Saturday, June 21, 2025

Majesty. Grandeur. The Taj Mahal of polling crossbreaks. SNP hit 41% in simply sumptuous Ipsos subsample.

Marcia on the previous thread pointed out that the SNP are on an unusually high 4% in the latest GB-wide Ipsos poll.  So I had a look at the data tables to see if I could find the Scottish subsample figures, and they didn't disappoint...

GB-wide voting intentions (Ipsos, 30th May-4th June 2025):

Reform UK 34%
Labour 25%
Conservatives 15%
Liberal Democrats 11%
Greens 9%
SNP 4%
Plaid Cymru 1%

Scottish subsample: SNP 41%, Reform UK 30%, Labour 15%, Liberal Democrats 7%, Greens 3%, Conservatives 3%

Having talked the subsample up, I'm now going to have to talk it back down again, because Ipsos are not like YouGov, so the Scottish figures are probably not correctly weighted.  However, 4% for the SNP in the GB-wide numbers, which are properly weighted, is not at all shabby - and this is the latest in a string of decent GB-wide polls for the party since their setback in the Hamilton by-election, although curiously the fieldwork for this poll took place before that vote.

Why the long delay?  It may have something to do with Ipsos rolling out a new methodology - they seem to be changing their emphasis from telephone polling to an adjusted version of online panel polling (one of the adjustments being that panel members are recruited offline).  I don't know whether that will affect their long-running series of Scottish telephone polls commissioned by STV.  But certainly the headline numbers do look a bit different from polls conducted by other firms - as far as I can see, Reform's 34% is an all-time high across all pollsters, beating even the 33% previously recorded by Find Out Now a couple of times in May.  The gap between Labour in second place and the Tories in third is also bigger than other firms have been showing.

Incidentally, Ipsos have given Alba propagandists no hiding place in this poll, because it looks like Alba were offered as an option, but recorded a big fat zero in the Scottish subsample.

Net ratings for party leaders:

Nigel Farage (Reform UK): -15
Ed Davey (Liberal Democrats): -15
Kemi Badenoch (Conservatives): -49
Keir Starmer (Labour): -54

Percentage of respondents who rate each party leader *positively*:

Nigel Farage (Reform UK): 34%
Ed Davey (Liberal Democrats): 23%
Keir Starmer (Labour): 19%
Kemi Badenoch (Conservatives): 11%

I think it's fair to conclude from the above numbers that Labour are unlikely to turn things around unless they either change leader or drastically improve Starmer's reputation with the public.  The latter is far harder to do than the former.  It's always said that Labour are not as ruthless as the Tories and don't dump their leaders in a crisis - but if they don't, they may already be toast, and Nigel Farage may be the next Prime Minister.

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The running total in the Scot Goes Pop 2025 fundraiser currently stands at £2760, meaning it is 41% of the way towards the target figure of £6800.  If you'd like to help the blog keep going, donations by card are welcome HERE, or alternatively you can cut out fees altogether (depending on which option you select from the menu) by making a direct donation via PayPal.  My PayPal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Bilingual people no longer need to feel left out: yes, Stew hates you too


As far as I can remember, I don't think we had definite proof until now that the controversial "Stew" blogger's hostility to Gaelic also extends to Scots, but it's not a huge surprise to learn that it does.  Of course it takes a different form in the case of Scots, because whereas he hates Gaelic and regards it as alien and useless and wants it to be totally eradicated, he's merely trying to reclassify Scots as just English in a funny accent.  That has the same ultimate effect, though, because if Scots is seen as merely a non-standard variant of English, it becomes acceptable for authority figures to "correct" people's Scots speech and push everyone towards standard English.  By contrast, accepting that Scots and English are closely-related but distinct languages means giving parity of esteem to Scots and English words and phrases and treating them as equally valid and legitimate.

It may totally blow Stew's mind that it's possible to understand the words of another language without being bilingual, but it's certainly not news to Portuguese people, who can watch Spanish TV and understand the bulk of what is being said without needing subtitles, simply because Spanish and Portuguese are very closely related languages.  That doesn't make Portuguese people bilingual, except for the minority who have taken the trouble to learn to speak Spanish themselves.  The same principle applies to Scottish Gaelic speakers, who can generally understand what is being said on the Irish language channel TV4 without much difficulty.  But for the most part they are not Irish speakers and are not bilingual in Gaelic and Irish.

