A statement from Comical Ali, now in employ of a man who can snarl in Portuguese

These crooks, these liars, these cheats, Salmond and Sturgeon, they tell you they invented policies on a council tax freeze, on protecting A&E departments, on keeping higher education free. They lie! These are glorious original policies of the People's Party, but these creemeenals, these mer-sen-arrries, Swinney and MacAskill, they lie, they steal, they puff and pant to catch up. These crooks and cheats even invent time machine so they can travel back four years and make it look like they were implementing council tax freeze, saving Monklands A&E and abolishing tuition fees before glorious People's Party devised these original policies last week. As for this creemeenal Salmond and his supposed "charisma"? Pah! Stolen by his pack of time-travelling wolves from the glorious Gray, who they give unappealing snarl to with their reality-distorting technologies. We will crush them, these creemeenals, these cockroaches, these mer-sen-arrries. In fact, we already have crushed them - the score is three-nil to the glorious Gray!

Why is less democracy always the solution?

Interesting to learn from Subrosa that Their Man In Edinburgh, the esteemed Michael Moore, is touting the idea that the one-off planned five-year term for the next Scottish parliament should be made a permanent arrangement. Subrosa poses this question -

"The cynic in me ponders the benefits to unionist Westminster; there must be some or the idea would never have been mooted, although there is evidence from Germany that when Bundestag and state elections (which are conducted by Länder rules) are the same year, the state elections were completely overshadowed. Yet what are the benefits to Westminster?"

I actually don't think there's any great mystery about what's going on here - it must have finally occurred to some bright spark in the Lib Dems that the 'solution' of putting the 2015 Holyrood election back a year doesn't even begin to address the problem thrown up by five-year fixed term parliaments at Westminster. If the Holyrood parliament starting in 2016 runs its natural course, there will again be a scheduled election that would clash with a Westminster contest in 2020 - presumably necessitating a further 'one-off' extension, and the whole process will continue on into perpetuity, leaving everyone (not least London Lib Dems) looking extremely stupid. Of course, this snag could have been deferred for quite a while if only the 2015 election had been brought forward by a year, rather than put back. Three-year parliaments work perfectly well in Australia without the sun falling out of the sky - but it seems giving the public more democracy rather than less is an option that would never even occur to our masters.

But my own question is this - what happens if (as is perfectly possible) the Westminster coalition collapses in a heap well before 2015, rendering all these shenanigans totally redundant? Can we have our own election back then, please?

Subrosa also makes this observation -

"All these constitutional changes we're hearing about at present favour the libdems. No matter how badly they do in future voting, if the AV result is a yes, then they will be the king-makers."

That's not really true. As a majoritarian system, AV will for the most part continue to produce majority Tory or Labour governments, which for the avoidance of doubt is a bad thing not a good thing. Because of the specific circumstances of UK politics, though, with a medium-sized third party that is ideologically somewhere between the two larger ones (and thus well-placed to attract second preferences) it will give the Lib Dems more seats than the current system would, and therefore make future balanced parliaments very slightly more likely. The Lib Dem-sceptics among us shouldn't be squeamish about that, because without balanced parliaments there's simply no hope of achieving more meaningful electoral reform at a later date. The idea that a majority Labour government would ever voluntarily introduce PR is in the realms of fantasy.

Progressive Scottish Opinion : SNP support up on 2007 winning share

The latest poll for the upcoming Scottish Parliament election shows a picture somewhere in between the two extremes of Ipsos-Mori on the one hand, and YouGov and TNS-BMRB on the other. Labour have a lead, but of a more middling variety, while the SNP vote is actually well up on 2007. There is also no sign whatever of the modest advance for the Greens suggested by the last couple of polls. Here are the full figures -

Constituency vote :

Labour 43%
SNP 37%
Conservatives 11%
Liberal Democrats 5%
SSP 2%
Greens 1%

Regional list vote :

Labour 44%
SNP 37%
Conservatives 11%
Liberal Democrats 4%
Greens 2%
SSP 1%

Once again, I'd suggest it's worth looking at the combined vote for the SNP and the Tories. For the avoidance of doubt (I'm looking at you, Mr. Labour wind-up merchant "Braveheart"), that is not because a coalition between the two parties is remotely likely or desirable, but because both parties will probably be vigorously opposed to any Labour-led administration for their own separate reasons. In this instance, the combined figure stands at a whopping 48% on both ballots - exactly the same as for Labour + Lib Dem.

However, the huge health warning here is that Progressive Scottish Opinion's track record is...well, rubbish. Their weekly polls in the 2007 race were as mad as a bucket of frogs, and the fact that they're quoting constituency vote figures in this poll for the Greens who (as far as I'm aware) are only standing on the list doesn't exactly inspire huge confidence.

TNS-BMRB : Labour list vote lead trimmed

Evidently while I was busy noticing that I'd been very slow on the uptake about the last Angus Reid poll, I was being equally slow on the uptake about today's full-scale Holyrood poll in the Herald -

Constituency vote :

Labour 44% (-5)
SNP 29% (-4)
Conservatives 12% (+3)
Liberal Democrats 11% (+4)

Regional list vote :

Labour 39% (-8)
SNP 29% (-4)
Conservatives 11% (+2)
Liberal Democrats 10% (+3)
Greens 6% (+3)
Others 5% (+3)

UPDATE : The ever-delightful Labour wind-up merchant "Braveheart" (ahem) popped along earlier to helpfully point out that I had the SNP's percentage share of the list vote wrong - it should have been 29%, not 33%. I've updated the figures above, and changed the headline to reflect the rather smaller cut of the Labour lead than the one I thought we were dealing with. However, I haven't updated the following text, so it should be read with the changed figure in mind...

It goes without saying that the constituency figures make for sobering reading, but a dramatic reduction of the Labour lead on the list vote (which in theory ought to be the more important of the two) offers some grounds for encouragement at this stage, with the proper campaign period - during which the SNP will have the considerable advantage of the most popular party leader - still to come.

