Analysis of the SNP's two spectacular by-election wins in Glasgow

Just a quick note to let you know I have an analysis piece at The National about yesterday's two local by-elections in Glasgow, both of which produced pretty spectacular wins for the SNP.  The article is accompanied by a photo of John Swinney in a novelty hat, so please do brace yourselves.  You can read it HERE.

Find Out Now! Find Out How? Find Out ZAP! WHAM! POW! Labour deservedly slump to just 22% in the first GB-wide poll since society's most vulnerable got thoroughly Kendalled

We all know there are people out there, sometimes quite poor people, sometimes even quite left-wing people, who resent anyone that doesn't work and regard the 'workshy' as the source of all society's ills.  When I was growing up, I had a great-aunt who was born in the early years of the 20th century, and who I always assumed to be a lifelong Labour voter, and her catchphrase (well, one of several) was "they neither work nor want".  In my view it's faulty thinking caused by what's in front of people's noses - anyone on a low income will know lots of people who are 'economically inactive', but very few of them will know any billionaires, so it's quite hard for them to visualise the fact that if you just got a few fabulously wealthy individuals to pay their fair share, the funds raised would dwarf anything you could get by hammering the disabled or those with mental health problems.

Nevertheless, the fact that the faulty thinking exists has given Labour hope that they could get away with savage cuts to benefit payments that not even the Tories ever attempted.  I've even seen the "Scotland isn't really more progressive than England" brigade on social media predicting that Liz Kendall's announcement would go down better in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK.

That presents us with an interesting test case, because it's unlikely the numbers are going to lie to us - if forcing the most vulnerable people to choose between work and starvation is something the typical man or woman on the street approves of, we should now see Labour's poll ratings start to recover.  But I must say that anecdotally, everything I've heard from the people around me has led me to conclude that the complete opposite is likely to happen - I've heard nothing but shock and outrage at what Kendall has done.  The first GB-wide poll to be conducted since the announcement is consistent with that interpretation...

GB-wide voting intentions (Find Out Now, 19th March 2025):

Reform UK 27% (-)

Labour 22% (-2)

Conservatives 21% (-)

Liberal Democrats 14% (+3)

Greens 11% (+1)

SNP 3% (-)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

22% equals Labour's record post-election low across all polling firms.  It's little more than half of the 40% vote share that the supposedly "unelectable left-wing extremist" Jeremy Corbyn led Labour to in the 2017 general election.

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Nicola Sturgeon cleared

Doubtless there's someone in Bath that will be devastated by this news, but most sensible people in the independence movement, both inside and outside the SNP, will be extremely relieved.  None of us know exactly what has gone on, but the idea that anything good (from an independence point of view) would have come out of the former SNP leader being faced with prolonged legal action is obviously for the birds.

The Peter Murrell case will still attract a lot of press interest, but now that he's left the SNP, and now that he's separated from Ms Sturgeon, and now that Ms Sturgeon is leaving the Scottish Parliament anyway, a firewall of sorts is in place and we're getting a lot closer to the point where we can look to the future for the independence cause without the constant dark whispers that the Branchform monster is going to turn up at any moment and destroy everything in sight.  That's a good thing, not a bad thing.

More analysis of the new Survation poll showing the pro-independence majority at Holyrood is on course to be retained

Just a quick note to let you know I have a new article at The National, discussing the new Survation poll which suggests the pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament is on course to be retained in next year's election.  In particular, I take a look at the implications of Reform UK's record high showing in the poll.  You can read the article HERE.

Stonking Survation survey shows the Scottish Parliament on course for another PRO-INDEPENDENCE MAJORITY next year - and the fieldwork took place BEFORE Labour hammered society's most vulnerable

From memory, I'm pretty sure that the previous Survation poll in early January was the only Scottish poll from any firm over the last few months that didn't show pro-independence parties on course to retain their parliamentary majority next year, so it's extremely heartening that has now been rectified and that all pollsters are in agreement.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot voting intentions (Survation / Quantum Communications, 6th-13th March 2025):

SNP 34% (-1)

Labour 23% (+1)

Reform UK 17% (+4)

Conservatives 12% (-2)

Liberal Democrats 8% (-)

Greens 4% (-2)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot voting intentions:

SNP 29% (-2)

Labour 20% (-1)

Reform UK 16% (+3)

Conservatives 13% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 9% (-1)

