Now we've established that Stew doesn't want Holyrood to have any say on foreign affairs (meaning by definition that he opposes independence), can he clarify whether he agrees with his own retweet that Israel's 1967 invasion and conquest of the Arab town of Bethlehem was "the liberation of Bethlehem"?

As mentioned in the previous post, my devoted Somerset stalker "Stew" has been continuing to fire off tweets about me over recent days, faster than I can really keep up with, even though in some cases he has been directly demanding responses from me.  And this is the guy who just a few months ago innocently claimed to mention me on Twitter only a couple of times a year at most.  One might almost be tempted to say that he's finally dropped the pretence, although actually that's not true, because in most cases he's still doing his usual thing of making clear by indirect means that he's referring to me but without mentioning me by name.  He repeatedly does the same thing on his blog - the idea being that in a few months' time he can successfully shove what he's been doing down the memory hole by inviting his readers to search Wings or his Twitter account for my name, and say "You see?  I've barely even mentioned the guy!"

While I have a few spare moments, I may as well work my way through a few 'highlights' of his tweets about me from the last week or so, although frankly there aren't enough hours in the day to deal with all of them.  First up, there's a multi-tweet thread in which he critiques the question I asked of Anas Sarwar the other night.  You'll be dumbfounded to hear that he's not a fan of it.

Look, Stew, I'm truly sorry if I dismayed you by asking a question that departed from the women-with-beards issue.  Like all of us, I do know the lyrics of the reworked Elton John cover I Guess That's Why They Call It The Stew off by heart: "time wasted asking non-women-with-beards-related questions could be time spent asking women-with-beards-related questions".  Very true.

Leaving aside my blasphemy in neglecting the Sacred Topic, however, I'm rather surprised that Stew was so unhappy with my question, because I saw him earlier in the week imploring anyone who attended the Swinney/Sarwar event in Edinburgh to ask the two leaders whether there were any policy areas that divided them apart from independence.  I had already submitted my question by then, but I was confident that what I had put forward fulfilled a very similar function, because Gaza has been one of the points of difference between the SNP and Labour.  "Give us points of difference, but not THAT one" seems to be Stew's message.  "Don't even mention that one, because Bibi must be allowed to get on with the genocide in civilised peace and quiet."

So here's the remarkable thing. I asked Anas Sarwar whether he thought the Scottish Government should think small, "get back to the day job", and stop talking about foreign affairs.  His answer on all three of those points was essentially "no", and he promised to speak out about foreign affairs if he becomes First Minister, because he said his social justice values do not end at the Scottish border.  So having set out to find a dividing line between Mr Swinney and Mr Sarwar, the irony is that I ended up finding a dividing line between Mr Sarwar and Stew instead.  Despite opposing independence, Mr Sarwar believes, or at least claims to, that the Scottish Government should not be restricted to concerning themselves with the limited number of devolved powers imposed on them by Westminster.  Whereas Stew absolutely thinks they should be restricted in that way, and that they should stop getting ideas above their station, which is an extraordinary worldview for any self-styled 'independence supporter' to hold.  But there again, it's a statement of the obvious that if you don't think foreign affairs should be the province of the Scottish Government, you don't actually support independence at all.  

Let's stop pretending black is white, shall we?  Stew probably was a genuine independence supporter eleven years ago, but he no longer is.  He's a unionist now, and a devo-sceptic unionist at that, albeit one who ties himself up in knots trying to convince people that he still supports independence in some sort of convoluted, upside-down manner - because he knows he would lose readers otherwise.

Aw, bless.  You gotta love Stew, he's apparently convinced himself that his latest cosplay "psephologist" blogpost was some sort of killer effort that has left everyone totally stunned and that no-one can think of a response to.  Stew, I don't know how to break the news to you, dear heart, but apart from the first few sentences I haven't even read your precious blogpost yet.  I deliberately didn't read it, because I knew I might not have time to respond for a few days and I didn't want my mind cluttered up with gibberish while I was getting on with other things.  But rest assured I will find the time to read it and respond at length.  A little patience, if you please.  Although I do love the fact that you've clearly been frantically hitting the refresh button over the last week in the hope of seeing my reply.  A proper stalker badge is on its way to YOU, my friend.