As I've suggested before, the most important figure in this election could well turn out to be the combined support for the SNP and Tories - because even though those two parties are highly unlikely to enter into coalition with each other, they are also both unlikely to enter into a deal with Labour. Anything close to a combined SNP/Tory majority would therefore call into question the viability of a minority government led by Iain "the Snarl" Gray. On the constituency vote in this poll, SNP + Tory support comes to 41%, and on the list vote it comes to 44%.

Overall, these figures at least seem somewhat more plausible than the completely unrealistic Labour ratings that TNS-BMRB reported last time round - you don't need to be an expert in polling methodology to know that Labour were never going to receive 47% of the vote on the list. Indeed, even 39% still seems rather improbable given that Donald Dewar only managed 35%.

Last but not least, if James MacKenzie is telling us the truth when he says that the Greens are merely prudently keeping their options open about a coalition with Labour, he might want to urgently have a word with the Herald about it. They seem to see things in a rather different light -

"Despite likely Green support for a coalition..."

The way things are going, the "vote Green, get Gray" meme could soon be picking up a head of steam.

Angus Reid/Vision Critical subsample : SNP on 33% for Westminster

I must be slipping - it took an SNP press release to alert me to the latest Angus Reid/Vision Critical poll! I think I may have missed last month's as well. Here are the full figures from the Scottish subsample -

Labour 41% (-)
SNP 33% (-3)
Conservatives 13% (+3)
Liberal Democrats 6% (-2)
Others 7% (+1)

As I've mentioned a few times before, Angus Reid subsamples seem to be in a different category from those of other pollsters because the numbers are far more stable over time, suggesting they have been weighted. Whether they have been weighted accurately is of course the million dollar question - but on the face of it, these figures are far more encouraging for the Nationalists than the recent YouGov poll, because they relate solely to Westminster voting intention, and the SNP always score higher in Holyrood polls.

Which was less likely - Governor George W Bush of Texas granting clemency to a death row prisoner in 1999, or the unionist parties giving the people a say on their constitutional future in 2007 or 2010?

You have to hand it to the more mindless critics of the SNP and Plaid Cymru - if nothing else, they have their tedious little repertoire well-drilled. I popped over to Political Betting yesterday afternoon simply to express the unwelcome view that the Welsh referendum result was a "fantastic day for Wales", and yet another four-hour marathon ensued. First of all I was asked if I was even being serious - surely my comment could only be intended as sarcasm? No, I explained, it was indeed a fantastic day for Wales, as it was hard to think of a single good reason why the Welsh people weren't capable of running their own affairs on exactly the same basis as people in Scotland or Northern Ireland. Aha, came the predictable retort, it was absolutely fine if those countries governed themselves, just so long as they paid for it themselves. "As an English taxpayer," one commenter added, "I'm sick of subsidising the Scots". I told him in that case he should rejoice - because he doesn't. I pointed him in the direction of Professor Andrew Hughes Hallet's analysis -

"“The usual perception is that Scotland spends about 20% on public services more per head than the UK average...

“Those numbers are very misleading mainly because the spending in that part is what’s spent on behalf of Scotland but not necessarily in Scotland.

“The estimate for Scotland’s share, that’s contributions to defence, is 2.8 billion but it’s roughly 2.0 billion are actually paid out in Scotland

“So there’s an implicit subsidy going south in that sense and you can think of lots of other examples ...”

Hughes Hallett added:
“At the moment, on the current account, there’s a subsidy going to London, which is helping London.

“When you get down to it, on the current account for the last five years at least, maybe longer, Scotland has had a current account surplus, which is currently according to the national accounts in Scotland £1.3 billion.”

Asked whether Scotland would definitely be better off, Prof Hallett replied: “You can definitely say that it [Scotland] would be better off in terms of the revenue.”

Prof Hughes Hallett pointed to ‘missing’ income that is generated in Scotland but is actually attributed to London, giving the Crown Estate as an example saying: “The Crown agents who take fees for electricity generation and give it to the Treasury...”

Professor Hughes Hallett also destroyed one of the myths surrounding the bail out of HBOS and RBS claiming that their dealings in England would have meant that England would have shouldered a significant part of their liabilities."

Well, naturally the Nat-bashing hordes weren't best pleased about having one of their most cherished articles of faith totally demolished by a renowned economist, so after a series of fairly pathetic attempts to dismiss Hughes Hallett as a "no-name economist from a second-rate US university", we then moved on to the next phase of the standard repertoire - random (and rather desperate) muck-flinging. Yep, you've guessed it, it was the familiar heady blend of wild and long-since-disproved assertions that the SNP 'did a deal' over freeing Megrahi, and suggestions that they had bottled it on the independence referendum (or "acted dishonourably", as one commenter sniffed airily) by not bothering to spend an afternoon going through the motions of putting something to the vote in the Scottish Parliament that everyone knew was going to be defeated by 78 votes to 50, because the three unionist parties were hell-bent on voting it down.

It really is quite comical. If the SNP had taken the opposite course, we all know what the mantra would be by now - Alex Salmond would have "wasted parliamentary time and money on something no-one gives two hoots about" (the last bit is © Tavish "Two Hoots" Scott). As it is, they synthetically claim to be outraged that the SNP "weren't even trying to deliver independence". What are the SNP for, they plaintively cry.

That line of argument is, I'd suggest, the rough equivalent of claiming that a death row prisoner in Texas in 1999 wasn't really "trying to stay alive" because he dispensed with that all-important last-minute plea for clemency to Governor George W Bush.

An exotic variant on the traditional line came from PB's deputy editor David Herdson, who insisted that the SNP had 'squandered their golden chance' to call a referendum immediately after being elected in 2007. If they had tabled a parliamentary vote at that stage, he earnestly claimed, they would have got it through on the basis that the opposition parties would have recognised that the SNP had "won the election" and thus had the moral right to do it.

I believe the phrase "aye, right" was invented for moments like this...

An election that might tell us a little something

At the start of the year, I noted that the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election was a contest that told us almost nothing about the parties' prospects for Holyrood, partly because the circumstances were so unusual, but mainly because Scotland has of late seemed totally cut adrift from UK-wide trends as relating to Labour and the Tories. However, the Lib Dems might just be a different matter, and their utter humiliation in Barnsley Central this evening offers further reason to suspect that their Westminster alliance with the Tories stands to cost them a number of Scottish Parliament seats in May.

