SCOT goes POP!: 2026

Saturday, May 9, 2026

Scottish Parliament election results 2026: How we've moved closer to a decision on independence

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Friday, May 8, 2026

The SNP must go ahead with the Section 30 vote on day one of the parliamentary session - and then when Westminster say no, we move forward to using the 2029 UK general election as the final act of this drama, and to win independence outright

I suppose when election results come in, we all tend to look back at the predictions we made during the campaign and compare it to reality. I used to pride myself in avoiding hard predictions, but writing the 73 constituency profiles for The National effectively forced me into it, and I think I did pretty well on the whole. Although I said Angus Robertson was the likely winner in Edinburgh Central, I did say I thought both the Greens and Labour had a chance there, which pretty much leaves Glasgow Southside as the only one of the 73 that I got completely wrong, which is not a bad record. Can I just take this opportunity to thank the person who wrote to me before I did the Shetland profile and pointed out that Hannah Mary Goodlad's chances were being underestimated, because I took that tip seriously and looked into it as thoroughly as I could.

However, I think the point on which I've been vindicated the most is what I said last October about the unlikelihood of John Swinney's target of an overall majority being met. I said at the time that I thought it was a 1 in 200 chance, and even if you think that was an underestimate, I hope you'll agree that the result vividly demonstrates just how murderously difficult the target was to meet, and also demonstrates why that target must never be set again. We're now going to have to work hard to undo some of the damage caused by setting a precedent that simply cannot be allowed to stand. The argument was that the stars were aligned for a majority on this particular occasion due to Reform splitting the unionist vote - well, we've fallen a few seats short, and there's no particular reason to think the stars will ever be aligned in that way again, so the hardheaded reality is that if we're going to win independence or an independence referendum, regardless of whether it's with this mandate or a future mandate, it will have to be done with a multi-party Holyrood majority and not a single-party majority. So the single-party majority target will have to be binned and never allowed to rear its head again.

The way forward is simple enough: we have to act as if we were always looking for the multi-party majority, and go ahead with the vote on the Section 30. When Westminster say no, we take the Believe in Scotland advice, and use the 2029 Westminster election as the final act in this unnecessarily long drama. If Reform appear to be on course for victory in England, we ask for an outright mandate for independence as Scotland's last chance to escape Farage rule. That may well work, but even if it doesn't the strategy will be an each-way bet, because there's always the outside chance of a Green-led government being formed at Westminster that would grant us a referendum anyway.

The rumour mill and the art of the possible

As we await the initial results and as the first strong rumours start to come through, could I just make a gentle suggestion to all SNP supporters. Just completely stop talking about an SNP overall majority for the rest of the day, and start talking excitedly about an unprecedented pro-independence supermajority that will take this country closer to self-determination. If it's true that the Greens are taking two or three constituency seats, the path to 65 for the SNP is now so narrow as to be almost closed off, notwithstanding the very interesting rumours about Shetland. But the combination of a strong Green performance with Labour saying they've had a disaster in Glasgow (which is likely to be replicated elsewhere) could still mean by the end of the day there will be a really, really sizeable SNP-Green majority after list seats are taken into account. Let's start talking the significance of that up.

Thursday, May 7, 2026

Final Holyrood opinion poll round-up, plus the seven constituencies YouGov say will decide whether the SNP win an overall majority

So I voted a couple of hours ago, and I Made Mine A Double, Stoo. No real clues about the turnout because I always choose a quiet time of day, but there was a steady trickle of people going in and out. The fabled 'peach' ballot paper is so enormous that it's almost farcical.

I ran out of time last night to cover all of the remaining opinion polls, so just for the sake of completeness, here are the ones I didn't get round to...

MORE IN COMMON

Constituency ballot:

SNP 32%

Labour 20%

Reform UK 18%

Liberal Democrats 13%

Conservatives 13%

Greens 2%

Regional list ballot:

SNP 23%

Reform UK 22%

Labour 19%

Liberal Democrats 12%

Greens 10%

Conservatives 10%

IPSOS

Constituency ballot:

SNP 35%

Labour 20%

Reform UK 18%

Liberal Democrats 11%

Conservatives 10%

Greens 2%

Regional list ballot:

SNP 26%

Reform UK 18%

Greens 17%

Labour 15%

Liberal Democrats 11%

Conservatives 10%

YOUGOV MRP

Constituency ballot:

SNP 39%

Reform UK 18%

Labour 18%

Liberal Democrats 11%

Conservatives 10%

Greens 2%

Regional list ballot:

SNP 28%

Reform UK 19%

Labour 16%

Greens 15%

Conservatives 11%

Liberal Democrats 9%

I can't really discern any consistent trend across the polling industry, except maybe that the SNP do seem to have slipped back a little on the list over the course of the campaign. But their constituency vote seems to have held up fine, at least according to the majority of firms. Perhaps the oddest finding is Ipsos showing Labour making a five-point recovery on the constituency ballot, which if the poll is exactly right will do them no good whatsoever in terms of seats because they remain stuck on a dismal fourth place on the list.

Although the central finding of the YouGov MRP is that the SNP will be three seats short of an outright majority, it does suggest there is still an 11% chance of a majority because a handful of constituency seats are so tight. If the poll is exactly right (a big if), the SNP would need to win *six* of the following seven coin-toss seats in order to win a majority of one.

Aberdeenshire West (YouGov projection: SNP 32%, Conservatives 31%)

Dumbarton (YouGov projection: Labour 37%, SNP 36%)

Dumfriesshire (YouGov projection: SNP 31%, Reform UK 27%, Conservatives 25%)

Eastwood (YouGov projection: Conservatives 30%, SNP 29%)

Glasgow Kelvin & Maryhill (YouGov projection: Greens 32%, SNP 29%)

Strathkelvin & Bearsden (YouGov projection: Liberal Democrats 36%, SNP 32%)

Edinburgh Southern (YouGov projection: SNP 34%, Labour 32%)

I would also give special mentions to Edinburgh Central, which YouGov have as a likely Green gain, Edinburgh Northern, which YouGov say is a likely Lib Dem gain, Galloway & West Dumfries, which YouGov say is a likely SNP gain, Banffshire & Buchan Coast, which YouGov have as a likely SNP hold, and East Lothian Coast & Lammermuirs, which YouGov say is a likely SNP hold. We have good reason to believe all of those could be very competitive.

Make Mine A Double: as the polling stations open, be a 'peach' and listen to the strong case for Both Votes SNP

The polling stations are now open and the Scottish Parliament election of 2026 is well underway, so let's be 'peachy' and have a final word about the voting system. I've been writing this blog since 2008, and I feel as if at least 10% of the posts over that time have consisted of me explaining that you should vote for your first choice party on the list ballot, because the system simply does not lend itself to tactical voting on the list - there's too big a risk of it backfiring.

The voting system hasn't changed over the years, so the logic I was setting out in 2011 and 2016 for the most part has remained sound. That logic was:

* The overall composition of parliament is determined by the list ballot, not by the constituency ballot. If Party X gets 15% of the vote on the list ballot, the system will aim to give Party X roughly 15% of the overall seats in parliament, regardless of whether it receives 5% or 40% of the vote on the constituency ballot. The list ballot is therefore the more important of the two, and should be used for your first-choice party.

