The Scottish Tories and their media allies have discovered the virtues of proportional representation - but only when it suits them

The Scottish Tory MP Andrew Bowie made a preposterous intervention in the Commons yesterday.  He tried to reframe the SNP's landslide victory in the general election as some kind of defeat, and prayed in aid the supposed fact that 55% of the Scottish people had cast a vote for anti-independence parties.  (Actually, the correct figure is 54%, because the Greens are pro-independence and they took 1% of the vote, but let's not quibble.)  If taken seriously, Bowie's point would have to mean one of two things - either a) that he thinks the first-past-the-post voting system should be replaced with a proportional representation system that might prevent a party winning a majority of seats on 45% of the vote, or b) that he regards any party that wins a majority on less than 50% of the vote as lacking full legitimacy, and thinks it shouldn't be able to take controversial decisions without the consent of its opponents.

And yet we know he doesn't believe either of those things.  His own party won a UK majority on just 44% of the vote - a smaller mandate than the SNP won in Scotland.  It is now pursuing a Hard Brexit in spite of the fact that around 52% of the UK popular vote went to parties that wanted to hold a second EU referendum with a Remain option on the ballot paper.  If Bowie was being consistent, he would regard the election outcome as having deprived the Johnson government of any moral authority to proceed with its Brexit plans - but instead he seems to think that it was actually a stonking mandate for a Hard Brexit.

A four-year old child could spot the contradiction in Bowie's stance.  In fact, a foetus could probably spot it.  Even a reasonably bright goldfish might not have too much difficulty.  Why, then, hasn't the mainstream media done its job and ruthlessly exposed the Tory hypocrisy?  In fairness, there's been the odd honourable exception like Bernard Ponsonby on STV's election night programme, but in general journalists have taken the legitimacy of the Tories' UK-wide mandate as read, while repeatedly calling into question the legitimacy of the SNP's superior mandate in Scotland.  That simply isn't sustainable if the likes of the BBC want to avoid being seen as blatantly biased.  Self-evidently, either both mandates are 100% watertight or they're both open to question.  Which is it to be, guys?

Incidentally, Bowie was missing the point in another way as well, because 65% of the vote in Scotland went to parties (the SNP, Greens and Labour) that support the principle that the Scottish Parliament should be able to hold an independence referendum if it so chooses.  At this stage, that's the only mandate the SNP are actually claiming - the mandate to hold a referendum.  It's a bit pointless for the Tories to now claim that a vote for Labour didn't count towards that mandate, given that they spent the entire campaign warning that a vote for Labour was a vote for an indyref to be held next year.  

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Apologies if someone else has already made this point, but it strikes me as a bit rich that the so-called Labour moderates are making such an issue of the fact that Jeremy Corbyn won slightly fewer seats in this election than Michael Foot did in 1983.  That isn't a meaningful comparison, because Labour have lost Scotland since Foot's time, and that happened on the watch of the moderates themselves (when Ed Miliband was leader in 2015, to be specific).  Corbyn actually did a bit better south of the border than Foot did, and that's how he should probably be judged.  OK, there was nothing inevitable about Labour only winning one Scottish seat last week, but if the moderates think that some kind of New Labour-type leader could have won more than a handful of Scottish constituencies, they're deluding themselves.  

And it's all very well for the moderates to say that Labour has to be less ideological and move towards the centre ground where the voters are, but in fact Corbyn seems to have learnt that lesson in Scotland far better than they have.  He's at least taken some steps (however imperfectly) to make his peace with the Yes supporters who used to be Labour voters, while the "moderates" clearly feel that maintaining purity on Labour's hardline British nationalist line is more important than winning elections.  Ian Murray said as much himself - the Scottish Labour party destroyed itself in 2014 to save the Union, and it should destroy itself again now for the same reason.

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I've expressed my worries over the last few days that the SNP leadership might prove too cautious to bring about an independence referendum if the Tory government refuses a Section 30 order.  But here's a more positive interpretation.  

The conventional wisdom is now that the 2024 election is unwinnable for Labour.  I'm not actually sure that's right, because electorates across the Western world have become more volatile in recent years.  (Witness the Canadian Liberals jumping from third place to an outright majority in 2015.)  But nevertheless the perception is that the Tories are in power until at least 2029, and that ought to concentrate minds in the SNP.  There's no point in them playing the waiting game for a Tory defeat in 2024 that they don't think will actually arrive.  If they know that sooner or later they're going to have to overcome Tory obstructionism on an indyref by some means, it might just as well be sooner.

