Other recent videos:
ASTOUNDING poll surge for SNP: how Stew's "Accidental Clouseau" moment may have SAVED party he hates
More polling reassurance for SNP as by-elections approach, while Greens reclaim second place GB-wide
Greens almost draw level with Labour in GB-wide YouGov poll, SNP have double-digit lead in Scotland
If you'd like to help support my YouTube channel, I've set up a new Ko-Fi page.
Other recent videos:
More polling reassurance for SNP as by-elections approach, while Greens reclaim second place GB-wide
Greens almost draw level with Labour in GB-wide YouGov poll, SNP have double-digit lead in Scotland
Newly-elected Scottish Parliament decides by 72 votes to 55 to hold an independence referendum
If you'd like to help support my YouTube channel, I've set up a new Ko-Fi page.
Other recent videos:
Greens almost draw level with Labour in GB-wide YouGov poll, SNP have double-digit lead in Scotland
Newly-elected Scottish Parliament decides by 72 votes to 55 to hold an independence referendum
Is Scottish independence "closer now than on the day before the 2014 referendum"?
If you'd like to help support my YouTube channel, I've set up a new Ko-Fi page.
Click here to visit my new Ko-Fi page.
On Sunday I published a blogpost explaining that my experiment of using YouTube as a more sustainable funding model for Scot Goes Pop wasn't really working out, and I added that I was going to have to spend a few days mulling over what to do next. I expected it to amount to a straight choice between doubling down on the YouTube idea and trying to make my channel go truly galactic, or setting up a Substack newsletter and transferring all my energies into making that work instead. I've now made a decision, but before I come to that I'll just briefly recap how I arrived at this point.
For several years after 2014, the funding for this blog worked fairly smoothly - I simply ran a fundraiser once a year and it pretty much always hit its target within a few days or weeks. Things first started to become more difficult in 2021, and I think a big part of the reason was that I had begun commissioning opinion polls the previous year. Quite understandably, people tended to only donate once to each site within a reasonable time-frame, and so the general fundraising to keep the blog going became a victim of the success of the poll fundraisers. That wasn't the whole explanation, though, because after a while even the poll fundraisers started to fall well short of their target figures. The poll I commissioned last month for the Holyrood election was actually the first I'd managed to do for three years.
To be clear, the general fundraising for the blog was still working in the long run, and I was still staying afloat, but it was taking a hundred times more effort than it had done in previous years. Fundraising became practically a year-round effort, which effectively set up a vicious circle, because after a while the constant mentions of the crowdfunder became just 'normal background noise' and readers were far more likely to skim past them. That meant I had to continuously devise ever more in-your-face methods of getting the fundraiser noticed whenever progress stalled, and although those efforts worked, it was getting increasingly stressful and I realised I couldn't go on like that for much longer.
So just under a year ago I decided to make a radical change to try to find a sustainable solution. I checked the average earnings per 1000 views that YouTube creators in the UK receive simply from ad revenues - the figure was surprisingly decent, and I realised that could be the ideal outcome for me, because I would no longer have needed to receive any funding from readers/viewers at all. That would have been a much healthier situation. However, I couldn't be sure whether it would work in practice, because earnings vary wildly on either side of the average depending on the subject-matter of each channel and the demographics of its audience, so the only way I was ever going to find out was to give it a spin for a while. Doing that was far from straightforward, because to even qualify for earnings I had to reach 1000 subscribers on YouTube, which took me until almost Christmas.
So it's only really now, five months later, that I have a good sense of how much I'm earning from YouTube per month, and it's simply nowhere near enough. My viewing figures are, if anything, higher than I had expected, so that's not the problem - it's just that videos about Scottish politics pull in well below the UK average earnings per 1000 views because of the demographics of their viewers. I did some sums, and I realised that to achieve the type of earnings I had initially been hoping for, I would have to get an average of 10,000 to 20,000 views per video, which I'm not sure is even attainable. I've checked various Scottish political channels on YouTube and none of them are at that kind of level. There's simply a finite number of people out there who are interested enough in Scottish politics to regularly watch videos about it. Some YouTube channels attract additional revenues from sponsorship, but again, that only really seems to be possible with an average of over 10,000 views per video.
