"War is not a Hollywood movie. Living, breathing people are the ones who must be saved."

Iuliia Mendel on Twitter: "Every subsequent deal for Ukraine will only be worse — because we are losing. We are losing people, territory, and the economy.
The EU (which by the way has paid Russia more than €311 billion for energy and goods since February 2022) has no real strategy, no way to stop fueling… pic.twitter.com/zx8lBKQn7X

— Iuliia Mendel (@IuliiaMendel) November 22, 2025

When retweeting someone you've never previously heard of who is expressing a controversial view that you happen to agree with, it's best to check who they are just in case they're some sort of political extremist, but as far as I can see Iuliia Mendel's credentials are absolutely fine - indeed she's President Zelensky's former Press Secretary.

Her views chime with mine, which is that the Ukraine war has become a sort of Death Factory, comparable to the long stretches of the First World War when hundreds of thousands of men were callously sacrificed by military leaders in pursuit of pitifully tiny gains of territory.  In other words, what is being fought for in the real world, rather than in the world of rhetoric, is now too small to justify the loss of life.  Russia cannot realistically conquer Ukraine, while Ukraine cannot realistically recapture all - or anything like all - of the territory it has lost.  What is actually been fought for is thus the precise location of a post-war border or armistice line or "line of actual control", and the fine details of that question are far better decided by peace talks rather than by industrial-scale slaughter of young people who under the law of the two countries cannot actually choose for themselves whether they wish to fight and die or not.  So don't try to tell me that continuing the war is all about "freedom".

Ms Mendel's point about "human life being the highest good" equates in its purest form to pacifism, which is an ideal I've always been very attracted to.  In practice I accept that pacifism has some limitations, because it wouldn't have worked against the Nazis, and Ghandian passive resistance would have been a hopeless tool in preventing the Holocaust.  Genuinely defensive military campaigns may therefore be morally justified even if they cause substantial loss of life, but that is not what we're talking about here.  What can realistically be defended has already been successfully defended.

Of course some political leaders argue that the war has to be continued no matter what the cost because of a wild, wholly unproven theory that Putin is the new Hitler and he will invade the rest of Europe if he is not stopped in Ukraine, just as Hitler conquered much of Europe after Britain and France failed to defend Czechoslovakia.  But with all due respect, if Putin was Hitler I think we might just have noticed by now.  He's been leader of Russia since 31st December 1999, so if he has Napoleonic ambitions he's been remarkably slow about taking any action on them.  The 28 point peace proposal, which has been criticised for being "handwritten by the Russians", almost certainly gives a much truer guide to Putin's war aims, which are seemingly limited to consolidating the territorial gains already made, prevention of further NATO expansion, and a return to the international community (such as membership of the G8) from a position of strength.  Indeed the latter point would be completely irreconcilable with invasions of Finland, Poland or the Baltic states.

There's also the small matter here of the fact that Russia has the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, and if the Ukraine war isn't ended there is always the theoretical chance of an escalation that leads to human civilisation being destroyed by nuclear war.  Previous generations understood that morally difficult compromises and concessions sometimes had to be made to preserve nuclear peace - for example NATO made no attempt to defend Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968.  Some principles are not worth risking global destruction for, and that's a truth our political and military leaders seem to have lost sight of somewhere along the line.  To put it mildly, those hyping up and agitating for a wider conflict with Russia are deeply irresponsible.

Last but not least, I want to address an accusation that has been levelled at me when I've made points like these in the past, namely that I'm applying different standards to Ukraine and Gaza.  That is categorically untrue.  What I've called for in Palestine is a two-state solution based on the pre-1967 boundaries.  Those boundaries are exceptionally favourable to Israel (much more favourable than the original UN partition plan, for example) and were won at the point of a gun.  The international community rewarded Israel's military aggression in 1948 by recognising the territory it invaded as its sovereign land.  The State of Palestine has reconciled itself to that profound injustice in the hope of a lasting peace and of self-determination within its reduced territory.  It will probably also end up accepting total demilitarisation, even though there's no reason why it should have to, other than the 'might is right' principle.