VIDEO: The SNP's six best results in Election 2019

So just before I give the now-world-famous "Random Totty From Freedom Square" her camera back (and a million thanks to her for rescuing the situation after I bought a useless camcorder), I thought I'd record one more video to complete my series about the 2019 election.  See if you can spot the "deliberate mistake" in this one.

The Tories told voters that this election was "one last chance" to stop an independence referendum. That chance has now gone.

Just thought I'd take a screenshot of this tweet, in case it mysteriously disappears at some point.  Here we have the Tories telling voters last Wednesday that the election was "one last chance" to stop a second independence referendum.  Not a "once in a generation chance" or even a "once in a lifetime chance", but the "last" chance.  If that chance wasn't taken, the matter was settled forever.  And we know that when politicians say things like that, they're always talking absolutely literally and can be held to their word.

Just a reminder of the result of the "one last chance" election -

SNP: 48 seats (+13)

Conservatives: 6 seats (-7)

Liberal Democrats: 4 seats (n/c)

Labour: 1 seat (-6)

Crikey, what a moment.  No more chances for the Tories - ever.  Time to move on, and hold that referendum.

Miscellaneous election stuff

So a few miscellaneous things.  I have an article in The National about what the polls got right and wrong in Scotland over the last few weeks.  You can read it HERE.

I was interviewed yesterday about the election for an article on the Al Jazeera website by Alasdair Soussi, entitled 'SNP victory puts Scottish independence back in the spotlight'.  You can read it HERE.

I was also interviewed on Radio Sputnik yesterday, and I was asked about Jo Swinson's claim in her concession speech that "nationalism" is on the march on both sides of the border.  That gave me a rather enjoyable opportunity to call the Liberal Democrats "the quintessential nationalists" of this campaign, who "out-Toried the Tories" and are "obsessed with the British state". I haven't found a catch-up link for the interview, but if one appears I'll post it here later.

Video: Reaction to Jo Swinson's defeat

Yes, I know I forgot to turn the lights on, but I'm much too tired to record the video again!



UPDATE: The final result of the general election in Scotland -

SNP 48 (+13)
Conservatives 6 (-7)
Liberal Democrats 4 (n/c)
Labour 1 (-6)

Of course the SNP will immediately reduce themselves to 47 by depriving Neale Hanvey of the whip, but hopefully common sense will prevail and that state of affairs won't last for too long.  If the people of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath think that Mr Hanvey is a fit and proper person to be their MP, it would be rather bizarre if the SNP conclude that he isn't even fit to be a party member.

There was a frustrating run of narrow defeats towards the end of the night that just barely spared the waters of Loch Ness from a frightening ordeal, but really, it was incredible how close the SNP came to gaining seats like West Aberdeenshire & Kincardine and Caithness, Sutherland & Easter Ross - those weren't even on my radar a few weeks ago.  The failure to gain Moray and Banff & Buchan shouldn't have been a surprise, because the Leave vote was stronger in those two seats and the outcome tonight is linked to the trend in Leave areas south of the border.

The fact that the Liberal Democrats delivered the goods in four of the five seats they were competing for makes Jo Swinson's defeat look like a very personal one.  If you lose your seat for the specific reason that your own constituents dislike you as a person, it's safe to assume you don't have much of a future as party leader.  I would guess it's only a matter of hours before she formally resigns.  The Lib Dems must wish that Vince Cable had stayed on for a few more months.  Ironically, if he had, Jo Swinson herself might still be an MP.

That said, it's blindingly obvious that the Lib Dems owe their narrow gain in North-East Fife to a massive anti-SNP tactical vote by Tory supporters.  There was a very clear correlation between the drop in the Tory vote and the increase in the Lib Dem vote.

The overall Scottish outcome will hopefully kill forever the idea that the SNP cannot confront the electorate with the issue of independence if they want to win elections.  They shied away from making the case in 2017, but went in all guns blazing in 2019, and the contrast between the two results tells us all we need to know.  Safety-first and blandness don't inspire anyone.

Nicola Sturgeon has really got to use the tremendous moral mandate she now has to push relentlessly for an independence referendum to actually take place - a Westminster veto simply can't be accepted, even tacitly.  In the long run it's not defeats you rue - it's squandered opportunities at moments of triumph, and we can't afford to let this opportunity slip through our fingers.

With three results to go, it looks arithmetically certain that the SNP's share of the popular vote in Scotland (45%) is going to slightly exceed the Tories' share of the UK vote (currently 43.6%).  I'm sure that point will be made repeatedly, because if Johnson is claiming a mandate to deliver Brexit on his terms, it's very hard to see how the SNP don't have a watertight mandate to hold an independence referendum.

