Is there any way there might be an early Westminster general election before 2028?

It's fair to say that an early general election would probably be in the overwhelming best interests of the SNP and the independence movement.  The polls do not show the SNP on a stellar vote share, but that doesn't matter under first-past-the-post as long as you're in first place and each other party is far enough behind you, and that is exactly the scenario that has arisen.  An early election would very likely see the SNP regain a majority, perhaps even a landslide majority, of Scottish seats at Westminster, and the 2024 election would be left looking like an unimportant aberration.

The snag is, of course, that an early election is extraordinarily unlikely.  There's no incentive for Keir Starmer to call one, in fact there's every conceivable disincentive.  And his hand can't be forced with a vote of no confidence, because he has an overwhelming majority of Commons seats (albeit won on only 34% of the popular vote).  We quite rightly scoffed at the Trump allies in the US who apparently spent January and February fantasising about how they were going to contrive a way of bringing the Labour government down early.

Nevertheless, very strange things do happen sometimes - nobody imagined in the spring of 2017 that Theresa May was only a few weeks away from losing her parliamentary majority, because she didn't have to call an election for another three years.  So just from a purely speculative point of view, I've been pondering whether there might be some sort of way an election could happen before, say, 2028 (and some would argue that even 2028 would count as "early").

I think almost certainly the key to it would be Keir Starmer's early departure as Labour leader.  That would have two effects - first of all, it would give the green light to the London media to start chipping away at the new Prime Minister's legitimacy, ie. they'd say that he or she lacks any 'personal mandate'.  Secondly, and far more importantly, it would open up the possibility of the Labour membership selecting a leader who a significant percentage of Labour MPs cannot live with.

Imagine, for example, that Jeremy Corbyn was currently Labour Prime Minister with 400 MPs.  That would plainly not be a stable situation in which we could be sure that the parliament would survive its full term, because many, and perhaps most, of those 400 MPs would regard themselves as informally part of the opposition to the Corbyn government.  Now, of course Starmer's replacement isn't going to be a Corbynite, the rules have been stitched up to ensure that can't happen.  

But what if it was someone from the soft left?  What if it was Angela Rayner, for example?  Is it just conceivable that the Labour parliamentary party has moved so far to the right that there are several dozen MPs who wouldn't even be able to stomach someone like Rayner?  There might also be a class element to it - there are a fair number of posh boy (and posh girl) Labour MPs who would cringe every time they hear their own Prime Minister speaking with that accent.  Suppose the right-wingers organised and went all-out to bring down Prime Minister Rayner, and when they failed went for the Plan B of setting up a Change UK style organisation, but on a much bigger scale?  That might just possibly be enough to bring down the government and trigger an early election.  It's an extreme long shot, but not totally impossible.

As you might have seen, there's been a lot of chatter in the media in recent days about Rayner supposedly already being on manoeuvres, and one Labour source was quoted as saying the leadership battle would undoubtedly be a straight fight between Rayner and Wes Streeting.  If that's true, punters at the betting exchanges don't seem to have twigged yet.  Streeting is the weak favourite, but is only priced at 7.8, while Rayner is only priced at 8.8, implying a strong probability that the next leader will be someone else entirely.  Rayner's odds have shortened since I last checked, but I still think she looks like value.

Sorry, Stew, but you're wrong again: no, I was not on the Alba NEC when the Nordic Model on prostitution law was adopted as party policy

Stew on Twitter: "I wonder if James Kelly knows that he was *on the Alba NEC* when it officially adopted the Nordic model as policy?" pic.twitter.com/UzD9dJe7IW

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) May 22, 2025

For someone who is so insanely belligerent and abusive, there's an almost childlike naivety about Stew at times.  He genuinely seems to be asking whether I didn't even notice that I was on the governing body of a political party, or whether (the only other possible interpretation) I was on the governing body of a political party without noticing what policies that party was adopting.

Not that this makes much difference, but on the principle that "truth matters", I really must point out that the latest claim Stew is making is yet again false.  In fact, I was not on the Alba NEC when the Nordic Model became party policy.  It was adopted as policy on 11th September 2021, which was the first day of the two-day inaugural Alba conference in Greenock.  At that point I was not an NEC member, but merely a candidate for the NEC.  The ballot for NEC members took place during the conference and did not close until the end of session on the 12th.  The results were revealed to the candidates on the 13th, so I did not become an NEC member until around two days after the Nordic Model became policy.

I did not attend the 2021 conference because I live with a vulnerable person and Covid remained an unacceptably high risk (in my opinion it was irresponsible of Alba to hold a fully in-person conference at a time when other parties were not yet doing so).  However, if I had been able to attend I would have voted against the Nordic Model becoming policy.  I would have been on the losing side in that vote, but I would not have been in a minority of one, because I saw on the live-stream that at least one Alba member was brave enough to speak against the motion.

But having been outvoted, precisely what does Stew think the oddity of my position was?  Does he really think no-one should be on the governing body of a party unless they agree with every single one of that party's policies?  If he does, it's little wonder that he's always been unwilling to be a member of any party that is not called the Wings Party and is not led by himself on the "Il Duce" principle.