What may be asked of Ukraine is actually not quite as punitive as that.  It's more akin to Austria accepting permanent neutral status in return for Soviet withdrawal in 1955.  That neutrality has since developed into a key part of Austrian national identity and a source of tremendous pride.  Who knows, something similar may yet happen in Ukraine.

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Counting down the five greatest moments in British comedy history

At NUMBER FIVE, it's..."Deny everything, Baldrick"

 

Holding steady at NUMBER FOUR, it's...Del Boy falls through the bar

 

Climbing to NUMBER THREE, it's...Bernard is both for and against National Service

   

So near and yet so far: at NUMBER TWO, it's...Morecambe and Wise meet André Previn

 

And a new entry, straight in at NUMBER ONE, it's...Kevin McKenna says the Alba Party's disgraced former General Secretary Chris McEleny is "likeable"

It's a form of instant immortality, Kevin.

In case you're wondering, he's not being ironic or sarcastic or even playful.  He actually means it.  There's a lengthy section later in the article in which he expresses his total mystification that this thoroughly "likeable" chap is so loathed within the Alba Party, and the only possibility he can even think of is that it might have something to do with anti-Catholic bigotry.  Hmmm.  Yes, Kevin, I'm sure that's a far more plausible explanation than the purges and the lying and the cheating and the abuses of power and the "Andy Swan" incident that landed him in Greenock Sheriff Court on a charge of threatening behaviour.  

Incidentally, Kevin, I'm a Catholic too.  If you go back far enough, two-thirds of my ancestry is Irish, and some of the rest of it is French-Canadian (also Catholic).  I went to Catholic schools all the way from the age of four to the age of seventeen.  I've been through baptism, first communion, confirmation, the full works.  And yet I was still one of the targets for the McEleny Purges last year.  Perhaps I should take some sort of action against McEleny for bigotry against his own kind?  After all, he can't possibly have had any other motivation...

There is, though, a serious point in all this, which is that Kevin's article has finally produced the smoking gun proving beyond all doubt that Ash Regan regards McEleny as an ally.  Some of Regan's supporters have until now been in denial about this, and have insisted that McEleny's vocal support for her is a one-way street.  I can understand why, because she might be a more attractive proposition if you could have her as leader without McEleny tagging along, but the quote makes clear that you can't, and that she is absolutely determined to bring him back in a senior position.

It really is an impossible choice for the remaining non-expelled Alba members.  Elect MacAskill and you'll still be lumbered with Tasmina and the Corri Nostra, but if you elect Regan you'll be re-lumbered with "Mad Dog".  I don't envy you that decision.

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Memo to the Daily Record: you cannot say "this election is not about independence" just 24 hours after your own political editor angrily insisted that Westminster elections are the ONLY elections in which anyone is allowed to vote for independence. That is a direct and total contradiction, and you are treating your readers like idiots.

On one of the previous threads, someone posted about focus group findings suggesting that voters who were swithering between the SNP and Labour were most concerned about whether it was better to bolster Labour's majority and have Scottish MPs from the governing party, or whether it was best to have SNP MPs as an independent Scottish voice in the House of Commons.  I found that encouraging in a way because it strongly implies that nobody buys into the line that Labour are at risk of not winning in England and that Scottish votes might be decisive and that "this is an opportunity that Scotland can't afford to miss" and all the rest of the standard Sarwar guff.  But clearly the Daily Record, the most contemptible newspaper on the planet (a view I've consistently held since before I even started blogging in 2008), still think trying to treat Scottish voters like idiots in that way is a promising strategy, and in their front page endorsement of Labour have basically instructed the Jocks to "eat your cereal, stop thinking about independence and give the Tories a kicking".  As a visual aid for this Orwellian-style "two minutes hate", a rogue's gallery of Tories with demon eyes is presented so you can see who you're supposed to be kicking.  And what makes this truly Orwellian, of course, is that the real motivation for the endorsement of Labour is the Record editorial team's undying hatred of the SNP and burning desire to see the SNP defeated and humiliated.  They don't give a monkey's about the Tories and could quite happily tolerate living under Tory rule - as they proved in 2014 by helpfully arranging another ten years  of Tory rule by backing the No campaign in the independence referendum with the fraudulent "Vow".