Thoughts on the upcoming exit poll

Based on experience in the last few elections, we can say a few things about the upcoming exit poll, which will be theatrically announced by the broadcasters at the stroke of 10pm.  It's likely to be highly accurate, it's likely to contain some sort of surprise, and there's a 50% chance we won't like that surprise.  If the worst comes to the worst and the projected number of seats for the SNP is a lot lower than we're expecting, the only slight consolation is that the margin of error may effectively be higher in Scotland due to the large number of ultra-marginal seats.  Even an exceptionally accurate exit poll can't be expected to correctly call races that are within 1% or 2%.

While we're waiting for the moment of torture, just a quick punt for my last three constituency previews in The National - Perth and North Perthshire, Glasgow South-West and Glasgow North-West.  I've now covered all 59 constituencies - it's been an epic undertaking, so I hope you've found them interesting and useful.  But actually, come to think of it, rather than reading the last batch I'd prefer you to ring round your family and friends and make sure they've all voted SNP, or will do by 10pm.  Let's not allow this one to slip through our fingers.

VIDEO: Anti-Brexit tactical voting guide for Scotland

Do you have a pro-European voter in your life who lives in either a Scottish Tory seat or a Scottish Tory target seat?  Are they not especially party political but very keen on doing whatever they can to stop Brexit?  If so, I've made this video just for them, so please feel free to pass it on.  It's a guide to anti-Brexit tactical voting in Scotland.



Unfortunately the figures for the Survation poll I tentatively reported in my previous post did turn out to be too good to be true, although it's still a very good poll for the SNP - significantly better than the Panelbase polls, for example.  Here are the correct numbers -

SNP 43%
Conservatives 28%
Labour 20%
Liberal Democrats 7%

Seats projection: SNP 47, Conservatives 8, Liberal Democrats 3, Labour 1

Labour will be breathing a sigh of relief this morning, but the Lib Dems must be horrified - if Survation are right they're back to the share of the vote they started with in 2017.

There's also some very good news on the independence question...

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 49%
No 51%

On the subject of postal votes...

I've been receiving quite a few emails from readers over the course of the campaign, so apologies if there are one or two I haven't replied to yet, because I've been up to my neck with various things. As postal votes are in the news today, I thought this might be a good moment to show you an email from a week or so ago about that subject, and let you make up your own mind. I agree with most of this, apart from the suggestion that the problems "at source" are only minor - I do think the system has been abused more often than we'd like to believe. Part of me thinks we'd be better off going back to the old system where you needed to have a good reason to apply for a postal vote.

"Feels like I've been a subscriber since SGP first started, and as always you come into your own during election campaigns.

But one thing is missing, and it's something that gives the Tories a serious head start at every campaign - their hard core postal vote.

That has to change if we are going to remove the likes of Mundell and Carlaw from Westminster and Holyrood, and the likes of Carruthers, Drysedale, and Nairn (just three of the Tory Councillors in D&G) who rely primarily on postal votes to get elected.

The percentage of voters using PVs in rural areas is around 21%, and my own estimates (based on the 2017 local and GE results) give Tory candidates 80% of that 21%.
For example, Ian Carruthers - a Tory councillor in my own ward - received just over 1,600 first choice votes and reached quota at the first round. 600+ of those votes were postals.
The figures were even higher in a neighbouring ward.

It's the soul destroying part of any count down here. We may look like we're almost there …. then they bring in the postals.

After 2014 I made a point of looking closely at the conspiracy theories surrounding voting at the referendum.
It took me around 30 minutes to comprehensively debunk every piece of outrageous nonsense I found on FB, YouTube, and other platforms.

But by then it was too late - the damage had been done, and it's still being done today.

I keep asking folk if they've ever wondered why so many Unionist media outlets gave so much coverage to those claims of 'massive' electoral fraud - invariably committed by MI5, every postie in Scotland, and the 45% of staff working at counts all over Scotland who claimed to be Yes supporters/SNP members, but were actually Illuminati sleeper agents.
They haven't, but occasionally a wee light goes on when they realise what I'm suggesting.

I've been to every count down here since 2011.
I've attended the last 3 postal vote verification sessions - talked to the staff, had the system explained to me in great detail, and been told repeatedly that many of our own get more than a bit angry when an ignorant zoomer claims they're all working for MI5 or 'Westminster'.
Basically, the PV system is 100% foolproof - with the exception of 'at source' - places like care homes.
But that exception can only affect a tiny number of votes - and what kind of loon is going to risk a very good, very secure job for a few more Tory votes ?

