The refusal to allow a debate and vote on independence strategy at the SNP conference is reprehensible, and leaves a vacuum where strategy should be

I initially assumed that the timing of the publication of a draft indyref bill was directly connected to the news having just broken that this year's SNP conference is being effectively blocked from debating independence strategy - in other words the leadership were saying to party members: "OK, we're not giving you a debate or a choice but just look at how we *are* progressing the cause of independence".   But our regular commentor "yesindyref2" pointed out that if the draft bill was to appear within the first 100 days of this latest SNP administration, it would have had to be this week - so maybe there is an element of coincidence.

The bill is welcome, but it is no substitute for open debate within the SNP on the way forward.  It might have been an adequate substitute if there had been a time limit attached to it - in other words a deadline for the UK government to agree to the transfer of powers for the bill to actually be passed, and a commitment that if the deadline wasn't met, the Scottish government would then say to voters "we have very clearly exhausted every single avenue for attempting to bring the UK government to the negotiating table, their rejection of democracy is definitive and permanent, we are therefore moving forward to using a scheduled election to seek an outright mandate for independence".  There is overwhelming opinion poll evidence that the electorate will be receptive to that message if it is presented to them correctly.

But no deadline means no credible strategy for bringing an independence mandate about in actuality, or for bringing independence itself about, and therefore a vacuum now exists that only open debate within the SNP can fill.  It shouldn't be forgotten that at last year's conference John Swinney staked a great deal of his personal authority on his ability to secure an outright SNP majority, which I always thought was practically impossible (a 1 in 200 chance was my estimate, which I'd suggest was borne out by the constituency results in May).  But he said he would do it and use it to force the UK government to agree to a referendum.  "Challenge accepted" he said in respect of the target of an overall majority, which means in brutal arithmetical terms you'd have to now say "challenge failed".

If a leader asks his party conference to give its backing to his preferred strategy on the basis that he will get it to work, and if it then fails, I don't think it's unreasonable for party members to expect that they will then get the opportunity to review what went wrong and to decide what new and more effective strategy will be put in its place.  Given the circumstances, how can the leadership even begin to justify blocking that opportunity? I recall a great deal was made last year of the fact that strategy is the exclusive domain of the party leader, and that John Swinney should be commended for voluntarily consulting conference when he didn't actually have to.  If the message is now going to be "the leader consulted conference once, but he didn't actually have to do that and he has no plans to do it again", I don't think I'll be the only person to see the parallels with the UK government saying "you'll have had your democracy in 2014".

How can SNP members make their views heard on using a scheduled election to bring about independence if the leadership are going to block all future debates and votes on the subject? Well, it's not easy, is it.  The blocking is done via the Conferences Committee, which is a predominantly elected body, but it's elected by conference delegates rather than by the wider membership. In practice that means the selectorate contains a disproportionate number of what is sometimes referred to as "the payroll vote", ie. people who inevitably hold a particular loyalty to the leadership's stance. In an ideal world that system would be reformed to put members properly in charge, but in reality that's a non-starter because any reform proposal would have to get through the same gate-keeping machinery.

Ultimately the leader is an elected position, and is elected by all party members, so in theory the next leadership contest will offer an opportunity for members to take control of the situation and introduce a credible independence strategy.  However, that big chance could be several years away, because John Swinney gives the impression of a man who is going nowhere.  And in every other sense apart from independence strategy that's a very good thing, because now that Kate Forbes has departed the stage, Mr Swinney is undoubtedly the best leader we have available.

Remember also that when he was elected leader in 2024, there was no contest at all and therefore no debate.  Considerable pressure was put on his only opponent (Graeme McCormick)  to withdraw on the grounds that an election would have been too costly - which is always the worst and most indefensible excuse for avoiding democracy and democratic debate.  The system has since been changed to make it even harder (much, much harder, in fact) for democratic leadership elections to be triggered.  I would gently suggest that both of those factors severely weaken the leadership's moral position when they now refuse to "voluntarily" permit internal votes and decisions on strategy.

The National have quoted the former MP Stewart McDonald as effectively saying "what a pity we're not going to let you have a vote, because it would have been such fun to defeat your crazy de facto referendum idea which cannot possibly lead to independence" (that's a paraphrase, let me stress).  Well, two points on that.  Firstly, there are again unfortunate parallels with unionist politicians who ludicrously say things like "in a way it's a shame we're not going to let you have a referendum, because you would undoubtedly lose again".  A good rule of thumb is that if you're confident in the popularity of your own position, you allow the vote, you don't block it.  As for the idea that a de facto referendum won't directly lead to independence?  Even if that's true, the uncomfortable truth for Mr McDonald is that would give it a great deal in common with the "let's pretty much do nothing instead" strategy that he seems to prefer.  But the obvious sense in which the de facto referendum strategy *is* superior is that it can directly lead to an outright mandate for independence coming about, which Mr McDonald's strategy cannot.  The weirdly visceral nature of the opposition to a de facto referendum in certain quarters strongly suggests to me that some people are actually frightened of living in a world in which there is an outright mandate for independence, and would actually prefer to live in a world where the 2014 mandate has not yet been overturned and is still providing the UK government with a veneer of democratic cover.  That is not a psychological phenomenon that I can easily understand or explain.