As I've noted before, a poor performance for the Lib Dems is ultimately bad news for Labour. Not only might it harm Iain "the Snarl" Gray's chances of becoming First Minister, it also reduces the likelihood of any government he leads being stable. If he finds himself forced by the arithmetic to look beyond the Lib Dem (and possibly Galloway one-man-band) ranks, his options for reliable allies over the four - or five? - years ahead will be distinctly limited.

UPDATE : Stuart Dickson alerted me to this little gem. Note the commendable dedication to accuracy in the visual representation of a general election result in Barnsley Central that had Labour on 47.3% of the vote, and the Lib Dems on 17.3%. Note also the refreshingly open acknowledgement that there was a virtual dead heat for second place, with the Tories just six votes behind the Lib Dems. Those of us who support lesser parties can but feel humbled in the face of yet another example of the Lib Dems' legendary honesty and moral rectitude.

Which begs only one question - do they have a bar-chart template for elections in which they're starting from sixth place? I'm sure they must have all eventualities covered...

A few more thoughts on that YouGov poll

I've just been having a belated look at the details of the controversial YouGov poll from the weekend, and there's no great mystery about the two factors that led to a double-digit SNP lead on the raw data being transformed into a handsome Labour lead in the headline figures. The original sample already included more Labour identifiers than SNP identifiers - but the difference was just two (291 Labour to 289 SNP). That was reweighted to become a whopping 478 to 201 advantage for Labour. And on newspaper readership, another crucial aspect of YouGov's methodology, the weighting of the 94 Record/Mirror readers in the actual sample was almost tripled so that they became 251 'virtual' people - who were disproportionately likely to vote Labour, naturally.

In one sense, these figures reinforce the obvious need for weighting - it seems highly likely that Labour do have a greater advantage over the SNP in terms of party identification than the trivial one suggested by the original sample, and it's clear enough that tabloid readers were underrepresented relative to readers of quality papers. But the real issue is where the target figures for the weightings come from, and whether they have any objective basis. YouGov have form on this - after being subjected to persistent criticism in the run-up to last year's Westminster election, they suddenly conceded that their previous methodology had been failing to take account of changes in party ID in Scotland following the SNP's victory in 2007, and that the Nationalists would be "weighted up" by about 2% in subsequent polls. Encouraging though it was to see their willingness to accept an error, it was hard to escape the impression that both the old and the new weightings had to some extent been plucked out of the air on the basis of what 'looks right'. I'd suggest the next lesson they need to learn is that a one-dimensional party ID model simply isn't appropriate for a country with such an entrenched pattern of diverging party preferences for devolved and Westminster elections. If weighting by party allegiance is considered essential due to the difficulties thrown up by YouGov's panel method, a better bet might be to look at how people actually voted in the previous election for the relevant institution, with adjustments to take account of the 'spiral of silence' problem and false recall.

Regardless of what you think of the massive inbuilt 'head-start' awarded to Labour in YouGov polls for Holyrood, one other observation ought to be relatively uncontroversial - the greater the need to reweight certain portions of the sample, the more unreliable the poll results become, even if the weighting system is well-founded. For example, because barely a third of the target number of Record/Mirror readers were interviewed, there's a greater statistical chance that the voting preferences they reported will be unrepresentative of that section of the population, and of course any such distortion will be magnified when the figures are scaled up. The need for such extreme weighting is an inescapable weakness of YouGov's panel method - and yes, James MacKenzie, that remains a valid point no matter how many times the SNP have commissioned YouGov polls in the past.

My own gut feeling - and I said this at Political Betting even after the Ipsos-Mori poll showing the SNP ahead - is that Labour probably do have some kind of lead at the moment, but that the mammoth advantage suggested by the TNS-BMRB poll at the start of the year seemed highly implausible. The same applies to Labour's lead on the list in this poll. Either way, what we all need to urgently remind ourselves of is that this is a PR election, and that the First Minister will be chosen by a vote of all members of the Scottish Parliament, not by a plurality of one party over another in terms of the popular vote or seats. In many ways the most important figure is the combined support for the SNP and Conservatives - not because those two parties are remotely likely to agree a coalition deal, but because the Conservatives are overwhelmingly unlikely to enter into coalition (or indeed any sort of formal deal) with Labour. Even if we assume this poll is accurate, Labour and the Lib Dems in combination have a lead of just 2% on the constituency vote over the SNP and Tories in combination, and 6% on the list. That may put the state of play in somewhat better perspective.

Green on the constitution?

I had a slightly irritable exchange with James MacKenzie at Better Nation yesterday, both on the queries that have been raised about the new YouGov poll commissioned by his party, and on the possibility that they (the Greens) might enter a coalition with Labour should the latter emerge as the largest party in May. It has to be said that James simply didn't have a defence of the poll's methodology on its own merits, although to be fair other commenters did have a go later on. On the coalition front, the impression I got was that James was trying to present his party as roughly equidistant between Labour and the SNP - while he concedes they are closer to the Nationalists on justice policy, nuclear power and the constitution, he claims they are somewhat closer to Labour on public transport and carbon emission targets. He pointed out (and I accept) that they entered into coalition negotiations with the SNP in good faith four years ago, but that they had subsequently gone on to oppose the government vigorously on the basis that it had turned out to be "a business-as-usual administration on poverty, the economy and the environment".

I'd naturally refute the latter point, but it does raise an interesting issue in relation to any future deal with Labour. James has previously proved very touchy whenever it's been suggested to him that the Greens' support for an independence referendum and/or enhanced powers for Holyrood has been quietly dropped, or isn't much of a priority for them. He even memorably worked himself into a state of apoplexy over the synthetic controversy of the 'lapsed tax powers', asking where the equivalent anger from Nationalist bloggers was - the implication seemed to be that the Greens are now the "true believers" in Scottish self-government. Well, let's see the evidence for that. If coalition with Labour becomes a possibility, will the Greens prioritise constitutional progress in the negotiations? I'd suggest the fairly obvious answer is - no, they will not.

