"Brazen, indefensible": The night ITV lost the trust of Scottish viewers forever

Two minutes in, and Johnson has already mentioned Sturgeon by name and attacked an SNP policy. How the hell can ITV justify locking Nicola Sturgeon out of the room on Johnson's demand, allowing him to attack her unchallenged? This is quite literally outrageous. #LeadersDebate

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 19, 2019

This is UNBELIEVABLE. ITV have selected a question about "the Union" in a debate from which they've banned the SNP. They're ENCOURAGING Johnson to attack the SNP unchallenged. They're not only shafting Scotland, they're trolling Scotland. #LeadersDebate

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 19, 2019

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Click here for a handy list of SNP election crowdfunders.

Don't forget, folks, it's Scotland v Kazakhstan at 7.45 tonight...

...and the half-time analysis looks set to be particularly gripping.

What's incredible about this is not that Johnson says he'll "never debate Nicola Sturgeon". It's that the broadcasters react to that by saying "No worries, we'll just exclude her from the debates for you, then". Because that's LITERALLY what they've done.https://t.co/8jaoNcpBlI

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 19, 2019

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I have another two constituency previews in The National today - this time it's Paisley & Renfrewshire North and Paisley & Renfrewshire South.

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Click here for a handy list of SNP election crowdfunders.

UK "democracy" proved to be a sham as London court backs ITV bid to rig the general election

I'm not surprised that the SNP and Liberal Democrats have lost their challenge to ITV's rigged leaders' debate tomorrow night, but this is a dark day for what purports to be "British democracy", and make no mistake - this will distort the outcome of the election.  The only question remaining is how severe that impact will be.  I'm not sure the SNP's position will be dramatically worsened in relation to the Tories, because people thinking of voting Tory to "stop Indyref 2" are unlikely to be SNP-Tory floating voters anyway.  The much bigger danger to the SNP is in seats where Labour are their main opponents.  Traditionally there has been considerable overlap between the SNP and Labour support, with a large number of voters open-minded about voting for either party.  If ITV succeed in presenting Jeremy Corbyn as the only alternative to a Tory government, Labour could start to come back from the dead in a number of Scottish constituencies, most obviously the six marginals they currently hold.

Subject to legal advice, I hope the SNP are at least still considering their options about challenging the BBC and Sky debates.  On the face of it, they ought to have a better case against Sky, who are planning to exclude the third-largest party but include the fourth-largest party.  But as far as ITV are concerned, we'll just have to get our prayer mats out and hope that this shameful attempt to stitch up the general election has a relatively limited effect.

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Click here for a handy list of SNP election crowdfunders.

Lib Dem ransom demand may ensure the SNP take the BBC to court

The Liberal Democrats have become noticeably less frosty today about the SNP joining them in challenging ITV's rigged leaders' debate in court.  It's unlikely that they're being friendlier out of the sheer kindness of their hearts, so I can think of two possible explanations: a) their lawyers have told them there's a better chance of success if the case doesn't seem to be motivated by narrow self-interest, or b) their double-standards in saying that the SNP should be excluded has led to negative responses in focus groups or internal polling.

The courts tend to be conservative with a small 'c', so I think we have to presume that the balance of probability is that today's challenge will fail.  But let's suppose for the purposes of speculation that the court thinks the arguments on each side are finely-balanced.  If so, it could be that we've been very unlucky that the ITV format has had to be challenged first, because it seems to me that ITV's defence of what they're doing is slightly less weak than the BBC's or Sky's.  They've got an interview-based programme scheduled for after the debate on Tuesday night, featuring leaders of the excluded parties but not Labour or the Tories.  That was clearly a wheeze dreamed up with the specific aim of making the debate court-proof, and it might just work.  But as far as I'm aware, the BBC and Sky have no such programme planned, so even if the ITV debate is upheld, it's still possible that the BBC and Sky debates might be shown the red card if the SNP launch further legal challenges later on.  Would they, though?  Or would they be demoralised by a first defeat and think there is little point in taking the matter further?

What might tip the balance in favour of them fighting to the end is an extraordinary letter the Liberal Democrats have sent to the BBC, which almost reads like a ransom demand -

"In light of all of the above you are now required to confirm, by 5pm on Wednesday November 20, 2019, that Jo Swinson will be invited to take part in any ‘leaders’ debate’ to be broadcast by BBC during the current General Election campaign."

If the Lib Dems are determined to take the BBC to court, come what may, I would guess the SNP will feel they have to be there as well to protect their own interests.  Because the one thing that would be even worse than a two-way debate excluding the SNP is a three-way debate excluding the SNP.

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I have another couple of constituency previews in today's edition of The National - this time it's Edinburgh East and Argyll & Bute.