Incidentally, Mr McDonald is also in the news today because he's come out in support of BBC Scotland's utterly random attack on Radio Sputnik's Edinburgh operation - which ceased to exist several years ago!  Again, I struggle to understand those who believe that a defunct radio station that at its peak had an audience consisting of two men and a penguin is a bigger threat to Scottish democracy than the BBC itself, which pumped out blatant anti-independence propaganda and disinformation to millions of viewers and listeners in the run-up to referendum day in 2014.  But each to his own, I suppose.

As always, I do want to finish by stressing that the SNP (and to a lesser extent the Greens) remain the only game in town for delivering independence.  It may be hard to see the way forward at present, but if we are persistent enough a path will emerge.  Don't give in to frustration and start listening to the siren voices of the Stuart Campbells of this world who want you to lash out and try to destroy our only vehicle for independence.  It would be literally impossible to destroy the SNP anyway, and a civil war in our movement will just set the cause back decades.

*  *  *

I still urgently need to make Scot Goes Pop financially sustainable if I'm going to continue with it.  My recent promotional blitz had the aim of either increasing the number of regular monthly supporters from the high teens to around 60, or attracting around £1500 in one-off donations.  The first target was nowhere near to being met, but the second one was just over halfway met.  Even if I could hit that second target of £1500 in the near future, it would allow me to continue for the time being.  Many thanks to everyone who has contributed so far.  Donations are welcome via my Ko-Fi page - you can choose to either set up a small recurring monthly payment or a one-off donation of any amount of your choice.  A wide variety of payment methods are accepted, including PayPal.

Another Scottish polling disaster for Burnham: a majority of voters want Scotland to become an independent country, and the SNP have a FIFTEEN point lead over Labour

Someone asked on the previous comments thread whether it was true that a new Survation poll showed that Andy Burnham is the most popular politician among Scottish voters.  Yes, it is true (albeit with certain caveats that I'll come to later) but it seems extremely churlish to focus on that detail when pretty much everything else in the poll is so wonderful for the independence movement and for the SNP.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Survation / Diffley Partnership, 13th-24th August 2026)

Yes 52% (-)

No 48% (-)

This is the third Survation poll in a row to show a Yes majority, which looks pretty significant given that Survation haven't particularly been favourable for Yes in recent times.  They had No in a clear lead last year, so what we're seeing is consistent with a relatively recent swing in favour of independence.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election: 

SNP 34%

Labour 19%

Reform UK 18%

Conservatives 11%

Liberal Democrats 8%

Greens 5%

Restore Britain 4%

The Westminster numbers pretty much snuff out any hope for Labour that the Burnham bounce has in itself been enough to get them back into the game in Scotland.  The recent Find Out Now poll, which was the only other full-scale Scottish poll of the Burnham era to date, showed very similar numbers.  While one poll could have been leading us wildly astray, it seems much less likely that two polls showing the same thing are both rogue polls.  It's quite possible that Survation's numbers would put the SNP on course for a 2019-style landslide with more than three-quarters of the Scottish seats in the House of Commons.  And remember that we're right in the middle of Burnham's natural honeymoon period at the moment - so if anything you'd expect things to improve for the SNP from here.

As far as the personal ratings for leading politicians are concerned, Burnham is ahead - but these are net ratings which subtract the percentage of respondents who are not satisfied with each politician from the percentage who are satisfied.  That arguably gives Burnham an advantage over someone like John Swinney, who has had a much longer period of time to build up a minority group of voters who are unhappy with him.  It doesn't necessarily mean that voters as a whole prefer Burnham to Swinney.  As you may recall, Humza Yousaf had really poor net ratings during his time as First Minister but generally was still ahead of Anas Sarwar on the straight question "who would you prefer to be First Minister?"  No such direct comparison will ever be made between Swinney and Burnham because they are not in competition with each other for the same political office, but the fact that the SNP are so far ahead of Labour on Westminster voting intentions in particular is not easily reconcilable with the belief that voters prefer Burnham to Swinney.