* Although the greater importance of the list ballot can break down a bit if one party has a totally dominant lead on the constituency ballot, and although that leads people to feel they can 'hack' the system by tactically voting for a second-choice party on the list, you can only do that safely if you know what the constituency results are going to be at the moment you cast your vote, and by definition you don't. If you think you do, the information you're basing that belief on is nowhere near as reliable as you think it is.

* In both 2011 and 2016, it was fair to say that past history suggested there was a significant risk that the Greens might not win list seats in most regions, so if an SNP supporter voted 'tactically' for a second-choice party on the list, regardless of which party that was, there was a danger they were voting for a party that wouldn't win any seats in their region and would thus help unionists to win seats - a classic example of an intended tactical vote completely backfiring.

If the logic has changed at all, it's only on that third and final point, because the Greens are now much more established and it's arguably extremely unlikely that they won't take a significant number of list seats. So the risks attached to voting Green are now lower than they used to be - but it's important to stress that the point remains unchanged for all of the non-Green fringe pro-indy parties. If you vote 'tactically' on the list for any of those tiny parties, you are throwing your list vote away on parties that cannot possibly win any seats, and you are helping unionists to win seats. That is true beyond a shadow of doubt.

The choice on the list for sensible independence supporters therefore narrows to just two: SNP or Green. I'm a member of the SNP, so I'll leave it to Green members and supporters to make the case for the Greens. I'm going to make the case for Both Votes SNP, and it remains an extremely strong one.

The nub of it is this: as things stand this morning, you really don't have a clue what the constituency results are going to be. There is a huge spread in the polls from a 12-point SNP lead in the constituency ballot with More In Common to a 24-point lead with Find Out Now. Polling accuracy is not determined by majority vote, or by averaging - often an outlier poll proves to be the most accurate, as we saw in 2017. I therefore would not be totally surprised if the SNP clean up in the constituencies to such an extent that they win an overall majority on constituency seats alone, and I also would not be surprised if the wheels come off and they lose a truckload of constituencies that most people are assuming are safe. There's one overnight projection on Twitter based on the More In Common poll that has the SNP on just 43 seats. That would be a catastrophe that could potentially even open the door for a unionist government. It's a real possibility because with a 12 point SNP lead on the constituency ballot, unionist parties start to move into the fringes of contention in a large number of seats, and in some cases unionist tactical voting on the constituency ballot will get them over the line. (To be clear, tactical voting does work on the constituency ballot.). If people have abandoned the SNP on the list ballot because they assume SNP list votes will be 'wasted', the SNP will not be compensated for their constituency losses with list seats, and the disaster will be compounded, wholly unnecessarily.

As we survey this scene of massive uncertainty on the morning of polling day, with both an SNP overall majority and a disastrous SNP result remaining realistic possibilities, we can really only look back in wonder at the unutterable folly of the people such as Somerset Stew who were absurdly trying to convince you a year ago that they already knew with absolute certainly how many constituency seats the SNP were going to win today and therefore that all SNP list votes would be wasted. If you're an SNP supporter who is tempted to vote 'tactically' on the list, it's true that in the best case scenario where the SNP clean up in the constituencies, you could look back with the benefit of hindsight and think to yourself that there was a missed opportunity to get rid of one or two unionists on the list. But in the worst case scenario that the More In Common poll is right, you could end up with the psychological catastrophe of Reform outpolling the SNP on the list ballot (it's within the poll's margin of error), and such a poor seats tally for the SNP that it would set the cause of independence back years. You would then spend the next five years kicking yourself for being so daft as to not vote SNP on the list and to contribute to that result coming about. The latter danger is far more scary than the former.

I don't know which way it's going to go - I don't even have a particularly strong gut feeling about whether the polling average is underestimating or overestimating the SNP. There's a plausible case to be made for either, and I therefore can't promise you that you won't end up with regrets if you take my advice. But it's the very fact that we don't have a crystal ball handy that means the logic points overwhelmingly, in my view, to being safe, being responsible, and voting Both Votes SNP.

Wednesday, May 6, 2026

MRP latest: Survation sizzler gives SNP huge 20-point lead over Labour on the constituency ballot

There may be blogposts coming at you all evening, because we've got polls coming out of our ears at the moment. Hot off the press is the Survation MRP poll, which I find really interesting, because although the actual seats projection for the SNP isn't stellar, the SNP's constituency vote share is nudging 40% and they have a 20-point lead on the second-placed party. So if there's something not quite right about the projection model, it's not hard to see how these numbers could translate into a superb result.

Constituency vote share (Survation MRP):

SNP 39%
Labour 19%
Reform UK 17%
Conservatives 12%
Liberal Democrats 10%
Greens 2%

Regional list vote share:

SNP 29%
Reform UK 17%
Labour 16%
Greens 15%

Conservatives 13%
Liberal Democrats 8%

Seats projection:

SNP 59

Reform UK 18

Labour 17

Greens 16

Conservatives 13

Liberal Democrats 8

Survation's chief Damian Lyons-Lowe tried to cover himself in advance with reverse psychology by predicting "hot takes" about individual constituency projections that might render this a poor MRP poll. Challenge accepted, Damian, and let me present to you Exhibit A: Paisley. You've got Labour winning that by 32.2% to 31.6%, and it's hard to see why, because although it's not one of the SNP's safest seats, it's not at the most vulnerable end of the scale either. You only have one other surprise Labour gain in the central belt (unless you count Edinburgh Central, which I wouldn't really regard as a shock due to the Green splitting the pro-indy vote), so what is it about Paisley in particular?

Then we come to Exhibit B: Airdrie. You have that as Reform UK's only constituency gain. That's perhaps not quite so absurd, because the local demographics do favour Reform, but if Reform win *only* one constituency seat, I'd be very surprised if that's the one.

The good news for the SNP is that Survation have them ahead in Banffshire & Buchan Coast, Edinburgh Northern, East Lothian Coast & Lammermuirs, Edinburgh Southern, Galloway & West Dumfries, Eastwood, Aberdeenshire West, Glasgow Kelvin & Maryhill and Strathkelvin & Bearsden.

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Dramatic Find Out Now poll gives the SNP a mammoth 24-point lead, puts pro-independence parties on course for 60% of the seats, and suggests Labour could finish SIXTH

As you'd expect on the eve of polling day, there's quite a bit of new opinion poll information, so I'm going to try to split it over several different blogposts this evening to make it more manageable. First of all, let's take a look at the new Find Out Now poll, because the figures from that can be directly compared to the Find Out Now poll I commissioned for Scot Goes Pop two weeks ago.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot (Find Out Now, 1st-6th May 2026):

SNP 41% (+6)

Reform UK 17% (+1)

Labour 15% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 12% (+2)

Conservatives 10% (+1)

Greens 2% (-11)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 26% (-1)

Reform UK 18% (+1)

Greens 17% (-3)

Labour 12% (-)

Liberal Democrats 11% (-)

Conservatives 11% (+1)

Seats projection:

SNP 61

Reform UK 19

Greens 17

Liberal Democrats 11

Conservatives 11

Labour 10

The apparent surge for the SNP on the constituency ballot is misleading, because it's caused by Find Out Now changing their methodology since the last poll to exclude the Greens as an option in the constituencies where they aren't standing. Nevertheless, it's still an extremely encouraging finding, because it shows that the SNP are picking up the lion's share of those Green votes, which has not always been the pattern seen in polls from other firms.