In a nutshell, the folk who believe the nonsense have no idea how the PV system operates, and they've certainly never worked as Count or Polling Agents.
Nor have they spent a few days in the middle of a PV verification where we actually take part in the process !!
In fact I'll bet the zoomers don't even know we have people at every count watching the entire thing happen, and can stop the count if we suspect something's wrong.
I've stopped a count before, and I was right to do so.
I was thanked by an Electoral Commission (Scot) observer afterwards as he'd also missed what I'd spotted.

Perhaps, once the current election is done and dusted, you can start looking at postal votes - the numbers, where they are highest, how they can create a built-in Tory majority, and how there's not a single shred of credible evidence supporting the nonsense stories that cost us dearly at every election?

The only way we can counter the situation is by getting as many of our supporters to apply and use PVs.

I did the data transfer from the Marked Register a couple of years ago and was shocked by what I saw. Our vote didn't turn out. It was raining. Folk were tired after work. There was something unmissable on TV etc etc.

The reasons don't matter, but the result down here meant Mundell had effectively been elected before the Polling Stations opened.

And it's all down to the ignorant zoomers who found it easier to blame electoral fraud rather than the real reasons we lost (media, the 'Vow', currency, and allowing the opposition to dictate the debate).

We need to change minds before the next referendum."

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I have three more constituency previews in today's edition of The National - this time it's Ochil & South Perthshire, Airdrie & Shotts and Kilmarnock & Loudoun.

It's Tuesday, so it must be MRP day

If memory serves me right, YouGov's projection model was updated every day during the 2017 general election campaign, but this time we've only seen one set of figures so far and the next update will be at 10pm tonight.  It'll be a nerve-wracking moment, because the most recent full-scale Scottish poll was completed on Friday, and four days is an eternity at the end of a campaign.  Who knows what might have changed.  Remember that the rigged BBC debate took place on Friday evening.

In the meantime, we already have the updated MRP figures from Remain United, although I'm not sure how credible their projection is for Scotland, because they seem to have based their calculations on a single GB-wide ComRes poll and a few Deltapoll constituency polls in England.  On the face of it, that means the Scottish projection is derived purely from a subsample (albeit a larger than usual one), and thus shouldn't be regarded as reliable.  However, for what little it's worth, the numbers are favourable for the SNP...

Seats projection (Remain United):

Conservatives 340
Labour 233
SNP 45
Liberal Democrats 11
DUP 10
Sinn Fein 6
SDLP 2
APNI 2
Plaid Cymru 2
Greens 1

There are also three seats (Aberdeen South, Angus and  Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock) where the SNP are estimated to be just behind the Conservatives and could win with the help of a small amount of tactical voting.

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I have three new constituency previews in today's edition of The National - this time it's Edinburgh South, Motherwell & Wishaw and Midlothian.

Gina Miller blasts Mike Smithson's letter-writing antics for the Lib Dems as "extraordinarily scandalous"

More details have been coming to light of the downright lies that the Liberal Democrats have been telling Scottish voters in highly deceptive "letters" that were supposedly written by self-styled "polling and elections expert" Mike Smithson (in reality a former Lib Dem county councillor and a former Lib Dem parliamentary candidate).  Here are some of the gems -

"The election in Edinburgh South is between the SNP and the Liberal Democrats."

REALLY?  Edinburgh South is held by Labour, and is the safest seat in the whole of Scotland.  The SNP were in second place last time, the Tories were third, and the Lib Dems were in a distant fourth with a miserable 3% of the vote.  The YouGov projection model suggests that the Lib Dems will finish fourth again this time.  Even if Smithson thinks YouGov have got it wrong, his claim that Labour won't even be in the running looks risible.

"The majority of voters in Scotland want the UK to remain in Europe and want Scotland to remain in the UK."

No, they don't.  It doesn't work that way for the simple reason that Remain voters are disproportionately likely to be pro-independence, and Leave voters are disproportionately likely to be anti-independence.  Only a minority of voters take a dual pro-Europe, anti-independence position - a significant minority, admittedly, but a minority nonetheless.

"Support for Labour and the Conservatives has nosedived in Scotland."

Labour, yes, but support for the Conservatives appears to be roughly where it was two years ago - at most there has been a drop of three percentage points, which is scarcely a nosedive.

"Support for the Liberal Democrats is growing in Scotland."

No, it isn't.  Polls show their support has slipped over the course of the campaign.

"Only the Liberal Democrats can gain seats from the SNP in Scotland."

"Seats"?  Seats plural?  We know that North East Fife is a possibility, but what other seats are they going to gain?