Greens 8% (-1)

Alba 3% (+1)

Seats projection: SNP 55, Labour 19, Conservatives 17, Reform UK 14, Liberal Democrats 13, Greens 10, Alba 1

SNP + GREENS: 65 SEATS

ALL OTHER PARTIES: 64 SEATS

SNP + GREEN MAJORITY OF 1 SEAT

PRO-INDEPENDENCE PARTIES: 66 SEATS

ANTI-INDEPENDENCE PARTIES: 63 SEATS

PRO-INDEPENDENCE MAJORITY OF 3 SEATS

You can guarantee that Alba HQ's resident young whippersnapper Robert Reid (who interestingly is never allowed to put his own name to any of his 'official' pronouncements) will be wound up like a clock to proclaim this poll as some sort of breakthrough.  As ever, don't shoot the messenger here, but there's no breakthrough at all, and 3% on the list is actually a poor showing for Alba that would be extremely unlikely to win them any seats.  The Diffley Partnership were commissioned to do the seats projection, and they must have some quirk in their model that awards one seat to Alba even on 3%, something that I'm almost certain wouldn't be the case if John Curtice was doing the projection.  

It's not totally inconceivable that could happen in the real world election, but it's very, very unlikely.  Small parties have picked up one seat on a low national vote share in the past, but that was because their vote was disproportionately concentrated in particular geographical areas - for example, Tommy Sheridan outperforming the SSP's national vote in Glasgow in 1999.  One of the reasons that Alba weren't even close to a list seat in 2021 is that their vote was pretty evenly spread across the country, and until that changes they'd need to be on 5% or 6% of the national vote to expect to make a seats breakthrough.  I'm wondering if the Diffley Partnership may have relied on Survation's regional breakdown to produce the Alba projection, and if so I think that's a questionable way of going about it, because the margin of error in any regional subsample is bound to be enormous.

A lot of the hype surrounding this poll is about Reform UK's showing, and actually that's fully justified, because no poll from any polling firm has produced numbers anything like this before.  Reform's 17% on the constituency vote is a full three points higher than their previous best of 14% (recorded by Norstat), while their 16% on the list vote also beats their former high watermark of 13% (recorded by both Norstat and Survation) by three points.  However, for as long as the SNP and Green vote holds up, Reform will look less like kingmakers and more like spoilers for the unionist side.

The in-built features of the British political system that have led to Labour's war against the most vulnerable

I've been asked quite a few times how I know that Chris "Mad Dog PRIMUS" McEleny actually instigated the Alba expulsion proceedings against me, rather than him just acting as the monkey to the Tas organ grinder.  My answer has always been that I don't know for sure that he was one of the instigators, but what I do know for sure is that expelling people is something that he really enjoys doing.  It gives him immense personal satisfaction and pleasure.  I could see it in his eyes during Colin Alexander's expulsion hearing, and I see much the same look in Liz Kendall's eyes as she talks about destroying the lives of disabled people, and people who suffer from mental health problems.  

For Starmerites, this is the stuff that really turns them on.  They didn't enter politics because they thought big business was a problem or because they wanted the wealthy to pay their fair share.  They entered politics because they feel an utterly irrational level of resentment and anger towards the most vulnerable in society.  When they look back on their careers, they want their legacy to be a "solution" to the "problem" of vulnerable people's existence.  Perhaps even a final solution, if Kim Leadbeater gets her way.

However, there are two other factors specific to the British political system which have greatly contributed to us reaching this point - 

1) The funding model for political parties.  When Rachel Reeves is presented with a choice between taxing the wealthy or getting the funds from disabled people instead, and she reacts as if the latter is the easy option and the former is utterly unthinkable, that must in part be due to Labour's reliance on wealthy donors.  If you had state funding for parties, or a cap on spending, or a cap on the size of donations, the range of policy options open to governments would suddenly and radically expand, because left-wing parties wouldn't have to fear losing their level playing-field if they genuinely pursued social justice.

2) The absence of proportional representation.  If we had PR, a socialist party to the left of Labour would be viable.  As is the case in Germany, it might take around 5-10% of the vote and thus take around 5-10% of the seats.  That would mean there would always be a price to pay for Labour in tacking too far to the right, because left-wing voters would have somewhere else to go.  As it is, Labour just ignore their left flank because most of the left are still sitting powerlessly within the Labour party itself.  (OK, that's an over-simplification, because the Green Party is stronger than ever before and Labour are also threatened by left-wing independents in certain areas.  But Starmer, Reeves and Kendall continue to think and act as if they needn't worry about the left.)