ITV dig their own grave even deeper with a comically Anglocentric justification for their rigged leaders' debate

A few hours ago, a reader of this blog alerted me to the standard reply ITV have been sending out in response to the avalanche of complaints they've been receiving about their proposal for a rigged leaders' debate featuring only two of the parties in this multi-party democracy.  Pretty much everything in the reply seems calculated as a legalistic justification that they hope will prevent Ofcom and the courts ruling against them.  By far the weakest point they make is that the two parties represented in the debate are the only parties that have supplied Prime Ministers since the Second World War.  Frankly, I'm not sure the result of the 1951 general election should be considered terribly relevant in determining the line-up for a leaders' debate in 2019.

But this is the bit that really caught my eye -

"the two parties that were by far and away the two largest in the last Parliament...Parliament's official website gives the current state of parliamentary representation as; Conservatives 298, Labour 243, Liberal Democrats 20 (SNP 35)"

On what planet do you try to justify the exclusion of the third-largest party by reference to seat numbers, and then present those numbers in a format that implies that the fourth-largest party's 20 seats are somehow more important than the third-largest party's 35?  I mean, just how seriously can we take ITV's commitment to the cold hard logic of arithmetic if they think 20 is a bigger number than 35 when it suits them?  "Oh, those are only Jock seats, they don't really count!  Just put them in brackets as an afterthought."  If our country's future wasn't at stake, this would be hysterically funny - the broadcasters are so hopelessly caught in their Anglocentric trance that they honestly can't see how ridiculous they're making themselves look.

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Actually, there's been precious little comedy value in this election campaign so far, so thank heavens for Ian Smart's latest intervention.  He's written a characteristically barking mad blogpost about Scottish Tory election chances that has somehow managed to receive no fewer than two glowing media endorsements - one from Katy Balls in the Spectator, and the other from Henry Hill in ConHome.  Ian is of course chiefly known for a couple of things - a) being temporarily suspended from Labour for using racist language on social media, and b) his long-running and bats**t crazy conspiracy theory about Kezia Dugdale being planted inside the Scottish Labour party by the SNP as a long-term sleeper agent.  Normally conspiracy theorists who use racist language find themselves cast out to the margins of society, but for some reason nothing that Ian says or does ever seems to tarnish the media's faith in him as a credible pundit and insightful thinker.

Basically what he's saying this time is that the conventional wisdom about the election in Scotland is wrong, and that the Tories will gain seats from the SNP, rather than the other way around.  Now, actually, I wouldn't dismiss that idea out of hand.  If the rigged TV leaders' debates go ahead as planned, the SNP will not be fighting the Tories on a level-playing field, and it's therefore not impossible that the current state of play could be turned on its head over the next few weeks.  The equation is really pretty simple - the SNP had a national lead over the Tories of eight percentage points on polling day in 2017, and so if the Tories can turn things around sufficiently to leave themselves less then eight points behind, they're likely to gain seats rather than lose them.

But that isn't really the point that Ian is making - he thinks the polls are wrong and that the SNP were never in a position to make gains in the first place.  His reasoning, if we can call it that, is based on a string of factual inaccuracies and magical thinking.  First of all he claims that the Brexit Party's voters should really be considered Tory voters, because the Brexit Party won't be standing in "most places".  Surely he can't have slept through Nigel Farage's announcement that candidates will he put up across the board?

Then he suggests that the only four seats that the Tories stand to lose once the Brexit Party's votes are reallocated will mostly be rescued due to unionist tactical voting.  In spite of the wide-scale tactical voting last time around, Ian still thinks unionist voters were "confused" in those seats about which party was best placed to beat the SNP, but that they won't be this time.  Which means, for example, that he's saying the resurgent Liberal Democrats will somehow lose even more votes in their former heartland seat of Gordon, in spite of the fact that they only took 11.6% of the vote in 2017 - a massive 21.1% drop on two years earlier.  As Sir Humphrey Appleby might have put it, that's a rather courageous prediction.

But Ian doesn't end there - he adds that, because the SNP are facing a Tory challenge in five of their own marginal seats where the majority is less than the Tory majority in Gordon, he can "see no reason" why the Tories won't gain most of those seats.  Well, OK, but can he see any particular reason why they will gain them?  If he can, he's not bothering to share it with us.  If tactical voting is his magic bullet once again, I have to tell him that if I was a budding unionist tactical voter in Lanark & Hamilton East, I wouldn't have a clue whether to plump for Labour or the Tories.  That constituency is an incredibly tight three-way marginal with just 0.7% separating the SNP in first place from Labour in third.  Yes, OK, technically the Tories are starting from second, but polls suggest the Tory vote will drop back, and it's Labour who have all the tradition in the seat.  Good luck sorting that one out.

Ian does have some good news for us - he fancies the SNP's chances of holding off the Lib Dems in Ross, Cromarty and Skye.  Just one snag - there is no such constituency, and there hasn't been since 1997.