"In constituencies right across Scotland the only way to stop the SNP winning is for Conservative and Labour voters to vote tactically for the Scottish Liberal Democrats to stop the SNP."

Rubbish.  Of the 59 Scottish constituencies, there are five, or perhaps six at the most, where the Lib Dems are likely to be the SNP's main opponents.  If the Lib Dems want to encourage unionist voters to throw their votes away in the other 53 or 54 seats, we should probably just let them get on with it.  But the snag is that they're sending very similar letters to pro-European voters in Tory-Labour battleground seats, making the bogus claim that the local battle is between the Tories and the Lib Dems.  That's a classic case of putting party before country, because splitting the Remain vote in those crucial seats could help Boris Johnson be re-elected with a thumping majority.  It's no exaggeration to say that Smithson, ostensibly a lifelong Europhile, could end up being responsible for a Hard Brexit if he succeeds in deceiving people.  It's little wonder that Remain activist Gina Miller blasted his letter-writing antics as "extraordinarily scandalous and misleading to the public".

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I have three new constituency previews in today's edition of The National - this time it's Moray, West Aberdeenshire & Kincardine, and Rutherglen & Hamilton West.

Video: SNP on course for major gains in Scotland

Here's the third in my series of short pre-election videos, this time focusing on the two newest full-scale Scottish polls from YouGov and Panelbase.  I can neither confirm nor deny rumours that the improvement in picture quality is due to the person known in certain quarters as the "Random Totty From Freedom Square" very kindly lending me her camera for a few days.

Up-to-date Panelbase poll suggests the SNP are still on course for significant gains

I wondered after the new independence figures from YouGov whether we'd see a corresponding drop in support for the SNP, and now we're some way towards answering that question.  A new Panelbase poll has been released with fieldwork dates that are identical to the ones that Britain Elects claimed for the YouGov poll (although I'm wondering if that might have been a mix-up) and show only statistically insignificant changes within the margin of error.

Scottish voting intentions (Panelbase):

SNP 39% (-1)
Conservatives 29% (+1)
Labour 21% (+1)
Liberal Democrats 10% (-1)

Seats projection: SNP 40 (+5), Conservatives 12 (-1), Liberal Democrats 5 (+1), Labour 2 (-5)

I know people's reactions to this will differ, and some will think it looks too close to the 2017 result for comfort.  But it's really important to remember that Panelbase are typically the least SNP-friendly pollster, and that YouGov tend to report SNP vote shares that are a few percentage points higher.  Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that Panelbase are wrong or that YouGov are right, but we can't possibly know the answer to that until election night.  Until then what matters is the trend, and we're entitled to a sigh of relief that there's no clear trend against the SNP in this bang-up-to-date poll.  Even if Panelbase are absolutely correct, the SNP would gain Stirling from the Tories and win most of Labour's seats.  The Lib Dems must also be alarmed to see their vote gradually drift closer to the 7% they received last time.

Panelbase agree with YouGov that there's been a drop in support for Yes, but the change is much more modest in the Panelbase poll.  That leads me to wonder if YouGov have slightly exaggerated the trend due to the margin of error or some other factor.  We'll have to wait for future polls to know for sure.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 47% (-2)
No 53% (+2)

In fact this means that Panelbase are saying that the recent Yes surge has not been fully reversed - if it had been, the Yes vote would be back to somewhere in the region of 43-45%.

YouGov independence polling

You may have seen that there are polling numbers from YouGov that purport to show a sudden and statistically significant drop in support for independence - down from 49% to 44%. Now, the first thing to say (and any serious analyst of any political complexion will tell you the same) is that we need to exercise a touch of scepticism about a single poll that shows a big and unexpected change. All polls have a margin of error, but statistically it's inevitable that a small proportion of polls will fall outside the margin of error - ie. they'll be rogue polls. It's possible that's what's happened here. Another possibility is that there may have been a genuine drop in support but that YouGov are overstating it due to the normal margin of error - a reported Yes vote of 44% could mean that the true figure is as high as 46% or 47%.

But of course a third possibility is that the poll is accurate. If so, it's surprising, because two previous Scottish polls during this campaign showed support for independence holding steady at a historically high level. The Ipsos-Mori poll conducted between the 19th and 25th of November showed a 50-50 Yes-No split, so if something has changed it's happened very rapidly. But that's not totally inconceivable, and there are precedents for this sort of thing happening in previous UK-wide campaigns. Remember that the media coverage of general elections compels voters to view political issues through a Britain-wide lens - they're bombarded with political parties making pie in the sky promises to transform Britain for the better. If and when Boris Johnson is returned with a working majority and gets on with delivering a Hard Brexit, that effect is likely to wear off pretty rapidly.