I did have a mad thought about aiming for a faster turnover by stripping back to audio commentary and perhaps doing several videos a day, and getting up to 10,000 views per day that way, but I quickly realised that was a hopeless idea. So I then started thinking about abandoning YouTube and switching to a Substack newsletter, which had always been my main Plan B - I regarded that as an inferior idea because it would have involved charging readers for subscriptions, but at least it could have provided more stable funding and would have got me out of the crowdfunding trap once and for all.
I very, very nearly set up a Substack account on Monday afternoon, but once the doubts started creeping in, I swung hard in the opposite direction. I had several concerns, but the biggest of all was that I would have needed to put at least a substantial minority of my content behind a paywall. To me, that defeats the whole purpose of the exercise. When pro-independence bloggers and content creators first started to crowdfund in significant numbers just over a decade ago, the reason was that we didn't think the mainstream media was serving Scotland well enough, and we wanted a thriving alternative media to step into the breach as best it could. So the point of the funding was to help people like me make more content and to get it seen by as many people as possible, not to hide the content and only make it visible to a secret society of a few dozen people.
There are no perfect options available, but I realised I wanted a solution that ticked as many of the following boxes as possible: a) no paywalls, b) no more stress from having to run 'boom and bust' annual crowdfunders, c) funding that comes at least partly, and to the greatest extent possible, from sources other than my readers or viewers, and d) the opportunity to continue growing the audience substantially. I think YouTube, combined with some conventional blogging as I've been doing in recent months, is actually the best fit. I've definitely reached a new audience with my YouTube channel - that's clear from the comments section of the videos. Although there is probably a natural ceiling on how much that audience can expand, I have not come close to reaching that ceiling yet, so there's still considerable scope for growth, which will in turn increase advertising revenues over time. There's plainly always going to be a significant shortfall of funds to plug, however, so I've come to the conclusion that using a Patreon-type site is the best (or least worst) way of bridging the gap.
I've always known I didn't want to use Patreon itself, which is far too fussy in the way it works. I've checked up on the alternatives as carefully as I can, and I've decided to go with Ko-Fi. My new page on Ko-Fi is now up and running and you can visit it HERE. It allows anyone who wishes to support my YouTube channel or the blog to set up either a small recurring monthly payment (the suggested options are £5, £10 or £20, but you can also choose any other amount you prefer), or to make a one-off 'tip' of any amount. This can be done at any time, and of course you're also free to cancel recurring payments at any time. Payment can be made by card, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and one or two other options. It's just a much more flexible arrangement all round, and if it works it will hopefully generate much more stable and predictable funding from month to month. That will free me up to concentrate on growing the YouTube channel as much as possible and creating the most interesting possible content. As I'm sure some of you know from personal experience, making videos for YouTube is an insanely time-consuming process - even though I do it in a completely no-frills way without fancy editing or graphics or background music or whatnot, it still usually takes me hours each time.
My decision will of course mean I'll have to promote my Ko-Fi link in the description section of the videos, and at the bottom of each blogpost, but it should be a lot less obtrusive than the previous reminders of the annual fundraisers, and hopefully the whole issue of funding will become much less stressful from this moment on. (No guarantees, of course, but I'll soon find out.)
Just to address a specific point that was raised the other day, one or two of you said that for a variety of reasons it's convenient for you to listen to podcasts but not to watch YouTube videos. As most of my videos are effectively monologues, they would generally work as podcasts as well, and until a few months ago I used to upload an audio version of each video to Soundcloud. The only reason I stopped doing that was because the videos took so long to edit, process and upload that I was usually losing the will to live by the end and I couldn't be bothered facing another few minutes dealing with Soundcloud. However, it's something I could go back to doing if there's a strong enough demand for it. Let me know in the comments section if you have a strong preference for audio content.
And once again, just a reminder that my new Ko-Fi page can be found HERE.
In view of recent requests, I've also uploaded a podcast version of the above video on Soundcloud as a trial run, just to see if there's any interest in the audio-only format. It's on Spotify as well.
Other recent videos:
Greens almost draw level with Labour in GB-wide YouGov poll, SNP have double-digit lead in Scotland
Newly-elected Scottish Parliament decides by 72 votes to 55 to hold an independence referendum
Is Scottish independence "closer now than on the day before the 2014 referendum"?
If you'd like to help support my YouTube channel, I've set up a new Ko-Fi page.