In their tweet tonight, the Record claim that it's been fourteen years since they last backed Labour.  Anyone who follows their output may reasonably conclude that they've kept their supposed non-support for Labour over the last fourteen years exceptionally well-hidden.  If they've refrained from making an official editorial endorsement during that time, it was only due to a worry over sales, because they knew that many of their readers had become passionately pro-independence and pro-SNP during the indyref campaign and would probably instantly walk with their feet if the Record reverted to the explicit "be a sheep, baa-aa, vote Labour" stuff.  The editorial team have been gagging for the earliest possible moment that they could get away with resuming normal service, and they think they've found it - but you can tell they're not quite sure and are nervous they may be miscalculating and jumping the gun.  The giveaway is that the opening words of the endorsement are "this election is not about independence", imploring independence supporters to absurdly believe that they can somehow take a holiday from what they believe in and can vote against independence by voting Labour without that having any actual effect or consequence.

But wait - is this election really not about independence?  How can that be, given that only yesterday the Record's political editor Paul Hutcheon told us that John Swinney has no credibility in claiming a mandate for an independence referendum from the Holyrood election of 2021, because the Supreme Court had "ruled unequivocally a referendum is a matter for Westminster, not Holyrood".  In other words, he is not just saying that Westminster elections are about independence, but that Westminster elections are the ONLY elections that are about independence.  According to Hutcheon, you are literally NOT ALLOWED to vote for independence or for a referendum on independence in any other type of election - you have to do it in a Westminster general election, because that's your one and only shot.  If you're an independence supporter, Hutcheon is telling you that when a general election comes up, by Christ you do not muck around - you clear your diaries and use that election for the purpose God has ordained, namely to express your view on whether Scotland should be an independent country.

So the Daily Record is factually wrong to tell its readers that this election is not about independence, and we have that on the Highest Authority imaginable - no, not God, someone far more senior, it's Mr Paul Hutcheon, political editor of the Daily Record.  Congratulations, chaps, you managed to pre-contradict the entire thrust of your logic for endorsing Labour.  That takes some talent, and we salute you.

(And yes, we know what the get-out clause will be - although general elections can be about independence, not all of them are, and this is one of the exceptions.  You can tell it's one of the exceptions because the Daily Record says it is.  Don't even bother to try to think for yourselves, guys - you are sheep and that's why the Record exists.  If you're ever allowed to vote for independence, the Record will inform you in plenty of time.  However, don't wait up for that, because the Record have decided you will never be allowed to vote for independence.  They just haven't told you yet.)

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I've been continuing to write constituency profiles for The National, and here are the links for Glasgow South, Glasgow North East, Glenrothes & Mid Fife, and Gordon & Buchan.

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What is genocide?

Like many of you, I've occasionally had exchanges on social media over the last few months with Israeli sympathisers who innocently claim to be bewildered and deeply offended by any suggestion that Israel is perpetrating a genocide in Gaza.  But these people, whether they realise it or not, rarely agree with each other on the exact reason they offer for what is happening not being a genocide, which may be a clue that they're not on the firmest of ground.  By far the weakest argument I've encountered is that a genocide is the destruction of a whole people, and because Israel isn't doing that, it can't possibly be committing a genocide. But in fact the UN's definition of genocide is much broader than that - 

"a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part"

Which is why the ICJ had no difficulty in stating that there were plausible grounds for believing genocide was taking place.  Even Hitler didn't kill the entirety of Europe's Jewish population - he killed just under two-thirds.  The current claimed death toll of Palestinians in Gaza since October is just under 30,000, which is almost certainly a massive underestimate.  The population of Gaza is around 2.4 million, and the population of the wider Palestinian territories is around 4.8 million (excluding residents of the illegal Israeli settlements).  That means if the target population for genocide is considered to be Palestinians as a whole, a minimum of 0.6% have been killed so far, and if the target population is considered to be Palestinians specifically in Gaza, a minimum of 1.2% have already been killed.  There comes a point where that can be considered a non-trivial "part" of the overall ethnic group, especially when no end to the killings is in sight and the numbers can only vastly increase, especially due to man-made (ie. Israeli-made) starvation.