Perhaps offering some support for the famous Yes Minister scene suggesting that you can get any poll result you want depending on how you phrase the question, there is a supplemtary question in this poll which finds a majority in favour of the proposition that some government powers in Scotland should be held at UK level, which arguably contradicts the majority in favour of independence.  However, the two results are perhaps just about consistent with each other if it can be assumed that respondents felt they were being asked "if Scotland remains in the UK, should the UK government have some powers in Scotland?

*  *  *

I'm still urgently trying to make progress towards my blogging and YouTube videos becoming financially sustainable.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue by becoming a supporter, please check out my Ko-Fi page HERE - it accepts small recurring monthly payments or one-off donations of any amount, and it also accepts a variety of payment methods, including card and PayPal.  A million thanks to everyone who has already contributed.

The BBC will ALWAYS be fearlessly neutral and even-handed and ask all the important "valid questions"...except on these four subjects, naturally

*  *  *

I'm still urgently trying to make progress towards my blogging and YouTube videos becoming financially sustainable.  If you'd like to help me continue to create content by becoming a supporter, please check out my Ko-Fi page HERE - it accepts small recurring monthly payments or one-off donations of any amount, and it also accepts a variety of payment methods, including card and PayPal.  A million thanks to everyone who has already contributed.

Warning - Danger - MASSIVE BLACK HOLE APPROACHING and Stew wants to chuck YOUR life savings straight into it - Please learn the lessons of the Dugdale debacle and ca' canny this time

Probably because I grew up during the period in which the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six were released, I've always been deeply troubled by the persistent recurrence of severe miscarriages of justice and the utter failure of the criminal justice system to learn lessons from past catastrophic mistakes. As long-term readers may know, I'm inclined to the view that Lucy Letby is probably innocent, and my guess is that she will eventually be exonerated and released, but only after a ridiculously long delay of many years, by which time the psychological damage to her will be beyond imagining.  It is inexplicable that the UK system almost always compounds its errors by doubling down on them when it knows from past experience that it will eventually be forced to confront them anyway, by which time the reputational damage to itself will also be that much greater.

When so many people have been wrongly banged up (or even wrongly executed if you go back far enough), the mindset of someone who is consumed with anger at the criminal justice system because not enough people have been jailed for alleged non-violent offences is alien to me.  But that is precisely where Stuart Campbell stands.  If you asked him what his two political priorities are, and if you managed to get an honest answer out of him, he would undoubtedly say the eradication of trans ideology and getting Nicola Sturgeon jailed.  Not independence for Scotland.  Not the elimination of nuclear weapons to secure a future of humanity.  Not the tackling of the climate emergency to ensure humanity has a habitable planet to live on.  Not ending the genocide and offering justice to the people of Gaza.  Not the alleviation of poverty in Scotland.  No, what motivates Stew, what is literally his heart's desire (and everyone reading this knows deep down that this is true) is pointless revenge against a woman he obsessively hates.

There is nothing that can be done about hatred being Stew's political lodestar, or about the grotesque manifestations of that, but I hope it is obvious to most sensible independence supporters, or indeed to anyone who has any form of constructive political aspiration for this country, just how harmful and foolhardy it would be to follow him down that rabbit hole.  His newly-published threats to the police to take legal action unless they prosecute people in the SNP over the 'ring-fenced fund' episode means beyond doubt that he will soon be once again seeking eye-watering amounts of money from his followers (in the ballpark of what would be required to fund a referendum campaign, ironically) to futilely throw away on yet another revenge-driven court case that he simply cannot win.  I hope the Kezia Dugdale debacle at least gives his disciples pause for thought about whether on this occasion the money might be better spent on something more worthwhile, such as, y'know, actually campaigning for Scottish independence.

I'm not even going to 'pick a side' here and say that I either believe or disbelieve Nicola Sturgeon when she says she knew nothing about Murrell's activities.  The question just doesn't interest me because Ms Sturgeon is no longer SNP leader, she is no longer an MSP, she is no longer in frontline politics in any form.  I do personally think she was foolish to recently attack the current SNP leadership after they expended so much political capital defending her to the hilt, and it also grated on me slightly when she tried a fresh variation of the "it's another example of a woman suffering for the actions of a man" soundbite, which I felt was a cheap way of playing to a certain gallery by generically demonising men.  But what she says and does as a private citizen is a matter for her.  The rest of us should get on with living in the political present where the independence cause is firmly in the hands of John Swinney and cannot be affected much by the actions of past leaders.

We are presently standing at a junction where the two possible routes are signposted as "independence" and "other stuff".  Somewhat ironically in view of a cartoon he once published, Stew is gagging to visit the "other stuff" location and wants you to join him there.  Don't be tempted this time.  