Other recent videos:
Is Scottish independence "closer now than on the day before the 2014 referendum"?
What was the REAL vote share for pro-independence parties at the 2026 Holyrood election?
First Makerfield by-election poll shows Andy Burnham could be in TROUBLE
If you'd like to help support my YouTube channel, I've set up a new Ko-Fi page.
The controversial far-right blogger "Stew" has done yet another of his tweets about me without mentioning me by name - he does this regularly so that he can later do his schtick of "look! search for his name on my Twitter or blog! not there is it? I never even mention the guy!" This time it's a pair of 'before' and 'after' screenshots, which purports to show me contradicting myself, and is interspersed with a photo of a certain Ba'athist propagandist to imply that the alleged contradiction is in the service of pro-SNP propaganda. That's quite a heroic implication on Stew's part, because the first screenshot in fact shows me openly criticising the chosen strategy of the SNP leadership - scarcely something that a real propagandist would do. However, let's take a look at the two quotes and see if Stew's point is as weak as it first appears.
19th August 2025:
"So the SNP remain the only game in town, and we just have to work from within to try to improve the situation somehow. If the rebel motion doesn't make the conference floor, the next best outcome is to radically amend the Swinney motion so that it closely resembles the rebel motion. If that's not possible, the next best outcome is to defeat the Swinney motion altogether. And if it's not realistic to do that, the very least that needs to happen is for the motion to be amended to remove the most harmful stuff from it. As I've said before, no plan at all would almost be better than the Swinney plan, which would leave us in a worse place than ever before by setting a precedent of the SNP going into an election essentially agreeing with the UK government that no referendum should occur until some sort of ludicrously unattainable threshold is reached. That could make it impossible to achieve independence for literally decades to come. The voting system simply isn't designed to produce single-party majorities."
Today:
"The way the SNP have recovered from this event has been truly remarkable. Our old friend Stew is trying to make out it has left the independence movement a "broken shell", which he obviously wants to be true, but the events of the last few weeks tell a completely different story. The SNP leadership under John Swinney have restored the trust of party members sufficiently that the pre-election fundraiser succeeded beyond all expectations - and make no mistake, without that restored trust and without the funds that flowed from it, we wouldn't be sitting here now with the highest number of pro-independence MSPs in history. Once we get past the negative headlines of today, which unfortunately we've known were coming for a long time, both the SNP and the wider independence movement will actually be in pretty good shape."
Those two comments are clearly about different subjects - they're not totally unrelated to each other but they're not about the same thing. I don't see how anyone can possibly interpret today's comment as meaning that the single-party majority strategy worked or that it has put the independence movement in a better place - that's not something I believe, and I've unambiguously said in at least two of my videos since election day that the strategy was an "unforced error". What I was talking about today was instead the way in which John Swinney has rebuilt trust with SNP members to the point that they are willing to take a leap of faith and donate substantial money to the party in spite of what happened with Peter Murrell - and I pointed out that without that process of gaining trust, the SNP wouldn't have been so successful in the election because they simply wouldn't have had the funds to compete. What does Stew think that's got to do with the single-party majority strategy? Answers on a postcard, folks, and send them to Bath.
It's quite true, however, that I'm hopeful that the majority strategy may not prove to have been as harmful as I feared last summer and autumn, and that's mainly because of the remedial work that John Swinney and other senior SNP figures have done since polling day by stressing that the combined SNP-Green majority is more than enough to constitute a mandate. I didn't necessarily expect them to be quite as proactive if these circumstances arose, and it's made all the difference.
I do want to express my admiration for Stew, though, because not many people would be brave enough to voluntarily bring a Ba'athist propagandist into the conversation (especially if they actually live in Bath) when only a month ago they were telling anyone who would listen that "Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central is FREE MONEY", only to then begin their first blogpost after Mr Robertson's defeat with the line "well, we told you so". There was also that unfortunate incident of announcing there was no chance of a pro-independence Holyrood majority in this year's election ("barring nuclear war or alien invasion"), followed by an announcement that a single-party SNP majority was a nailed-on certainty, followed by the unintentional comic genius of "well, we told you so" when neither of those hopelessly contradictory predictions actually came true. Being as wrong as that takes considerable talent, and it's why Stew is a national treasure in his own quasi-fascist sort of way.