So by the same token, most monolingual English speakers in Scotland can understand the fragments of Scots spoken in Still Game because the words are closely related to their English equivalents, and also because everyone in Scotland (except maybe in the Highlands) has been passively exposed to Scots throughout their lives.  But what about people who can actually speak Scots themselves, and not just understand it - are they bilingual?  Well, yes they are.  In most cases they don't recognise that fact about themselves, because speaking both Scots and English is just second nature to them and thus seems utterly unremarkable.  

Think about how Scots is used in the real world (and also in Still Game, for that matter).  There's probably nobody who truly speaks "pure Scots" (as I discussed in my podcast with Len Pennie four years ago), but by the same token, there's probably well over a million people in Scotland who never speak pure English either.  Scots speakers tend to constantly 'code-switch', often within the same sentence.  You might hear a sentence like "get aff that floor".  The word 'that' is common to both Scots and English, but 'off' and 'floor' are different in Scots.  In this case the speaker has used the Scots word for 'off' but not for 'floor'.  Does that mean he or she speaks a transitional dialect which incorporates 'aff' but not 'flair'?  Nope.  He or she knows both versions of both words, but has just semi-consciously chosen in the moment, probably for no particular reason, to use the Scots version of 'aff' but the English version of 'floor'.  They know which one is "Scottish" and which one is not, and if you asked them to translate from the Scottish version of each word to the English version, or vice versa, they would be able to do so.  But how can anyone "translate" unless Scots and English are different things?  How can they pull off the feat unless they're bilingual?

Answers on a postcard, folks (to be sent to Bath).

Incidentally, just as a general observation: why does someone like Stew, who still nominally claims to be an independence supporter (despite regularly urging his readers to vote against independence) want Scotland to be as similar as possible to England?  Why does he seemingly want to eradicate all points of difference, of which Gaelic and Scots are prime examples?

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The running total in the Scot Goes Pop 2025 fundraiser currently stands at £2760, meaning it is 41% of the way towards the target figure of £6800.  If you'd like to help the blog keep going, donations by card are welcome HERE, or alternatively you can cut out fees altogether (depending on which option you select from the menu) by making a direct donation via PayPal.  My PayPal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

The Alba Party's shambolic infighting intensifies as the convener of Inverclyde branch sends an email to all local party members blasting the MacAskill leadership for "barely registering" - and then QUITS

An Alba member from Inverclyde has forwarded to me an extraordinary email that was sent out to all local party members two days ago by Jim McEleny - who I presume is Chris "Mad Dog" McEleny's father, unless there's also a brother with the same name.

""Stand up for what is right even if you stand alone. Stand up for truth, regardless of who steps on it."
Suzy Kassem

I believe that it is essential to stand up for our beliefs even when everyone around us disagrees with what is being said. Because silence implies agreement and speaking out could provide courage for others facing similar struggles.

Staying silent about the things that bother or scare us won't make them go away. In fact, it could make them worse by giving the people who are causing those problems a feeling of impunity.

I believe that the recent treatment of our former general secretary by the Alba Party has been shameful. In last year’s Gourock by-election we achieved Alba Party’s highest ever result at almost 10%. At that point we were on a trajectory to win seats at the Scottish Parliament election.

Since then, after the decision to unfairly expel the former General Secretary - one of the late Alex Salmond’s chief strategists and confidantes - the party has struggled in by-elections and we have went from polling numbers that would see success next year to barely registering at all.

To that end, I can no longer continue as the Convener of the Inverclyde Alba LACU that as a result of how the Party has treated someone who led the independence movement for a decade on Inverclyde Council and has stood in every single election on our behalf since Alba Party was formed by Alex Salmond.

I wish you all the very best for the future and thank you for your support of Alba Inverclyde LACU during my time as Convener and our Alba Party group leader on Inverclyde Council.

The dream shall never die.

Jim McEleny
Former Convener
Inverclyde Alba LACU"

It won't surprise you to hear that I don't have sympathy with either side in this dispute.  Chris McEleny is the classic example of living by the sword and dying by the sword - he regularly abused his powers as General Secretary to trample all over people, and was not shy about resorting to outright falsehoods in doing so.  The only excuse anyone has ever been able to offer for his behaviour is "he vos only following orders", ie. that the beneficiaries of his abuses of power were people like Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and never himself.  But even if that was true (and I don't believe it was) it means he knew he was doing the wrong thing and carried on doing it for years anyway.  Those of us who were on the receiving end are not going to be impressed by breathtaking hypocrisy about "standing up for what is right even if you stand alone".  That is scarcely one of McEleny's values - indeed, the polar opposite appears to be one of his values.  "Stand up for what is wrong because that's what you're paid for.  Stand up for lies because you think you'll get away with it" would just about sum it up.