The other factor is that, during general election campaigns, media discussion of independence is heavily slanted in favour of unionist spokespeople. Scottish coverage generally sees the SNP outnumbered 3-1, and at UK level the ratio is probably more like 8-1 or higher - indeed it's not unusual for independence to be discussed without any pro-independence voice being present at all, as happened in last night's rigged BBC leaders' debate. It's the polar opposite of what happens in a referendum campaign, where there has to be parity between both sides. So if the (relative) balance of an indyref campaign causes Yes support to rise, as it did in 2014, it's not unreasonable to suppose that the hopeless imbalance of a general election campaign might cause Yes support to fall, and that any such fall may be only temporary.

Bear in mind that even if this is a genuine drop, it's not as if the floor has caved in - it just takes us back to where we were a year or so ago, before the big Yes surge. Until recently YouGov's normal range for Yes was 43-45%, so 44% is bang in the middle of that. I'm not too concerned about it unless there's a corresponding drop in SNP support.  There's contradictory information about what the fieldwork dates for this poll were - one article seems to suggest it's the same poll that showed the SNP with a huge 16-point lead over the Tories, and if that's true there'd be nothing much to worry about.  However, Britain Elects are saying the fieldwork dates were the 3rd to the 6th of this month, which would mean that it's a different and newer poll, and there might still be a risk of an SNP decline.  We may find out more tonight, because there's usually a flurry of polls on the final Saturday night of a campaign (although whether any of them will be Scottish polls remains to be seen).

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I have three new constituency previews in today's edition of The National - this time it's Edinburgh North & Leith, Dunfermline & West Fife and West Dunbartonshire

The BBC's reputation in Scotland will never recover from this latest unforgivable betrayal - they made this choice freely, and they can have no complaint about the consequences

"The BBC Prime Ministerial Debate"
Oh go away you chancers. This is not a presidential system. It's just a cover story to justify excluding most of the major party leaders.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) December 6, 2019

Nick Robinson says he will ensure that the debate is "fair". Presumably Nicola Sturgeon, Jo Swinson and Sian Berry will shortly be ushered into the room, then. #BBCDebate

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) December 6, 2019

Boris Johnson using the platform the BBC have given him to attack Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP in his opening statement. Doubtless the BBC will now be ensuring fairness by clearing their schedules after the debate to give Ms Sturgeon a right of reply. Or perhaps not. #BBCDebate

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) December 6, 2019

It's happening: full-scale YouGov poll gives SNP big lead over the Tories, and enormous lead over Labour

Incredibly, we'd only had two full-scale Scottish polls in this campaign prior to tonight.  Ipsos-Mori had reported a huge SNP lead over the Tories, while Panelbase had reported a lead that wasn't all that much higher than in 2017.  Although Panelbase have become known in recent times as one of the least SNP-friendly pollsters, there was a reasonable concern that Ipsos-Mori may only have found such a big lead because of their telephone methodology, and that further online polls might be more in line with Panelbase.  The new poll from YouGov lays that worry to rest.  In complete contrast to what happened in 2017, it looks as if the SNP may actually have gained a little support over the course of the campaign - quite an achievement in the 'away fixture' of a Westminster election.

Scottish voting intentions (YouGov):

SNP 44% (+2) 

Conservatives 28% (+6) 

Labour 15% (+3) 

Liberal Democrats 12% (-1) 

Greens 1% (-3) 

Seats projection: SNP 44 (+9), Conservatives 9 (-4), Liberal Democrats 4 (n/c), Labour 2 (-5)

The 6% increase for the Tories shouldn't be regarded as any kind of shock - the change is measured from the most recent YouGov poll in October, and there's been plenty of evidence since then that the Tories have reaped the benefits of a total collapse in Brexit Party support.  I know some people will be concerned to see the Tories virtually back to the 29% vote they had in 2017, but remember that under first-past-the-post what matters more than anything is the gap between the first-placed party and the second-placed party - and that gap appears to have doubled over the last two years from 8% to 16%.  For proof that a decent share of the vote doesn't necessarily translate into a decent haul of seats, remember that Labour took only one seat in 2015 despite having 24% of the vote.

The biggest threat to SNP dominance in this campaign is any late Labour surge, and this poll does pick up tentative signs of a Labour recovery - but it could well be too little, too late.  Labour would need to be well into the 20s before they'd do any real damage, and they're fast running out of time.  Their last opportunity to make a big stride forward could be the rigged BBC "Prime Ministerial" (sic) Debate that includes Corbyn but excludes most other major party leaders.  But the equivalent ITV debate a few weeks ago failed to noticeably shift the dial.