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For two-and-a-half months between late February and early May, I was so wrapped up in writing the 73 daily constituency profiles for The National that a) I had much less time to make YouTube videos, so I did fewer, and b) I pretty much stopped keeping track of my progress in turning the videos into a sustainable alternative funding model. I've since been doing some catch-up on that, and the latest stats are fairly grim. The bottom line is that, as things stand, it's just not working. And there's no point in anyone saying "I told you so", because as I said at the outset last year, I went into this experiment with my eyes wide open - I had checked what the average earnings per 1000 views were in the UK, and at that average level it would have just about worked. However, I also knew that individual YouTube channels can fall anywhere on a very wide range on either side of that average, depending on their subject-matter and the demographics of their viewers, and the only way I was ever going to find out where my own channel would slot in was by giving it a proper go for a few months.
Yup, you've guessed it, it turns out that videos about Scottish politics slot in pretty much at the absolute lowest end of the earnings range. It's puzzling in a way, because my videos are disproportionately viewed by males over the age of 55, and if anything I'd have thought that would be a relatively higher-income group that advertisers would be only too keen to target, but apparently it doesn't work that way. So I'm now not entirely sure of the best way forward, and I'm going to have to mull it over a bit.
In theory, YouTube could still be made to work, but to do that I'd have to think big - on the current rate of return, I'd have to average 10,000-20,000 views per video. So far my most popular individual video has around 7000 views, and obviously the average is much lower than that. Is it even feasible to get up to the required level with a channel about Scottish politics? I genuinely don't know. I've found a small number of political channels that have pulled it off, including ones that just seem to be run by ordinary blokes like me rather than by celebrity commentators, but crucially they all have a UK-wide focus. If anyone knows of a specifically Scottish political YouTube channel that receives a large number of views, please do let me know, because that would be important information to factor in.
It's also theoretically possible to square the circle by making a YouTube income via sponsorships (which are generally much more lucrative than the regular earnings anyway), but in practice there's a Catch-22, because apparently channels require average views of at least 10,000 per video to attract sponsors in the first place. So it seems there's no way of getting around it - that's the daunting level of popularity my channel would need to reach.
Basically I'm going to have to decide whether to double down on the YouTube idea and go all-out in trying to make the channel go truly galactic, or whether I should declare it a failed experiment and try something radically different, such as Substack or a similar site. I'm reluctant to do the latter, because it would probably involve putting at least a minority of material behind a paywall, which I'd really rather not do. Or I could just try to keep this blog going in the way I've been doing over the last few years, but you've seen what that's involved - I've just barely stayed afloat, but only with near-constant, in-your-face fundraising, which I am so tired of having to do, and I know you must be equally tired of seeing the reminders of the fundraisers at the bottom of each blogpost.
For the time being, though, please bear with me because I simply have no choice but to keep plugging away at the fundraising for at least a few more weeks. As I've mentioned a few times, I've been due to receive a substantial payment for freelance work at some point in May or June, and once that comes in I should be able to take a much-needed complete break from fundraising for at least a few months, but as of today there's still no sign of it even being in the pipeline. So your patience is much appreciated as I continue to promote the fundraiser at the end of each post in the following manner...
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Catch up with last Wednesday's award-winning blogpost: "S*** just got real, lads. The famously always wrong blogger "Stew", who said there was "zero chance, barring nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the Holyrood election producing a pro-indy majority, and who said betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central was "free money", has now said there is "NO chance" of victory in a 2029 de facto referendum. Looks like it's ON."
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Catch up with last Wednesday's 'critics' choice' blogpost: "S*** just got real, lads. The famously always wrong blogger "Stew", who said there was "zero chance, barring nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the Holyrood election producing a pro-indy majority, and who said betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central was "free money", has now said there is "NO chance" of victory in a 2029 de facto referendum. Looks like it's ON."
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Catch up with last Wednesday's critically-acclaimed blogpost: "S*** just got real, lads. The famously always wrong blogger "Stew", who said there was "zero chance, barring nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the Holyrood election producing a pro-indy majority, and who said betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central was "free money", has now said there is "NO chance" of victory in a 2029 de facto referendum. Looks like it's ON."