The dogs on the street know what an Iain "the Snarl" Gray-led government will look like on the constitution - it will be, to coin a phrase, a "business-as-usual administration". So whatever (probably minor) concessions the Greens might secure on environmental policy, that's the sort of government they would be supporting. They are, of course, perfectly entitled to put constitutional progress for Scotland on the back-burner for five long years if they so wish, and in some ways it might be considered perfectly natural that a Green party would regard such matters as a relatively low priority. But if that is the case, let's have a bit of honesty about it, and at a minimum let's hear no more nonsense about how they are the true 'guardians of the flame'.

A silver lining from YouGov

After the excitement of the recent Ipsos-Mori poll, YouGov have provided a reality-check for the SNP, but certainly not an extinguishing of all hope that the calamity of an Iain "the Snarl" Gray premiership might yet be averted.  Here are the full figures -

Constituency vote :

Labour 41% (+1)
SNP 32% (-2)
Conservatives 15% (+1)
Liberal Democrats 8% (-)
Others 4% (-1)

List vote :

Labour 40% (+4)
SNP 26% (-5)
Conservatives 15% (-)
Liberal Democrats 7% (-1)
Greens 6% (-)
Others 5% (-)

The SNP have already raised an important technical objection to the poll, namely that the raw figures have been reweighted in accordance with party identification for Westminster elections, which certainly seems counter-intuitive given the traditional disparity between Westminster and Holyrood polls.  I've no idea how much credence to give to that complaint, but if it is true that the unadjusted figures showed a double-digit lead for the Nationalists, it's at least worth keeping an open mind on the point.  But there are a number of other crumbs of comfort for the SNP as well -

1) For a poll showing a significant Labour lead, the SNP are proving remarkably resilient on the constituency vote - just 1% down on their winning position from 2007.

2) The greater Labour lead on the list vote doesn't pass the 'smell test' somehow.  In all of the three Holyrood elections to date, the SNP have managed to retain more of their constituency votes on the list than Labour have, and it's hard to think of any particular reason why that pattern should be completely reversed now.

3) The dire showing for the Lib Dems continues to jeapordise Labour's chances of cobbling together a stable parliamentary majority, whether in coalition or a looser arrangement with Tavish Scott's party.  On the seat projections from this poll, the two parties would just about have a majority between them, but there's very little room for slippage from Labour's heady current standing.

4) Although Patrick Harvie seems to be touting the Greens as potential alternative partners for Labour, his party's level of support remains very much on the borderline between a breakthrough in terms of seats, or a 2007-style result.  In any case, if they couldn't find sufficient common ground with the SNP four years ago, it seems somewhat doubtful that they'd be able to suffer the 'born to rule' arrogance of Gray's mob for a full term.

It's also worth pointing out that the Ipsos-Mori poll arrived in the wake of Scottish issues (the budget and the Megrahi report) featuring very prominently in the news.  With the recent blanket coverage of the revolutions in the Middle East, the reverse is true this time round.  We'll have to wait until the formal campaign to get a proper sense of how the stark choice between Salmond and Gray plays with the public when placed before them on a nightly basis.

UPDATE :  Stuart Dickson has forwarded me this email he sent to YouGov's Peter Kellner and Anthony Wells, raising a further issue I hadn't previously spotted -

BPC disclosure rules - new YouGov/Scottish Green Party poll published in today's Sunday Herald

Hello Peter and Anthony,

I note that the detailed tables for this YouGov poll...have not appeared yet at the YouGov website. You have been very good lately, so I look forward to perusing the detailed tables as soon as possible (later today?).

It is unsatisfactory that the newspaper article ONLY reports the "certain to vote" VI figures: this is non-standard for YouGov polls, and I can only presume that it is designed to mislead. Please slap the Scottish Green Party / Sunday Herald on the hand.

COPY OF MY POST ON UK POLLING REPORT:

A new YouGov poll on behalf of the Scottish Green Party is published in today’s Sunday Herald.

Dire for the Lib Dems, but unclear whether it is good for Labour or the SNP. Prior to weighting being applied the SNP were 13 POINTS ahead!! After weighting was applied, the SNP were suddenly 9 POINTS behind !! Go figure.

But I am confused by one thing: why on earth are the SH only publishing the “certain to vote” figures ?!? YouGov polls are not normally reported in this fashion. Anthony, can you provide the normal headline figures, as they will appear when YouGov get round to publishing the full tables? Thanks in advance.

On one point YouGov can probably be absolved of blame - it's not unusual for them to wait until Monday to put the details of a Sunday poll on their website. However, if Stuart is right about their normal practice in relation to certainty to vote (they've changed their methodology so many times over the years I've lost track) the partial reporting of this poll in the Herald does seem a bit suspicious. Given that the Scottish Greens commissioned the poll, it's hard not to wonder whether the figures restricted to those certain to vote just happened to be more favourable for Patrick Harvie's party.

It seems my "apologism" goes on...

With utter predictability, Political Betting's resident US Republican cheerleader 'Stars and Stripes' popped up a couple of hours ago to triumphantly pounce on the story from a Swedish tabloid that the former Libyan justice minister (who has defected to the opposition) claims to have proof that Colonel Gaddafi ordered the Lockerbie bombing, and that Megrahi was guilty.  For the uninitiated, Stars and Stripes is one of the most consistently vicious and offensive commenters on PB, for all that he maintains a veneer of civilised discourse much of the time.  Here's his pearl of wisdom for this evening -

Now that we have the admission of the Libyan justice minister that Libya was indeed behind the Lockerbie bombing, and Megrahi indeed did it, will we still hear from PB’s Scottish government apologists who insisted Megrahi was just a poor stooge unjustly convicted by the West because we couldn’t get our hands on the real culprit?  Thought not.

So, naturally, I felt a response of some kind might just be in order...