As I've pointed out many times, all anyone can do is find the political party that is the closest fit for them.  You're never going to find the perfect fit - there are always going to be at least one or two policies you strongly disagree with.  For independence supporters who oppose the Nordic Model, there's a particular problem, because the only major pro-indy party that actively opposes it is the Green Party.  My policy disagreements with the Green Party on other matters clearly outweigh my agreement with them about the folly of the Nordic Model.

In any case, nobody in their right mind is going to just crudely count up the policies they agree with and the policies they don't - some issues are more high-tariff than others, and independence has the highest tariff of the lot.  (Unless your name is Stew Campbell, of course, in which case gender identity politics is far, far, far more important than independence, or indeed than any other subject in the known universe.)  I do feel strongly against the Nordic Model, but that's always going to be a lower priority for me than independence - which is why, for example, I openly supported Ash Regan in the 2023 SNP leadership election even though she is one of the highest-profile proponents of the Nordic Model.

Nevertheless, I can assure Stew that the Nordic Model was very much on my mind when I was standing for the Alba NEC in 2021.  That's why, in the summer of 2021, I recorded a podcast interview with the prolific Canadian blogger Maggie McNeill, who is a semi-retired escort and perhaps the most eloquent critic of the Nordic Model anywhere in the world.  You can listen to the podcast HERE or via the embedded player below.

James Kelly · Scot Goes Popcast Episode 10: Maggie McNeill

The remarkable YouGov polling that shows the Scottish public are totally opposed to Ash Regan's private member's bill introducing the Nordic Model on prostitution law - both in terms of principle and practicalities

Still smarting from Bonnie Prince Bob's excoriating video calling him out on his apologism for the genocide in Gaza, Stuart "Stew" Campbell has made a quite astoundingly defamatory statement about Bob, suggesting he must be a frequenter of 'saunas' simply because he opposes Ash Regan's bill introducing the Nordic Model on prostitution law.  With any luck Bob will sue the hell out of Stew.

As long-term readers of this blog know, I'm also strongly opposed to the Nordic Model, and in fact I think I first blogged about the subject before Wings Over Scotland even existed.  But from a party political point of view, what interests me most are the chances of the Regan bill passing, because there's an obvious tension here.  There's probably a natural majority in the Scottish Parliament in favour of the Nordic Model, foolish though that is - the SNP, Labour and the Tories all seem attracted to the idea (gloriously ironic in the Tories' case given that the Nordic Model is rooted in Marxist concepts of class struggle and 'false consciousness'), and yet there's a massive obvious downside to SNP MSPs allowing the bill through, because that would give Ash Regan a huge propaganda win as she bids for re-election either as an Alba candidate or as a candidate for a new McEleny/Regan party or as an independent.  That's a genie they won't be keen to let out of the bottle.  Additionally, passing the bill could make it harder for the SNP to do a confidence-and-supply deal with the Greens if one is necessary after next May's election, because the Greens are viscerally opposed to the Nordic Model and instead favour the decriminalisation of prostitution.

So I did a Google search to see if I could find out which way the wind is blowing, particularly as far as SNP MSPs are concerned.  I ended up none the wiser, but I did discover that sex workers opposed to the bill mounted a fightback a few days ago, and in doing so cited a major YouGov poll of Scottish adults from a year ago that I must have overlooked at the time.  With a bit of difficulty I've tracked the data tables down, and the results are truly remarkable.  It's not a surprise that the public would oppose the Nordic Model due to the harm it causes in practice to vulnerable sex workers, but what perhaps is quite startling is that it turns out that a plurality of the public think prostitution should remain legal as a matter of principle, even before any other factors are taken into account.

YouGov poll of adults in Scotland, 13th-17th May 2024:

Generally speaking do you think it should or should not be legal in Scotland for a person to do the following…

Pay someone to have sex with them?

Should be legal: 47%

Should not be legal: 32%

As far as I can see there's no funny business going on here, there's no Yes, Minister question-ladder effect distorting people's answers.  Only one question seems to have been asked prior to the above one, and that was a scrupulously neutral question asking what the top three government policy priorities should be.  So the results can be regarded as entirely credible.  

I think it's fair to say that many of our elected parliamentarians simply think the public are wrong about this.  Which is fine - as I said about the gender self-ID issue in 2021, it's perfectly legitimate in a parliamentary democracy for MSPs to vote in defiance of the public's wishes, as long as they're clear-sighted and honest about what they're doing, and don't try to delude themselves that the public are happy about it when the polar opposite is true.  Sadly, however, that kind of honesty is rarely forthcoming.

It may also be of some interest to SNP MSPs to learn that the kind of liberal, pro-independence, pro-Europe voters they rely on to get elected are even more likely to be in favour of keeping the purchase of sex legal. Remain voters from 2016 are in favour of it by a margin of 50% to 28%, while in contrast Leave voters are opposed by a slender margin of 41% to 39%.  Yes voters from the 2014 independence referendum also favour keeping prostitution legal by a bigger margin (49% to 31%) than No voters do (44% to 33%).