Sky News makes brazen attempt to rig the general election by inviting the fourth-largest Commons party to a three-way leaders' debate, but not the third-largest

I pointed out the other day that just about the only thing that might be more outrageous than ITV's decision to hold a two-party election debate in a multi-party democracy would be for Jo Swinson to get her preferred outcome and for there to be a three-way debate in which the fourth-largest Commons party is included and the third-largest is excluded.  But Sky News have proved up to that task - they've brazenly invited the leader of a party with 20 MPs (Swinson) and not invited the leader of a party with 35 MPs (Sturgeon).  Like ITV's decision, this is an entirely arbitrary selection based on the broadcaster's own preferences and not on objective criteria.  It most certainly is not justified by precedent, because Nicola Sturgeon was invited to every leaders' debate in 2015, even though the SNP went into that election as only the fifth largest Commons party and the Lib Dems went in as the third-largest.  (And the SNP were not obviously doing better in the opinion polls in 2015 than they are now, so that's no excuse either.)

The broadcasters are quite literally making up the rules as they go on, which is the sort of thing you'd expect to happen in Putin's Russia - and the likes of Andrew Neil would be quick to scream about it if it did.  My own view is that there should be a moratorium on leaders' debates until an independent body can come up with objective criteria for inclusion and exclusion that are applied consistently, not changed at a whim because broadcasters are prioritising "box office potential" over the integrity of the democratic process.

I also cannot understand why the SNP are being so passive at the moment.  I know they were bruised by a failed legal challenge to the three-way debates in 2010, but they have a much stronger case now as the third largest party, and you can't win a raffle if you don't buy a ticket.

UPDATE: I see Sky's carefully-worded justification for excluding the third-largest party is that they have invited "the three main UK-wide parties".  Guys, when you're in a hole, it's generally best to stop digging.  "UK-wide" is not a synonym for "based in London".  Neither Labour nor the Liberal Democrats are UK-wide parties because they don't put up candidates in Northern Ireland.  If you want a debate between UK-wide parties only, it'll be a Boris Johnson monologue.  (Although maybe I shouldn't put ideas in their heads, because they'd probably be tempted.)

Sky News are hellbent on undermining Scottish democracy - they must be challenged, and stopped

You may have seen today that SNP depute leader Keith Brown has written to Sky News chiding them for their apparent plan to exclude Nicola Sturgeon from the proposed TV debate on the Brexit deal.  Now, it's possible that Sky may argue that this is not a general election debate, we're not in a regulated general election period, and therefore all that is needed is the leading representative from the pro-deal side (Theresa May) and the leading representative from the anti-deal side (Jeremy Corbyn).  But that won't wash, for the simple reason that Sky News are right in the middle of a bizarre months-long crusade to exclude Scotland's leading party from future general election debates as well, so their plans for the Brexit debate are clearly fuelled by exactly the same Anglocentric mindset.

Not that they're being upfront about their desire to exclude the SNP, of course - they're simply badgering viewers to sign an innocuous-sounding petition to "make leaders' debates happen".  But the very few explanatory words at the top of the petition set out exactly what Sky's definition of a "debate" is, and it's nothing short of extraordinary.

"Genuine leaders' debates took place in 2010, but in the next two elections didn't happen."

What?  What?  What?  The "genuine debates" in 2010 excluded the SNP, Plaid Cymru, UKIP and the Greens.  Whereas in 2015 there was an immaculately inclusive debate on ITV that included the leaders of all of those parties, alongside the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats.  According to Sky that was not a "genuine debate".  Why?  Presumably because the Jocks and the Taffies were cluttering up the set and making it hard for viewers to concentrate on the "real choice" between the terribly important London-based parties, who are terribly important because they're based in London.

Make no mistake - Sky's agenda is to destroy Scotland's political distinctiveness and to impose a one-size-fits-all London model on the entire UK.  They must be stopped.

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Click here for the 2018 Scot Goes Pop fundraiser.

Jackanory Jim has fundilymundily reduced Miliband's wiggle-room

So Jim Murphy said it again on tonight's leaders' debate - Labour will vote against a Tory Queen's Speech under all circumstances.  It is almost impossible to square that with Ed Miliband's claim on Thursday that there are circumstances in which he would refrain from taking office in order to avoid working with the SNP.  I suppose technically there is nothing to prevent Labour from voting the Tories down and then declining to form a government themselves, but the direct outcome of that would be a second election within weeks (by July at the latest).  They would be absolutely crucified for acting so irresponsibly, and we can safely assume it won't happen.  Essentially, either Murphy or Miliband is lying to us.  As ever in these situations, it's hard not to conclude that it must be Murphy.

If there's one thing that I find even more irritating than Jim Murphy's mannerisms, it's the grotesque spectacle of a Scottish Tory innocently claiming that her party must be opposed to proportional representation for principled reasons, because first-past-the-post is such a rotten system for them.  Oh yeah, so that's why you had absolute power in Scotland between 1979 and 1997, without ever having got more than 31% of the vote?  Hint : it's only a bad system for you if it doesn't work massively in your favour at UK-wide level.  I think it's probably fair to say that quite a few Scottish Tories would have undergone a Damascene conversion on the electoral system if Scotland had voted Yes last year.