Even for a man who’s been so spectacularly wrong so many times before, S&S, you’ve just surpassed yourself.  Wrong yet again.  As the weight of evidence stands at the moment, Megrahi’s conviction is unsafe, and indeed even simply on the balance of probability he’s likely to be innocent.  “Apologism” for the Scottish government doesn’t come into this, as they - wrongly, in my view - professed their faith in Megrahi’s guilt when they released him. 

Now, if this new claimed evidence is actually produced and stacks up, what will I say then?  Well, to coin a phrase - “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”   In your case, S&S, we already know the answer to that question from your reaction to the severe doubts raised over Megrahi’s conviction by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.  You stick your fingers firmly in your ears.

Incidentally, here’s the wry response to this ‘revelation’ from Professor Robert Black, one of the architects of the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands -

“[On this blog yesterday, the following was posted:]

“What’s the betting that, sometime in the next few weeks, the following happens:
 

1. In the burned out ruins of a Libyan government building, someone finds definitive documentary ‘proof’ that Libya and Megrahi were responsible for Lockerbie, and/or

2. A Libyan official reveals, ‘we did it’.

The official case is now so thin that only such concoctions can save it (although it’s also crossed my mind that a prisoner will come forward who says ‘Megrahi confessed to me’ – another hallmark of paper-thin cases).”"

Sure enough, my own first reaction was how eerily similar this was to the forged “Galloway documents” that conveniently turned up in Baghdad within days of the fall of Saddam’s regime.  But unlike you, S&S, I’ll be waiting to see if this proof actually stacks up before reaching a definitive judgement.  Facts may be dull things, but in the long run they’re so much more reliable than gut certainties.

It is of course true that there have been instances over the years where, despite considerable doubts over the safety of a conviction, new evidence emerged that conclusively demonstrated the individual in question had been guilty all along.  A good example is James Hanratty, and I always thought it was a matter of regret that the legendary campaigner Paul Foot couldn't bring himself to concede he'd been wrong in that case - albeit wrong for the very best of reasons.  It certainly wouldn't have detracted from the many, many cases he'd been proved right about, most notably that of the men jailed for the murder of Carl Bridgewater.  But the idea that a vague assertion from a man who has every motivation to urgently burnish his anti-Gaddafi credentials means that all the doubts about Megrahi's conviction have been instantly and comprehensively magicked away is utterly risible.  Here is a telling quote from a Swedish Middle East expert, highlighted by a commenter at Robert Black's blog -

"At the same, considering Al Jeleil just left the regime, there may be a credibility issue. It could be that these sorts of leaks from former members of the regimes are more about distancing themselves from Gadaffi as than revealing the truth."

SNP storm back into the lead with Ipsos-Mori

Hot on the heels of Brian Souter's potentially game-changing donation to the SNP, tonight brings word of the Nationalists' best opinion poll showing since...well, it must be quite a while ago as I can't remember exactly when! Here are the full figures (or 'full' for the four largest parties) -

Constituency vote :

SNP 37% (+6)
Labour 36% (-5)
Conservatives 13% (-)
Liberal Democrats 10% (-1)

Regional list vote :

SNP 35% (+3)
Labour 33% (-3)
Conservatives 13% (+1)
Liberal Democrats 10% (+1)

Note : I'm not quite sure whether I've got the Tories and the Lib Dems the right way round on the list vote, as I've seen contradictory information (and of course I don't pay my Murdoch levy).

As ever, there is a health warning - there's always the danger that one poll in isolation might be a rogue, and in any case Ipsos-Mori seemed to overstate the SNP in the run-up to last year's general election. But as with the Souter donation, the real value of this poll could be its impact on the media narrative. Nick Pearce's complacent suggestion earlier today that the result of the election was bound to be a minority Labour administration or a Lib-Lab coalition unless Alex Salmond could produce "something dramatic out of the hat" is a fine example of the narrative that's just (for the time being, at any rate) been completely blown away.

Souter's donation is no dilemma

Brian Souter posed me a dilemma just over a decade ago. I normally believe in exercising the right to vote at every possible opportunity I get, so it was difficult to resist the temptation to take part in something as unique as a privately-organised nationwide referendum. However, the opponents of Section 28 were adamant that the best way of defeating Souter's agenda was to abstain, so I heeded that advice and stuffed the ballot forms in a dusty drawer, where they probably still reside (albeit hopefully accompanied by a different generation of dust). In fact, my only regret is that it didn't occur to me to do what apparently quite a few other people did, which was to simply return the envelope without a ballot paper inside, ie. to needlessly cost Souter the postage.

So, to put it mildly, I wasn't on the same page as the Stagecoach tycoon in relation to Section 28. But the problem for those who criticise the SNP's decision to accept his latest large donation is that it's not remotely clear how that issue is actually relevant. Has the cause of equality for gay people taken a backward step as a result of a Souter-funded SNP winning power four years ago? I'd suggest the answer is fairly obviously no, so any 'fears' about what the repercussions might be this time seem very synthetic.

Meanwhile, the best thing about the donation is the way it's completely transformed the media narrative about the election. Whether that's temporary or long-lasting remains to be seen, but the powerful message many newspaper readers will have received this weekend is that the SNP are very much back in the game.

What do the Mail and Staines do when caught lying? Repeat the lie, naturally.

They're at it again. After last weekend's bungled attempt to convince us that a "smoking gun" had turned up that proved the SNP were willing to free Megrahi in exchange for concessions from London, the Mail and their increasingly ludicrous cheerleader Paul Staines have brazenly repeated that lie and tried to back it up with 'something Jack Straw has told them'. Mysteriously, though, it's a full nine paragraphs into the Mail piece before a direct quote from Straw appears, so it's rather a long time before we get to find out whether the claims that -

"Mr Straw said that Mr Salmond and Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill both told him personally that they would be prepared to let Abdelbaset Al Megrahi go home to Libya in return for political concessions from Westminster"

- have any basis whatsoever. And do they? I'll give you three guesses. Here is what Straw actually says...