This one isn't a Stew tweet about me, but instead a Stew retweet of a Stephen Daisley tweet about an anonymous comment on this blog.  What's deeply disturbing about it is that Daisley presents screenshots of a Spectator article he wrote about Winnie Ewing's supposed ties to Israel, and in which he describes Israel's 1967 invasion and conquest of Bethlehem as "the liberation of Bethlehem".  

Long-term readers of Scot Goes Pop will know I've made numerous references to an extraordinary article that Daisley wrote many years ago, long before he was even employed by STV, in which he similarly said the 1967 invasion and conquest of East Jerusalem was "the liberation".  But to talk of the liberation of Bethlehem is even more offensive, because throughout modern history Bethlehem hasn't been a Jewish town at all.  The censuses in the 1920s and 1930s found literally just two Jewish people in the whole town.  Traditionally the population was overwhelmingly Arab Christian, and more recently has been overwhelmingly Arab Muslim, ie. Palestinian.  The vast majority of countries in the world regard Bethlehem as part of the sovereign (but illegally occupied) territory of the State of Palestine, and the minority that don't recognise the State of Palestine instead regard Bethlehem as part of the 'Occupied Palestinian Territories'.

The only way of making sense of Daisley's barmy claim that Bethlehem was liberated in 1967 is that he means it was promised to Israel in the Bible thousands of years ago, and therefore it needed to be annexed and its population expelled or exterminated, so that the rightful ethnoreligious owners could take over.  Now, we all know the standard disclaimer that "retweets are not necessarily endorsements", but if I was retweeting content that contained such an outrageous claim, I would go out of my way to make clear I disagreed with it.  Stew very noticeably did not do so, and I think we could do with some clarity from him about whether he agrees with Daisley about Bethlehem or not.  Even if he read Daisley's words and didn't think they were controversial, that speaks volumes too.

Elsewhere, Stew's newest obsession seems to be retweeting derogatory comment about Zohran Mamdani, the progressive and rather wonderful Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York...

Presumably Stew was cheering on the disgraced and God-awful "centrist" Andrew Cuomo in the primary, and in November will be keeping his fingers crossed for the Republican incumbent Eric Adams.

There's also this immigrant-bashing dog-whistle of a retweet, presumably preparing the ground for Stew's inevitable endorsement of Reform UK next year...

*  *  *

The running total in the Scot Goes Pop 2025 fundraiser currently stands at £3000, meaning it is 44% 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

Crossbreak cornucopia as SNP stun rivals with epochal lead in Scottish subsample from Find Out Now

GB-wide voting intentions (Find Out Now, 25th June 2025):

Reform UK 30% (-1)

Labour 22% (-1)

Conservatives 18% (+2)

Liberal Democrats 13% (+1)

Greens 11% (-)

SNP 3% (-)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

Scottish subsample: SNP 37%, Reform UK 16%, Labour 14%, Liberal Democrats 11%, Conservatives 9%, Greens 8%

You know the drill by now: only YouGov are known to correctly structure and weight their Scottish subsamples correctly, so subsample numbers from Find Out Now and other firms have less credibility.  Nevertheless, there has been a lovely consistency to the SNP's commanding position in subsamples across multiple firms recently, including YouGov themselves, so I don't think it's too outlandish to hope that there may be more than a grain of truth in it.

At GB level, the impression that Labour may have been recovering a bit has been dented - they're back down closer to their post-election low once again. However, it remains to be seen what the effect of the climbdown on benefits cuts will be - that's too recent to be factored in yet.

*. *. *

For those that have been asking, yes I'm aware that my devoted Somerset stalker has been tweeting about me relentlessly in recent days and seems desperate for a reply.  That's kind of what he does all the time anyway, but I promise, I AM NOT IGNORING YOU STEW, and you'll get some of the attention you've been craving in due course.