The poll shows the public also think that accepting payment for sex (ie. as opposed to purchasing it) should remain legal, by the even bigger margin of 50% to 29%.  However, that's the part of the equation the Nordic Model doesn't criminalise (at least not on paper).

Thinking about your local area, which of the following comes closest to your view…

I would prefer for sex workers to look for business on the street: 2%

I would prefer for sex workers to look for business online: 63%

The point here is that the Nordic Model effectively forces sex workers back onto the streets, in defiance of the public's overwhelming wishes.  Why does it do that?  Simply because once the purchase of sex is criminalised, clients of sex workers will consider it too risky to make the initial approach online in case they are being monitored.  Instead they'll look for direct face-to-face interactions, thus forcing sex workers looking for trade to do so in much less safe conditions, and arguably causing a totally unnecessary 'public nuisance'.

Which of the following comes closest to your view?

Sex work, even when carried out by those who choose to engage in it, should always be considered to be violence against women: 13%

Sex work, carried out by those who choose to engage in it, should not always be considered to be violence against women: 62%

On paper, that's the most damning result of all for the Regan bill, because the entire logic of the Nordic Model is predicated on the Marxist-rooted assumption that ALL sex work, without exception, is a form of male violence against women, and that it's therefore acceptable to discriminate by gender in the policing of an effective ban on prostitution by only criminalising the male purchaser and not the female seller (who is supposedly a victim suffering from 'false consciousness').  However, again, it seems that many parliamentarians simply believe the public are wrong to reject this ideology.

When the Scottish Government is considering new laws to keep sex workers safe, do you think they should or should not consult sex workers and sex worker-led groups that represent them?

The Scottish Government should consult sex workers and sex worker-led groups that represent them: 79%

The Scottish Government should not consult sex workers and sex worker-led groups that represent them: 7%

I suspect this might be the most promising get-out clause for any SNP MSPs who have sympathy for the Nordic Model but who also want to avoid boosting Ash Regan's election hopes - they could simply point out that the consultation that has taken place was wholly inadequate and indeed was largely a sham, and that if legislation on the subject is to be taken forward, it would be much better for it to be done by the Scottish Government rather than by a private member.  That way, there's a far better chance that the interests of all affected parties can be properly considered and protected.

Hapless Starmer now trails Reform by EIGHT points in latest GB-wide More In Common poll

There's been a lot of focus on the Tories' polling problems recently, mainly due to them slipping to fourth place in the latest GB-wide YouGov poll, but the horror show continues for Labour too.  Both Techne and Opinium showed Labour slumping to new post-election lows at the weekend, and now More In Common show them slipping to 22% - which is their second-lowest since the election.  The outright low with More In Common was 21% a few weeks ago, which at the time stood out like a sore thumb as an outlier, so in practice things may now be as bad for Starmer as they've ever been.

GB-wide voting intentions (More In Common, 16th-19th May 2025):

Reform UK 30% (+2)

Labour 22% (-3)

Conservatives 21% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 14% (-)

Greens 8% (-)

SNP 2% (-)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

Reform have also hit 30% for the first time ever in a More In Common poll, and it goes without saying that their 8-point lead is also the highest they've ever had with the firm.

I've seen a bit of chatter in one or two places about the SNP being on 2% of the GB-wide vote (as opposed to the more usual 3%) in four consecutive polls from different firms.  Well, two of those firms are More In Common and Techne, who actually both show the SNP on 2% extremely frequently, so there's a fair chance that this is just a coincidental little run caused by normal margin of error noise.  But time will tell.

BREAKING: Controversial "Stew" blogger dramatically fails to deny reports that his friend Chris McEleny is planning to use his position as Nominating Officer to mount a coup in Alba - a party he has ALREADY BEEN EXPELLED FROM

Stew on Twitter: ("UPDATE: I’ve been told of this passing mention in a hilarious paranoid fantasy in which I’m planning a coup to take over Alba or something. Official statement: I have no plans to take over, or even become a member of, Alba.)" pic.twitter.com/Pby4VEnrWE

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) May 21, 2025

As ever, what matters here is not what Stew has said but what he hasn't said.  All he's doing is knocking down a straw man, because I never at any point alleged that Stew himself was planning a coup within Alba.  What I did say is that it appears that Chris McEleny is refusing to voluntarily relinquish his role as Alba's Nominating Officer with the Electoral Commission, which he cannot be removed from in any other way.  It's a statement of the obvious that there's likely to be a reason why he has refused to step down, and one very obvious possibility is that he wants to retain control over the candidates Alba can put forward at the 2026 election, ie. even after his expulsion he intends to put forward his own slate of Alba candidates and to prevent the leadership's chosen candidates from being adopted, unless he personally approves of them.  That would, indeed, amount to a coup, and the only way out for the leadership would be to either cut a deal with McEleny or to nominally set up a new party with a new name.