It's also, of course, complete garbage for Ruth Davidson to claim that Scotland voted heavily against electoral reform in the 2011 referendum.  That's like claiming that a death row prisoner in America who is forced to choose the method of his own execution has made a decision not to live.  People certainly voted against AV for incredibly stupid reasons, and they probably didn't understand the system they were voting against, but there was still a widespread instinctive appreciation that the option being put before the country was nothing remotely like the Holy Grail that the Liberals and the SDP used to fight so passionately for.

By the way, is it just me, or has the unionist media given up to such an extent that they can't even be bothered trying to spin this debate as "another win for Jim Murphy"?

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It's possible that we may have at least one more full-scale Scottish poll to come before polling day - I was emailed within the last hour by someone who was polled by Panelbase this morning, and it seemed to be a Scottish poll.  If so, I would guess it can't have been commissioned by Panelbase's usual newspaper client, because obviously the Sunday Times wouldn't be able to publish until after the election.  So the client could be an alternative media outlet (such as Wings), or the SNP.  If the latter, we may only see the results if it's tactically advantageous to release them.

Miliband's suicidal "1979 moment" : he admits he'll let a Tory government take office to prevent Scotland having influence at Westminster

A few very quick observations on tonight's two leaders' specials -

1) Whoever is advising Ed Miliband on how to get back into the game in Scotland is giving him terrible advice.  You don't do it by openly blackmailing voters and telling them that you, as a Labour leader, will deliberately let a Tory government in unless they do what you want.  This is Scottish Labour's very own "1979 moment" - and if they don't backtrack very quickly, they may never recover from it.

2) David Cameron boasted - literally boasted - about "getting rid" of 20,000 administrators in the NHS.  However useless he thinks those jobs were, they were real jobs providing people with real livelihoods.  I thought it was supposed to be so unconscionable to get rid of jobs in any circumstances, and for any reason, that we simply have to keep inhuman weapons on the Clyde forever as a job protection scheme?

3) The "2017 scenario" which might lead to Scottish independence if Britain leaves the EU seems to have been firmly reignited tonight.  Cameron insisting that there will be no Tory-led government without an EU referendum, and Miliband effectively ruling out a Labour government if it requires SNP support, significantly increases the chances that the referendum will indeed happen.

4) Nick Clegg started rambling utter nonsense about how no-one was going to be Prime Minister next week, and then suddenly seemed to recall that there constitutionally has to be one.  He contrasted his approach to Cameron and Miliband by saying that the result the voters deliver has to be respected, and that everyone has to act responsibly within that framework.  But the reality is that he's been just as irresponsible as the others - by ruling out forming any government that is reliant in however informal a way on SNP support, he's effectively ensuring that there are a wide range of arithmetical scenarios in which it will be virtually impossible for a stable government to emerge.

5) Clegg said that he would downscale Trident from four submarines to three, because its purpose is no longer to "flatten Moscow at the press of button".  Er, Nick, I don't know how to break this to you, but if you no longer want to flatten cities at the press of a button and mass-murder millions of civilians, the correct number of submarines is not three, but zero.  That's what nuclear missiles do, you see.  They're quite limited in their application - you can't use them to tickle people's feet.

6) I burst out laughing when the young man in the audience addressed Nicola Sturgeon as "Madam First Minister".  I think the reason it seemed so incongruous was that there just didn't seem to be the same distance between her and the audience that was there when the three London leaders spoke.

Britain-wide YouGov poll confirms Nicola Sturgeon defeated Miliband in the BBC leaders' debate

Today's Britain-wide YouGov poll is the first to have been entirely conducted since the BBC leaders' debate on Thursday night.  There's a supplementary question about the debate itself, which shows that Nicola Sturgeon was judged to be the winner both by respondents across the whole of Britain, and by the Scottish subsample - although understandably her margin of victory was much, much bigger with the latter.

Which leader do you think came across best in the debate?  (Respondents across Britain) :

Nicola Sturgeon 30%
Ed Miliband 27%
Nigel Farage 17%
Leanne Wood 3%
Natalie Bennett 3%

Which leader do you think came across best in the debate?  (Respondents in Scotland only) :

Nicola Sturgeon 63%
Ed Miliband 22%
Nigel Farage 8%
Natalie Bennett 1%
Leanne Wood 0%

This isn't an instant poll, so respondents will have been influenced by the post-debate reporting, including the widespread reporting of the rather questionable instant poll from Survation that had Miliband slightly ahead (albeit only at Britain-wide level).  So perhaps the most important thing about YouGov's result is the reassurance it provides us that the Survation poll didn't distort people's perception of the outcome - or at least not sufficiently to convince a plurality that Miliband won.

The headline voting intentions from YouGov's Scottish subsample are also of particular interest, as they're the first numbers we have that are entirely post-debate.  They show : SNP 40%, Labour 27%, Conservatives 19%, UKIP 6%, Liberal Democrats 6%, Greens 2%.  If that was the result of a full-scale poll, it would look like the gap had narrowed, but in subsample terms it's very much business as usual, and doesn't give rise to any obvious suspicion that the debate has changed the state of play.

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Here's a damning verdict on the leader of Plaid Cymru from one member of the YouGov panel -

"Uniformed spreader of misinformation, stupidly taken in by Nicola Sturgeon."