The eye-catching finding from the Scot Goes Pop poll was the Greens on an all-time high of 20% on the list ballot, so the big question was whether that would turn out to be an outlier. The answer to that question appears to be yes, but only in part, because the 17% for the Greens in today's poll is still exceptionally high by normal standards. They're still in the hunt for second place in terms of seats, and they're still contributing to a pro-independence supermajority of sorts, although this it's time it's 'only' 60% of the seats in parliament.

And Labour are down to sixth place in the seats projection - oh my goodness me. In a way you could argue that's an artificial finding because Labour are in third place in terms of votes on the constituency ballot, and fourth place on the list. But it's the sort of outcome that could actually happen in the real world, because the Liberal Democrats will probably take more constituency seats than Labour do, and that might give them slightly more seats overall than they would really be due on a strictly proportional allocation.

This poll muddies the waters somewhat, because it doesn't replicate the trends shown by other firms. There's no telling recovery for Labour on the constituency ballot as Ipsos are showing today (hopefully more on that in a later blogpost), and there's no renaissance for the Tories as Norstat showed, notwithstanding a trivial one-point increase in the Conservative vote share on both ballots.

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Over the last few months, I've been building up the Scot Goes Pop channel on YouTube - you can check it out HERE, and don't forget to subscribe.

Is tomorrow's Scottish Parliament election the end of the road for Labour in Scotland?

I've now completed my profiles of all 73 Holyrood constituencies for The National. I reckon in terms of combined word count they must come to somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 words - which is almost the equivalent of writing a novel over the course of two months. But at least I didn't have to devise the plot! The final one is Uddingston & Bellshill, and you can read it HERE.

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Over the last few months, I've been building up the Scot Goes Pop channel on YouTube - you can check it out HERE, and don't forget to subscribe.

Paradoxically, the Daily Record's endorsement is clear evidence of both Labour's weakness and the Record's weakness

The Daily Record's mindless support for the Labour party, regardless of circumstances, will survive the heat death of the universe. But it's no longer 2007, and very few people are going to be influenced by this. https://t.co/gEsWe1UgF1
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 5, 2026

Nope, nice try, Paul, but the status quo - which you favour - is "more of the same". Voting for change would mean voting for independence. And if you stick a saltire on a call for change which doesn't mention "Labour", on a casual glance people will assume you mean independence.
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 6, 2026

The fact that Hutcheon needs that explained to him - and almost certainly will still resist it even now it has been explained - demonstrates the extent to which he's caught up in groupthink. He lives in a bubble in which the opponents of the British state, rather than the British state itself and its upholders, are "the establishment", and the existence of people who see things the other way around doesn't even enter his head when he puts together a front page like that.

Nevertheless, in all sorts of ways this "endorsement of Labour" is evidence that the Record are acutely aware of the weakness of both their own position and Labour's position. If they weren't worried about angering and alienating a large number of their readers by endorsing Labour, they wouldn't have taken the extraordinary and possibly unique step of not even mentioning the name of the party they're supporting, or even of referring to that party obliquely. In 2007 they felt able to be much more full-on, and the fact that they no longer do speaks volumes.

It's also clear that they know that saying "vote for change", even leaving aside the interpretation of that phrase as referring to independence, cannot be used as a less offensive proxy for "vote Labour", because it's not at all clear that Labour are the SNP's main challengers in this election. So in order not to be misunderstood, they've had to tie themselves up in knots by attacking both the SNP and Reform while still not actually mentioning the word "Labour". That's weakness because it's a tacit admission that Labour are in severe danger of finishing third or fourth (or even fifth, as the Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll showed).

The parroting of Labour's own message "Reject Reform, Beat the SNP" strongly suggests that Labour have found on the doorstep that Sarwar's overture to Offord has harmed Labour and that some anti-Reform voters are turning to the SNP. The fact that they're needing to go to such lengths to address that problem is a sign of weakness - as is the fact that the polling evidence shows that there are a number of seats in which a tactical vote for the SNP can help stop Reform, but there are no seats in which a tactical vote for Labour can have the same effect. So if challenged on the claim that you can stop Reform by voting Labour, they wouldn't even be able to justify it coherently.

The Record also know that their only credible objective in making this endorsement is to stop the SNP winning an overall majority - it's extremely unlikely that the SNP can be prevented from forming a government. So they ought to have some concerns about the effect their decision will have on their relationship with the Scottish Government over the next five years. I can't remember the last time I looked inside the Record, but I'm vaguely aware that they occasionally run columns from SNP politicians and supporters. I remember Alison Thewliss had a regular column with them until Hutcheon treated her like dirt and dropped her because she wouldn't write what he wanted her to.

Now, of course there are benefits for the SNP to a relationship with the Record because it allows them to reach a particular audience. But I'm not sure it's an act of charity on behalf of the Record - running the occasional column from John Swinney or whoever is also a signal to SNP-supporting Record readers that the paper they read is not unremittingly hostile to the party they support. Will the SNP continue to allow the Record to have its cake and eat it now that it has run a front page explicitly calling the SNP "hopeless" and telling people to vote them out of office? I mean, would Nigel Lawson have written columns for the Mirror or the Morning Star in 1987? Just a thought to ponder on. If the Record are determined to be hostile, then perhaps they should be treated as hostile and forced to live with the full consequences of that in terms of sales figures and political relevance.

Meanwhile, I've now completed my profiles of all 73 Holyrood constituencies for The National. I reckon in terms of combined word count they must come to somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 words - which is almost the equivalent of writing a novel over the course of two months. But at least I didn't have to devise the plot! The final one is Uddingston & Bellshill, and you can read it HERE.

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Over the last few months, I've been building up the Scot Goes Pop channel on YouTube - you can check it out HERE, and don't forget to subscribe.

Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Final YouGov MRP projection of the campaign suggests pro-independence parties will have 60% of the seats in the new Scottish Parliament

Thanks to Marcia for alerting me to YouGov's update (the second and almost certainly final one) of their MRP projection for Holyrood. It leaves us none the wiser about the direction of travel because it shows the SNP slipping back a bit, whereas More In Common's MRP update showed the SNP gaining a little ground.

YouGov MRP seats projection:

SNP 62

Reform UK 19

Labour 17

Greens 16

Liberal Democrats 8

Conservatives 7

As far as I can see, the vote shares are not available yet, but it does sound very much from the Times write-up that any dip in the SNP's support has been minimal, and that the SNP seat count has only dropped back because YouGov are picking up an increase in unionist tactical voting as polling day approaches. The Times are claiming that this means the SNP's campaigning on independence has "backfired" because it's riled up unionists, but frankly that is a load of utter tripe - there have been any number of previous elections in which the SNP have tried to play it safe by mentioning independence as little as possible, but the unionist parties have still managed to whip their own voters up into a frenzy about the subject. It would have happened no matter what the SNP had done - and as we've seen, the great benefit of the SNP's own focus on independence is that it's kept the Yes vote high during the campaign.

For those of you who don't recall, the previous YouGov update had the SNP on 67 seats, which was an overall majority, whereas 62 is three short of a majority. However, the pro-independence parties in combination would have an extremely healthy 60% of all seats, ie. 78 in total. And the SNP are potentially within reach of a single-party majority, because it's obvious from the write-up that some of the seats that have flipped since the last update are still extremely close. Eastwood, for example, is said to be staying with the Tories by a "razor-thin margin". The Greens are supposedly on course to win two seats, one in Glasgow and one in Edinburgh, so even if the SNP just manage to hold those two, that would get them to 64, just one short of a majority.