We know with a high level of confidence that Stew is close to McEleny and speaks to him in private regularly, so it's highly probable that Stew already knows the reason for McEleny choosing to retain the Nominating Officer position.  It's therefore fascinating that Stew spurned the opportunity to mock me for suggesting that McEleny is planning a coup, and instead carefully set up the straw man about himself.

Hmmm.

Meanwhile, I know I wasn't the only person shocked to see Stew last night defend the police for emptying a full can of pepper spray into the face of a 92-year-old pensioner with only one leg, and then immediately afterwards discharging a taser at him, causing excruciating pain (he died only three weeks later).  What an insight these words give into Stew's perverted worldview: "They spray him. They try everything reasonably possible."  

This of course is in keeping with Stew's repugnant views on the Hillsborough tragedy - he was so keen to absolve the police of any blame that he insisted Liverpool fans were somehow responsible for their fate.  It's hard to escape the conclusion that every instinct in Stew's body would lead to any Stew state being a police state. 

To very slightly adapt James Maxton's words when he publicly debated with the fascist leader Oswald Mosley in the mid-1930s:

"And woe betide anyone who wishes to disagree with the Great Leader.  What will be our rights?  Stew will decide them.  What is truth?  Stew will decide.  We throw our freedoms away at our peril.  And once they are gone we may never get them back.  Dictatorship allows no opposition."

It really is no surprise at all that Stew is now a Reform man.

One potential side-benefit of the Reform surge may be the end of the BBC's and ITV's ability to rig the TV leaders' debates

Right at this moment, Reform UK are the outright favourites on the leading betting exchange to win most seats in the next general election.  They are priced at 2.5, with Labour just behind at 2.64, and with the Tories third favourites at 5.3.  So even with four years potentially still to go until the election, people are giving up on the idea that the Reform surge is just a passing fad.

I always try to look on the bright side wherever possible, and as you know I do think the looming prospect of a Farage government and Britain's withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights could lead to a surge in support for independence and the type of Yes supermajority that John Swinney seems to be needlessly insisting on before taking any action.  However, that is only a potential and highly speculative indirect benefit.  

It's much harder to think of any direct benefits of a Reform government.  Pretty much the only one I was previously able to come up with is that Reform are, theoretically at least, committed to replacing first-past-the-post with proportional representation.  But even that has to be regarded as highly dubious, because their support for PR is tactical rather than principled, and if they win under first-past-the-post they're likely to suddenly decide there's no tactical advantage after all.  I wouldn't totally give up hope on the idea, though, because it depends on the circumstances in which a Reform government is elected - if they're well short of a majority they may yet conclude that PR would work in their favour.

I have, however, now come up with a potential second direct benefit of the Reform surge, because I think it's highly likely to put an end to the "Prime Ministerial Debate" con that the BBC and ITV have been attempting in recent elections, which involves them pretending that we have a presidential system in which there are only two "candidates for Prime Minister", thus justifying the exclusion of all but two parties from TV election debates.

How would that work this time?  You can't have Labour v Tory debates when it's obvious from the polls that Reform are one of the two main contenders for power.  In any case, we hear that Morgan McSweeney wants to frame the next election as a straight choice between Starmer and Farage, which means Labour would be unlikely to agree to a Labour v Tory head-to-head.

But neither can you really have a Labour v Reform head-to-head when the Tories remain the second largest party in parliament.  Indeed, once you concede the participation of Reform, you're also making the case for Lib Dem involvement almost unanswerable, because the Lib Dems have a far bigger parliamentary group than Reform.  The case for the Greens to be involved would also be strong, given that they have almost as many MPs as Reform.  And if you've already got five parties in the mix, and two of them are Reform and the Greens, how can you exclude the SNP, who have as many MPs as Reform and the Greens combined, and who may well be poised to quadruple their own numbers?

The broadcasters will hate this, but I think the logic points inexorably towards immaculately fair 2015-style seven-way debates between Labour, Conservative, Reform UK, Liberal Democrat, SNP, Green and Plaid Cymru.

They don't call him "Mad Dog" for nothing - the Alba Party may face a coup attempt from their disgraced former General Secretary Chris McEleny, even though they've already expelled him

Below is an up-to-date screenshot of the Alba Party's registration with the Electoral Commission. 

As you can see, one of the party's three official "officers" (officers recognised by the Electoral Commission are to some extent distinct from those recognised by the party's own constitution) is none other than a man who has already been expelled from the party, namely the disgraced former General Secretary Chris McEleny.  By any standards, this is an intriguing metaphysical state of affairs.  When Alba took action against me a few months ago, I checked the rules and it appeared to me that any expulsion took effect as soon as the Disciplinary Committee had reached their decision, notwithstanding the right of appeal.  If that's correct, a non-member of Alba effectively still has a degree of control over the party.  (Admittedly, Corri Wilson's interpretation of the rules seemed to be different - her email telling me that my appeal has been rejected implied that I only ceased to be a member at that point, which would mean that McEleny is still technically an Alba member pending any appeal.)