Hmmm.  Let's be fair to Leanne - she may be a gullible spreader of misinformation, but at least she has the common decency to do it in a uniform.

At last! A leaders' debate with rules.

I'm thrilled that BBC Scotland have heeded my call on Thursday that much stricter rules should apply to future leaders' debates. As far as I could gather, the rules for this morning's Sunday Politics Scotland debate went as follows -

1) When Nicola Sturgeon is answering a challenging question, the moderator should personally ensure that SHE CANNOT COMPLETE ANY SENTENCE WITHOUT AGGRESSIVE INTERRUPTION.

2) Jim Murphy, Ruth Davidson and Willie Rennie should not be asked any challenging questions by the moderator.

3) When Jim Murphy, Ruth Davidson or Willie Rennie is attacking the SNP, the moderator should allow them to continuing speaking WITHOUT INTERRUPTION, AND AT HOWEVER MUCH LENGTH THEY WANT.

4) When Nicola Sturgeon is attacking the other parties or asking them questions, the moderator must personally ensure that HER VOICE IS COMPLETELY DROWNED OUT.

5) When Jim Murphy, Ruth Davidson and Willie Rennie are talking over Nicola Sturgeon and preventing her from being heard, they must be ALLOWED TO DO SO.

6) If Nicola Sturgeon shows the slightest sign of opening her mouth when someone else is speaking, the moderator must TELL HER TO SHUT UP.

Did you spot any others?

The Scottish leaders' debates demonstrate why "rules" shouldn't be considered a dirty word

I've heard one or two people (mostly from south of the border, oddly enough) suggest that the two Scottish leaders' debates this week were somehow superior to the "sterile" Britain-wide debate in Salford last week.  Now it's true that the Salford debate had its limitations - you had four members of the audience asking elementary questions and being treated like little Gods for the next thirty minutes.

"Thank you Jonny for your question, it's such an important one for hard-working families and for our whole country.  And you're absolutely right, Jonny, I agree with you so much, Jonny, and I pay homage and tribute to myself for recognising that Jonny is so right.  I remember your name, Jonny, it's been twenty seconds since you asked your question, but I still remember your name, and I want you to know, Jonny, that even though I will have to stop speaking soon and give someone else a go, and even though it will probably be five whole minutes before I get a chance to speak again, when I do get that chance again, Jonny, I will be calling you Jonny, because I will remember your name even then.  That's how important your question is to me, Jonny, and I want to thank you for all you've done for our country tonight."

But I think that was a price worth paying for all seven leaders being given a relatively equal chance, not being talked over (for the most part), and not being unfairly advantaged by one-sided applause or jeering (for the most part).  That's where the Scottish debates have fallen short - they haven't always allowed the arguments to be fairly put and fairly tested.  Viewers thankfully have a strong sense of justice, and the coordinated attempts to shout Nicola Sturgeon down tonight will have angered a lot of neutrals - however, that effect would have been even more devastating for Jim Murphy if he hadn't been partly let off the hook by the distorting "social proof" of an army of Labour partisans in the audience making their presence felt.

If you can guarantee that the audience will be politically balanced, then fine - allowing them to intervene has an enriching effect.  But the lesson of tonight is that providing such a guarantee may be utterly impossible.  I defy anyone to suggest that anything even approaching 45% of the audience in Aberdeen were Yes voters.  As Gillian Martin hinted at on Twitter, it may not be the BBC's fault in this case - Labour may simply have cynically organised people to pose as neutrals and supporters of other parties when they filled in their application forms.  (And the fact that there are enough Labour zealots out there to pull that stunt off puts a rather different complexion on the hoary old myth about nationalist infiltration of polling panels.)

The presence of Hugh Pennington as an "ordinary member of the audience" when he has been a household name for two decades, and when he appeared in a Better Together ad only last year, raises a few question marks to say the least.  There are also strong rumours on social media that the young woman in last night's audience who claimed to have been won over on the spot by Jim Murphy may in fact be a long-standing Labour activist.

I'm glad to say that Nicola kept her cool throughout (perhaps learning from the head-to-head with Johann Lamont last year) and emerged with enormous credit and dignity.  She was the clear winner tonight, just as she was last night - but of course it remains to be seen whether the creepy journalistic cult of Murphy will take advantage of the absence of instant polls, and insist once again that the Earth is flat.

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As a particularly barking mad illustration of the above point, Ross Clark wrote the following a few hours ago at the Spectator -

"Having impressed a UK-wide audience in the seven-leader ITV debate last week, [Sturgeon's] reception at the Scottish version was far more muted, with some instant polls suggesting a narrow victory for Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy."

Hmmm. There were no instant polls, and yet Murphy seemingly managed to win some of them. See what I mean about a cult?

Still, it appears his "victory" in these non-existent "polls" was only "narrow", so at least his fan club in the press are keepin' it real.