If YouGov's numbers are close to the final result, the SNP can be quietly confident of making gains from the Tories, and supremely confident of making gains from Labour.  Which makes it all the more frustrating that they may have thrown away their chance in one of the six seats they realistically hoped to take from Labour.  However, if the SNP really do have a 29% national lead over Labour, Neale Hanvey will hope to ride on the coat-tails of his former party's success due to having the SNP name and logo next to his own name on the ballot paper.  He may still have an outside chance.

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I have two more constituency previews in today's edition of The National - this time it's North Ayrshire & Arran and Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock.

BBC doubles down with arrogant reply to complaint about Andrew Neil's factual inaccuracies

I've just been taking a look at the screenshot on Twitter of the reply David Hooks received from the BBC after his complaint about Andrew Neil's interview with Nicola Sturgeon. I presume the complaint related to the factual inaccuracies in Neil's line of questioning, which were so blatant that in one case the BBC's own Fact Check tacitly acknowledged the mistake. Even by the BBC's standards, the reply is dripping with arrogance and corporate propaganda. It follows the familiar trick of ignoring the actual complaint and responding to an imaginary one instead - ie. "how dare Andrew Neil interrupt people". This is the bit that leaps out -

"As a consequence, it is true that Andrew Neil often interrupts politicians, but he only does so when he does not feel he is getting a precise and direct answer to the question he has posed. He does so courteously but firmly."

Now, we all know that's not true.  Andrew Neil often crosses the line from being an interviewer to being a participant in a debate in which he puts forward his own opinions, and the purpose of his interruptions is often to loudly drown out a point he disapproves of and doesn't want viewers to hear.  One obvious example was a couple of years ago when he challenged RT presenter Afshin Rattansi about the complaints against RT upheld by Ofcom, which he suggested were proof that Putin was pulling the strings.  Rattansi countered by quite reasonably pointing out that the BBC Trust had upheld a similar complaint against the BBC's own Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg.  Neil immediately cut him off and angrily denounced him for suggesting that Kuenssberg and her employers were anything other than saintly figures who hadn't received their due in prestigious industry awards yet.

Not all of Neil's interruptions of Nicola Sturgeon were in that mould, but a good few of them were.  Specifically she was refusing to accept the premise of his questions relating to the supposed requirement for a country to have its own currency before joining the EU (a requirement that the BBC Fact Check later admitted does not exist).  He did his utmost to talk over her to the extent that viewers wouldn't even notice that she was disputing him on that point of fact - frankly he failed, but that was his intent.  At one point he even bizarrely suggested that Ms Sturgeon had accepted his claim, and when she pointed out that she hadn't done any such thing, he hurriedly changed the subject.

Antics of that sort are not an attempt to furnish viewers with greater illumination.  They're an attempt to deceive viewers.  There's simply no excuse for it, and it's little wonder that the BBC proved unable to address that point directly.

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I have two more constituency profiles in today's edition of The National - this time it's North-East Fife and Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale.

Mike Smithson makes a Blair-style non-apology for his propaganda letters - but he knows he's got this one badly wrong

Tony Blair was always the master of the non-apology.  After the disaster of the Iraq War, he tried to get himself off the hook with this tortuous formulation -

"I can apologise for the information being wrong but I can never apologise, sincerely at least, for removing Saddam."

So he wasn't apologising for something that no-one had asked him to apologise for, and while he 'could' apologise for the Dodgy Dossier, it was by no means clear that he was actually doing so.  The cynicism of that statement popped into my head again yesterday when I saw Mike Smithson's non-apology for his propaganda letters to voters, because it was very much in the same mould.

"As is widely known I have been a member of the Lib Dems since its foundation and make no apologies for seeking to help the party during elections."

That's absolutely fine, but according to Wikipedia the Liberal Democrats currently have 120,845 members.  The other 120,844 somehow manage to "help the party during elections" without conning voters into thinking they are an "impartial election expert" offering objective advice about tactical voting options.  That's what people think Smithson should apologise for, not for doing a bit of honest canvassing.

But once the decoy non-apology was out of the way, we then got a fascinating clue as to what has really been going on.

"I should explain that while I approved the text of the letters I did not have a prior view of the list of constituencies they were going to. This was unlike GE2017 when a similar exercise was carried out with me approving every single seat on the constituency list...The party has given me assurances about the future."