"What he's forgotten is that when I went to him in late 2007, asking him [Salmond] to agree to a PTA that would not exclude Megrahi, he indicated that he could be more accommodating if I could offer him two concessions"

So, whether we believe Straw or not (and Kevin Pringle on behalf of the Scottish government hotly refutes the allegation), he is talking once again about the narrow issue of whether the SNP government would consider dropping their public opposition to a PTA with Libya that didn't specifically exclude Megrahi, and not about a proposed deal to release Megrahi - an outcome which at that point London wasn't even seeking.

Put simply, the Mail are lying, and they know they are. If it wasn't unthinkable for a government to do this, it's getting to the point where the SNP would be well within their rights to ponder legal action.

Too many eggs in one basket?

I didn't see tonight's edition of Newsnight Scotland, but if this article on the BBC website gives an accurate sense of what Alex Salmond said, I must say it strikes me as another troubling example of the SNP putting, if not all their eggs in one basket, then certainly a few too many of them. There's simply no need to act as if only the party that wins the most seats in May has the automatic right to rule. And contrary to the mythology that's grown up about the last election, the SNP didn't actually go down that road in 2007 - at least, not until it was clear that they had one more seat than Labour. Remember Salmond's speech at the Gordon declaration? Reading between the lines, he seemed at that point to be working on the assumption that not only would Labour emerge as the largest party in terms of seats, but would perhaps even sneak the popular vote on the constituency ballot as well. And yet he was still confidently pressing the case for an SNP-led progressive alliance. It was a PR election, after all.

Of course, the primary aim has to be a clear-cut win, but if the SNP were to fall, say, just one or two seats short of Labour's tally, wouldn't it be somewhat frustrating if they had tied themselves up in knots with too many pre-election pronouncements about what constitutes victory and defeat? It may seem improbable that "Two Hoots Tavish" would negotiate seriously with the SNP in that scenario, but as we learnt last May, all sorts of funny and unexpected things can happen in the aftermath of a tight election. Let's give them the maximum opportunity to happen in Scotland's best interests.

Richard Baker : "And we did not seek their view either..."

Many years ago, I became reasonably well-read on the scientific research into the human form of mad cow disease. I've probably forgotten about 80% of what I learned, but at the time I was knowledgeable enough that when a news story cropped up on the subject, I was able to meaningfully judge for myself whether it stacked up, and if so what the true significance was. As a result I was genuinely shocked to discover just how often journalists in the quality press and television news - ie. the ones you trust, not tabloid hacks who you fully expect to lie and distort at every turn - make sloppy factual errors, or exaggerate wildly for sensationalist effect. The angle on any given day would always be one of two extremes - the BSE scare was over, or else it was "much worse than previously thought". Either the best-case or worst-case scenario of what the science was saying would be selectively reported to suit the occasion. Nuance was never an option, even when that was precisely what the facts demanded - which they invariably did.

So it really is quite a jolt when you first get to the point of knowing enough about a subject to realise just how amateurish journalists can be, but it's happened to me a number of times since then. Today was an absolutely textbook example. The only thing anyone can find to pin on the SNP government in the documents released on the Megrahi affair is the apparent belief in Whitehall in late 2007 that Kenny MacAskill was looking to do a deal on slopping-out compensation and the devolution of legislative powers on airguns. Alex Salmond has explained very convincingly the good reasons for taking that belief with a bucket-load of salt - if Jack Straw was going to win concessions from his colleagues, it suited his purpose to present the position as "MacAskill looking for a deal". But whether or not we believe that a deal was actually proposed, it's a relatively minor revelation, because it didn't relate to the release of Megrahi. By definition it couldn't have done, because the UK government didn't actually want Megrahi freed at that point - it wasn't until the following year that the policy changed, as a direct result of the diagnosis of the Libyan's illness. When it did, we learn from Gus O'Donnell that London Labour's rather startling strategy for "facilitating" Megrahi's freedom basically consisted of saying as little as possible to the SNP - for fear of "irritating" them! The fact that communicating any desire for compassionate release was seen as totally "counter-productive" tells its own story, and essentially kills the conspiracy theories of any SNP collusion with London in 2009 stone dead.

But have the gentlemen and ladies of the London press noticed any of this? With a few honourable exceptions, the answer is - don't be daft. Even the normally authoritative Channel 4 News baldly claimed at the start of tonight's show that the documents "also show a Scottish government trying to gain other advantages for sending him [Megrahi] back", in spite of the fact that the dates render that a logical impossibility. Upon seeing a near-identical example of journalistic sloppiness (or should that be consciously cavalier treatment of the facts in pursuit of a sensationalist story?) from Paul Waugh, I couldn't resist getting the following out of my system -

"Paul, for the love of God, even the most cursory look at the dates would tell you that conclusion is logic-bending gibberish. The alleged "footsie playing by the Scots" supposedly happened in 2007 - a whole year before O'Donnell claims the British government changed their policy and decided they wanted Megrahi released. How could the Scottish government have gained concessions by offering to do something the UK government didn't actually want at that point? Hint - they couldn't, and therefore, fairly obviously, they didn't.

The allegations of a proposed deal - which Alex Salmond has refuted strongly, and offered credible reasons for doubting - related solely to the possibility of the Scottish government dropping their public opposition to a PTA with Libya that didn't specifically exclude Megrahi. That would have been a relatively minor shift on their part - but it was, for the record, one they didn't make. This is pretty basic stuff, and all in the documents. Now forgive me for lapsing into cliché, but the fact that so many London-based correspondents seem incapable of comprehending what is there for them in black and white really does call the standard of journalism in this country into severe question."

But however frustrating the distortions of today have been, I'm in little doubt that the SNP have taken a stride forward as far as the "long game" is concerned. On all the salient points, the documents bear out what they've been saying all along, and have left Labour - especially Scottish Labour - looking like rank hypocrites. The latter now have very little option but to stick to the absurd line that "if Iain Gray had been First Minister, Megrahi would still be behind bars", but there can't be a single person in Scotland who seriously believes that anymore. Whether Gray's personal stance in 2009 was sincere or not (and I have my doubts), the only premiership of his in which Megrahi wouldn't have been returned to Libya is a purely theoretical one in which he paid no attention whatever to the wishes of his colleagues in London. Everyone knows that could never have happened, because he's Labour, and the first loyalty of Labour First Ministers is always to the UK party leader - not to his or her own values, let alone to the people of Scotland.