As far as McEleny's performance in the Gourock by-election is concerned, the fact that it's still considered some sort of stellar result speaks volumes about just how catastrophic Alba's electoral record has been otherwise.  He achieved that "success" because Alba sat out multiple other by-elections in order to pour all their resources into Gourock - and yet despite supposedly being a big local name, he still took less than one-tenth of the vote.  And perhaps even more revealing is that he brought essentially no personal vote whatsoever to the table in the 2022 local elections, when Alba's resources were spread more evenly.

Presumably McEleny senior is acting on instructions from (or according to the wishes of) "Mad Dog" himself, and so this will be part of the five-dimensional chess the former General Secretary imagines himself to be playing as he bids to resurrect his political career.  Is he trying to trigger some sort of popular uprising against the leadership, so he can then use his leverage as Alba's Nominating Officer to regain control of the party?  Or is this is a sign that he's finally given up on a comeback within Alba, and is instead preparing the ground for a defection of his faction to a different party or grouping?  One way or another, we'll find out pretty soon.

Ironically, one of the key factors that led to McEleny's expulsion was his abuse of emailing privileges - he sent out a long email to all Alba members at the end of last year which sought to undermine the announcement that the acting party leader had only just made that the position of General Secretary was to be abolished.  Now that McEleny's father has also used his emailing privileges to attack the leadership, it wouldn't be surprising if those privileges are much more tightly controlled in future - perhaps by ensuring that all emails have to be vetted by Tyrannical Tasmina and her team.  

That would be in keeping with the response to whistleblowing last year about wrongdoing in the party's upper echelons - instead of accepting a need for greater openness and transparency, Tasmina introduced a new rule requiring all elected committee members (including NEC members) to sign a legally binding gagging agreement.  If some people have flatly refused to sign, on the basis that their loyalty is to the members who elected them and that they are not employees required to take orders, that might explain some of the ongoing strife we've seen in recent weeks.

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The running total in the Scot Goes Pop 2025 fundraiser currently stands at £2760, meaning it is 41% of the way towards the target figure of £6800.  If you'd like to help the blog keep going, donations by card are welcome HERE, or alternatively you can cut out fees altogether (depending on which option you select from the menu) by making a direct donation via PayPal.  My PayPal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Friday, June 20, 2025

SNP win the first preference vote in the Cromarty Firth by-election, but miss out after transfers

There were two by-elections in the Highlands yesterday, both of which were counted today.  And while there is nowhere in Scotland more fascinating in geographical terms than the Isle of Skye, I think politically the Cromarty Firth by-election was probably the more interesting of the two, so I'll start with that.  When I sat down to write this post, nobody had yet transcribed the result or calculated the percentages, so I've gone old school and calculated them myself manually from the video of the announcement.  Hopefully I haven't made any mistakes...

Cromarty Firth by-election result on first preferences (19th June 2025):

SNP 23.8% (-5.3)
Independent - Cross 20.1% (n/a)
Independent - Rattray 15.4% (n/a)
Reform UK 14.6% (n/a)
Liberal Democrats 12.2% (-15.7)
Greens 3.9% (+1.0)
Alba 3.8% (n/a)
Labour 3.2% (-1.0)
Conservatives 2.0% (-4.7)

The percentage changes above are measured from the 2022 local elections, rather than from the previous by-election in the same ward last year.  The SNP vote has held up pretty well, bearing in mind that in 2022 Nicola Sturgeon was still in her pomp and her party was still polling in the mid-to-high 40s in opinion polls.  Normally a 3.7 point lead on first preferences would be enough to be transfer-proof and to seal the victory, but probably a lot of unionist voters got through all the independent candidates before they 'boaked', allowing Mr Cross to sneak home from second place.  

Alba, as we know, clutch to absolutely any straws they can find in any and every situation (now that McEleny has been expelled it'll probably be HQ's resident wonderbairn Robert Reid doing the clutching, albeit from behind the curtain of anonymity), so they'll undoubtedly crow about finishing ahead of both Labour and the Tories.  But in context I don't think this is a great result for Alba.  They had a high-profile candidate in Steve Chisholm, who is well known for his championing of freeports, which obviously has a special relevance in the Cromarty Firth area.  Yet even with that USP he still didn't break the 5% barrier.  That said, of course, a lot of actual Alba members absolutely loathe and despise Chisholm's stance on freeports and believe it is contrary to the democratic wishes of the party rank-and-file, so maybe his candidacy was a double-edged sword.