Scottish Labour's entire election strategy, RIP

Jim Murphy is a mumbler, so correct me if I misheard him, but I'm pretty sure that he promised at the end of the STV debate that Labour would vote against a Tory Queen's Speech.  If we can take him at his word, then it means that Nicola Sturgeon has been right all along when she's said this -

"If there are more SNP and Labour MPs than there are Tory MPs, we can lock the Tories out of power even if they're the largest single party."

And it means that Jim Murphy has been plain wrong all along when he's said this -

"The largest party gets to form the government."

End of story.  Scottish Labour have just destroyed their whole election strategy, but in truth they had no choice.  The contradiction at the heart of it was so laughably obvious that it just wasn't sustainable - not even with the help of a lovestruck press who think Murphy is the Messiah.

And judging from Bernard Ponsonby's bizarre summary of the press room's verdict on the debate, they really do still think he's the Messiah - in defiance of all the evidence.  Murphy didn't have a meltdown, but he was clearly third-best out of four tonight - and with all due respect, that's not the place where you expect to find a Messiah.

Bottom of the heap was of course Willie Rennie, but he can at least console himself by reflecting on his unintentional comic genius.  He told a member of the audience that the Lib Dems' achievement in government was mainly to stop the Tories being quite as evil as they otherwise would have been (wouldn't it have been a better idea not to put them in power in the first place?) - plus of course "all the other great things" that the coalition have done.  I'm sure we can all agree that those great things are so obvious he didn't even need to waste our time by naming them - and thankfully he didn't.

Above all else, let's not forget his gaffe of the century at the very end...

"Vote for everything.  Vote Lib Dem."

Nicola Sturgeon wins the debate by a landslide, say viewers in Scotland

The datasets from the Survation instant reaction poll are now out, and the Scottish subsample shows that respondents north of the border thought Nicola Sturgeon won the seven-way leaders' debate by a comfortable margin.

Who do you think won the debate?  (Survation, Scottish respondents only) :

Nicola Sturgeon 46.5%
Ed Miliband 24.8%
Nigel Farage 13.3%
David Cameron 8.9%
Nick Clegg 5.6%
Leanne Wood 0.9%
Natalie Bennett 0.0%

This is hugely significant, because at Britain-wide level the Survation poll was actually the weakest for Sturgeon of the four polls we've seen this evening.  So when we see all the Scottish subsamples, it's highly likely that Sturgeon will have scored a decisive victory across the board.

UPDATE : And here is the very similar Scottish subsample from ICM. I haven't actually located the datasets yet, so I'm taking these numbers on trust!

Which of the seven leaders taking part do you think won the contest? (ICM, Scottish respondents only) :

Nicola Sturgeon 49%
Ed Miliband 16%
David Cameron 12%
Nigel Farage 11%
Natalie Bennett 5%
Nick Clegg 4%
Leanne Wood 3%

The YouGov datasets have been released, but irritatingly they don't contain a geographical breakdown.  Perhaps more detail will appear tomorrow.  However, as Sturgeon won that poll on a Britain-wide level, we can safely assume that she was well ahead in the Scottish subsample.

What struck me most about the debate was that Nicola Sturgeon and Leanne Wood pursued almost opposite strategies - Sturgeon downplayed the Scottish dimension and presented herself almost as a UK political leader, while Leanne Wood mentioned Wales several times in practically every answer.  The strange thing is that their objectives were exactly the same, ie. to maximise the vote for their party in their own constituent nation of the UK.  So they both thought they had the best strategy for achieving that objective, and they can't both have been right.

Although Wood was the least polished performer (with the possible exception of Natalie Bennett), it seems to me that the constant mentions of Wales may be a big part of the reason why she fared so poorly in the GB-wide polls.  Many English people will have thought "she's not even interested in me".  That doesn't necessarily mean that she made a misjudgement - if she was able to speak directly to her target voters and if they liked what they heard, then it will all have been worth it.  She'd much rather see Plaid Cymru make two or three gains in May than finish third or fourth in a Britain-wide debate poll.  But the flipside is that her target voters could actually have been impressed by a good showing in the British polls, and that's an advantage the SNP will now enjoy and Plaid Cymru won't.

The polling firms are split on whether Cameron or Miliband performed better, but they're all agreed that it was a very close battle between the two.  So, as was the case with the Paxman interview show last week, Miliband has exceeded expectations, and is probably closer to neutralising Labour's huge leadership handicap - which was the one and only factor that led most commentators to anticipate that the Tories would eventually pull away as the election approached.  Although an incumbent government can normally expect to benefit from swingback in the opinion polls, it generally happens before the start of the formal campaign period.  So it could be that Labour have already dodged that bullet, in which case some sort of Labour/SNP governing arrangement is now firmly on the cards.

Stunning Sturgeon WINS Britain-wide YouGov debate poll

Britain-wide instant reaction poll (YouGov) :

Nicola Sturgeon 28%
Nigel Farage 20%
David Cameron 18%
Ed Miliband 15%
Nick Clegg 10%
Natalie Bennett 5%
Leanne Wood 4%

With ComRes it's practically a four-way tie...