It's the Liberal Democrats that are apparently doing a lot of the damage - they are now projected to win both Edinburgh Northern and Strathkelvin & Bearsden. But remember that Edinburgh Northern is a completely new seat, which must increase the level of uncertainty, while in Strathkelvin & Bearsden the Lib Dems were actually in *fourth* place last time around, some thirty points or so behind the SNP.

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My latest constituency profiles for The National are Stirling and Strathkelvin & Bearsden.

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Over the last few months, I've been building up the Scot Goes Pop channel on YouTube - you can check it out HERE, and don't forget to subscribe.

SNP and Greens both improve their standing in the final More In Common MRP poll

I took a little bank holiday jaunt to the seaside earlier, and it suddenly struck me that I didn't see a single election poster anywhere on the journey. You literally wouldn't know there was an election on at all. That would have been completely unthinkable at this stage of proceedings a few years ago, and I'm wondering if that lack of visibility might in itself play a role in depressing the turnout.

The latest poll to be published is an MRP from More In Common. The journalist who first revealed the numbers was laying on the anti-SNP spin fairly thick, suggesting that the poll showed John Swinney just barely limping over the line. In truth it's actually rather a good poll for the SNP, because their constituency vote share has risen, which contradicts the trend shown by Norstat and thus increases the chances that Norstat was giving us a misleading impression due to margin of error noise. On the other hand, the SNP list vote has dropped and they are getting dangerously close to being overtaken on the list by Reform, but as long as they can avoid the psychological blow of that crossover occurring, a poor list vote share may not actually make all that much difference in terms of seats.

Scottish parliament constituency ballot (More In Common MRP poll):

SNP 35% (+2)

Reform UK 19% (-2)

Labour 17% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 13% (+1)

Conservatives 13% (+1)

Greens 2% (+1)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 26% (-3)

Reform UK 22% (+3)

Labour 15% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 12% (-)

Greens 11% (+1)

Conservatives 11% (+1)

Seats projection:

SNP 60

Reform UK 22

Labour 13

Liberal Democrats 12

Conservatives 12

Greens 10

The seats projection is also a marked improvement on the previous More In Common MRP, both for the SNP on their own, and for the SNP and Greens in combination. Pro-independence parties would have 70 seats, and anti-independence parties would have 59.

In terms of the individual seats, it's heartening to see the SNP on course to win Edinburgh Central, although Labour are only seven points behind in second place, and as in 2016 there remains a significant danger that the Green intervention could split the vote and hand the seat to a unionist party. As for the Lib Dems, apart from the seats that are nailed on, they are also projected to win Edinburgh Northern and Strathkelvin & Bearsden, which is a bit ominous, although I do wonder if the MRP projections for Strathkelvin & Bearsden are going astray by using the UK general election result in Mid Dunbartonshire as a baseline.

The Tories are projected to cling on to Dumfriesshire, Aberdeenshire West and Ettrick, Roxburgh & Berwickshire, although all three are on a knife-edge between themselves and the SNP. Reform UK are projected to take Banffshire & Buchan Coast and Ayr, but the SNP are still firmly in contention in both, with Ayr practically looking like a three-way dead heat between Reform, the SNP and the Tories. Bathgate is weirdly competitive, with the SNP only one point ahead of Reform - is that because the controversial "Stew" blogger used to live there?!

Labour are projected to be completely wiped out in the constituency seats due to the SNP gaining Edinburgh Southern and Dumbarton, although I continue to wonder if sufficient account is being taken of tactical voting in those seats.

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My latest constituency profile for The National is Skye, Lochaber & Badenoch.

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Over the last few months, I've been building up the Scot Goes Pop channel on YouTube - you can check it out HERE, and don't forget to subscribe.

Sunday, May 3, 2026

Alex Massie looks in the mirror and thinks he sees the true Scotland staring back at him

Alex Massie's basic problem is that he doesn't just disapprove of the Scottish Government and want it changed. He also disapproves of the Scottish voters and wants them changed. "The problem with Scotland is that it's full of Scots."
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 3, 2026

The context of this was a tweet from Massie in which he predicted that Scottish voters would choose the SNP on Thursday, and added that this would mean they had got it wrong - as if he was an exasperated teacher marking some very bad homework. I actually have a pet theory about why he's so perpetually disappointed in his fellow Scots. Something he said in one of his columns a few years ago has always stuck in my mind, and I think it was highly revealing - he said that most people in Scotland would agree that the country closest to us culturally is England, and that the next closest is Wales, and that the third closest is Ireland.

I would be so bold as to say that he's almost certainly wrong about that. OK, being a Catholic, about two-thirds of my own pre-1850 ancestry is Irish, so that may be distorting my thinking, but I really have very little doubt that if a survey was conducted on the subject, most people in Scotland would say that Ireland is the country most similar to our own, with our more distant Celtic cousins Wales in second place, and England in third. I mean, even if you were a hardcore Rangers supporter, who would you say in the UK is most similar to you, if you were being totally honest? It would surely be loyalists in Northern Ireland. For everyone else, the case is even more straightforward:

* As a cultural and ethnic group, the Scots supposedly came from Ireland in the first place (specifically Antrim).

* That, in combination with population movements back and forwards over the centuries, means that people in central Scotland and the north of Ireland are almost indistinguishable genetically. I gather that some ancestry services don't even try to make the distinction, and just have a single "Central Scotland and Northern Ireland" group.

* For centuries, Scotland was a predominantly Gaelic-speaking nation, and at that time Gaelic was even closer to Irish than it is in the modern day - and indeed the written form of the language was actually identical to Irish.

* Scottish traditional music is so similar to Irish traditional music that I'm not sure a visitor from far-flung parts would be able to spot much difference between the two.

* Apparently part of the reason that a disproportionate number of Irish people settled in Scotland during and after the famine was because they felt it was culturally much more familiar than England.

And yet I can totally understand that things would look very different from the vantage point of someone with Massie's privileged background. He went to insanely expensive private schools, one of which was in the Borders, and to him it must seem totally obvious that the Scotland he knows is more similar to England than to any other country. And while the Scotland he knows is perfectly real, it's only a small and unrepresentative part of the whole. Basically he looks in the mirror and thinks he sees Scotland staring back at him, but instead all he sees is himself and the people from his own milieu. No wonder the way Scotland actually votes is so befuddling to him.

Although I'm not a regular follower of his and Bernard Ponsonby's podcast, I was intrigued to watch their ranking of the seven First Ministers to date. (Massie's ranking was mostly ridiculous, although he did make one technically valid point, which was that Ponsonby had Donald Dewar too high because the assessment was based mainly on things Dewar had done as Secretary of State for Scotland rather than as First Minister.) At the end of that show, Massie said that John Swinney was more typical of "average Scotland" (or some such jargon like that) than any other First Minister in the past. Now I mustn't be churlish, because that was intended as a compliment to the leader of my own party...and yet objectively I do think it was another very odd and revealing comment. All I really know about Mr Swinney's family background is that his uncle was awarded the Victoria Cross during World War II, but if his accent is anything to go by, he may have grown up in a reasonably 'good area', and he's certainly better educated than the average Scot - he has a degree from Edinburgh University. He's also active in the Church of Scotland, which in this day and age puts him in the minority. I think only really someone like Massie could look at all of that and think it represents some sort of centre of gravity for the nation as a whole. But then I would imagine Massie thought Nicola Sturgeon belonged to the servant classes.