The slump in Lib Dem support is surprising given that they did well in Skye, but perhaps it can be put down in part to the loss of any personal vote for Molly Nolan, who was on the ballot for them in 2022.

Obviously the Highlands aren't a Labour-SNP battleground area, so the swing between those two parties is less meaningful than it would be in the central belt or parts of the north-east.  But for what little it's worth, there was a nominal swing from SNP to Labour of just over 2%, which if extrapolated to the whole country is consistent with a Scotland-wide SNP lead of around eight percentage points over Labour.

More to follow...

Thursday, June 19, 2025

The cause of Palestine is the cause of humanity - and it is therefore inseparable from the Scottish independence movement

I've been meaning for weeks to comment in more detail on former Alba man Neil Sinclair's claim that vocal opponents of the Gaza genocide are 'piggy-backing' their cause onto the independence movement, and that Yessers must 'protect' the movement at all costs by silencing all views about Gaza or at least putting them into a sort of sealed antechamber where they cannot contaminate the drive for independence.  There's a paradox here, of course, because Neil also demanded that Gordon Millar's "Sacred Comment" defending and 'contextualing' the genocidal views of the Israeli civilian population must be published in full on this pro-independence blog, and he denounced my earlier deletion of it as "censorship".

So why wasn't he logically consistent by applauding my refusal to allow Millar to contaminate this pro-independence space with a pro-Israel agenda and frankly repugnant apologism for genocide?  There was something really rather comical about the way that Neil initially broached the subject on his private chat group for former and disillusioned Alba members.  He grandly announced out of the blue that we were going to have to discuss the issue of "censorship" and that on this occasion it just so happened to touch on the issue of Israel/Palestine.  As several people instantly pointed out in a state of some bewilderment, whenever anyone else had wanted to make comments that just so happened to touch on the issue of Israel/Palestine, Neil had always been extremely quick to invite them to either shut up about it or to take it elsewhere.  But perhaps it's different when it's a mate of Neil who wants the freedom to express views on Israel/Palestine and to do it in the pro-independence space of his choice?  Perhaps it's different when Neil himself has strong private sympathy with the specific views on Israel/Palestine that are being piggybacked onto the independence cause?  Or perhaps it's because he saw Millar's 'contextualising' of genocide (essentially saying that Palestinians are undesirable troublemakers who 'nobody wants') as just 'regrettable statements of fact' that need to be introduced into the pro-independence space to 'help people to understand' why it is so terribly important to silence or banish all other expressions of views about the subject?

Openly expressed anti-genocide views might, for example, offend the many independence supporters who are supposedly pro-Israel and pro...well, pro-genocide, not to put too fine a point on it, or who at least, like Stuart "Stew" Campbell, think there are overwhelmingly strong arguments against taking any sort of principled stance about the mass extermination of an ethnic group.  Above all else, it might prevent us from immersing ourselves totally into the 24/7 crusade against women with beards, and we can't be having that, can we? It was interesting that after I called Neil out publicly on his hypocrisy, his main cheerleader kept saying to me "Neil and I don't like the genocide and we've criticised Israel's actions on occasion, but..."  The operative word is always 'but', isn't it?