*  *  *

The running total in the Scot Goes Pop 2025 fundraiser currently stands at £2780, 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

Scot Goes Pop puts Anas Sarwar ON THE SPOT

Well, sort of.  I had a little cameo last night at the Holyrood Sources podcast recording in Edinburgh where both John Swinney and Anas Sarwar were questioned at length - albeit separately, they didn't debate each other directly.  Audience members were invited to submit questions in advance, and I was lucky enough to have my question for Anas Sarwar selected.  I just read it out exactly as I had submitted it a few nights ago, and it was this - 

"The Scottish Government, especially under Humza Yousaf but also under Mr Swinney, has taken a principled stance against Israel's actions in Gaza.  That stance differs sharply from the UK Government and has given a voice to countless people throughout Scotland and the UK who feel that Keir Starmer and David Lammy do not speak for them on this issue.  Wouldn't something precious be lost if Mr Sarwar wins the election and the new Scottish Government thereafter just parrots the UK Government line on Israel and Gaza?  Would Mr Sarwar even accept that the Scottish Government should be speaking out on foreign affairs, or does he think small like so many other Scottish Labour politicians before him by insisting that devolved governments should 'get on with the day job' and not concern themselves with reserved matters at all?"

You can watch both the question and answer HERE or on the embedded YouTube player below, starting at around 5 minutes in. 

 

In reality it didn't put Mr Sarwar on the spot to any great extent, because what I didn't anticipate was that in the seconds before I read the question out, he made an extremely strong statement that "Benjamin Netanyahu is out of control", which lent him greater credibility in answering my question by saying he would "continue" to speak out on foreign affairs.  Where he was on much weaker ground, though, was in arguing that I had unfairly characterised the UK Government's position, when in fact all I had actually said was that the Scottish Government's stance had differed sharply from the UK Government's - which is pretty much unarguable, given the contrast between Humza Yousaf's strong condemnation of Israel as First Minister and Keir Starmer's repeated insistence that "Israel has every right to defend herself".  If you listen to Mr Sarwar, you'd think the Starmer government has been fearless from day one in standing up to Israel - and that, I'm afraid, is the depiction of events in a parallel universe.  I also remain unconvinced that Mr Sarwar, in the unlikely event that he ever becomes First Minister, would be given the latitude by London Labour to use the type of language about Israel that he did last night.  If he can just about get away with it now, it's only because no-one thinks he is important and no-one is paying much attention to what he says.

Geoff Aberdein said at the start of the event that, barring miracles, one of the two men we'd be hearing from would be elected First Minister next year.  I think that gives a slightly misleading impression - it would be more accurate to say that, barring miracles, John Swinney will be re-elected First Minister next year.  To the extent that Anas Sarwar does still have a small percentage chance, it's probably comparable to the small chance of Reform being elected to lead the Scottish Government next year - although in fairness, it would have been very difficult to devise a three-way event incorporating Reform, because no-one seems to have a scooby who Reform's candidate for First Minister is going to be.  

Andy Maciver channeled his inner Stuart Campbell by spending much of the evening talking up the chances of an SNP-Labour coalition government.  His basic argument is that the current relationship between the SNP and Labour is analogous to the previous relationship between the CDU and SPD in Germany, and to the previous relationship between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in Ireland - ie. they agree on most policy areas apart from independence but can't imagine going into government with each other because of supposed historical baggage.  Mr Maciver points out that in both Germany and Ireland, the historical baggage was pretty easily dispensed with when grand coalitions were required to freeze out the Left Party and Sinn Féin respectively.  But the operative words are that there is broad agreement between the SNP and Labour except on independence - which is not exactly a trivial matter, and as far as I am aware there was no equivalent massive dividing line between the CDU and SPD, or between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.  My guess is that in Mr Maciver's case, the expectation of an SNP-Labour deal is coming from the centre-right perspective that the SNP's prioritising of independence is a bit of nonsense that can and will be set aside as part of a sort of 'maturing' process.  In reality, the SNP's support base is highly unlikely to allow that to ever happen.