His father Allan Massie, who sadly died very recently, was one of this country's finest journalists, but he had a very similar blind spot. I remember reading a column from him back in the day in which he celebrated the triumph of Thatcherite politics in New Zealand, which he bizarrely regarded as proof that Scots are actually Thatcherites because New Zealand is an ethnically "Scottish country" (a vast over-simplification, of course, although I believe there was a heavy concentration of Scottish immigrants in the south of New Zealand). But for some baffling reason, Scots in the mother country kept voting against their true Tory nature, and he was just so terribly disappointed in us and wanted us to do better. Alex continues to feel much the same way.

(To go back to the point about Ireland, the huge irony about Alex Massie is that he actually got his degree at Trinity College Dublin after he was rejected by Cambridge. Presumably he must have either hated it for some reason, or surrounded himself with upper-crust Brits for the whole time he was there.)

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Over the last few months, I've been building up the Scot Goes Pop channel on YouTube - you can check it out HERE, and don't forget to subscribe.

Saturday, May 2, 2026

Scotland moves a step closer to independence as earth-shaking Norstat poll shows Yes support has surged to an astonishing 55%

See what I mean about the way in which the unionist media seeks to bury independence polling results these days? This is clearly a hugely significant result - it's the eighth poll in a row from the formerly No-friendly firm Norstat to show a pro-independence majority, and it's the second-biggest Yes lead recorded by any pollster so far this year. And yet you'd practically need a magnifying glass to find it in the Sunday Times' write-up of the poll.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Norstat / Sunday Times, 27th-30th April 2026)

Yes 55% (+3)

No 45% (-3)

Across the polling industry, there have now been nineteen independence polls in 2026. Thirteen have shown a Yes lead, just four have shown a No lead, and the other two were tied. My own view is that it's particularly significant that the Yes vote seems to be going up rather than down, or at the very least is holding steady, in the heat of an election campaign - because in similar situations in the past we've often seen a temporary surge for No.

Meanwhile the Holyrood numbers from the poll ought to serve as a wake-up call for any independence supporters reading this who may be toying with the idea of playing silly buggers by throwing their list votes away on no-hoper fringe parties. Not only does the seats projection suggest the SNP are falling quite a bit short of an overall majority, but the Greens are also failing to do well enough to make a pro-independence majority secure. The SNP and Greens in combination are projected to take 68 seats, which is a majority, but they have very little safety-margin left.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 36% (+2)

Labour 20% (+1)

Reform UK 16% (+1)

Conservatives 14% (+3)

Liberal Democrats 11% (+1)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 28% (-2)

Reform UK 17% (+2)

Labour 17% (-)

Conservatives 14% (+4)

Greens 12% (-)

Liberal Democrats 10% (-)

Seats projection:

SNP 57

Reform UK 19

Conservatives 16

Labour 16

Greens 11

Liberal Democrats 10

Don't be deceived by the fact that the SNP constituency vote has increased - that's only happened because Norstat are now excluding the Greens as an option in most constituencies, so if anything the fact that the SNP have only gained two points may suggest a slight real terms dip in their support over the course of the campaign.

The effect of unionist media outlets commissioning polls can be seen in the supplementary question that was chosen about the SNP's policy of capping food prices - instead of asking the blindingly obvious question of whether voters support the policy or not, the Sunday Times asked for the silly Brit Nat hobby-horse question about whether or not the SNP would *deliver* the policy (which of course may depend on how obstructive Westminster prove to be).

A more useful supplementary question demonstrates that the voters have been more impressed by the campaigns run by the pro-independence parties than by the unionist campaigns -

Proportion of voters "impressed" by each party's campaign:

SNP 30%

Greens 24%

Labour 21%

Reform UK 19%

Conservatives 17%

Liberal Democrats 16%

That's not simply because voters have been more aware of the SNP's campaigning. The SNP also have the lowest figure for those who are "not impressed" by each party's campaign.

Proportion of voters "not impressed" by each party's campaign:

Reform UK 59%

Conservatives 56%

Labour 51%

Greens 49%

Liberal Democrats 48%

SNP 45%

A recent Ipsos poll showed a very similar picture of how voters were reacting to the campaigns.

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Over the last few months, I've been building up the Scot Goes Pop channel on YouTube - you can check it out HERE, and don't forget to subscribe.

Stonehaven REVELATION as "most accurate pollster" puts the SNP on course for an overall majority as Labour slump to FOURTH

To be clear, the bit about "most accurate pollster" is Stonehaven's own self-description, but I always put that in because it upsets our resident unionist troll KC.

It was Stonehaven who, a few months ago, first started the trend of MRP polls showing an SNP overall majority, and I must admit I was surprised that YouGov of all companies ended up following their example. Remember, however, that Stonehaven have stated that they factor tactical voting into their headline projections, and once again they've found that the SNP benefit more from tactical voting than any other party. That seems intuitively implausible, so if there's any health warning to be put on these numbers, that would be it.

Seats projection (Stonehaven MRP):

SNP 66

Reform UK 21

Greens 14

Labour 13

Liberal Democrats 8

Conservatives 7

SNP: 66 seats

ALL OTHER PARTIES: 63 seats

SNP OVERALL MAJORITY OF 3 SEATS

PRO-INDEPENDENCE PARTIES: 80 seats

ANTI-INDEPENDENCE PARTIES 49 seats

PRO-INDEPENDENCE MAJORITY OF 31 SEATS

Like a lot of people, the first thing I do when I see one of these MRP projections is look at the individual constituency numbers to check if any them look obviously wrong. In this case there are a few that leap out...

Dumbarton is projected to be an SNP gain, with Reform in a distant second place. That seems unlikely - even if the SNP do take the seat, there will presumably still be enough tactical votes for Labour to keep them ahead of Reform at the very least.

Cunninghame South is projected to be a Reform UK gain. It's amazing how many MRP polls seem determined that there is going to be a Reform breakthrough in Ayrshire in particular, and while that's certainly possible, I can't see why Reform would take this specific seat and fail to take any other constituency in the country, which is what Stonehaven are saying.

Edinburgh Northern is projected to be a notional SNP hold, with the Greens in second place. It seems far more likely the race there will be between the SNP and the Liberal Democrats.

The SNP are projected to take all three seats in the southern Blue Wall, which is possible on a good day, although I certainly wouldn't bet the house on it happening.

Here are the national vote shares from the poll:

Constituency ballot:

SNP 37%

Reform UK 18%

Labour 17%

Greens 10%

Conservatives 9%

Liberal Democrats 8%

Regional list ballot:

SNP 33%

Reform UK 19%

Labour 16%

Greens 13%

Conservatives 9%

Liberal Democrats 8%

That's a wee bit odd. The constituency-level projections seem to take account of the fact that there will be no Green candidates in most constituencies, but clearly the national vote shares do not. So if we make a common sense adjustment based on where those Green constituency votes might really go, we could well be looking at an SNP vote in the low 40s at least.

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My latest constituency profile for The National is the Shetland Islands. That, as it happens, is the only one of the 73 constituencies that I've never actually set foot in myself. I've been to Na h-Eileanan an Iar once, because I spent a few days in Uist when I was 14, and I've been to Orkney three times, including as recently as two years ago. But I've never made it as far as Shetland. Hopefully one day.

Incidentally, I was shocked to see that the Lib Dems have apparently taken out a front-page attack ad in the Shetland Times, which attempts to monster the SNP candidate Hannah Mary Goodlad. Either they're severely rattled or they have money to burn.