I can see absolutely no evidence to support Neil's fantastical claims of entryism of anti-genocide or pro-Palestinian activists into the independence movement or into specific pro-independence parties.  There would scarcely need to be any entryism, because the anti-genocide cause is the cause of literally millions of people in this country, and those people can therefore entirely naturally be found in huge numbers in all walks of life and in all organisations.  And there's an especially strong affinity between independence supporters and the Palestinian cause, for the obvious reason that it touches on issues of self-determination and domination by a more powerful neighbour.  If Palestinian flags were ever to be banned from pro-independence marches, as Neil Sinclair and his ilk demand, many Yessers who have been devoted to the goal of independence for years or decades would feel hurt and confused.  They'd think the movement had lost its heart, its soul, its humanity, that it had been turned into a sterile, soulless environment by dictatorial headmaster types with no moral compass or even common sense.  They might start walking away from the movement in their droves, and for what?  To protect the sensibilities of the supposed hordes of 'silent' pro-indy folk who are disgusted by Palestinian flags, either because they think the genocide is cool, or because they think the arguments for and against the genocide are far too complex to grapple with?  Well, where exactly are these people?  Where are they hiding?  Frankly I think there are about twelve of them, and they're all helpfully closeted off in Neil Sinclair's chat group or the Wings Over Scotland comments section.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when Israeli sympathisers on the Sinclair chat group informed me on the night of the Eurovision Song Contest that the twelve points awarded to Israel by the "UK public" was indicative that there was a silent pro-Israel majority out there, or a silent majority that doesn't care at all for the Palestinians.  I pointed out that there was massive evidence that the vote had been manipulated on an industrial scale by the State of Israel and by sympathetic actors, and that it hadn't been at all hard to do given that each phone number or payment card could vote up to twenty times for the same song.  With the overall vote split between 25 different countries, it didn't take all that many sets of twenty votes to push Israel into the 'douze points' position.  There were even some people boasting on social media that they had managed to vote EIGHTY times for Israel because they had payment cards registered in four different jurisdictions.  

But these points were met with sneering incredulity: "Don't you think, James (snigger) that it's just a tad more likely that these were just ordinary British people voting for their favourite song, as they do every year?"  No, I replied, it was far more likely that the State of Israel has engaged in massive manipulation of the vote, partly because of the evidence I had already identified, and also partly because the Israeli song was pretty bland and clearly wouldn't have topped a public vote on its own merits.  And with impeccable timing, a Find Out Now poll conducted among a demographically representative sample of UK viewers of the contest was published only a day or two later, setting out exactly what would have happened if British people had just voted for their favourite song and if there had been no Israeli manipulation of the vote - 

Find Out Now poll, 18th May 2025:

Of the following countries, whose performance did you particularly like?  Please select any that apply.  (UK excluded from below numbers, because British viewers couldn't vote for the UK in the contest itself.)

1) Sweden: 28%
2) Estonia: 19%
3) Austria: 18%
4) Malta: 15%
5) Iceland: 14%
6) Spain: 12%
=) Latvia: 12%
=) Finland: 12%
9) Italy: 11%
=) Israel: 11%
11) Luxembourg: 10%
=) Switzerland: 10%
=) Germany: 10%
14) Denmark: 9%
=) Netherlands: 9% 
16) France: 7%
=) Armenia: 7%
18) Norway: 6%
=) Greece: 6%
20) San Marino: 5%
=) Lithuania: 5%
22) Ukraine: 4%
23) Portugal: 3%
=) Poland: 3%
25) Albania: 2%

So, as I suspected, there would have been no humiliation for Israel if the vote hadn't been manipulated, but it would have been no better than the upper end of mid-table respectability for them.

The irony is that the whole reason that Israel went to such lengths to manipulate the vote was to mess with people's heads and to try to get them to say things like "uh-oh, maybe we'd better disassociate our political cause from the Palestinians, it looks like we've misread the public mood".  It is nothing short of astounding how easy it was for Israel to deceive some members of Neil's chat group into precisely the desired response - but, then, that was because the fictional version of the British and Scottish public that Israel was presenting them with was one that they desperately wanted to believe in.

"Relative" is an interesting choice of word, because here is a direct comparison from Stew's very favourite traffic comparison site SimilarWeb:

Estimated total visits in the 28 days up to 16th June 2025:

The National: 2,079,000
Wings Over Scotland: 242,808 

Looked at that way, The National's anti-genocide stance appears to be almost ten times more popular than Stew's "both sidesing" moral bankruptcy.  I know some will argue that it's unfair to directly compare traffic for a newspaper website to traffic for a mere blog, but who are we to argue with Stew's long-standing delusions of grandeur?  Perhaps of more significance is the comparison between The National and their own direct competitors such as The Herald and The Scotsman.  The Herald are not all that far ahead on around 2,700,000 visits, while The Scotsman are on around 4,300,000.  In both cases, the differential is less than I would have expected given the perception of The National as a relatively 'small' publication. 

It may well be that The National is gaining significant traction simply by being the only mainstream media outlet in the UK to actually provide a genuine news service on the Gaza issue.  Many people well beyond the borders of Scotland have pointed out that literally nobody else is doing what The National is doing.  That has vastly improved the paper's reputation - and by extension it has enhanced the reputation of the independence movement itself.