Before taking the screenshot, I scrolled down far enough so that you can't see the first line of Alba's registered postal address, just in case that would breach McEleny's privacy.  The fact that the address is in Greenock implies that Alba may yet again be making history for all the wrong reasons by being the first party ever to have their official headquarters in the basement of a man they've expelled.

You might wonder if the Electoral Commission simply haven't updated the details yet (after all, McEleny is listed as "Councillor Christopher McEleny" even though he hasn't been a councillor for three years), but as far as I've been able to gather that's not the case - McEleny does seem to remain Alba's Nominating Officer, which means that he is the only person allowed to put forward Alba candidates for local, Holyrood or Westminster elections unless he specifically authorises someone else to do so.  

Why don't Alba just sack him, you might wonder?  They can't.  Check the Electoral Commission rules.  A change of officer requires the signatures of all three current officers, unless it can be demonstrated that one of the officers has died or is unable to sign for some other reason.  It appears that, so far at least, McEleny has not voluntarily signed, which is the only way he can be removed.

So what is he playing at this time?  He may be looking for leverage, which would be in keeping with the pattern of the repeated high-profile leaks of damaging information to unionist tabloids over the last few months (the purpose of the leaks was presumably to send the message "there'll be plenty more of this if you expel me").  If we read in the coming days or weeks that McEleny's appeal against expulsion has succeeded against all the odds, that's highly likely to mean the Alba leadership have given in to blackmail in order to stop the leaks and to regain control of the crucial Nominating Officer position.

But we also know enough about McEleny for there to be little doubt that he's perfectly capable of some truly extreme behaviour - remember when he tried to suspend his own party leader Kenny MacAskill from attending NEC meetings.  He justified it as being in line with the precedent the NEC themselves had set a few months earlier by unconstitutionally barring "former party member James Kelly" from meetings of the Constitution Review Group, which I was an elected member of.  He's therefore quite capable of seeing through the nuclear option of remaining Alba's Nominating Officer even after his expulsion is formally upheld.  That would allow him to nominate his own slate of Alba candidates in the 2026 Holyrood election, including presumably himself as lead candidate in the West region.  Alba's own chosen list of candidates would be virtually an irrelevance, left to be butchered at McEleny's whim.

The Alba leadership's only defence against this would be to either cut a generous deal with McEleny (which again would amount to a surrender to blackmail) or to nominally set up a new party, which under Electoral Commission rules would need to have a new name.  That would leave McEleny, and presumably Ash Regan (and Stew?), in control of the rump "official Alba", which they would paint as the true inheritor of the telepathic Salmondite flame.

If all of this sounds far-fetched, you may be surprised to learn that most of it has happened before when the Respect party split into two.  However monumentally stupid the law is, there's no way around it - if an official party officer flatly refuses to go, there's no way of forcing him to, and a new organisation may be the only viable option left.

The mind boggles.  Be sure to get lots of popcorn in.

Are the Tories vanishing into history? Landmark new YouGov poll has them in FOURTH place, with barely half the vote of Reform UK

GB-wide voting intentions (YouGov / Sky, 18th-19th May 2025):

Reform UK 29% (+1)
Labour 22% (-1)
Liberal Democrats 17% (+1)
Conservatives 16% (-2)
Greens 10% (+1)

SNP 2% (-1)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

The data tables don't appear to be on the YouGov website yet, so take the SNP figure with a pinch of salt - I'm getting it from the Wikipedia list of polls, but the only source listed there is a tweet from Sam Coates, and that tweet excludes the SNP figure altogether.

I've speculated for ages about a potential tipping point where Reform UK clearly establish themselves as the main right-wing challengers to Labour and the remaining Tory vote starts to melt away as a result.  Are we now looking at that tipping point?  If so, will Tory MPs start to defect to Reform in significant numbers?

It's also worth pointing out that Labour are still not properly in mid-term yet, so there's a very real potential for them to end up in fourth or even fifth place at some point during this parliament.

UPDATE: The data tables are now out, and although the SNP's unusually low 2% GB-wide vote share is confirmed, the Scottish subsample is OK for them: SNP 28%, Labour 19%, Reform UK 18%, Liberal Democrats 15%, Greens 11%, Conservatives 8%.  It may be the implausibly high Green vote that has led to the SNP being a touch lower than normal.

"Ooft": with just one word, Somerset's controversial "Stew" blogger issues a chilling reminder that he actively championed Israel's right to commit genocide in the period immediately after October 7th - and STILL thinks he was correct to do so

Ah. Both-sidesing genocide yet again, I see.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 19, 2025

You’ve been crying genocide since the 12 Oct 2023 - less than 5 days after Oct 7 attack. You are not a serious person pic.twitter.com/Njvkzq8IB0

— Teajenny (@galluslass) May 19, 2025

Ooft.

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) May 19, 2025

"You were EVEN saying October 7th does not justify genocide RIGHT AFTER OCTOBER 7TH" is not the flex either of you think it is. Indeed, the fact that you both honestly seem to think it's some kind of Gotcha may be getting us to the nub of the issue. Opposing genocide...