*  *  *

I'm still urgently trying to make progress towards my blogging and YouTube videos becoming financially sustainable.  If you'd like to help me continue to create content by becoming a supporter, please check out my Ko-Fi page HERE - it accepts small recurring monthly payments or one-off donations of any amount, and it also accepts a variety of payment methods, including card and PayPal.  A million thanks to everyone who has already contributed.

Concerns mount that the "Scottish Daily Express" may be written by clueless Home Counties toffs, as paper launches bizarre crusade to stamp out the name Queensferry Bothy "because it's Gaelic"

If it wasn't so outrageous, the latest anti-Gaelic rant from the Scottish Daily Express would be hysterically funny.  The paper reports that "one Holyrood source" (translation: an unspecified Tory or Reform MSP) has claimed that taxpayers' money has been wasted on a Gaelic rebrand of the Holyrood food areas in order to "appease the nationalists", which conjures up images of John Swinney invading Poland if long-suffering Holyrood staff hadn't agreed to start referring to the Garden Level Restaurant as "The Garradh".  However, the article later notes that the food areas were due for a renovation anyway, which presumably means that adding Gaelic names didn't actually cost a penny more than renovating with English names would have done.

The Express complain that no guidance has been given on how the word "garradh" should be pronounced, in spite of the fact that the majority of people in Scotland do not speak Gaelic.  That, in fairness, is a very serious matter, given that technology allowing people to instantly look up the pronunciation of any word in any language on a conveniently portable handheld device is a pipedream that presumably remains several centuries away.

More puzzling, however, is the inclusion of the predominantly Germanic name "the Queensferry Bothy" in the Express' list of Gaelic interlopers, and that may explain why a sub-editor seemingly felt moved to insert the tortuous phrase "names inspired by Gaelic" as a get-out clause, although even that is something of a stretch.  The word "queen" comes from the Old English "cwen", and "ferry" comes from the Old English "ferian".  Meanwhile, "bothy" is a Scots language word dating from the 18th century, and although it will doubtless make the Express homicidal to be reminded of this, Scots is a Germanic sister language of English.  It's true that the word may ultimately be a modified borrowing of the Gaelic "bothan" (although it may also come from Old Norse or simply from the English "booth"), but by the same token two-thirds of the words in the English language are borrowings from either French or Latin.  Remind me to describe every Express article ever written as "inspired by French".

As usual, the Express try to justify their anti-Gaelic bigotry by noting that the language has continued to decline even as money has been spent on it, which makes no sense because the more logical conclusion to draw is that the investment has thus far been insufficient or that the language's predicament would have been even worse without it.  Plenty enough money was spent by successive British governments on malicious attempts to eradicate Gaelic (not least by means of the education system), so it scarcely follows that money spent on reversing that process cannot be effective or legitimate.

The Express' logic might be sound in a fascistic sort of way if they were prepared to openly admit that they think the eradication of Gaelic would actually be a desirable outcome, but of course they aren't.  They insteasd still pretend to care that some academics are arguing that Gaelic is on the brink of collapse (ie. within a few decades) as a native community language, and to merely think it's wrong that money is being spent on promoting "symbolic" use of Gaelic as a second language.  That being the case, I really feel it's time to haul the Express editorial team before a Holyrood committee and ask them to confirm that they would enthusiastically get behind any diversion of funds into protecting the remaining fragile Gaelic-speaking communities and promoting the transmission of Gaelic as a first language within those communities.

It might rather fun watching them squirm on that point.

*  *  *

My seven-day promotional gimmick is over, but I still urgently need to make progress on making my content-creation financially sustainable.  I currently have around twenty regular monthly supporters on my Ko-Fi page, so I basically need to roughly treble that, or to attract a very significant number of one-off donations.  If you'd like to help me continue to create content by becoming a supporter, please check out my Ko-Fi page HERE - it accepts small recurring monthly payments or one-off donations of any amount, and it also accepts a variety of payment methods, including card and PayPal.  A million thanks to everyone who has already contributed.

Douglas Alexander tacitly admits the choice for Labour is: a) change course on independence, or b) keep losing elections (and we already know it's b) because of the leadership contest stitch-up)

My seven-day conventional text-blogging blitz to help promote my Ko-Fi fundraising page is now over, and it certainly wasn't a waste of time because it led to several new sign-ups as recurring monthly supporters, plus several hundred pounds in one-off donations.  However, I did fall well short of my target of reaching 60 monthly supporters, and also a reasonable way short of the target of £1500 in one-off donations, so I'll just have to keep plugging away and hope I can reach financial sustainability before too long.  The one consolation of not reaching either target is of course that I am now freed from my conditional pledge to keep pre-moderation in the comments section switched off.  I might actually still leave it off for a little while longer, because as expected it's vastly boosted the number of comments, which in turn indirectly boosts the audience for the blog.  But I expect I'll sooner or later reach the saturation point I always reach where the downsides start to clearly outweigh the advantages.