Once international organisations and academics are able to access Gaza, the full scale of one of the gravest crimes against humanity since 1945 will become apparent and will be documented in detail.  There will then be a reckoning about the complicity of western governments and western media.  The National, the only pro-independence newspaper in Scotland, will shine like a beacon for having been on the right side of history from day one.  Why anyone in the independence movement could possibly think that is a bad thing is beyond me.

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The running total in the Scot Goes Pop 2025 fundraiser currently stands at £2480, meaning it is 36% of the way towards the target figure of £6800.  If you'd like to help the blog keep going, donations by card are welcome HERE, or alternatively you can cut out fees altogether (depending on which option you select from the menu) by making a direct donation via PayPal.  My PayPal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

One subsample to rule them all, and in the brightness grind them

As you probably saw in the comments section of the previous post, yesterday was a red-letter day for the SNP in the latest GB-wide YouGov poll.  They hit 4% of the GB vote, which hardly ever happens, and were above 40% in the Scottish subsample.

GB-wide voting intentions (YouGov, 15th-16th June 2025):

Reform UK 27% (-2)
Labour 24% (+1)
Conservatives 17% (-)
Liberal Democrats 15% (-)
Greens 10% (-)
SNP 4% (+1)
Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

Scottish subsample: SNP 41%, Labour 23%, Reform UK 13%, Liberal Democrats 10%, Conservatives 7%, Greens 5%

Although YouGov are unusual in structuring and weighting their Scottish subsamples correctly, the margin of error in any subsample results is still enormous due to the small sample size.  So the SNP are unlikely to really be in the 40s, but this is the second post-Hamilton YouGov subsample in a row to have them with a big lead over Labour, which makes it more likely that they've effectively got away with their defeat in the by-election.  The only real danger of that setback was that it might produce a snowball effect threatening the SNP's national lead, and if that hasn't happened, we may end up looking back on the by-election as a noisy irrelevance.

The Britain-wide figures are consistent with the recent pattern of the gap between Reform and Labour narrowing.  I'd put that down to a combination of Reform's breakthrough in the local elections gradually fading from memory, and Labour winning back a small percentage of lost voters with the U-turn on winter fuel allowance.  Morgan McSweeney may even think this means his masterplan for winning the next general election for Labour is gradually coming together, but I am very sceptical that Labour will be able to win the election if they merely recover to the high 20s or low 30s.  There's always the potential for the right-wing vote to coalesce behind (probably) Reform to defeat Starmer.

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It's trite to point out that Somerset's controversial "Stew" blogger often directly contradicts himself, but nevertheless it's startling to see him being brazen enough to do it in back-to-back blogposts.  In his last-but-one post, he blasted John Swinney and Kate Forbes for taking part in the "Scotland 2050" conference because this supposedly implied Scotland would still be part of the UK in 2050.  But when it became clear that Swinney would in fact be using his speech at the conference to say that he envisaged Scotland being independent well before 2050, Stew wrote another post expressing his outrage about that, because it's supposedly 'carrots'.

Whatever anyone may think of John Swinney and his excessive caution, it's fair to say that, as far as his participation in the conference was concerned, he simply couldn't win with Oor Stew.  Anticipating that Scotland will be independent is bad, anticipating that Scotland will not be independent is bad.  Maybe Swinney was supposed to channel his inner Peter A Bell and declare UDI on the podium.  

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Poll commissions, poll analysis, election analysis, podcasts, videos, truly independent political commentary - that's Scot Goes Pop, running since 2008 and currently the third most-read political blog in Scotland.  It's only been possible due to your generous support.  If you find the site useful and would like to help it to continue, donations by card payment are welcome HERE, or alternatively donations can be made direct by PayPal.  My PayPal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

Scot Goes Fundraiser 2025: An Update

Well, I've given Scot Goes Pop readers a good long break from the constant irritating reminders of the fundraiser at the bottom of each blogpost, but I'm now going to have to get back to that grindstone.  The year is almost half over, the fundraiser is still only around one-third of the way towards its target figure, and I'm getting dangerously close to the 'running on empty' scenario once again.  

As I always say, writing Scot Goes Pop is not a full-time job, but it is the equivalent of a very time-consuming part-time job.  To be able to put in that kind of commitment of time requires either a) private means, or b) successful crowdfunders.  And alas, I don't have private means, so the only way the blog can continue is if I hit the annual fundraising target, or at least get pretty close to it.  