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 19, 2025

...consistently rather than as a luxury extra is pretty much the only option for a serious person.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 19, 2025

Essentially the position Jenny is outlining here, and that Stew is clearly supporting, is that in the immediate aftermath of October 7th Israel had the right to withhold electricity, water and fuel from the entire civilian population of Gaza, in other words that it had the right to commit acts of genocide, unless Hamas released the hostages.  That, of course, was also the position of Keir Starmer at the time, but the penny subsequently dropped for Starmer that he had made an openly genocidal statement.  He later pretended that he hadn't said it or had misunderstood the question.

No such penny seems to have dropped for Stew - or if it has, it doesn't seem to have made the slightest difference to him.  He still seems to believe that genocidal tactics such as starvation were a proportionate and reasonable response to October 7th.  Perhaps his nickname should be "Starve Them Stew".

Fears mount that Stew may face relentless "It's just a flesh wound" mockery as he refuses to give up on his "Reform will back an indyref" fairy-tale in defiance of overwhelming evidence: "OF COURSE I'm a more reliable authority on Reform policy than Richard Tice", Stew insists

It's been obvious for months that controversial Bath-based blogger Stuart "Stew" Campbell intends to endorse a vote for the far-right anti-independence party Reform UK at next year's Holyrood election, and that he's currently engaged in the slow process of preparing the ground for that.  During my recent debate with him about tactical voting, I gave him a clear opportunity to rule out endorsing Reform, but he angrily refused to take it, which tells its own story.

However, this leaves him with a bit of a problem, because he's also trying to maintain an official fiction that he's at least nominally still a pro-independence blogger (in spite of making abundantly clear that he would abstain in any new independence referendum), and many of his disciples are still naive enough to take that claim at face value.  By endorsing Reform without some fiendishly clever cover story, he risks the scales finally falling from those people's eyes, which would mean the recent dramatic drop in his readership numbers reported by SimilarWeb may continue and intensify.  And Gawd bless him, he truly honestly thought he'd found the perfect cover story a few months ago, when the sports journalist Neil Drysdale tweeted an inaccurate story that Reform might back an independence referendum.  Stew's wishful thinking got the better of him, and he breathlessly reported what everyone else knew was a wildly implausible story as if it was the gospel truth.  He thought his fantasies had all come true, and that it would be possible to go Full-Fat Fascist while still posing as an independence supporter.

Reform predictably rubbished the story within hours, and for good measure humiliated Stew by openly mocking the Tories for treating him (briefly) as a credible source.  Now, most sensible bloggers at this stage would have just held their hands up and admitted they got it wrong, or at the very least maintained some dignified silence on the subject for a while.  But not our Stew.  He quickly returned to the fray all guns blazing, insisting that the person from Reform who had dismissed the story was not senior enough to be regarded as reliable, and that there was probably still a top secret plan at a higher level to back an indyref.  None of this, of course, makes the remotest logical sense, because Reform would not be daft enough to alienate their nationalist support base in England in pursuit of a much smaller number of pro-independence votes in Scotland.  But fair play to Stew, he's got his disciples just about brainwashed enough for them to accept that it was plausible that Stew might be a more reliable authority on Reform policy than Reform themselves.

It becomes a bit more problematical, though, when Reform's deputy leader Richard Tice makes clear, as he did yesterday, that the party would block an independence referendum if in power.  You might think that Stew would finally have to admit defeat at this point and accept that this is the definitive Reform position.  But that would be to severely underestimate the man's fortitude and optimism.

The idea that Tice determines policy is adorable, like if Angus Robertson made key decisions when he was Depute Leader of the SNP under Sturgeon 😄 https://t.co/SDWtGz6aOJ

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) May 19, 2025

You've got to love the laughing emoji at the end there, as Stew apparently expects his followers to laugh along with his mockery of the idea that the deputy leader of Reform UK might just possibly outrank Stew himself as an expert on Reform policy. Perhaps it's time for a kindly intervention like the one Terry Wogan performed on David Icke: "you do know they're laughing at you, not with you?" Otherwise Stew will just carry on and on and on without any self-awareness about how ridiculous he's making himself look, and let's face it, he's getting dangerously close to "It's just a flesh wound" territory.

And just to throw the kitchen sink at Stew, Reform's official Twitter account in Scotland tweeted this earlier -

Scotland doesn’t need independence.

Scotland needs Reform 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇬🇧

Be part of it ➡️ https://t.co/plgLBa1FdO pic.twitter.com/CN4jLczUrZ

— Reform UK Scotland (@ReformUKScot) May 18, 2025

Does that put the matter beyond all dispute? Oh don't be silly. STEWIE STILL KNOWS BEST. 

Come on, Stew, you're just being downright lazy here. You know you're going to have to do this Reform endorsement the hard way.  Better start honing your "to win independence, we must first kill independence" speech.  It'll be a hard sell, but we know you're the man for the job.