Incidentally, there is at least one other extremely weighty point of division between the SNP and Labour which has nothing to do with independence, and which Mr Sarwar touched on briefly last night - namely new-build nuclear power.  Labour are in favour of it, and the SNP are viscerally opposed to it (quite rightly).

Mr Swinney did not explicitly rule out an SNP-Labour coalition, but Mr Sarwar did, saying it was going to be a parliament of minorities and that the only way he'd be going into power was as head of a Labour minority government.  The hosts instantly picked up on that and pointed out that it meant he was giving up on any chance of winning a Labour majority, but perhaps more interesting is that it also seems to exclude any possibility of a Labour-led unionist coalition government.  When Labour have been in power in Holyrood in the past, it's always been in coalition with the Lib Dems, so it seemed a bit odd to take that possibility off the table, given that any narrow path to power left open to Mr Sarwar is almost certain to involve the Lib Dems (and indeed the Tories) in some shape or form.

I think last night was the first time I've seen Professor John Curtice in the flesh, and the one thing that doesn't come across on TV is just how remarkably tall he is.  He has quite a commanding presence when he walks into a room.  As for Anas Sarwar, I saw him pressing the flesh with the people sitting close to me during a break in the recording, some of whom he seemed to know and others he didn't, and it's fair to say that he has an easy-going charm about him that I don't think you really see on TV when he is trying to look all slick and polished.

My off-peak return train ticket from Cumbernauld to Edinburgh for some reason specified that travel via Glasgow is not valid, which is a complete nonsense because there are times at night when the quickest way back is via Glasgow, and by that time obviously the trains are all off-peak anyway.  So I had to wait an extra hour for a train to Falkirk, but that gave me a chance to enjoy walking around Edinburgh only a few nights after the Summer Solstice in what I believe is known in Shetland as 'the simmer dim'.

Astounding YouGov MRP poll puts the SNP within eight seats of overtaking the Tories UK-wide - and with a 26% chance of holding the balance of power

The title of yesterday's blogpost was 'Using an election to double as an independence referendum is the ONLY way independence can and will ever be won. Resisting it just delays the inevitable and causes needless pain along the way.' I realised afterwards that I'd inadvertently 'done a Stew' and completely contradicted myself in the space of a few days - what I should have said is 'using an election to double as an independence referendum is the ONLY way independence can ever be won, unless the SNP get lucky and hold the balance of power at Westminster'.  The first YouGov MRP poll since the general election confirms that there's a non-trivial chance of the latter happening, because in 26% of simulations a centre-left Labour-led coalition can be cobbled together, but only with the SNP's help.  In most cases this would have to be a five-party coalition involving Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, the Greens and Plaid Cymru, but there's an 11% chance of four parties being enough and a 3% chance of three parties being enough (ie. Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP).  So it would just be a question of whether the SNP are willing to play hardball and to make an independence referendum a condition of installing a Labour PM.

Remarkably, the seats projection shows the SNP within just eight seats of overtaking the Conservatives UK-wide - 

Reform UK 271 (+266)

Labour 178 (-233)

Liberal Democrats 81 (+9)

Conservatives 46 (-75)

SNP 38 (+29)

Greens 7 (+3)

Plaid Cymru 7 (+3)

The SNP would have roughly two-thirds of Scottish seats, and once again it's important to stress that this is in no way inconsistent with the result of the Hamilton by-election.  The Westminster seat of Hamilton & Clyde Valley would be one of the one-third of seats staying in unionist hands, with Labour projected to hold it by a margin of 30% to 27%, and with Reform in a strong third place on 23% - pretty much bang in line with the by-election result.

Most of the crude uniform swing projections from standard opinion polls have Reform failing to win any Scottish seats at all, but that is categorically not the case here - Reform would actually construct a 'mini light blue wall' in the south of Scotland, taking Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock, Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale & Tweeddale and Dumfries & Galloway.