But if the governor of New York had her way, Israel would already have taken the genocide much, much further.  Kathy Hochul said this - 

"If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo, I'm sorry, my friends, there would be no Canada the next day"

On that analogy, she thinks Israel should have totally annihilated all 2.4 million people in Gaza, and possibly all 4.8 million people in the State of Palestine, on 8th October.  Presumably this would have had to be done with nuclear weapons, because there is no other realistic way of destroying an entire ethnic group of millions in a single day.  To make the analogy more exact, of course, she would have to assume that Canada's attack on Buffalo was in retaliation for decades of US military occupation of Canada, which would mean under international law that the Canadians have a right to self-defence against the US, but the US do not have a right to self-defence against the occupied peoples.  That does not imply what Hamas did on 7th October was a legitimate form of self-defence, but it does mean that Israel haven't got a leg to stand on in suggesting that mass killings and mass destruction of infrastructure are a legal self-defence response to the events of 7th October, because they quite simply have no legal right to self-defence in Gaza at all.

Ms Hochul is, grotesquely, not a gun-toting Republican nutjob, but an elected Democratic Party governor in one of America's supposedly most liberal states.  And yet she not only cheerleads for genocide but thinks it hasn't gone anything like far enough yet. As long-term readers of this blog may remember, I have a vote in US presidential elections, and it's been an almighty struggle to find a Democratic primary candidate who has even a vaguely human stance on the Gaza conflict.  There was a Congressman who I agreed with on almost every policy, but when I got to his view on Israel/Palestine, I discovered that he thinks it's all the fault of the dastardly Arabs and everything would be as right as rain if they would just leave poor old Israel alone (ahem).  To my relief, I did eventually find a candidate who is standing on an explicit pitch of stopping the war and ending arms supplies to Israel.

As there are suggestions that Keir Starmer would like the SNP to change their pro-ceasefire Commons motion so he can allow Labour to vote for it, could I urge the SNP to stand firm and refuse any request to remove the words "immediate ceasefire" or to put any conditions at all on the immediacy.

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Most of the election pitches the SNP are trying out are hopeless - the exception is "only the SNP can beat the Tories in Scotland", but that will need a lot more work

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Stewart McDonald is the SNP MP for Glasgow South. Whether fairly or unfairly, he's often derided as the epitome of a Westminster careerist who wants to kick independence into the long grass so he can enjoy a few decades in the London parliament.  That makes the current situation bitterly ironic, because it's probable that burying independence is about to cost McDonald his seat and thus his career.  In 2017, when the SNP's national lead over Labour was around ten points, he held on in Glasgow South by just four and a half points.  If we assume the latest poll showing national parity between the SNP and Labour is broadly correct, he's on course to lose.

Which makes it fascinating that even as he stares down the barrel in this way, he's doubling down on his belief that the SNP win elections by putting independence on the backburner.  Perhaps he feels that what has worked three times can work a fourth time, even in more difficult circumstances, if you just "do it harder" as our dear old gun nut friend Kevin Baker used to say.  But the problem is that the circumstances are not just different, they're totally transformed, and the Scottish people are looking at Labour in a way that they haven't for years.  It's therefore difficult to know whether to laugh or cry when McDonald earnestly writes today about how the SNP can win by promoting high-minded objectives such as tackling "the crumbling of the post-war architecture of global governance".  Good luck getting a hearing for that as a third party standing in only 8% of the UK's seats when all the media will be interested in is the Labour v Tory horserace for Downing Street.  The sad reality is that if you want to be a Scottish political careerist in the current context you probably need to be a candidate for a Brit party, and that party needs to be called Labour.

No, the SNP's best hope was to challenge the prism of the Labour v Tory horserace by making the election about something else altogether, at least in the minds of independence supporters, in other words by making it a de facto referendum on independence.  Having turned their back on that idea, they seem to be frantically casting around for alternative pitches, almost all of which are hopeless.  The one that does have some promise, though, is the line about "only the SNP can deliver a Tory-free Scotland", because there is actually some truth to that claim and it can be demonstrated to voters, albeit with some difficulty because it's a complicated point.