YouGov poll suggests Andy Burnham is faring about as well in Scotland as the Romans and Edward II did

History doesn't record whether the Roman Emperor tried to win over the reluctant Caledonian tribes by setting up a "Senate North" somewhere really northern and close to them (like Milan), but even if he did it plainly didn't do the trick.  Judging from the latest Scottish subsample from YouGov, Andy Burnham is proving to be a similar flop Beyond The Wall.  However, he's not doing all that well further south either, because Reform UK have retaken the lead GB-wide.

Britain-wide voting intentions (16th-17th August 2026):

Reform UK 24% (+2)

Labour 22% (-2)

Conservatives 19% (-2)

Greens 13% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 12% (+1)

Restore Britain 4% (-)

SNP 3% (-)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-1)

As the fieldwork dates for the poll were well after the Clacton by-election, it looks like that contest may have provided a modest boost for Reform.  A lot of people have been engaged in a 'fake it until it's real' effort to convince themselves that a novelty candidate taking more than a quarter of the vote was in itself some sort of obvious humiliation for Farage, but the reality is that Reform took a good vote share on a respectable turnout, so there was no way the result was ever going to be harmful to them.  This poll is also a useful corrective to the notion that the normal party system is returning and that the Tories are gradually overhauling Reform.  In fact, the Tories have been stuck in third place in all recent polls, apart from the one conducted by Lord Ashcroft, who is not affiliated to the British Polling Council and who uses an extremely strange, atypical, and questionable methodology.

Scottish subsample: SNP 35%, Reform UK 19%, Labour 18%, Liberal Democrats 13%, Conservatives 7%, Greens 6%, Restore Britain 2%

The SNP have been ahead in all of the YouGov subsamples since Andy Burnham became Labour leader, with the size of the lead oscillating from middling to high - and this one is an example of high.  Labour's vote share this week is consistent with their performance in the only full-scale Scottish poll of the Burnham era so far, in which they were in the high teens and just barely ahead of Reform.

To put in perspective how badly Burnham has flopped in Scotland, it's worth remembering that even Jeremy Corbyn managed 19% of the Scottish popular vote in his supposedly disastrous 2019 general election campaign.

*  *  *

This is Post 6 of "Seven Days of Retro Scot Goes Pop" - a shameless gimmick in which I attempt to solve this blog's funding problems in the space of a week with a conventional text-blogging marathon to help promote my Ko-Fi donations page, during which period pre-moderation in the comments section will be switched off.  My target for the week is to either get up to 60 regular monthly supporters on Ko-Fi (as of now I have 22), or to reach £1500 in one-off donations to the page, or some sort of combination of a bit of both.  In an equally shameless attempt to coax KC's stinking rich Tory landowner chums in Surrey into helping to fund Scot Goes Pop, I have pledged to try to leave pre-moderation switched off even after the seven days are over, but only if at least one of the targets is met in full.  Yes, it's time to play hardball with our resident "Nessie" enthusiast.  

If you might be interested in making either a small recurring monthly donation or a one-off donation, please check out my Ko-Fi page HERE.

Liberation Scotland's wish to disenfranchise one million "incomers" - isn't that a rather sinister echo of Reform UK's language about deporting "strangers"?

I was thinking of writing a blogpost tonight about the latest chapter in Stew's prolonged temper tantrum about the Crown Office and Police Scotland impertinently refusing to accept that he is their Overlord and that they must defer to instructions from him (he's called his latest article 'The Land Of Do-As-You-Please', but 'The Land In Which Stew Is Not Actually Il Duce' might have been more apt).  But as I'm on a bit of a roll today with expressing some rather severe doubts about Salvo and Liberation Scotland, I thought I'd instead take a look at a long Twitter post from the latter, because I'm both struck and disturbed by how the language of the post echoes Reform UK rhetoric.  Whereas Thomas "Shut That Door" Kerr wants to deport "strangers", Liberation Scotland and Salvo merely want to disenfranchise "incomers".

"The dumbfounding thing is, when the SNP-led Scottish government goes to Westminster to ask for a 'Section 30' order, it is apparently quite content to hold the same, warped, glorified opinion poll, open to the same British state inspired political, media and corporate propaganda, the same monarchic intervention, potentially the same last minute 'Vow'. And worst of all, the same totally inappropriate local authority franchise giving a vote on the Scots nation's future to anything up to a million incomers who would have no right to such a vote to elect a national government anywhere in the world, never mind one on a matter of such immense moment of a nation's exercise of self-determination."