In other words, he did not write the letters himself, and although he "approved" the text, he allowed the Lib Dems to choose which seats the advice would be used in.  That makes the whole "election expert" thing a nonsense, because unless advice to "tactically vote Lib Dem to stop Labour" is carefully matched to correct constituencies by the "expert" on the basis of voting and polling trends, it might as well just be random noise - or, more accurately, propaganda.

And he's right about one thing - the character of the letters is very different from 2017, when they were making specific claims about specific constituencies, and when the claims did at least have some basis in fact, even if they were being stretched to the limit.  For example, the idea that the Lib Dems were best-placed to defeat the SNP in East Dunbartonshire, which could be justified on the basis of the previous general election result, albeit not on the basis of the local elections held just a few weeks before polling day.  Compare that specificity to the vagueness of this letter that has apparently been randomly sent out to Scottish voters this time -

I don't believe Smithson wrote a single word of that, and if he approved it he deserves every single bit of criticism that comes his way, because the claims in the letter are not ones that any genuine election expert would ever put his name to in a million years.  In the vast majority of Scottish seats, there is no conceivable way that "tactically voting Liberal Democrat" can possibly help to stop Brexit.  In every single Conservative-held seat, the SNP are the only credible challenger, and voting Lib Dem would just help the Brexit-supporting Tories to hold on.  To the extent that Labour can be considered a pro-Brexit party, the same is true in Labour seats - the SNP are in second place in all of those.  In spite of Smithson's blind spots, he's intelligent enough to know all of that, so if he approved that text, he knowingly approved something that is not only untrue, but the opposite of the truth.

And as for the notion that independence isn't "needed", that's self-evidently a political opinion, not something that can possibly be established by polling or election trends.  But it's richly ironic that the Lib Dems would choose to put those words in the mouth of Smithson of all people, because he's on the record as saying that he would vote for independence if he lived here!

VIDEO: Are the Liberal Democrats in trouble in Scotland?

For the second in my series of short pre-election videos, I've taken a look at one of the oddest patterns from the YouGov projection model.  The Lib Dem vote appears to be well up on two years ago across Scotland, but in the five seats they actually have a chance of winning, they're seemingly either flatlining or going backwards.

Latest YouGov subsample paints picture of SNP dominance

Despite the feeling that there's a bit of momentum behind Labour at GB level, they haven't made any further progress since Saturday according to the latest YouGov poll, and part of the reason is that their showing in the Scottish subsample is utterly abysmal.

Britain-wide YouGov poll:

Conservatives 42% (-1)
Labour 33% (-1)
Liberal Democrats 12% (-1)
SNP 5% (+1)
Brexit Party 4% (+2)
Greens 4% (+1)

Scottish subsample: SNP 52%, Conservatives 25%, Labour 11%, Liberal Democrats 7%, Greens 4%

In fairness, Labour were on an unusually high 21% in the previous subsample, so this is probably just sampling variation at play and the truth may be somewhere in between the two extremes.  But it certainly offers some reassurance against the idea that Labour might be starting to creep back up to the sort of level of support in Scotland where they could become a problem for the SNP.

The 9-point Tory lead will have to drop to around 6 or 7 points over the next nine days if a hung parliament is to become a serious possibility.  Such a small shift is obviously achievable - but what concerns me is that the polls may be overestimating Labour this time.  The numbers are weighted to how people voted in 2017, when there was unusually high turnout of Labour voters.   If that isn't replicated, Corbyn could be in an even weaker position than we currently think.

The good news, though, is that the opposite is true for the SNP - they didn't turn out their voters in sufficient numbers two years ago, which means 2017 weighting could be slightly underestimating their potential support.

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Since my last post I've had four more constituency previews in The National - Gordon, Glasgow East, Glasgow North and Central Ayrshire.

Video: Is the Tory lead narrowing?

A few weeks ago when I was on holiday and daydreaming, I realised a general election probably wasn't far off, and I had the bright idea (ahem) that I might mix things up a bit during the campaign by posting some short videos to keep you updated on the polling state of play.  So I finally got around to investing in a camera a few days ago...and discovered to my embarrassment that the picture and sound quality was marginally worse than the camera on my phone.  However, I was geared up to go ahead, so I decided to just do it with my phone.  Do I care about looking amateurish?  Pah, who cares about looking amateurish.  But future episodes might be in the form of a podcast, because a) making this video was far more time-consuming than expected, and b) I've got a proper microphone, so maybe I should work with what I've actually got.

Anyway, see what you think.  Tonight I'm discussing the batch of GB-wide polls in the Sunday papers, which paint a mixed picture, but on the whole suggest there may have been a narrowing of the gap.