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Over the last few months, I've been building up the Scot Goes Pop channel on YouTube - you can check it out HERE, and don't forget to subscribe.

Friday, May 1, 2026

"Stew-pid. Just Stew-pid." The advice that controversial blogger "Stew" would have given in a variety of dangerous historical situations

The controversial Somerset-based blogger "Stew" seems to have had a screw loose ever since Kezia Dugdale psychologically damaged him by defeating his vanity libel case - a drubbing that not only broke him reputationally but is also assumed to have cost him tens of thousands of pounds of crowdfunded money. But his loopy advice yesterday to vote for unionist parties "for the longterm benefit of the independence movement" is a new low, and he has understandably been relentlessly mocked for it. For my own tribute to dear old Stewie on this very special occasion, I thought I'd take a look at the sage advice he would doubtlessly impart in a variety of historical situations if someone gave him a time machine.

Stew's advice to Labour supporters in 1979: "Look here, lads, your party is a bit tired. Tell you what, why not vote for Mrs Thatcher for the longterm benefit of Labour? It's highly unlikely she'll make any significant changes to the economic model, or sell off any state assets, or gut the trade union movement or anything like that. Trust me, she'll be a four-year wonder and then you'll be straight back in power all revitalised and socialist. You won't regret it."

Stew's advice to the ancient Britons in the 5th Century AD: "Look here, guys, you're getting raided an awful lot by the Picts and the Scots. Tell you what, for your longterm safety and security, why not invite in some war-like Angles and Saxons as a sort of guard dog? Come to think of it, why not entice as many of them as possible over by giving them some of your land? Trust me, it's highly unlikely they'll outstay their welcome. You won't regret it."

Stew's advice to German centrists and liberals in 1932: "Look here, meine Freunde, you're having a bit of trouble shaking off Herr Hitler and forming a stable government. Tell you what, for the longterm benefit of German centrism and liberalism, why not actually vote for Hitler yourselves? You know, why not "hire" him? You'll find that he's instantly neutered and totally under your control. Trust me, you'll be perfectly safe. You won't regret it."

Stew's advice during the Trojan War: "That's a fine-looking horse. It's made of wood and has been left by the Greeks, you say? Perfect. BRING IT IN."

Stew's advice to Scottish independence supporters during the 2024 UK general election: "Every vote for Labour brings independence closer. Trust me on this, if you follow my advice I'll be giving you regular progress reports over the next two years on how the Starmer government is advancing the cause of independence. You won't regret it."

You're way ahead of me here - he actually said the last one.

[UPDATE: By a bizarre coincidence, Stew has actually revealed on social media tonight precisely how much the defeat to Dugdale cost him financially. It wasn't tens of thousands of pounds he lost, it was hundreds of thousands. £220,000, to be exact. That was largely money he had crowdfunded from well-meaning independence supporters, and then had to hand over to the unionist state pointlessly. "Bonkers" doesn't even begin to cover it - it's more like a tragedy for the people who funded him.]

Which group of voters did Offord actually intend to impress with his boast about owning six boats?

Paul Hutcheon's contributions to this campaign have been somewhat less than constructive, but I did think he was absolutely correct when he said that Malcolm Offord's boasts about his wealth were much more Thatcherite than Faragist. They triggered something primal in our hard-right commentariat, who have since seized the opportunity to espouse an Ayn Rand style 'morality' in which the only thing heroic or good is to accumulate vast personal resources and to care nothing for those less fortunate than yourself. It's ironic that Reform keep insisting that Britain is a "Christian country", because Christian morality is the polar opposite of Ayn Rand's. The Christian message to Malcolm Offord would be simple and unpalatable for him: "give your yachts to the poor".

My question, though, is who did Offord actually intend to impress by mentioning his boats and cars in his pre-scripted question to Ross Greer? All the evidence is that Reform primarily takes its votes from the lower end of the income scale, because that's where the anti-immigrant messaging seems to have most potency. But the only country I know of in which low-income voters are impressed by their leaders openly working in favour of the wealthy is the US, where people have bought into the myth of the 'American Dream' and honestly believe that tax cuts for millionaires can direct benefit themselves because they too will soon be millionaires if they just work hard enough. To the best of my knowledge, there is no similar phenomenon in Scotland. People in deprived parts of the East End of Glasgow or wherever are more likely to hear Offord's boasts, and his claims to be worried about losing young Scots to Dubai (!), and think "this guy is from another planet, he doesn't understand us, he can't speak for us".

There might be some logic to the idea that Offord is trying to expand Reform's support base by appealing to wealthy voters too, and it's true that fascist movements have in the past taken power with a coalition of support that combines both big business and the working-class. But in this case I'm not sure how Offord can appeal to Thatcherites without simultaneously alienating the low-income voters he needs to hang on to. If there is a way of pulling the trick off, I doubt if he's going the right way about it.

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My latest constituency profile for The National is Rutherglen & Cambuslang.

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If you're finding the new Scot Goes Pop poll useful, please check out our new polling fundraiser, and if you're able to chuck in a few pounds it would be much appreciated - it might help us to run another poll in the future.

Wednesday, April 29, 2026

In a democracy, there has to be a route by which the most fundamental changes can be achieved if there is majority support for them, no matter how annoying or upsetting the process may be for the people who don't want those changes to happen

It's a reminder of just how comprehensively Somerset Stew has moved over to the other side that right in the middle of a Holyrood election campaign, he has approvingly tweeted an article from the poet and former Yes supporter Jenny Lindsay saying she is now agnostic about independence and would strongly oppose another referendum, because it would be "divisive". I may be totally misremembering this, but I think I recall very briefly meeting Jenny Lindsay during the 2014 referendum campaign - I think she may have been manning the doors for John "The Gardener" McTernan's bizarre talk during "Yestival". I knew that she had become disillusioned with the Scottish Government due to her gender critical views, but this is the first time I've become aware that she has actually ceased to be a Yesser as a result. It seems that the trans issue has acted as a 'gateway drug' for her towards unionism (or soft unionism), which a cynic might say is what Stew was hoping would happen to people all along and is exactly why he started banging on about the issue in the first place.

To answer a question that sometimes comes up when I make the 'gateway drug' point - no, that categorically does not mean I regret commissioning a poll about gender self-ID several years ago. I did that at a point when the Scottish Government were full-bloodedly trying to push self-ID through, and when we had no idea that the UK Government were even considering using their imperial veto to get us all off the hook. My view was and remains that the Scottish Government desperately needed, in their own best interests, to be confronted with evidence of just how far they had drifted apart from public opinion, because pushing ahead recklessly could have caused untold damage to the independence cause. But once the course correction was achieved, as it eventually was (albeit by unexpected means) what the critical friend to the Scottish Government should do at that point is take yes for an answer. If you instead do what Stew has done and ramp up your fixation with the issue to the point that you're actually trying to use it to destroy the SNP and the independence cause, then you were never a friend in the first place.