It's no secret that this blog has some rather severe detractors who would very much like it to disappear in a puff of smoke - and to that end they pursue the narrative that "nobody reads it" and "nobody funds it".  The irony is that those people are obsessed with traffic comparison sites and know as well as anyone that Scot Goes Pop is the third most read political blog in Scotland - ahead of, for example, Bella Caledonia, Robin McAlpine and John Robertson.  But it's true that SGP's fundraising has lagged behind other sites in recent times - I've raised enough to keep going, but only barely, and it's been a constant struggle from around 2021 onwards.  And it's also true that ultimately "the market" will decide whether SGP is valued enough to remain part of the alternative media eco-system.

I'm sure you know by now what you'll be getting if the fundraiser succeeds - detailed polling analysis from a pro-independence perspective, truly independent political commentary, hopefully the occasional podcast here and there, and if we really start cooking with gas maybe even another poll commission at some point.

If you'd like to donate, the crowdfunder page can be found HERE.

Direct donations can also be made via PayPal.  In some ways this is preferable because the funds are usually transferred instantly, and fees can be eliminated altogether depending on the option you select from the menu.  My PayPal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

I know a small number of people prefer direct bank transfer, so if you'd like to do that, message me at my contact email address and I'll send you the necessary details.  My contact email address is different from my PayPal address and can be found in the sidebar of the blog (desktop version of the site only) or on my Twitter and BlueSky profiles.

Last but not least, there must be at least three or four people who have already donated multiple times to this fundraiser, because the same names have cropped up every few weeks.  If you're one of those people, please ignore this post, because I don't want to bankrupt anyone while trying to stay afloat myself!

Monday, June 16, 2025

FAQs on how the SNP might be able to win independence by using their leverage in a hung parliament

About a week ago, I published a blogpost setting out how there may be a 15-25% chance of the SNP holding the balance of power at Westminster after the next election and being able to use that to win an independence referendum.  As the 15-25% estimate implies, I do not think that's a particularly likely method by which independence can be won, but in circumstances where the SNP leadership have needlessly self-imposed almost impossible thresholds that have to be achieved before any other action towards winning independence can be taken, it may well be that a hung parliament is actually the most plausible remaining hope for progress in the relatively near future.

Even having clearly set out that major caveat, however, it was perhaps inevitable that some people were still going to be triggered by a post suggesting that independence could come about as a result of the SNP negotiating with Westminster parties, rather than by some madcap process involving Barrhead Boy stripping English people who live in Scotland of voting rights, "Liberate Scotland" sweeping to a landslide election victory, and then a grand march to the UN to beg them to decolonise us.  Consequently I received some rather colourful 'feedback', and I thought I'd respond to some of it here...

If using the balance of power at Westminster to win independence is such a wizard idea, why didn't the SNP do that in the 2015-17 parliament when they had 56 MPs?  Hmmm?  Hmmm????

Simple answer: because they didn't hold the balance of power in 2015-17.  There wasn't even a hung parliament during that period.  There was instead a Conservative government with a clear overall majority.  Doh!  Next...

Isn't the Section 30 route to an independence referendum dead?

This is an odd question because I didn't actually mention the Section 30 route at any point.  Because the UK parliament is sovereign, there are two ways in which an independence referendum could happen if the SNP hold the balance of power.  One is the Section 30 route, yes, in which Westminster would delegate powers to the Scottish Parliament to legislate for a referendum.  But the other way is simply Westminster itself directly legislating for a referendum.  The beauty of the latter option is that it means in theory a referendum could happen even if pro-independence parties fall slightly short of a majority in next year's Holyrood election.

But as far as the Section 30 route is concerned, that's only dead just now because the SNP have no leverage to bring it about.  A hung parliament is one of the few situations in which they might regain the necessary leverage.

If independence happened as a result of a Labour-SNP deal to form a government, the SNP seats at Westminster would disappear on independence day and the government would no longer have a majority after that point, so what incentive would there be for Labour to agree to a deal involving an independence referendum?

There are two answers to that.  First of all, Labour might well still think a referendum is winnable for the "No" side.  Secondly, the independence process - not just the referendum but the negotiations that would follow any Yes vote - might well take three years or more, so the SNP seats would remain in place for the bulk of a five-year Westminster parliament.

If the SNP were part of the government at Westminster, wouldn't that mean they'd be negotiating an independence referendum, and a subsequent independence deal, with themselves?