One thing that is consistent with the uniform swing projections, though, is that Labour are shown to be on course to hold Na h-Eileanan an Iar by some distance, with the SNP not even in second place.  I'm fairly sure that's a wonky projection caused by the unusual baseline figures in the constituency from last year's election.  In reality, if the SNP take two-thirds of Scottish seats, Na h-Eileanan an Iar is pretty likely to be one of them unless Torcuil Crichton has built up a really sizeable personal vote.

Although the Tories are projected to hold a couple of Scottish seats, both of them are on a knife edge.  The SNP are only one point behind in Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk, while in Gordon & Buchan there is effectively a three-way tie between the Tories, the SNP and Reform UK on 24% apiece - with the Tories only ahead by a tiny fraction.

*  *  *

The running total in the Scot Goes Pop 2025 fundraiser currently stands at £2780, 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

Using an election to double as an independence referendum is the ONLY way independence can and will ever be won. Resisting it just delays the inevitable and causes needless pain along the way.

"The fact is that most Scots, pro-independence or not, accept without question our right to self-determination", says the SNP MP Seamus Logan in his latest column for The National.

"So for heaven's sake let's make sure we never exercise that right", is the subtext of the rest of his article.  

I don't know whether Mr Logan is speaking on behalf of the SNP leadership, and whether his column is part of a softening up exercise for an unpalatable message that will come more directly afterwards, but if so that would be extremely depressing.  He even resorts to what is by now the rather tired old Gotcha attempt of: 'If you think the UK government would never agree to a referendum, why do you think they would respect the result of a de facto referendum and negotiate independence afterwards?'. That always sounds a hell of a lot less clever and sophisticated once you remind yourself that it's an argument for giving up and doing nothing at all: neither trying to secure a referendum, nor trying to secure independence itself.  In fact, once you get to the nub of it, there are very few things in life that are less sophisticated than clarion calls for passivity and inaction.

Despite my disagreements with Alex Salmond towards the end, there was one thing I definitely did agree with him on, and I know that for sure because he said "correct" when I expanded the argument in a phone conversation with him two years ago or so.  It goes like this.  There are two things that need to happen for Scotland to become an independent country:

1) A clear majority of the people of Scotland need to vote in favour of independence in a democratic event - meaning either a referendum or a parliamentary election in which one or more parties have sought an outright mandate for independence in their manifestos.

2) The Scottish and UK governments need to negotiate an independence settlement, that is then ratified by the Westminster parliament.

We have no unilateral power to make 2) happen, because it clearly takes two to tango.  But we have absolute power (and by 'we' I mean the people of Scotland) to make 1) happen.  The UK government can block a referendum, but short of abolishing democracy altogether it can do nothing to prevent scheduled elections from taking place, so there will always be a way of exercising our inalienable right to an expression of self-determination, and of securing a democratic mandate for independence.  The obvious point is that if there's one-half of the equation you can do, and one-half that you can't do for now because it is being frustrated by others, you get on with doing the bit you actually can do.  You do that because winning a mandate for independence is an end in itself - it would be a historic moment in which the Scottish people take confidence in themselves for the first time in centuries.  But you also do it because it's an absolute prerequisite for the negotiation of an independence settlement to ever happen.

Mr Logan's argument is the equivalent of saying you shouldn't go to a train station because you can't force the train to turn up - when the rather more salient point is that if you never go to the train station, it is you and no-one else but you who is guaranteeing that you will never be getting on a train.  Winning an independence mandate will not force the UK government to grant independence or even to come to the negotiating table.  But it will completely transform the psychology of the situation and open up options that were not there before.  If, for example, the SNP regain a majority of Scottish seats at Westminster in 2028 or 2029, those seats can be used as leverage to back up an independence mandate from the people - either by means of parliamentary disruption tactics or by temporarily withdrawing our MPs from Westminster until the UK government agrees to negotiate.  There are still enough believers in democracy in the London media and establishment that there will begin to be a feeling that it not sustainable to refuse to negotiate when Scotland has clearly voted for independence and is going unrepresented in the UK Parliament.