* * *
* * *
Catch up with last Wednesday's critically-acclaimed blogpost: "S*** just got real, lads. The famously always wrong blogger "Stew", who said there was "zero chance, barring nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the Holyrood election producing a pro-indy majority, and who said betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central was "free money", has now said there is "NO chance" of victory in a 2029 de facto referendum. Looks like it's ON."
* * *
* * *
Catch up with last Wednesday's critically-acclaimed blogpost: "S*** just got real, lads. The famously always wrong blogger "Stew", who said there was "zero chance, barring nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the Holyrood election producing a pro-indy majority, and who said betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central was "free money", has now said there is "NO chance" of victory in a 2029 de facto referendum. Looks like it's ON."
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That, I'm afraid, is the correct way of posing the question, because there is no doubt that the voting system remains wide open to abuse by Israel's supporters across Europe, who will not only cast their permitted ten votes each for Israel, but will also break the rules as they did in 2024 and 2025 by finding ways of casting more than the maximum allowed votes, and even of voting in multiple countries.
The BBC deserve almost no credit in this sordid affair, but one small thing I will say in their favour is that at least the UK are going beyond the basic tightening of the rules this year to only allow online voting. That should at least throw an obstacle in the path of the less fanatical Israeli bloc voters, although the true diehards will still find a way. It'll be interesting to see if Israel are at least pushed down to second or third place in the UK televote tonight. If they still get the maximum points (and remember there is no way on Earth that they have the strongest song this year), clearly a much more radical overhaul will be required. By this point, I wouldn't be too unhappy with a return to a jury-only system, or to the juries being given three times the weight of the public vote, or something like that.
Incidentally, one thing that definitely isn't helping the situation is the encouragement to viewers to spread their ten votes between different countries. That just benefits Israel even more, because Israeli supporters will ignore the advice and vote ten times for Israel, while everyone else will heed the advice and split the remaining vote.
If anyone is thinking of tactically voting against Israel, I'd have thought ten votes for the favourites Finland would be the best bet, because you always have to err on the side of assuming that the Israeli bloc vote will be so huge that they could be in with a shout of winning outright.
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So the moment that couldn't be avoided has now arrived: Reform UK have, at least for the time being, overtaken the SNP as the fourth-largest party in the House of Commons due to Stephen Flynn and Stephen Gethins' resignations as SNP MPs. I believe Reform have promised not to take any more Tory defectors, though, which means that the SNP will have a chance to grab fourth place straight back from Reform by winning the two by-elections to fill the vacancies. Gethins' seat of Arbroath & Broughty Ferry shouldn't be a problem, but Aberdeen South will be extremely competitive - Flynn's margin of victory in the overlapping Holyrood seat last week was not overwhelming. It really is so, so important psychologically that the SNP hold that seat, and I'm sure they'll be throwing the kitchen sink at it.
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So I just thought I'd put this post up to try to give another little boost to the ongoing Scot Goes Pop fundraiser, and I'll probably keep it pinned second from top on the blog over the coming few weeks. As you may remember me mentioning early during the Holyrood campaign, I'm due to receive some substantial funds at some point during May or June, and after that I should be OK for a decent period, but I've absolutely no idea exactly when those funds will come in, and until then I'm just trying to keep the show on the road.
Just to make you aware, I haven't been manually adjusting the target figure on the GoFundMe page - they've introduced a new system of dynamically changing the target as donations come in, because apparently that produces better results. So there's no magic number on this occasion - I'm just trying to raise as much as possible, although I could certainly do with raising another few hundred pounds at least.
So if you'd like to donate and help Scot Goes Pop keep going with its political, polling and election analysis, there are three main options:
For card donations, the GoFundMe crowdfunder is HERE.
Or you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
Or you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com
A million thanks to everyone who has already donated - it's very much appreciated.
One of the most important truths about life, which has been passed down from father to son and from mother to daughter over the centuries, is that you always know you've succeeded in getting right under Stew's skin when he starts calling you a "mouth-breathing imbecile" or an "Olympic-class moron". Yup, you've guessed it, he's written yet another novel-length rant about me on Wings today, and as per usual he hasn't mentioned me by name so he can later do his innocent spiel of "look, search for his name on my site, you'll see I barely even mention the guy!" So I've had to make do with the thrillingly exotic insults instead.