Britain-wide instant reaction poll (ComRes) :

Nigel Farage 21%
David Cameron 21%
Ed Miliband 21%
Nicola Sturgeon 20%
Nick Clegg 9%
Natalie Bennett 5%
Leanne Wood 2%

The ICM poll bears little resemblance to the first two...

Britain-wide instant reaction poll (ICM) :

Ed Miliband 25%
David Cameron 24%
Nigel Farage 19%
Nicola Sturgeon 17%
Nick Clegg 9%
Natalie Bennett 3%
Leanne Wood 2%

And Survation is showing...

Britain-wide instant reaction poll (Survation) :

David Cameron 25%
Ed Miliband 25%
Nigel Farage 24%
Nicola Sturgeon 15%
Nick Clegg 6%
Natalie Bennett 3%
Leanne Wood 2%

Bear in mind that well over 80% of the respondents to these polls are not voters in Scotland - when we see the figures for Scottish respondents only, it will be very surprising if Nicola Sturgeon is not ahead across the board.

Predictions for tonight's leaders' debate

I can't think of any useful way of "previewing" tonight's leaders' debate on ITV, so instead I thought I'd attempt a wild Eurovision-style prediction of what the instant reaction polls might show.  There should be at least three polls from YouGov, ICM and Populus respectively, who will all be in a madcap race to try to get their results out first.

I haven't heard anything definite about a poll of Scottish respondents only, which would be the only meaningful way of assessing Nicola Sturgeon's performance.  If it doesn't happen, we'll have to home straight in on the Scottish subsamples of GB-wide polls.  Here's what I think they might show.

Prediction for Scottish subsamples :

1. Nicola Sturgeon
2. Ed Miliband
3. Nigel Farage
4. David Cameron
5. Leanne Wood
6. Natalie Bennett
7. Nick Clegg

I don't think a Sturgeon victory among Scottish respondents is a foregone conclusion by any means - if you cast your mind back to the debates she was involved in during the referendum, she was majestic in most of them, but there was the occasional messy stalemate.  Probably the most frustrating one was the head-to-head with Johann Lamont - and with that in mind, it may be significant that the other two female participants tonight are effectively her allies, rather than her opponents.

The only reason I've got Leanne Wood as low as fifth is that respondents to the polls will presumably only be allowed to choose one leader, in which case those sympathetic to Wood and her arguments would be most likely to plump for Sturgeon as their outright winner.

There have been suggestions that Sturgeon or Wood might have a chance of topping the GB-wide polls, but I don't think that's likely - however well they perform, I think there'll be a natural resistance to "outsiders" (I know we're all supposed to be #bettertogether, but that doesn't seem to be the prevailing mood down south).  I suspect Wood might fare slightly the better of the two, partly because leek-phobia hasn't tightened its grip on the metropolis in quite the same way that haggis-phobia has, and partly because she's so difficult to dislike.  In fact, one of the presenters of the BBC "youth" debate the other week rather patronisingly said - in her hearing! - that she had a "lovely accent", and that if we were choosing the best voice to read an audiobook, she'd be the clear winner.

Prediction for Britain-wide polls :

1. Nigel Farage
2. David Cameron
3. Ed Miliband
4. Leanne Wood
5. Nicola Sturgeon
6. Natalie Bennett
7. Nick Clegg

The part of the prediction I'm most confident about is that Clegg will be at or close to the bottom.  Five years ago, he prospered courtesy of a heavy dose of fake humility, but his supplies seem to have well and truly run out.  Almost everything he says these days sounds arrogant, complacent and hectoring.

First leaders' "debate" demonstrates why SNP inclusion was so vital

You might remember that after the first Salmond v Darling debate in advance of the referendum, there was just one instant reaction poll with a very small sample size, which showed by a relatively narrow margin that the viewers thought Darling had been the better performer.  The entire narrative of a Darling victory was founded solely on that one poll, in spite of its limitations.  I wondered at the time what would have happened if the journalists' desired narrative had been frustrated by the poll indicating a narrow Salmond win - which could easily have been the case, given that only a small number of respondents were required to swing the balance in either direction.

We're seeing a scenario of that sort play out tonight, because the media would probably quite like to award a victory to Ed Miliband, not because they support Labour, but because the underdog coming out on top is the better story.  However, the ICM instant reaction poll (which admittedly has a bigger sample this time) is stubbornly refusing to give them permission to do so, with Cameron being declared the winner by 54% to 46%.  It'll be interesting to see what angle is taken tomorrow - I suppose there's still scope to spin it as the hopeless Miliband exceeding expectations, and almost nicking a plucky draw.

For what it's worth, I do actually think that Miliband came out on top, and that reaffirms the overwhelming importance of us having fought so hard for SNP inclusion in the real leaders' debate next week.  There's always a chance that your main opponent might do better than expected, and if you're not even in the room to counteract that, you've got a major problem.