Thankfully, one news source we can absolve of the charge of sloppiness tonight is Newsnight Scotland, which zoned straight in on the key question - when Scottish Labour were sanctimoniously denouncing the decision to release Megrahi, had they already been told that their London masters wanted him freed? Richard Baker's answer when pressed on that point spoke volumes -

"And we did not seek their view either."

Note the omission of the obvious word "no" at the start of that sentence. That makes it a non-denial denial, something which generally isn't issued by a politician without very, very good reason.

On Planet Staines, John McTernan going off on one about the SNP constitutes a "smoking gun"

Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes, has triumphantly produced an email written by John McTernan (Labour media tart and recreational Nat-basher, but at that point special adviser to the Scottish Secretary), claiming that it is the long-awaited "smoking gun" that the SNP did a deal to release Megrahi. The story also appears in the Mail on Sunday, whose headline hysterically screams "Scottish Ministers offered to free Lockerbie bomber in secret deal to end 'slop bucket' payments to prisoners". Now, I'd gently suggest to Staines that it might have been an idea to keep the email to himself, because although his near orgasmic excitement is clearly blinding him to this fact, the gap between what is contained in the actual text and the ludicrous claims that are being made on the basis of it is several light-years wide. Let's run through some of the problems thrown up by the rather creative "interpretation" of this fragment of correspondence, shall we?

1) The Date. McTernan's email is dated 9th November 2007. Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds because he was dying - or, if you're Paul Staines, that was the "pretext" for releasing him. So if a deal was being done to facilitate that process, you'd think it might just have happened after Megrahi's illness had actually been diagnosed, which didn't occur until well into 2008. If we're instead expected to believe that the SNP were preparing the ground to release him on an entirely different basis (presumably prisoner transfer, which wouldn't strictly speaking have been a "release" at all) then they had an awfully funny way of going about it. At that point they were volubly demanding that Megrahi be excluded from the Prisoner Transfer Agreement altogether, which would have ruled out even the theoretical possibility of his release from a Scottish jail unless his conviction had been quashed. Even purely from a PR point of view, it seems somewhat implausible that they were contemplating moving from that highly popular public position of principled and total opposition to one of "actually, guys, on second thoughts we might as well release him, because we've got some concessions on airguns and slopping out".

2) What was the "deal" actually supposed to be about? From the way the Mail and Staines report the story, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the email spells out that the alleged deal concerned the release of Megrahi. It does no such thing. Indeed, the only clue about what McTernan was getting at points overwhelmingly to the completely opposite conclusion -

"Jack should be aware that MacAskill may well want to portray this as him negotiating with the UK government on an international treaty - though we know that putting a statement of fact into the PTA, to the effect that Scottish Ministers have final say on prisoners in Scottish jails, does not require final say from the Scottish Executive".

So the discussions seemed to be merely aimed at reaching a public agreement over toughening up the language of the PTA, not at reaching a deal over what the SNP would then go on to do if the PTA was enacted, ie. whether Megrahi would be released. The best evidence that it had nothing to do with the latter is that McTernan and the UK government seem to be rebuffing MacAskill's alleged suggestions on the grounds that they don't actually need his permission to conclude the PTA on any basis they see fit. But they certainly would have needed his cooperation (and far more than that) if the purpose of the discussion had been to actively secure Megrahi's release.

3) Second-hand information. It's quite clear from McTernan's own words that he hadn't been present at the "discussion with MacAskill" - he is simply relaying second-hand information based on what officials have told him. And even that information seems startlingly vague -

"but that he [MacAskill] indicated he wanted to do a 'deal'".

Why is the word "deal" in inverted commas here? There could be many reasons, but my guess is that it was intended to convey that it was merely the officials' impression that a deal was being sought, and wasn't something that had actually been stated - that would be consistent with the very careful use of the word "indicated".

4) The name "John McTernan". To coin a phrase, we might wish for more reliable witnesses, especially when something as dramatic as a "smoking gun" is being claimed. Ideally, a document from a Scottish government source, but at the very least from a more sober Whitehall official. It may seem incredible that McTernan would bother with his trademark spinning against the SNP when corresponding privately with another Labour special adviser, but his final paragraph leaves little room for doubt that is exactly what he is doing -

"On Somerville, our law officer believes that Scottish Ministers are having a laugh. They could have ended slopping out by building private prisons but did not have the courage...they lost fair and square - the solution is for them not to screw up again in future."

So let's sum up what this "evidence" amounts to. Well, first and foremost it suggests that one of Labour's Nat-bashers liked to do a spot of Nat-bashing in his spare time. There's a shocker. It also suggests that this completely objective source of information had claimed that his officials' perception was that MacAskill wanted a "deal" of some kind - but as he hadn't been in the room at the time, he was in no position to judge if that perception was remotely justified. Most importantly of all, we know nothing about what the alleged proposal of a "deal" related to, but what little evidence there is in the email points to it being something completely different to that claimed by the Mail and Staines - ie. nothing whatever to do with the release of Megrahi.

And we're supposed to be impressed by that little lot? Dream on, Paul.

The moving question

Interesting to read via Better Nation of the stooshie over the plan to move the production of Question Time from London to Glasgow - and could there be a more deliciously ironic choice of location given the notorious events of a few months ago? Of course this is merely about a - slightly - fairer geographical division of resources and jobs behind the scenes, and needn't automatically lead to any reversal of the Neanderthal on-screen presumption that the "UK agenda" is whatever looks important to people living in London. However, the departure of the programme's editor may be the first sign that this move has at least a chance of leading indirectly to positive change - ie. the sort of person who can actually bear to work in Glasgow (regardless of where in the UK they come from originally) may also be the sort of person more likely to recognise the legitimacy of broader perspectives. I won't be holding my breath, mind.

One thing that made me laugh in the Guardian news story that Jeff Breslin links to is this comment about The Review Show, which made a similar move to Glasgow not so long ago -

"It emerged last year many guests were being flown from London to Glasgow at huge cost to licence-fee payers."