The Alba Party descends further into shambles and corruption: the Corri Nostra tightens its unelected grip on the party, an NEC member angrily doubles down on the official fiction that no vote-rigging occurred in 2023, Stuart Campbell lets slip that a senior Alba figure has got away with a severe breach of the party's Code of Conduct, while Tasmina gets on with the vital task of selling real estate in the United Arab Emirates

When the history is eventually written of how Alba ceased to exist as a credible political force, Friday 16th May 2025 will probably look like something of a landmark day.  Most important of course was the party's catastrophic result in the Clydebank Waterfront by-election, taking just 1.6% of the vote - and that happened in spite of the fact that Alba deliberately only puts up candidates in a tiny minority of by-elections these days, so they can concentrate their resources in the ones they do stand in.  For the first time, this disaster has caused some Alba members to seriously wonder whether the party can survive in its current form long enough to even stand in the 2026 election.

But there were also plenty of other things going on at roughly the same time.  The Alba NEC member Charlie Abel made a spectacularly ill-judged response on Twitter to someone who asked him why people should support Alba after they rigged their own 2023 internal elections.  He flatly denied reality, insisting the vote-rigging never took place, which many of the Alba rank-and-file regard as a contemptuous insult to their intelligence.  This is what he said:

"The 'cheating' did not happen.   I see people throwing  malicious accusations without evidence, against a party fighting for independence. I don't know their reasons. I prefer to trust my own mind and instinct, and would question rather, the judgement of the many, often anonymous keyboard warriors, who are doing nothing to help our Independence cause but stoke anger."

And then with jaw-dropping cynicism and arrogance, he added:

"Truth eventually wins.  That's also why you should still support Alba and vote for indy on the list in 2026."

You're right about one thing, Charlie.  Truth will win.  And that by definition means that Alba will lose unless it stops treating its own members like idiots.  A common theme among all organisations where disastrous failings have occurred (such as the BBC after the Jimmy Savile revelations or the Metropolitan Police after the investigation into Stephen Lawrence's murder) is that it's only possible to move on and regain trust after the facts have been admitted and acknowledged by the organisation's leadership, and after the toxic culture that allowed those failings to occur has been comprehensively addressed.  The Alba leadership hasn't even begun that process yet, and it seems the intention is never to begin.  Realistically, Charlie Abel is only saying these things because those higher up are instructing him to.

Meanwhile, with glorious irony, the two main beneficiaries of the direct vote-buying aspect of the 2023 vote-rigging, namely Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and Abdul Majid, were seen on Facebook getting on with the vital task of making even more money by selling real estate in the United Arab Emirates.

As regular readers of the blog will recall, the assumption of insiders I've spoken to is that the bulk vote-buying in 2023 was intended primarily to help Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, and that Abdul Majid was an 'accidental beneficiary' - but it was because the little-known-but-wealthy Majid topped the male ballot for Ordinary NEC Members by such a wildly implausible margin that the decision was taken to keep all of the results secret.  Chris McEleny then demeaned himself by trotting out a series of excruciatingly bad cover stories for the hush-up - first he claimed that it was "important to avoid embarrassment for good candidates who received no votes" and then eventually he settled on a nonsensical explanation about data compliance issues.

OK, there's nothing illegal about spending your time in plush Glasgow hotels selling UAE real estate, but the optics are dreadful, and Alba members will again wonder about Tasmina's sense of priorities, and about whether Alba to her has really been about the accumulation of money and status, rather than about the pursuit of Scottish independence.

Meanwhile, Friday also saw an announcement that Kirsty Fraser, the Alba Women's Convener and one of the more independently-minded people to be elected to the NEC a few weeks ago, has resigned for what are described as "personal reasons". She has been replaced on an unelected basis by Debbie Ewen - a key member of the "Corri Nostra" which functions as a party-within-a-party, and which already had a tight grip on Alba due to Corri Wilson's unelected role as "Director of Operations" and Chris Cullen's unelected role as an NEC member.  (He made two attempts to get elected spots on the NEC and failed on both occasions, but it didn't matter because he and his immature fiancée Shannon Donoghue had already abused their positions on the Constitution Review Group to wangle a guaranteed unelected spot for him.)

And last but not least, there's the damning information that Stuart Campbell let slip on Twitter.  The fact that he did it was a side-benefit of his truly epic (and still ongoing) meltdown about his "tactical voting" debate with me not working out in quite the way that he'd hoped.

I mean, I know why Alba really kicked him out, but I don't give a sh*t.

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) May 16, 2025

I defy anyone to interpret that as meaning anything other than that Campbell, who has never been a member of the Alba Party, was directly informed of the real reason for my expulsion.  I of course was never informed of the reason.  It hasn't been hard for me to work it out by inference - it was undoubtedly the leadership's fury that I stood up to them on both the Disciplinary Committee and the Constitution Review Group.  But nevertheless, disciplinary proceedings are strictly confidential, and it's hard to think of a more serious breach of the party's Code of Conduct than to pass such confidential information on to a non-member while withholding it from the subject of the hearing.  

Only a few senior figures within the party would have had the information, so by definition Campbell is implying that a senior Alba member severely breached the Code of Conduct and got away with it.  Campbell of course met Alex Salmond in person at the IMAX event shortly before Salmond's death, by which point the action against me was already underway.  But there are also a few other possibilities of who the culprit (or culprits) may have been.