That isn't just deeply offensive to many hundreds of thousands of people who are committed to Scotland and in many cases identify as New Scots, it's also factually inaccurate because there are in fact countries such as New Zealand in which even non-citizens are able to vote in national elections.  But that isn't even what we're talking about here, because there is no such thing as a Scottish citizenship and there won't be this side of independence, and therefore most of the million people being referred to in fact share precisely the same citizenship as "Scots", however that term is being defined.

For those of you who genuinely want to strip voting rights from English people resident in Scotland in a future indyref, even if you don't accept that is morally wrong and undemocratic, I would at least ask you to ponder how tactically foolish it is.  I know Salvo and Liberation Scotland don't accept this, but ultimately we will need UK government recognition for our independence, however grudging, and we won't get that by fiddling the franchise and cheating our way to a Yes majority.  The franchise has to be seen to be fair otherwise the entire exercise is a waste of time.  Furthermore, even if you're naive enough to believe you'd get away with fiddling the franchise for an indyref, we'll still need votes from these "incomers" in regular elections that occur before then, and telling people you're going to disenfranchise them is a rather unpromising way of asking for their support in an election.

And you know what?  Some of you really won't want to hear this bit, but it's true: Alex Salmond had no truck whatever with the idea of removing the vote from English people in an indyref.  When he phoned me up in the autumn of 2021 to "ask" me to stop disagreeing in public with Barrhead Boy about the subject, the point he repeatedly stressed was that I didn't actually need to have that argument, because Barrhead Boy quite simply wasn't going to get his way.  "No party led by me will ever support anything other than a civic franchise" he told me, and that's pretty much a word-for-word quote.  What he meant by a civic franchise was the same local government franchise that was used for the 2014 referendum.

I must say the pedantic hair-splitting about whether the 2014 referendum was a binding vote or a "glorified opinion poll" seems totally alien to me.  As it was an agreed referendum, and as both governments publicly committed themselves in advance to implementing the result, it's stretching credibility somewhat to suggest a Yes vote would have had no effect.  There were many things wrong with the 2014 vote, but its technically non-binding status was not one of them.

And no matter what terms a future referendum takes place under, I'm struggling to see how you're going to prevent propaganda from the British state or monarchy, or a repeat of "The Vow", unless you're actually going to ban the No side from campaigning or the media from reporting what they say.

*  *  *

This is Post 5 of "Seven Days of Retro Scot Goes Pop" - a shameless gimmick in which I attempt to solve this blog's funding problems in the space of a week with a conventional text-blogging marathon to help promote my Ko-Fi donations page, during which period pre-moderation in the comments section will be switched off.  My target for the week is to either get up to 60 regular monthly supporters on Ko-Fi (as of now I have 21), or to reach £1500 in one-off donations to the page, or some sort of combination of a bit of both.  In an equally shameless attempt to coax KC's stinking rich Tory landowner chums in Surrey into helping to fund Scot Goes Pop, I have pledged to try to leave pre-moderation switched off even after the seven days are over, but only if at least one of the targets is met in full.  Yes, it's time to play hardball with our resident "Nessie" enthusiast.  

If you might be interested in making either a small recurring monthly donation or a one-off donation, please check out my Ko-Fi page HERE.

"Yeah, you know that John Major guy? The Council of Europe FORCED him to give Scotland devolution. He only did it because they MADE him. FACT" - How Sara Salyers wrecked Salvo's credibility yesterday by trotting out a nutty, long-debunked claim

As I said in a recent video, I've tried hard to remain open-minded about Salvo's approach to independence campaigning - not because I think there's the remotest chance of them achieving their stated objective of "decolonising Scotland via the UN", but because I can see how their unusual strategy might yield side-benefits that are distinct from that stated objective.  Those side-benefits mainly boil down to publicity - ie. Salvo and Liberation Scotland might help to increase international awareness of the Scottish independence campaign and of the UK's ongoing denial of Scotland's right to democratic self-determination.