A cynic might almost say that the reason the Scottish Government don't want a mandate for independence is not because they think there would be nothing they could do to press the mandate home afterwards, but precisely because they know there would be plenty they could do and would be expected to do by their own support base.  Perhaps the specific tactics they would be required to use in that circumstance make them feel queasy, and they would prefer never to be put in that position in the first place.  So they prefer to do nothing at all.  

But for anyone who actually wants independence, rather than to just use the distant prospect of independence as a tool to remain in power, that simply isn't good enough.  Seamus Mallon famously said that the Good Friday Agreement was "Sunningdale for slow learners" - in other words Sunningdale or something very close to it was the only agreement that was ever going to be available, and unionist politicians had wasted a whole quarter of a century before accepting the inevitable anyway.  In exactly the same way, the use of a scheduled election to win an independence mandate is the only option that is ever going to be open to us, and exercising that option is an absolute necessity if independence is ever to be won.  Anyone who resists the inevitability of going down that path is simply wasting time, completely pointlessly.

*. *. *

Craig Murray is the latest in the long (pretty much endless) line of people to have been stabbed in the back by the Alba leadership.  He has been blocked from standing as an Alba parliamentary candidate, for two reasons:

1) His prison sentence.

2) His candidacy for the Workers' Party.

The first reason is absolutely ridiculous, given that he only went to prison in support of Alex Salmond, who praised him to the skies for his bravery.  As for the second reason, I pointed out at the time that standing for the Workers' Party should, on any reading of the Alba constitution, have led to Craig automatically losing his party membership, because the Workers' Party was putting up candidates in direct competition with Alba.  The fact that the party constitution was breached to allow Craig to stay a member, seemingly just because of a private chat he had with Alex Salmond, and at a time when lesser known Alba members were being expelled or suspended left, right and centre for fictional breaches of rules that didn't even exist, demonstrated that Alba is a tinpot dictatorship where the constitution and rules are just for show, and where all that matters is the whim of the leader and those around him.

To allow Craig to remain a member while blocking him as a candidate is logically incoherent.  Either you accept he broke the cardinal rule by standing for a rival party, in which case he shouldn't be an Alba member anymore, or you don't accept the rule was broken, in which case there's no reason to block him as a candidate.  Trying to have it both ways is an absolute nonsense.

*  *  *

The running total in the Scot Goes Pop 2025 fundraiser currently stands at £2780, 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

Another week, another SUBSAMPLE SENSATION as SNP soar to twenty-point lead in YouGov crossbreak for the ages

GB-wide voting intentions (YouGov / Sky News, 22nd-23rd June 2025):

Reform UK 27% (-)

Labour 23% (-)

Conservatives 17% (-)

Liberal Democrats 16% (+1)

Greens 10% (-1)

SNP 3% (-)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

Scottish subsample: SNP 39%, Reform UK 19%, Labour 17%, Liberal Democrats 10%, Greens 6%, Conservatives 6%

Oh, who will save the Scottish Tories now?  The number of respondents in these subsamples is tiny, but there does seem to be a weird consistency to the SNP doing markedly better after their setback in the Hamilton by-election than before.  That may seem counterintuitive but it's not impossible that it's a real trend.

The SNP have now been in power for longer than the Thatcher/Major government

Just a quick point that occurred to me the other day, and apologies if someone else has already pointed this out.  The longest-running UK government since the Second World War was the Thatcher/Major Conservative government that held office for exactly two days short of eighteen years.  It came to power on 4th May 1979 and was ousted on 2nd May 1997.  

The SNP government in Scotland has now exceeded that record.  It took office on 17th May 2007, which means it has been in power for eighteen years, one month and six days.  The only minor sense in which the comparison is not an exact one is that the Thatcher/Major government was always a single-party Tory administration, whereas the SNP had the ill-fated period of coalition with the Greens, and technically some or all of the law officers have been independents (ie. non-party).