While I've been gathering my thoughts to write this brief reply, it's occurred to me that the frame of mind I've had to get into to do it is very similar to the one I would normally adopt if I was rebutting an argument from hard-core British nationalists about how Scottish independence is a perfectly preposterous idea. But you know what? It's not just "very similar", it's actually one and the same thing. Look at how Stew's propaganda since the election has totally converged with the hardline British Nationalist Sam Taylor of "These Islands" fame. Both men have been arguing that the record-breaking mandate for pro-independence parties last week was in fact not a mandate at all, and was instead somehow a ringing endorsement of Our Pweshus Union. Both men have argued that the synthetic controversy over Q Manivannan's visa status is somehow proof that Scotland is not capable of governing itself. Both men have stated that Scottish voters are simply not up to scratch and that it's not only necessary, but also a matter of tremendous comfort, that the British state has retained for itself the powers to overrule the democratic decisions made by the substandard Jocks.
These arguments are not 'adjacent to unionist arguments'. They are unionist arguments, plain and simple. They are coming out of Stew's mouth because he is now a unionist. I no longer have any intention of indulging the people who fatuously excuse him by saying "och of course he's still a Yesser, he's just going through a grumpy fascist spell". This is the guy who told you to either vote for anti-independence parties or abstain at the 2021 Holyrood election. He told you to vote for anti-independence parties at the 2024 UK general election. He told you to vote for anti-independence parties at the Holyrood election last week. He has said he would abstain if he had a vote in another independence referendum, and he has said *today* that he is opposed to another referendum taking place. It has now reached the point that if a tweet calls Stew a "pro-independence blogger", we should community note it. If a newspaper calls him a "pro-independence blogger", we should complain to IPSO under the "accuracy" clause of the Editors' Code. And if the BBC or STV call him a "pro-independence blogger", we should complain to Ofcom. The evidence is there, let's stop ignoring it, or giving others a pass when they pretend not to see it.
What's got Stew's goat this time is my statement that the Scottish Government must now act on the clear mandate that they and the Greens have just won, and move forward to using the next Westminster election as a de facto independence referendum if a Section 30 order is yet again refused. Stew's Brit Nat argument that the refusal of a Section 30 will be the upholding rather than the defying of democracy is very easily dealt with, because in a parliamentary democracy it's the number of seats in parliament that determines whether a mandate is there or not, and the SNP and Greens between them have 57% of the seats. If parliamentary democracy didn't work that way, we wouldn't talk about Labour's mandate to govern at Westminster, we would instead talk about how they had been overwhelmingly rejected by the British people by a 2-1 margin. Only 34% of the electorate voted Labour in the general election two years ago (that's four percentage points lower than the SNP on their own managed in Scotland last week), and 66% voted for other parties.
Stew pretends to only be opposed to using a Westminster election as a de facto referendum because he is "concerned" that we would lose it, whereas in fact he is terrified that we would win it and unleash a self-governing "Woke Scotland" in which his beloved Reform fascists will struggle to get elected. However, just for the hell of it, let's deal with his bogus "reasoning" for believing that using a Westminster election would be tactically foolish.
"The media coverage will treat Scotland as an afterthought because it’s only 8% of the country"
What he's saying here is that the media will be preoccupied with the UK-wide election narrative - but what will that show? It might well show that Nigel Farage is days away from power, and I can hardly think of a better way of concentrating minds on a "vote for independence as your last chance to avoid Farage rule" message.
"and you’ll lose the heavily indy-favouring 16/17-year-olds and EU citizens"
Labour are committed to introducing votes at 16 for the next general election. It remains to be seen whether they will keep that promise, but the fact that Stew doesn't even seem to be aware of it speaks volumes. It would obviously be preferable to have an electorate that incorporates EU citizens, but even at the time of the 2022 census they made up only around 4% of the Scottish population (it'll probably be lower now), so the difference that will make shouldn't be exaggerated.
"Using a UK election also prevents voters from separating the issues of the plebiscite and normal politics (because they only have one vote), whereas in a Holyrood vote you can say that the constituency vote is for independence and the list vote is for the actual election."
I'm sorry but that's gibberish. Probably the most powerful argument in favour of using a Westminster rather than a Holyrood election is that there is only one vote and there is no danger of getting an inconclusive outcome due to the constituency and list results contradicting each other. Using a Westminster election also prevents "normal politics" from muddying the waters earlier in the campaign, because the SNP will not be standing for re-election as the devolved government of Scotland and will not have to focus on setting out their stall for a new term in office.