However, there comes a point where you're presented with irrefutable proof that a campaign group is fantasist in nature, and you just can't in good conscience take that group seriously anymore.  I reached that point yesterday when I read Sara Salyers' piece in the Sunday National, which was intended as a rebuttal of recent attacks on Salvo, but instead unwittingly demonstrated that those attacks had considerable validity.  My jaw absolutely dropped to the floor when I reached the start of her fifth paragraph - 

"A two million-strong petition for home rule in 1950 was ignored by the UK Government for 50 years. Only international pressure (the Council of Europe) finally forced the governments of John Major and Tony Blair to accept Scottish devolution"

This guff about the Council of Europe is right up there with "Ronald Reagan only became a communist because the aliens from the spaceship told him to".  It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a batsh*t crazy claim from the wilder fringes of our movement, which I have encountered numerous times over the years, not least in the comments section of this blog.  If I had a pound for every time I've had to patiently try to explain to its wide-eyed proponents why it is completely baseless and utterly without foundation, I'd be...well, not wealthy exactly, but I'd have £30 at least.  To see something that is so monumentally and stupidly wrong being trotted out as fact by the leader of a self-styled "national liberation movement" is nothing short of mind-boggling.  I would go so far as to suggest that this means Ms Salyers should never again be regarded as a reliable witness, and while most of us have no direct knowledge of whether her implausible claims about progress being made at the UN are accurate or not, they certainly shouldn't be taken on trust without corroboration from a far more credible source.

What has always put the Council of Europe claim into a completely different category from other fake histories or conspiracy theories is that you don't actually have to be an expert on the subject to know that it is false.  Literally anyone who lived in Scotland during the relevant period and who regularly watched the news knows that it logically cannot possibly be true for two main reasons:

1) There is no way John Major can have been forced to accept devolution by the Council of Europe, very simply because he did not accept devolution.  Not at any time.  Ever.  He remained viscerally opposed to it quite literally right up to the very second he was removed from office at lunchtime on the 2nd of May 1997.  He was such a roadblock that his election defeat was an absolutely essential prerequisite to devolution being brought about.

2) The Labour Party under Tony Blair did subsequently deliver devolution, but it is impossible for them to have been forced into it by the Council of Europe because the dates don't tally up.  The mythology about the Council of Europe seems to date from a single article written by James Wilkie in 2012, published on Newsnet Scotland and Electric Scotland, about his own lobbying attempts at a Vienna Summit in 1993 - by which point the Labour party had already been long since converted to devolution.  Labour policy initially changed under Harold Wilson in the mid-70s due to severe electoral pressure from the SNP, and accordingly support for an Assembly from Scottish Labour MPs was rather tepid to begin with.  However, a much more confirmational shift occurred during the 1980s due to Thatcherism, with the penny dropping for Labour MPs that if an Assembly had been set up as envisaged by the Scotland Act 1978, Scotland would have been largely governed by Labour throughout the 80s, rather than by Thatcherite Secretaries of State.  By 1990, Labour had already been fully transformed into a thoroughgoing pro-devolution party with only one or two holdout MPs (like Tam Dalyell) remaining opposed.  They were committed to legislating for a Scottish Parliament within the first parliamentary year of the next Labour government, and that is exactly what happened.

Anyone who actually believes the silly myth that the Council of Europe threatened in the 1990s to rescind the UK's membership unless Scotland was given a parliament, and that Labour's devolution policy was a sham until that point but suddenly and quietly became real as a result of Strasbourg's non-existent threat, is - to use the technical term - two sandwiches short of a picnic.

The only limited truth in Ms Salyers' claim is that the Scottish Covenant Association's petition tactics in the early 50s proved to be a failure, and that an alternative strategy ultimately proved far more effective.  But that successful alternative strategy was not international pressure, but instead pressure at the ballot box from the SNP.  Before Winnie Ewing's triumph in Hamilton in 1967, devolution was completely off the political agenda, but after she won, it was immediately bang on the agenda and never went away.  The Kilbrandon Commission was set up as a direct result (Gwynfor Evans' win for Plaid in Carmarthen in 1966 was also a crucial contributory factor) and for a time even the Tories under Edward Heath were converted to the principle of devolution.

The lesson for the present day is that we will win independence by causing the London parties pain domestically.  It can't be done in New York, Geneva or Strasbourg, and that really should be a statement of the obvious.   

*  *  *

This is Post 4 of "Seven Days of Retro Scot Goes Pop" - a shameless gimmick in which I attempt to solve this blog's funding problems in the space of a week with a conventional text-blogging marathon to help promote my Ko-Fi donations page, during which period pre-moderation in the comments section will be switched off.  My target for the week is to either get up to 60 regular monthly supporters on Ko-Fi (as of now I have 21), or to reach £1500 in one-off donations to the page, or some sort of combination of a bit of both.  In an equally shameless attempt to coax KC's stinking rich Tory landowner chums in Surrey into helping to fund Scot Goes Pop, I have pledged to try to leave pre-moderation switched off even after the seven days are over, but only if at least one of the targets is met in full.  Yes, it's time to play hardball with our resident "Nessie" enthusiast.  