Alba is a profoundly corrupt organisation in which the party constitution, the Code of Conduct, and internal democracy itself, are all shams.  All that really talks is money, blood connections, and transactional arrangements.

He just can't help himself: controversial "Stew" blogger once again trivialises the genocide in Gaza as "Middle Eastern politics"

Stew on Twitter: "But then you watched a European song competition last night and made it all about Middle East politics, so I suppose it’s in character. What a miserable life."

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) May 18, 2025

Ah. That appears to be you, once again, trivialising an *ongoing genocide* as "Middle Eastern politics".

Shameful.

No wonder you had to turn to AI and instruct it to give you a free pass with gibberish about "swans". Few others will be giving you any sort of pass.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 18, 2025

According to Stew, this scene depicts "Middle Eastern politics". pic.twitter.com/kja7crzEj2

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 18, 2025

In telling us to forget about the genocide and concentrate on the singing, Stew reminds me a bit of Tory politicians demanding that Marcus Rashford concentrates on football rather than on nutrition for children, or that Gary Lineker gets on with Match of the Day rather than commenting on politics.  The conservative perspective is that everyone should just get back in their box so that the world can continue to be run for the benefit of the people who already run it - in this case so that Benjamin Netanyahu and the state of Israel can continue exterminating the Palestinian ethnic group without interruption.

To be clear, though, there are any number of Tory politicians who are by now far more progressive than Stew on the issue of Palestine, including some of the least likely people you could ever imagine, such as Edward Leigh.

Quite apart from the repugnance of his views, Stew appears to be completely losing contact with the world around him.  90% of social media reactions to Eurovision this morning have been expressing outrage at how close the EBU allowed Israel to get to victory and to hosting next year's contest.  But Stew is oblivious to all of that - to him, it was just another routine episode of a singing competition.  "Just Another Year", to misquote Johnny Logan.

A night of shame for the Bunker BBC and the Bunker European Broadcasting Union

I'm a lifelong Eurovision fan - I've only missed one contest since I was five years old, but never before has it been quite such an uncomfortable watch.  The European Broadcasting Union should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves, as should many of the individual national broadcasters, most notably the BBC and the German public broadcaster NDR.  Countless viewers told the EBU that they needed to learn from the catastrophic mistake of last year, when not only was Israel allowed to compete but received special protection with the use of audio technology to filter out the booing during the song.  Well, it's clear that the EBU did "learn from their mistakes", but in completely the opposite way from what was demanded - they identified the places in last year's broadcast when they had allowed the full sound of the booing to slip through the net (particularly during the results section), and took all possible steps to "rectify" that.  The speaking role for the EBU executive supervisor was even cut out completely for the first time in decades, because the audience kept booing him last year.  Absolutely anything was sacrificed to protect Israel.  Anything.  This was bunker EBU and bunker Eurovision.

The only people who really came out of it with any credit were the Spanish broadcaster RTVE who put out a message in support of Palestinian rights immediately before the contest, and probably some of the members of the national juries, who it seemed to me were deliberately marking Israel down.  They probably imagined they were just making their own private protest, but in the end they may well have saved us from the ultimate catastrophe of an outright Israeli victory, because by the time the public vote was added into the mix there were only a few dozen points separating the Austrian winner and the Israeli runner-up.  Israel won the popular vote, but that was not because the European public wanted them to win.  It was simply because the Israeli diaspora throughout Europe, and right-wing nutjob sympathisers of the Netanyahu genocide, organised themselves and used their full twenty votes per phone number to create the synthetic impression that Israel was wildly popular throughout Europe.  Much the same thing happened last year, so it wasn't a huge surprise to me that Israel were so close to winning, and I voted tactically for Sweden (the pre-contest favourites) on the theory that they were most likely to avert the disaster if Israel were close.

Pretty much everything involving Israel during that broadcast was like watching a propaganda film from the Nazi era - this was a depiction of an 'alternative Europe' in which everybody is continuing to treat Israel like a normal country, and everybody is totally cool with the genocide, and everybody just adores Israeli popular music.  Even people booing Israel in an arena have to be technologically transformed into people cheering Israel in an arena.  It's just sheer cynicism.  Cynicism beyond that which we could really have thought the EBU and the BBC were even capable of until a couple of years ago.

What happened tonight cannot be allowed to happen ever again.  If the people of Palestine are still being exterminated by Israel a year from now, the broadcasters of countries like Ireland, Spain, Norway and Iceland have got to make clear they will withdraw from the contest unless Israel is excluded.  (Nobody is realistically expecting the BBC to develop a conscience any time soon.)  And if that causes other countries like Germany to storm off in a huff, I do not think that would be the end of the world by any means.

Get them OUT NOW #BanIsraelfromEurovision pic.twitter.com/DPBTSqT1TF

— 𝓑𝓵𝓪𝓴𝓮 🇸🇪 🇫🇮 🇪🇪 🇩🇪 🇲🇹 (@NllNKUCHACHACHA) May 17, 2025