With Jenny Lindsay, it's a different story, she's clearly sincere in what she says, even though I totally disagree with her. Where I think she really doesn't have a leg to stand on is her notion that holding another referendum would be some sort of crime against humanity because it would terribly upset people who don't want independence to happen. In a democracy, there has to be a path by which even the most fundamental changes can be achieved if there is a majority in favour of them, even if some people would be annoyed or upset by them. The assisted dying vote in the Scottish Parliament last month was genuinely frightening and traumatic for many disabled people because it looked with a few hours to go as if the legislation might well pass. I was personally relieved that it didn't pass, but I do respect the fact that it was absolutely right and proper that the vote was held, and that it will be similarly right and proper that other such votes will undoubtedly be held in the future, in spite of the stress and anguish it caused. Exactly the same democratic principle applies to independence. Even "once in a generation" has ceased to be an alibi, because by 2028 - when John Swinney wants to hold the referendum - a generation will have passed since 2014. Alex Salmond was always explicit about what he meant by a political generation, and the example he usually gave was the period of time between the 1979 and 1997 devolution referendums.

If unionists feel there is something uniquely traumatic about fundamental change occurring via a referendum process, the onus is on them to accept that it can instead happen by a non-referendum democratic process. But usually the idea of achieving independence in some other way makes them even more homicidal. The only other option I can see for them if they want the issue to go away would be to engage in good faith with independence supporters in seeking a 'Grand Compromise' that both sides could live with, and would be enough for the bulk of the independence movement to agree to stop pressing for a referendum for a prolonged period of time, say for fifteen years. But that compromise would probably look very much like genuine Devo Max - and we all know the fury with which unionists tend to react to that idea. The reality is they don't want a coming together, they don't want an end to division. That path is open to them, but they don't intend to take it. All they want to do is totally thwart and destroy the legitimate political aspirations of their adversaries - who now represent more than 50% of the Scottish population.

So if you want to piously preach about "divisiveness", get back to us when you've had a change of heart and are willing to start listening, engaging, and compromising. We're not exactly holding our breath on that one.

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My latest constituency profile for The National is Renfrewshire North & Cardonald.

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

The Diffley difference: new poll tilts this election in the SNP's favour - and is the ELEVENTH poll in the last four months to show that Scotland would vote Yes to independence in a new referendum

Unlike our occasional commenter Declan, I'm not particularly given to punching the air upon seeing an opinion poll, but if I was ever going to do that, yesterday would have been the day. There were only two polls last week and they effectively produced a split decision - the Find Out Now poll I commissioned for Scot Goes Pop was pretty favourable for the SNP and exceptionally favourable for the Greens, while the Survation poll was significantly less good for both parties, although at least it did still point to a pro-indy majority in the Scottish Parliament and a fifth successive term in office for the SNP. As the Tories discovered in the 2017 general election, and as Labour discovered in 1970, there's always just a chance that the least favourable pollster will also turn out to be the most accurate. So the only way we could really get any reassurance on that front was if there was another Survation poll showing a rosier picture - and amazingly that's exactly what happened yesterday.

The Diffley Partnership commissioned a Survation poll that began its fieldwork before the previous one even ended, and it's significantly better for the SNP on the constituency ballot. The seats projection doesn't quite show them on course for an overall majority, but it does show them knocking on the door with 62 seats.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot (Survation / Diffley Partnership, 17th-23rd April 2026):

SNP 38% (+3)

Reform UK 20% (-)

Labour 18% (-2)

Conservatives 12% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 10% (-)

Greens 2% (+1)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 29% (-)

Reform UK 19% (-)

Labour 17% (-)

Greens 12% (+1)

Conservatives 12% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 9% (+1)

One sense in which last week's Survation poll was actually very good was that it showed there would be a Yes majority in a new independence referendum - something that most Survation polls in recent years have not showed. The Diffley poll demonstrates that was not a fluke by showing the Yes vote rising higher still. Having checked the small print, it looks like a possible explanation could be that Survation have finally dropped the dubious practice of weighting by recalled vote from a referendum that took place over a decade ago - but I don't want to be too definite in saying that, because last week's poll apparently was still weighted by 2014 vote. I'm guessing there may be an error in the methodological note on one of the two polls.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 52% (+1)

No 48% (-1)

There have now been seventeen independence polls in this calendar year so far, ie. in the last four months, and *eleven* of them have shown a clear Yes majority. The settled will klaxon is screeching tonight, and there are reports of it being heard as far away as Finland.

I was asked a specific question in the comments section of this blog the other night, so I just thought I'd take a moment to answer it -

"James! You're an SNP member who isn't a slavish follower of the party line, so I'd be interested in your thoughts. We know that you oppose Swinney's approach of proclaiming an SNP majority the only way to get a referendum, but your objection has mostly been based on the unlikelihood of that being achieved."

To be clear, that wasn't the only reason for my objection, or even the main reason. I was more worried about the precedent it would set - ie. if we weren't successful in this election, we'd then have lumbered ourselves in all future elections with the precedent of saying ourselves that we need to hit a target that, regardless of anyone's views of whether it's impossible or not, is certainly exceptionally difficult to reach. I also didn't think the strategy was consistent with the principle of democratic self-determination. As much as I'm an SNP member and want everyone to vote Both Votes SNP, I also don't think it's the business of any pro-independence party to try to place limits on how the Scottish people can exercise their right to self-determination, or to declare that there may be illegitimate or 'non-valid' ways of doing so. If the Greens put independence in their manifesto, and if people vote Green, those votes still count.

Ever since the decision at conference was made, though, I've been repeatedly saying that all that really needs to happen is for John Swinney to soften his language before the election, and to make clear that although we're chasing a single-party overall majority as an ideal, a multi-party pro-indy majority would still constitute a mandate and would still be acted upon. That does now seem to be happening to some extent, so I'm a lot more comfortable with where we are now than where we were last October. Paul Hutcheon was fuming yesterday about Swinney 'shifting the goalposts', so it can only be a good thing.

"But recent polls suggest it's just about possible. So let's assume it is achieved. Do you think that would actually create any significant pressure on Westminster to concede? Or would they be able to dismiss it just as easily as they've always done?"

I think to break the logjam there's going to have to be some sort of 'wow' factor to the result, just as there was in 2011 - something that makes London commentators say "yeah, we didn't see that coming". It could happen in several different ways - if the SNP win a higher vote share than expected, or if there is some sort of pro-indy 'supermajority', or if the SNP and Greens take first and second place respectively. The Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll suggested both of the last two scenarios might be on the cards. Remember also that the London commentariat are far more obsessed with the Starmer soap opera than they are with the constitutional fate of Scotland, so if Labour do poorly enough in the Holyrood election to play a role in Starmer resigning - for example if they finish fifth in terms of seats, as the Scot Goes Pop poll suggested they might - that could also make people sit up and take notice.

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Alex Cole-Hamilton really didn't want to answer the question about Prestwick Airport.

Anas Sarwar really didn't want to answer the question about whether he would refuse a peerage.
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) April 28, 2026

What does anyone actually need six boats for? Does he have one in each continent, or something like that?
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) April 28, 2026

If the SNP had no new policies, the cry would be "You're knackered! You've run out of ideas!"

But because they do have new policies, it's "Why didn't you do these things nineteen years ago?"

You can't have it both ways, chaps.
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) April 28, 2026

Monday, April 27, 2026

EXCLUSIVE SCOT GOES POP / FIND OUT NOW POLL: By a more than 2-1 majority, the Scottish public reject Wes Streeting's arrogance, and insist that Scottish voters - rather than the UK Government - should decide on whether an independence referendum is held. Even Labour voters decisively agree that Streeting is wrong.