If you might be interested in making either a small recurring monthly donation or a one-off donation, please check out my Ko-Fi page HERE.

Some free - and mostly sincere - advice for Scottish Labour

Scottish Labour have finally learned the lessons of two decades of defeats and realised what they need is another soul-crushing machine politician from Lanarkshire that no-one has ever heard of. Better late than never. https://t.co/4i1D5Labcq

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) August 16, 2026

I'm sure all of us sometimes make exaggerated or over-simplified criticisms of unionist organisations for partisan reasons, but I really do feel the sentiment in the tweet above is 100% fair comment.  Quite literally the more Scottish Labour fail, the less they seem to learn.  I sometimes wonder if Labour constantly think back to the 'good old days' when Scottish people would vote for anything in a red rosette and assume that means soul-crushing machine politicians from Lanarkshire are actually incredibly popular, and that the voters are just having an inexplicably prolonged break from following their natural desires. 

A bigger issue is perhaps that Scottish Labour's branch office status prevents them from taking any action to solve the problem even if they ever get to the point of correctly identifying it.  When UK Labour lose to the Tories, they generally move a bit to the right to win voters back from the Tories, just as David Cameron moved the Tories a bit to the left to win voters back from Labour.  But when Scottish Labour lose to the SNP, they can't take the logical step of meeting the voters they've lost to the SNP halfway, because their bosses in London won't let them do that "for the greater UK good".  So instead all they've got left is to pathetically beg SNP voters to "please stop caring about that thing you really care about, we're going to do the total opposite of what you want but please just vote for us anyway", and wonder why that doesn't work any better on the fifth attempt than it did on the first.  Having said that, it did kind of work as a one-off in 2024 due to special circumstances, which is the worst thing that could possibly have happened to Labour because they'll now be even more baffled when it doesn't work again.

I always say that every election in which the SNP shy away from the de facto referendum route to winning independence is just a monumental waste of time, because it doesn't really create an alternative way forward, it just postpones the inevitable.  A de facto ref is the only viable option, and that penny will inevitably drop eventually, so it's just a question of how many years or decades we waste before arriving at that unavoidable destination.  In precisely the same way, every election in which Labour run away from finally making their peace with Yes supporters simply delays any chance of a Labour comeback, because making their peace with Yes supporters is the only way a comeback is possible and they'll inevitably reach that conclusion at some point.  It's not inconceivable that Monica Lennon could have successfully reached out to Yes voters, but it is totally inconceivable that Joe Fagan or Michael Marra will, so the way things are shaping up Labour will just end up wasting yet another five years.

What would Labour making its peace with Yes-voting Scotland look like?  It wouldn't look like Labour becoming a pro-indy party, but it probably would mean them coming up with a credible and concrete answer to the perfectly reasonable question: "if the UK is a voluntary union, how does Scotland leave if it wants to?"  Their answer wouldn't necessarily have to resemble the one that pro-indy parties would want - it could be a fresh solution that addresses any concerns Labour themselves have about exercises in self-determinations, assuming that any of those concerns are not totally bogus.  If they genuinely believe that 2014-style referendums are too disruptive, for example, they could simply stipulate themselves that any mandate should be sought in a scheduled election, and that whether pro-indy parties win more than 50% of the vote in combination would be the test of success or failure.  It's quite a challenging threshold for the Yes side, after all, so why fear it if you truly believe that Scots aren't that fussed about indy?

The bottom line is, though, that Scottish Labour will have to painfully come to terms with something that Northern Ireland unionists came to terms with nearly three decades ago when they signed the Good Friday Agreement - ie. that the territory they live in will henceforth have the right and the ability to choose to leave the UK in practice and not just in theory.

*  *  *

This is Post 3 of "Seven Days of Retro Scot Goes Pop" - a shameless gimmick in which I attempt to solve this blog's funding problems in the space of a week with a conventional text-blogging marathon to help promote my Ko-Fi donations page, during which period pre-moderation in the comments section will be switched off.  My target for the week is to either get up to 60 regular monthly supporters on Ko-Fi (as of this evening I have 19), or to reach £1500 in one-off donations to the page, or some sort of combination of a bit of both.  In an equally shameless attempt to coax KC's stinking rich Tory landowner chums in Surrey into helping to fund Scot Goes Pop, I have pledged to try to leave pre-moderation switched off even after the seven days are over, but only if at least one of the targets is met in full.  Yes, it's time to play hardball with our resident "Nessie" enthusiast.  

If you might be interested in making either a small recurring monthly donation or a one-off donation, please check out my Ko-Fi page HERE.