But those are no more than points of pedantry, because the government has clearly been totally dominated by the SNP throughout.  From a purely party political point of view, ie. leaving aside for a moment the frustrations over the lack of progress on independence, that is quite some achievement.

I saw from a tweet that Stew Campbell had written a blogpost about me called "Anatomy of a L...", with the rest of the L word obscured. I knew without even checking that it would be "Lunatic". The poor chap's vocabulary range has shrunk to almost nothingness.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 23, 2025

And yes, I will be wearily responding to my Somerset stalker's 7562nd blogpost about me, but it'll probably have to wait until at least tomorrow at this stage.

The Stew-pot calling the Stew-kettle Snow White

You may have noticed that this has been a recurring theme from Stew for several weeks now - whenever I point out the obvious fact that voting against independence is not the ideal strategy for winning independence, he accuses me of "hate".  He even wrote a blogpost about me on Wings a few weeks ago called "Blinded By Hate" - although curiously it does not feature in his "compare and contrast" list of blogposts (or in his pie-chart of blogposts - genuinely a thing!) which seeks to establish that he has only ever written three blogposts about me and that I have written dozens about him.  Mysteriously, his landmark 2022 blogpost "For Karen and James", in which he made the downright bonkers claim that I and Karen Adam were literally the only reasons he had returned to "full-time blogging", also does not appear on the list or pie-chart of his supposed "three blogposts" about me.  Nor do the vast majority of the other blogposts about me that have featured on Wings over the years.

What is going on here?  Well, look at the screenshotted tweet above.  You'll notice that it's unambiguously about me but it doesn't directly mention me by name.  He does the same thing in many of his other tweets and blogposts about me.  A cynic might almost wonder if that's a deliberate tactic - allowing him to stalk me relentlessly while still being able to innocently invite people to "do a search of the words 'James Kelly' on the site - look, only three posts appear!  It's him that is Blinded By Hate, not me!"  But then a cynic would only wonder that because cynics are very, very cynical indeed.  

So what is this "hate" of which he speaks?  I can only assume that he thinks I hate both him and the Alba Party (or at least the Alba leadership) - that's what he seemed to be getting at in the past.  But, Stew, here's the thing - Fergus Ewing is not you, and he's not even a member of the Alba Party, so why would my supposed "hate" extend to him?  I find him perfectly likeable, and I've actually been extremely complimentary about him at times - I've said that I agreed with some (definitely not all, but some) of his critique of the SNP's strategic choices over the last few years, and I also made abundantly clear that I thought the SNP had made a terrible mistake by temporarily suspending him.  It's hard to make much sense of what Stew is getting at unless he's hinting that there's some kind of informal arrangement between Alba and Mr Ewing that he knows about and the rest of us don't.

But there's also the small matter of the pot calling the kettle black.  If Stew thinks that me calling for independence supporters to vote for the pro-independence Scottish National Party is a "strange place" for me to end up in, and that I can only have been led there by "hate", what would he say about a nominally pro-independence blogger who told his readers to vote for the anti-independence Labour party in the general election, simply as an act of revenge because he was so eaten up with resentment and bitterness after Nicola Sturgeon refused to back him in his idiotic vanity court case against Kezia Dugdale?  What would he say about the same blogger now moving towards an outright endorsement of the soft-fascist and most certainly anti-independence party Reform UK - something he'll only be able to justify with mind-bending contortions of logic along the lines of "to win independence, we must first kill independence"?  

I think that's a pretty strange place for you to end up in, Stew, and yes, I do think you've been led there by hate - or at the very least by deep-seated bitterness and grievance.  Others may disagree...but only because you've brainwashed them.