Can anyone imagine the "Rearm Britain" brigade sending troops to fight the Americans if Greenland is invaded?

Even twelve long years after I last posted there, I'm desperately sad to see what's happened to my old haunt of Political Betting, affectionately known as "Stormfront Lite" due to the excessive number of borderline-fascist nutjobs in the comments section.  It's now been completely taken over by "TSE", notorious for once inventing a family tragedy to avoid having to settle a private bet - which I suppose those with a sense of irony would say makes him the ideal man to edit the UK's best-known political betting site.  But it's actually not so much his welching that's the problem, it's the dismal standard of his political analysis and his puerile sense of humour, which I know he honestly thinks adds an "inimitability" to the site but is in reality making it too excruciating to read.  The saving grace is that there are often lengthy, thoughtful guest posts at the weekend, and it might almost be better if TSE just ran those and didn't even try to fill in the gaps in between.  His dreadful weekday posts are absolutely wrecking the site.

I believe he's a Tory member in Manchester or somewhere like that, and like so many clueless Tories south of the border he fancies himself as a bit of an expert on Scotland and Scottish politics.  His latest pronouncement is that Donald Trump's second term has killed Scottish independence stone dead - and he's tried to ward off suggestions that he's guilty of wishful thinking by pointing out that other people have in the past been guilty of wishful thinking on the subject.  But no, I'm afraid this is no more than yet another round of wishful thinking on stilts from a bog-standard Greater England imperialist perspective.

If he was actually immersed as most of us are in what is happening in Scotland, he'd realise that the issue of Trump is a red herring because by far the biggest barrier to independence at present is the SNP leadership's own reluctance to press the issue.  That is not an insurmountable barrier in the long run, but would anyone confidently bet on it being overcome during Trump's four-year term?  Most of us would regard it as an immense luxury if we could start thinking in terms of what external factors might get in the way of an SNP leadership that is seriously trying to win independence in the short-term.  (And any chance of a non-SNP route to independence has been completely ended by the insanely destructive behaviour of the Alba Party elite.)

By the time the independence campaign is fully back on track, it's likely that either there'll be a Democratic president and normal service will have been resumed, or JD Vance will be president, in which case independence will be a moot point because we might all want to take up Musk's offer of emigrating to another planet.

But in any case, TSE is making himself look more than faintly ridiculous by suggesting that campaigning for independence while Trump is president is like trying to do it during the Battle of Britain.  If we're supposed to believe that Trump's trade wars and his threats to invade Greenland are an existential threat on a par with 1940, one that puts an end to politics as usual for the foreseeable future, I'd suggest we'd first need to have a British government that recognises the existence of such a threat.  Instead, Starmer is still sycophantically paying homage to Trump as the leader of a Euro-Atlantic alliance and indeed as someone without whom no way forward in Ukraine is even possible.  If anything, all that does is make Scottish independence look more attractive, because the world order that Starmer is offering is plainly bankrupt.

There's now a Canadian Prime Minister who is using extremely belligerent language and talking of "the Americans" as an aggressor that his country needs to be defended from.  If Starmer was bold enough to verbally "stand with Canada" against the US threat, that might start to change perceptions in Scotland and make people feel that we've moved into an emergency situation which crowds out domestic issues like independence.  But I doubt if there's a single person reading this who can imagine Starmer actually having the guts to do that.  

Britain and other European countries are supposedly rearming so that they can act more independently in future, but does anyone seriously think that Starmer would send troops to fight against the US if there was a border incursion in Canada or a full-scale annexation of Greenland?  Of course he wouldn't.  He'd suddenly rediscover the realpolitik that he's thrown to the wind as far as Ukraine is concerned.  He'd say that a military solution was in the realms of fantasy given America's military strength.  He'd say a dispute between two valued allies was a matter of great regret, and he'd urge a diplomatic solution.  He'd argue that escalation must be avoided at all costs, and he'd suggest that until an amicable agreement can be reached, life wouldn't be so bad for those living under occupation.  After all, the Americans aren't a bad sort, and Donald is a great personal friend of his.

Not exactly the sort of Churchillian rhetoric that will inspire solidarity and put the Scottish independence cause on hold.