Tell me, does no "expert" on the arts that might realistically appear on a show like that live anywhere other than London? Was nobody ever flown down from Scotland or the north of England at "huge cost to licence fee payers" during the programme's former life - or was the attitude that if people were silly enough to live several hundred miles away from the acknowledged centre of the universe, they were by definition ruling themselves out of any possibility of appearing on "national" television?

It's the eternal question : 'What Would Iain Do?'

Back at the height of the controversy over the release of the convicted (if unlikely to be the actual) Lockerbie bomber, Iain "the Snarl" Gray informed the Scottish Parliament that if he had been First Minister, Megrahi would still be behind bars. The only possible interpretation that could be put on those words is that Gray would have issued binding instructions to that effect to whoever had been his Justice Secretary - an utterly extraordinary admission, given that the legal position is that decisions on compassionate release must be taken by the Justice Secretary alone, and indeed on a quasi-judicial basis, free from political considerations.

All the same, given Gray's refreshing keenness to share with us how he would act in a variety of hypothetical scenarios, I wonder if he'd now care to tell us what he would have done if he'd been...oooh, I don't know, a junior Labour minister in the Foreign Office just after Megrahi's illness was diagnosed? Would Mr Gray have helpfully advised the Libyans on how to apply for compassionate release as the actual Labour junior Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell did at the time, or wouldn't he? Come on, Iain, you don't even have to - hypothetically - contravene the law in answering this one...

My response to Indy on prostitution

I've been having an exchange with Indy on a previous thread about the discriminatory Swedish law on prostitution, and as my latest reply was several light-years over the character limit, I though I might as well devote a fresh post to it! Indy had said -

"In Scotland both buying and selling sex is illegal as I understand it..."

Not so - in fact, the opposite of that statement is true. All sorts of things associated with prostitution are currently outlawed (kerb-crawling, overt advertising of sexual services, etc.) but the actual buying and selling of sex behind closed doors is perfectly legal. In fact, it's so legal, it's taxed. The Trish Godman proposal to import the Swedish law would change that, criminalising only the buyer, while perversely leaving the seller with no responsibility whatever for what would by then be regarded as an illegitimate transaction, even when that person is acting completely independently.

"In the first place the Belle De Jour type of prostitute (if she really exists)..."

If by "Belle de Jour type of prostitute" you simply mean someone working through free choice and without coercion, yes of course they exist, and in considerable numbers. For example, see this open letter to Holyrood from one such person -

"My name is Laura and I am an independent escort. I am not pimped, coerced or working under duress in any way. I am not labouring under any addiction, nor am I the product of an abusive background. I have been a sex worker for some 16 years and it’s fair to say I love my job.

The first part of Trish Godman’s opening statement makes for interesting reading ;

“People who buy sex do so of their own free will, whereas the majority of prostitutes are unwilling participants in this exchange of cash for sex.”

Of what “majority” does she speak, exactly ? Over the years I have met women working at every level of the sex industry and in fact, it has been my experience that the vast majority of those women are happy in their work. Sure, there are days we dislike, the same as every other job, but the only women I have ever encountered who are truly unhappy are those who are drug addicted, or trapped through fear. This proposed legislative change does not take the above into account in any way, it seeks to prohibit the purchase of sex regardless of any circumstances."

Returning again to Indy's comment -

"she...is not likely to come to the attention of the police in the first place and if she does i.e. if a self-employed woman, not being coerced or constrained into acting as a prostitute, makes her living providing a sexual service for a particular group of clients e.g. disabled men then she could probably get herself classified as a sex therapist of some sort and thus be outside the application of the law."

Because she is presumably working behind closed doors and takes care over how she advertises her services, she already is outside the application of the law, and the introduction of the Swedish model would not change that. The question you instead need to address is why it is just or rational to criminalise her disabled clients (or indeed her other clients), but not her, when she is getting as much out of that consensual transaction as they are. Furthermore, your hint that prostitution might be acceptable as long as only "certain groups" are the purchasers opens up a whole new can of worms, and another area of inequality before the law if we were ever to go down that road.

"For practical purposes the laws on prostitution these days relate primarily to street prostitution and to the provision of prostitutes as part of organised criminal activity."

As I understand it, you're saying that's precisely as it should be. Why, then, do you want to introduce a law that would change that?

"After all it would serve no-one's interests to lock up even more drug addicts in our already overcrowded jails and everyone recognises that."

Would it serve anyone's interests to lock up (or more likely heavily fine) disabled clients of prostitutes? I can't find the link, but I seem to recall reading a study that suggested that as many as a third of the clients of sex workers are "the lonely and the sad", ie. not necessarily disabled, but very far removed from the one-dimensional charaterisation of clients we're supposed to be buying into. Trying to create a legal framework that casts all these people regardless of circumstance and motivation as "exploiters of women", and the people who freely choose to provide them with sex (many of whom are not even women) in exchange for often considerable financial reward as "victims of male violence against women" is plainly nonsensical, and worthy of the logical contortions seen in authoritarian states down the years, where whole swathes of law is/was rooted in dogmatic articles of faith, rather than the "seeking of truth from facts".

For the avoidance of doubt, I'll go back and emphasise the point "freely choose to provide". If the prostitute is not acting freely, of course the law should take punitive action against whoever is responsible for de facto slavery. But that's not what the Swedish approach is about.

"That's why it would be much more effective to focus on arresting and charging the clients."

I've already set out why I don't think that's true, and this article expands on that point much more comprehensively than I can, explaining why the much-trumpeted "success" of the Swedish model is a mirage born out of wishful thinking. But even if, for the sake of argument, your proposition was correct, I would still have considerable difficulty with the idea that "effectiveness" automatically trumps natural justice and equality before the law. After all, a law relating to street violence that solely criminalised males under the age of 25 (and allowed everyone else to act with impunity) might well be reasonably "effective" at tackling the problem, but I trust most people would accept that it would be grossly discriminatory, and contrary to our most fundamental values as a liberal democracy.