"But secondly, you really do have to be an Olympic-class moron to imagine that the SNP are likely to be MORE popular in 2029 than they are now. They’ve been in power for 19 years already..."
That ignores the fact that the SNP's best ever election performance occurred in 2015 after eight years in power, and after they had been showing clear signs of losing popularity with the public (the 2014 European elections and the Cowdenbeath by-election, for example). As soon as voters became focused on independence rather than on "normal politics", the SNP suddenly found they had an almost 50% vote share at a Westminster election.
In any case, if a de facto referendum is done properly, it won't be the SNP trying to win on their own - ideally there would be an agreed slate of pro-indy candidates, or failing that it would at least be made clear that a vote for any pro-indy party would count towards the majority.
Excitingly, the fraudulent "47% graph" has survived into the Fascist Era at Wings, but I've already debunked that umpteen times.
"There is NO chance, not a ghost of a crumb of an atom of a hope, that the SNP can secure 50% of the Scottish vote in the 2029 UK election."
You know, that comment would really worry me if it wasn't coming from the same guy who told us that there was "zero chance, barring a nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the SNP and Greens winning a majority between them last week, or by the same guy who said "I'm calling it now, Humza has lost" in the middle of the 2023 SNP leadership election, or by the same guy who said "betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central is FREE MONEY". As it is, the excitement and anticipation is now coursing through my veins.
This is really happening, guys. It seems to be nature's way of telling us that victory at the 2029 de facto referendum is nigh-on certain.
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As I pointed out after one of Anas Sarwar's catastrophic TV debate performances during the campaign ("HOW DARE YOU JOHN DON'T YOU DARE JOHN THAT MAN WANTS TO DEPORT MY FAMILY JOHN THIS IS A MORAL ISSUE JOHN DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT JOHN"), I have genuinely regarded him as an atrocious politician since long before he became Scottish Labour leader. That opinion was largely formed by seeing him in action during the 2014 referendum campaign when he was Johann Lamont's deputy as leader. I was completely bewildered by Labour's and the media's total faith in him as some sort of charismatic, inspiring leader who had great things ahead of him, and sure enough their faulty perceptions have finally faced the inevitable rendez-vous with reality.
However, I have now developed a little theory as to why they went so badly astray. It seems like a billion years ago now, but regular readers might recall that last June I attended the Holyrood Sources event at which both Sarwar and John Swinney were interviewed, and I was fortunate enough to be called to ask Sarwar a question about the Gaza genocide. After I had finished reading my question out, Sarwar said "it sounds like you have a particular view on the Scottish constitutional question" and it suddenly became obvious that I was in the midst of a heavily Labour-supporting and unionist audience, because I heard lots of knowing chuckles around me as if my question had somehow just been deligitimised. After the podcast recording was over (or possibly it was at the half-time break), Sarwar came up to close to where I was sitting and greeted a lot of the people near me, several of whom he seemed to already know. I got the opportunity to see what he's like when he's not conscious of TV cameras on him, and he actually came across completely differently. He was very likeable and had an easygoing charm about him.
I think the media and Labour genuinely believed they were onto a winner because of the man they actually knew in person, and were forgetting that he comes across as a half-automaton, half-clown on TV screens. You sometimes hear the claim that it's better if parliamentarians rather than rank-and-file party members choose leaders, because they know all of the candidates' strengths and weaknesses, but Sarwar is actually a good advert for the opposite being true. You might well be better off leaving the decision to people who only know the candidates via mass media, because exactly the same will be true for voters at election time.
I know a lot of people had a similar epiphany about Douglas Ross during his stint as a pundit on the BBC results programme, because as soon as he was no longer functioning as a politician, the real person started to shine through and you could see for the first time why people like Ruth Davidson rated him highly. (But that of course doesn't even begin to excuse what he did to David Duguid. What. A. Cad.)
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Please check out the Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser, particularly if you'd be interested in helping me commission another opinion poll in the future at a moment of maximum impact.
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Please check out the Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser, particularly if you'd be interested in helping me commission another opinion poll in the future at a moment of maximum impact.
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Please check out the Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser, particularly if you'd be interested in helping me commission another opinion poll in the future at a moment of maximum impact.