I struggle to see why that would be any sort of problem - it would actually smooth the process considerably.  But no, any governing arrangement between the SNP and Labour would be unlikely to involve the SNP taking up ministerial office in Westminster - it's much more likely to be a confidence-and-supply agreement with the SNP remaining on the opposition benches.  When it seemed possible in the run-up to the 2015 election that the SNP would hold the balance of power, I personally argued that there was no good reason for them not to get involved in a full-blown coalition if it meant holding the position of Secretary of State for Scotland.  But they seemed allergic to the idea at the time and I doubt if anything has changed since then.

But any referendum won by negotiating with Westminster parties would be another non-binding referendum - that's no use!

This objection makes absolutely zero sense.  The only way a referendum can be binding is if Westminster approves that principle in advance, so if that's the kind of referendum you want, you can only get it via negotiations with Westminster. Any informal vote we organise ourselves, regardless of whether it's a referendum or a scheduled election doubling as a de facto referendum, would by definition be non-binding.  Its purpose would simply be to produce a Yes majority that would pile moral pressure on Westminster to come back to the negotiating table.

Didn't the Tories and DUP in combination have a Commons majority of only one seat in 2017?  (This excitingly left-field question comes from a controversial and increasingly far-right Somerset-based blogger, universally known as "Stew".)

No.  They had a nominal majority of six, but to all intents and purposes it was actually thirteen due to Sinn Féin declining to take up their seats.  No idea why you thought it was only one, Stew - you must have been using your wonky abacus again.

Wouldn't the Tories and SNP in combination have had a much more robust majority of 30 seats in 2017?  (This one also comes from "Stew".)

Wonky Abacus Klaxon yet again: the Tories and SNP in combination would have had a majority of 56 seats in 2017.  So what?  The SNP did not hold the balance of power at any point in the 2017-19 parliament, as can be seen from the fact that the Conservative government successfully sustained itself in office even though the SNP consistently voted against it in no confidence votes.  (Although there was an early election in 2019, that only came about because the Tories themselves voted in favour of it.)  But the idea of the SNP trying to win a Yes vote in an independence referendum in the context of them propping up a Tory government at Westminster is certainly an 'interesting' one, Stew.

And as for Stew's hoary old claim that there was a more limited one-off deal to be done, with the SNP agreeing to vote for Theresa May's soft Brexit plan in return for an independence referendum, I've debunked that umpteen times.  May wouldn't have been interested in such a deal because she was a conviction politician on the issue of "Our Precious Union", and she would have known it would be counter-productive anyway - her own backbenchers would have been so outraged by a deal putting the Union in peril that she would have lost far more votes for the soft Brexit plan than she'd have gained.

No, the only way a deal at Westminster will ever result in an independence referendum is if the SNP are able to offer a stable governing majority to a centre-left administration.

Sunday, June 15, 2025

Another heavy blow for the Alba Party as popular senior member quits

I've got to be slightly cagey about what I say here, because I've been given permission to reveal some things, but not others, and there's a grey zone in the middle where I'd better tread carefully.  However, what I can tell you is that yet another very senior Alba member has left the party.  For privacy reasons she's asked to be identified as 'Bingo Wings' rather than by her actual name, but I'm sure many of you will know her well - she was a very popular figure within Alba and has had lots of success in the party's internal elections, including in the latest round of elections a few weeks ago.

I asked her why she left, and she gave me a one word answer: "mince".  That's not very specific but it's heartfelt, and many of us will have a fair idea of what she's getting at.  I gather she's been treated extremely badly in recent weeks.

Among those of us who have left Alba or been forced out, there are wildly varying opinions on the way forward - I and a few others have gone back to the SNP, some have joined "Liberate Scotland" (which I think is yet another dead end but they clearly take a different view), and others are just steering clear of party politics altogether for the time being.  But I think the one thing we'd all agree on is that being part of Alba was just a thoroughly unpleasant experience in a way that we could just never have anticipated when it all started in 2021.  What the Alba leadership (which essentially means Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and the people around her) have always wanted from the rank-and-file members is basically just an adoring fan club.  If you're willing to play that role, then you may have a positive experience, but if you have any independent ideas of your own, you'll quickly find yourself in a toxic environment.  There's lots of out-and-out bullying and plenty of passive-aggressive nastiness too.

I know some people will say "that's just politics for you, all parties are the same", but I think that's only true up to a point.  There's an Alba-specific problem here - Alba just seems to be a particularly nasty party, as Theresa May once said about the Tories.