This is, in fact, not only untrue but a massive insult to both groups for different reasons. pic.twitter.com/oQ1cz10dQo

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) June 20, 2025

Here's yet another Stew tweet that is unambiguously about me but evades the search function by not mentioning me by name.  It's also just about the laziest retort I've ever seen from him - it amounts to no more than "Rubbish, because reasons!"  Who are the two "groups"?  What is the nature of the "massive insult"?  What are the "different reasons" for it being an insult in each case?  Nobody knows, and his lips are sealed.  Probably you're supposed to conclude that he'd tell you if only you were on his own plane of intellect, and capable of understanding.

One logical possibility is that the two groups he's referring to are "Palestinians" and "humanity", and that he regards a comparison between the two as an insult to humanity, because he sees the entire Palestinian ethnic group as 'terrorist trash'.  That's a point he made once before when he wrote a blogpost last year calling for the Green MSP Ross Greer to be prosecuted for hate crimes simply because he had used the words "Victory to Palestine!  Victory to humanity!"   According to Stew, "Palestine" and "Hamas" are indistinguishable concepts, and you are therefore illegally supporting a proscribed terrorist group if you simply wish the Palestinians success in their resistance to genocide.

Conflating the Palestinian ethnic group with Hamas most certainly constitutes a profound insult, but I somehow doubt Stew has had that particular epiphany quite yet.  So what he thinks the insult to Palestinians was remains a total mystery.

"You must now vote for the SNP on the list": controversial Somerset-based blogger reveals stunning change to his tactical voting advice in the Highlands

When Somerset's controversial "Stew" blogger started talking up Fergus Ewing's chances of holding his constituency seat as an independent, it struck me that he (ie. Stew) was setting himself up for a bit of a problem.  It's become extremely important to him to hold the line, patently absurd though it is, that the SNP are definitely not going to win any list seats at all at next year's Holyrood election.  I think he's banking on the simplicity of that (totally fraudulent) message to convince people to abandon the SNP on the list when they simply haven't done so in past elections - including in 2016, of course, which was before Stew's Damascene conversion on the subject and when he was still on the same page as me in pointing out that "tactical voting on the list" is a mug's game and essentially impossible to pull off successfully.

But by arguing that Ewing has a real chance of beating the SNP in Inverness & Nairn, Stew is by definition reducing his "projected number of guaranteed SNP constituency seats" in the Highlands & Islands and thus making it even more likely that the SNP will win at least one compensatory list seat in the region - which is one of the two regions where they already have a list seat, of course.  So if Stew concedes that inescapable point in an effort to maintain at least a semblance of logical coherence, it basically pulverises the simplicity of his "definitely no list seats at all for the SNP" messaging and means he'll have to revert to a more complex and probably less persuasive sales-pitch that factors in the real possibility that in some places SNP list votes will translate into SNP list seats.

I was curious to see how he would handle the dilemma, but I wasn't quite expecting this - 

Wow.  So in the blink of an eye he's gone from "every single SNP list vote in Scotland will definitely be wasted" to "SNP list votes in the Highlands & Islands will not be wasted and that's a good thing because it means you can vote for Fergus Ewing safely".  But the most important part of this new tactical voting advice is the bit he doesn't want to spell out, for very obvious reasons.  The logic only holds true if the SNP don't fall short of the percentage vote on the list that Stew is expecting - in other words he's tacitly saying you can only vote for Fergus Ewing safely on the constituency ballot if you also vote for the SNP on the list.  And by implication that has to be what he's advising you to do.

Stew telling people to vote tactically in favour of the SNP on the list - now that was a plot twist I didn't see coming.  

By the way, if I lived in Inverness & Nairn I would be voting for the official SNP candidate Emma Roddick and not for Fergus Ewing - and that would be the case even if I hadn't rejoined the SNP a few months ago.  It's no secret that I'm closer to Mr Ewing's views on identity politics issues than I am to Ms Roddick's, but Mr Ewing's call for the SNP to abandon independence for the next ten years makes it next to impossible, I would suggest, for independence supporters to vote for him.  He's now become a short-term and medium-term unionist.

*  *  *

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