SCOT GOES POP BRICK INDEX

David Cameron 98
Ed Miliband 77

(The Scot Goes Pop Brick Index indicates how much out of a score of 100 I wanted to throw a brick at the TV while the leader in question was speaking.  Lower scores are better, therefore Miliband was the "winner".)

Will we get a Scotland-only instant reaction poll after the leaders' debate?

So it now looks like there will be just one proper leaders' debate, and (miracles will never cease) it'll be a fair one including the leaders of all six parties that hold major party status somewhere on the island of Great Britain, plus Natalie Bennett of the Greens. But of course a crucial part of leaders' debates are the instant reaction polls that "tell you who won" - the Cleggasm wouldn't have been the Cleggasm without polls. If we only get GB-wide reaction polls, that won't really tell us anything useful about Nicola Sturgeon's performance - you could easily imagine her being judged the debate's best performer in a Scottish poll, but only being ranked fourth or fifth in a GB-wide poll. If there are no suggestions that the media will commission a Scotland-only poll, I hope the SNP will seriously consider commissioning one themselves, because we wouldn't want a false narrative to take root after the debate.

In many ways, the debate will be an even bigger opportunity for Plaid Cymru than for the SNP. They were severely disadvantaged in two constituencies (Ceredigion and Ynys Môn) by the rigged 2010 debates, and hopefully a good performance from Leanne Wood will transform their prospects and help them win both seats back.

I can understand why the Liberal Democrats were so keen to accept the new proposals, because they probably feel they have been "promoted" - the second seven-way debate has effectively been replaced by three individual Q&A slots for Cameron, Clegg and Miliband. But in compensation, there will be a four-way "challengers' debate" featuring Sturgeon, Wood, Bennett and Farage, and it wouldn't surprise me if that programme gets decent ratings - it will, after all, be a genuine debate and not a monologue.

Talking of debates, I watched this YouTube video yesterday for the first time since referendum day, exactly six months ago. I probably watched it at least ten times in the run-up to September 18th, but after the No vote I thought I'd never be able to bring myself to watch it again. And yet I got through to the end without feeling even a trace of pain - in fact I found it just as inspiring as I ever did. I think that must be a sign that the healing process has finally been completed. Or to put it another way : we're winning.

Fantastic news : David Cameron has finally accepted Alex Salmond's challenge for a head-to-head TV debate. Five months too late, but better late than never. Let's set the date.

I suspect David Cameron is going to regret this pre-scripted line at Prime Minister's Questions -

He said the head-to-head debate should be between the two people who "actually call the tune - that is me and Alex Salmond".

So Cammo's latest bizarre tactic for running away from debates is to suddenly agree to the debate he ran away from throughout the last few months of the referendum campaign. Ever since September, our old friend "Carlotta Vance" has been gloating about the Prime Minister essentially getting away with his cowardice in refusing to debate with his direct counterpart in the Yes campaign - I have a sneaking suspicion that may no longer be the case.

Five months too late, but let's get on with it. There's still plenty of time for a head-to-head Salmond v Cameron debate before the broadcasting regulations kick in, so as the challenge has finally been taken up, the words that spring to mind are "Any time, any place."

* * *

Possibly still smarting from the occasion last year when he randomly picked me out as someone to 'make an example of' (and found to his horror that I actually answer back), YouGov's Laurence Janta-Lipinski made this comment on Twitter an hour ago about my post on his firm's decidedly odd "apocalypse" poll -

"We do a fun, lighthearted poll. Some people take it *WAY* too seriously"

Apparently Laurence has failed to notice that part of my response to the poll was fairly light-hearted, but in all honesty it shouldn't have been. If the average employee at YouGov reckons that the very real long-term prospect of global thermonuclear war (which probably wouldn't wipe out the human race, but would certainly kill most of us) is a "fun" topic, the mind boggles. How can we trust them to poll objectively on the subject of Trident, if that's the underlying attitude?

The BBC website misleads readers on the Ofcom "major party" proposals for a second time

Iain Watson, writing on the BBC website about the revised proposals for leaders' debates -

"And it's possible that when negotiations with the parties begin on the new proposals both Labour and UKIP will say two potentially unwieldy debates with seven participants is over the top and wouldn't it be better to transform one of these into a clash between those which broadcasting regulator Ofcom regards as the "major" parties? That would restrict the platform to David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage..."

NO IT WOULDN'T. How many times does this London-centric misapprehension have to be corrected? Ofcom only proposed that UKIP be given major party status in England and Wales, in much the same way that they are only proposing to give the SNP major party status in Scotland. This is not a matter of interpretation - it's there in black and white. If these debates are to be regarded as GB-wide, there are three parties (Labour, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats) that have major party status throughout the whole of Great Britain, and three other parties (the SNP, Plaid Cymru and UKIP) that have major party status in part of Great Britain. There is no conceivable sense in which Ofcom are proposing to give UKIP superior status to the SNP and Plaid.

If, on the other hand, these debates are supposed to be UK-wide as opposed to GB-wide, then there are literally no parties that have major party status throughout the whole country. There are eleven parties that have major party status in part of the country (and that doesn't include the Greens, weirdly enough).