Labour's UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting was recently asked in an LBC interview whether there would be an independence referendum if the Scottish people vote in favour of holding one at the Scottish Parliament election next week. There were numerous ways he could have answered: he could have waffled and said "well, let's wait and see the result before taking a view" or "I'm confident that the Scottish people will make the right decision" or the old favourite "I'm not going to sit here and deal in hypotheticals". But instead he came right out and baldly said "they're not having" a referendum irrespective of the result of the referendum - and the contemptuous "they" in the context of the question could only have referred to the Scottish people themselves, rather than to the Scottish Government or the SNP. When pressed on how the Scottish people could get a referendum if they want one (presumably the interviewer was naive enough to assume there must be some sort of mechanism in a democracy), Streeting doubled down and said "they're not having one" and that they have no way of getting one, because the British government has decided and what the voters want doesn't matter.

I mean, "muscular unionism" is one thing, but there comes a point where you're just completely jumping the shark and openly taunting Scottish voters that they do not live in a democracy, and that they do not live in a voluntary union, and that the UK is their prison, and that Streeting, Starmer and the others are their jailers. Well, Streeting may think it's possible for him to stop the Scottish people from voting on certain subjects, but at least as of this moment he does not yet have the power to prevent them being asked for their views in opinion polls. So I thought it was not unreasonable to use the new Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll to ask for their immediate verdict on Streeting's outburst. Do they agree with him that it's for the UK Government to decide whether Scotland can vote on independence in a referendum, or do they instead believe that Scottish voters should decide in next week's election?

As you may have seen, I've already released the result in a video on my YouTube channel, but here it is in text format:

Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll (15th-20th April 2026, sample size: 1002)

John Swinney has said if the SNP wins a majority in the upcoming Scottish Parliament election this would act as a mandate for an independence referendum. Meanwhile Wes Streeting (UK Government minister) has said "they're not having one" and "we are not going to introduce chaos into the UK by having an independence referendum. Absolutely not".

Who should decide whether or not a Scottish independence referendum takes place in the future?

The UK Government should decide: 24%

Scottish voters should decide (such as at the Scottish Parliament election taking place on 7th May): 53%

Don't Know: 23%

The result is not remotely surprising, but its emphatic nature does send an incredibly powerful message to Streeting, to the rest of the Labour UK Government, and indeed to the wider London establishment. The margin is more than 2-1, and if Don't Knows are removed it works out at roughly 69% for 'Scottish voters should decide' and 31% for 'the UK Goverment should decide'.

Particularly important is the fact that people who actually voted Labour in the 2024 general election take exactly the same view as the wider sample: 49% think the Scottish people should decide and only 35% agree with Streeting that the British government should decide. If Labour do as badly in this election as we think they might (the seats projection from this poll has them in just FIFTH place), there's going to be a lot of soul-searching about how they can reassemble the 35% coalition of support that proved just about enough to win them a majority of Scottish seats in 2024, and questions will surely be asked about whether that will ever be possible if people like Streeting continue to stick two fingers up at his own voters' belief in the principle of self-determination. A substantial minority of the Labour voters in 2024 were independence supporters, but support for the idea that Scotland itself should make the decision clearly goes much further than that.

There is no real gender gap in the poll, except for the fact that women are much more likely to say "Don't Know". 56% of men and 50% of women say the decision should be for Scottish voters. Unsurprisingly, younger voters are much more decisively in favour of self-determination than older voters, although even among 55-64 year olds (an age group that returned a No majority on the standard independence question), there is a 50% to 29% margin in favour of Scottish voters being able to decide. Only among over-65s is there a plurality in favour of the UK government deciding, and that plurality is very narrow indeed.

Every single one of the eight electoral regions is in favour of Scottish voters making the choice, with the biggest majority in Lothian (59% to 16%). And remarkably there is near-*unanimity* among people who voted SNP and Green at the 2024 general election - 94% of Green voters and 95% of SNP voters say that it's a matter for the Scottish people rather than for Streeting and UK ministers. Also intriguing is that quite a substantial minority of Reform UK voters (34%) are in favour of self-determination.

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If you're finding this poll useful, please check out the new Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser, and if you're able to chuck in a few pounds it would be much appreciated - it might help us to run another poll in the future.

Now that the taboo has been broken of interviewees pointing out the elephant in the room live on air, I think Ed Balls is going to have to do a little bit better than "yeah, I was a Labour Cabinet minister but that was YEARS AGO" and "the Foreign Secretary is ONLY MY WIFE". https://t.co/PXvYP3DnpT
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) April 27, 2026

Join me on YouTube at NOON as Wes "they're not having one!" Streeting faces his HIGH NOON in the Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll: do the Scottish public agree with Streeting that the UK Government gets to decide whether an independence referendum is held, or do they think voters should decide in the Scottish Parliament election next week?

If you join the waiting zone, the video should automatically start playing when the clock strikes 12 for Streeting's HIGH NOON. While you're waiting for the results, please check out the new Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser, and if you're able to chuck in a few pounds it would be much appreciated - it might help us to run another poll in the future.

It will soon be HIGH NOON for Wes Streeting in the Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll

My latest constituency profile for The National is John Swinney's seat of Perthshire North.

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If you've finding Scot Goes Pop poll useful, please consider donating to our new polling fundraiser, which you can find HERE.

Sunday, April 26, 2026

Hammerblow for Brit Nat propaganda outfit "Scotland In Union" as their regular pollsters Survation show a clear pro-independence majority, right in the middle of the Holyrood election campaign

As I said the other day, there's still more to come from the new Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll - I had been planning to release another result on Friday, and then that slipped to yesterday, and somehow it didn't happen today either. I think I probably just needed some downtime, because the mid-part of the week was a bit manic, but tomorrow may well be the day. In the meantime, I had been expecting to be able to bring you the weekend polls that would usually come along at this stage of an election campaign, but amazingly there don't seem to be any. It's probably just as well that I and a certain Green Belt "Project" went ahead and commissioned our own polls last week, otherwise there'd be no up-to-date information at all about the state of play in the Holyrood race, although unfortunately those two polls muddied the waters a bit, because despite having almost identical fieldwork dates, they contradicted each other in several respects.

The Survation poll was much less favourable for the Greens (somewhat ironically, given who commissioned it), and by implication it was also less good for the SNP, who didn't receive a boost on the constituency ballot in spite of the Greens being excluded as an option in the constituencies where they aren't standing. But one sense in which the two polls are in complete accord is in showing a rosy picture for independence - and that's highly significant, because Survation, in total contrast to Find Out Now, do not have a long track record of showing Yes majorities. Their previous poll at the start of the year was a dead heat, and prior to that they had produced several polls in a row showing a No lead. They have now become the SEVENTH different pollster to show a Yes lead at some point in this calendar year so far, and it's only April. So there's no point in our old friend KC droning on about how it's only ever Ipsos and Find Out Now who show a Yes lead - those days are over. Of the sixteen independence polls in 2026, this is the TENTH to show a pro-indy majority.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Survation, 14th-21st April 2026)

Yes 51% (+1)

No 49% (-1)

It also shouldn't go unnoticed, incidentally, that Survation are the pollsters who conduct the regular series of propaganda polls for Scotland In Union, which replace the standard independence question with a leading question, and which always give the impression that opposition to independence is stronger than it actually is. It's something of a blow for Scotland In Union, I'd have thought, that this of all moments is when Survation have suddenly shown a Yes majority in a credible poll with a credible question.

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My latest two constituency profiles for the national are the Orkney Islands and Paisley.

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If you've found the latest Scot Goes Pop poll useful, please consider donating to our new polling fundraiser, which you can find HERE.