As I've noted many times, the fact that "vote Labour on Thursday to get the Tories out on Friday" is not really an honest claim does not make it any the less compelling to voters, because it intuitively sounds correct and the simplicity of it is almost irresistible.  But if you have the means of challenging it, you've got to at least try, and the SNP do have the advantage that they are clearly the main challengers in all six constituencies held by the Scottish Tories...

Dumfries and Galloway:

Conservatives 44.1%

SNP 40.6%

Labour 9.2%

Moray:

Conservatives 45.3%

SNP 44.2%

Labour 5.0%

West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine:

Conservatives 42.7%

SNP 41.1%

Liberal Democrats 11.7%

Labour 4.6%

Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk:

Conservatives 48.4%

SNP 38.8%

Liberal Democrats 8.1%

Labour 4.7%

Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale:

Conservatives 46.0%

SNP 38.3%

Labour 8.5%

Banff and Buchan:

Conservatives 50.1%

SNP 40.4%

Liberal Democrats 5.4%

Labour 4.1%

Those numbers make a powerful case all by themselves, because people can see that even if there is a truly enormous swing from SNP to Labour in those seats, at most all that will be achieved is the replacement of the SNP as the second-placed party with Labour - it won't dislodge the Tories.  Doubtless these numbers will be appearing in leaflet bar charts in the constituencies themselves to encourage Labour-inclined voters to vote tactically for the SNP, but I actually think - as unconventional as it might seem - that the SNP need to get the numbers out nationally in an advertising campaign. The notion that "only the SNP can beat the Tories in Scotland" is too counterintuitive to really stick unless you provide a visual representation of the underlying logic, and you probably need to bash voters over the head with it again and again and again.

I know you might think "this is completely irrelevant outside those six seats", but remember that a lot of voters don't do detail, and if you can convince them that the SNP are the threat to the Tories in Scotland, they may well start to think that applies across the country.

Scot Goes Pop poll fundraiser: If you haven't already, please consider helping Scot Goes Pop commission a New Year poll so we as jndependence supporters can actually ask the questions we want asked and think need to be asked.  The fundraiser page is HERE, however if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

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The fallout from the Alba internal elections

Just a final thought about the Alba internal elections a few weeks ago.  This is difficult to write, because to a large extent I don't actually know what's been going on, it's like looking a jigsaw puzzle with a lot of the pieces missing.  I've asked questions where I could, but answers haven't always been forthcoming.  However, it's clearly not a healthy situation when people who were standing for election have actually left the party in the short period since.  It's not healthy that people who were successfully elected felt unable to take up their positions, in at least two cases on matters of principle. It's not healthy that others who were initially standing for election withdrew after the vote was nullified and restarted.  It's not healthy that we don't know whether those who made the decision to nullify the vote were aware of the original outcome before making their decision. It's not healthy that results have been kept secret, which frankly should be considered obviously unacceptable in any electoral process anywhere in the world.

One thing I do know is that I attracted some very unexpected supporters in the re-run version of the Membership Support Convener election - I can't and won't name them publicly because the support came in private messages, but I got the distinct impression that they were people who felt very, very badly let down and that I was considered the best bet for them to register that dissatisfaction.  I very nearly won the election, and I would guess that's a non-trivial part of the explanation why, because in the general NEC ballot I was quite a way short of being elected (although with eighteen candidates on the ballot, there's no shame in that).

On the secrecy issue, I was confidentially sent the results of the Membership Support Convener election before the official announcement.  It didn't contain raw vote numbers but it did contain percentages.  Before posting the percentages on this blog, I waited to check that there was an announcement of the winners on social media so that I didn't jump the gun (as I accidentally did once in the past), but it occurred to me later that I wasn't actually sure whether the percentages had been revealed in the official announcement at Natonal Council - it would be interesting to find that out from anyone who was there.  As we now know, the results of the NEC ballot ended up being completely withheld, apart from the names of those successfully elected.  Even candidates were not told the result unless they requested it by email, and even if they did, they were only given a partial result that excluded everything that happened after they were eliminated.  (This means I know who finished behind me but not who finished ahead of me.)

There were suggestions that the secrecy might be explained by a desire to spare the blushes of those who polled poorly, but I actually get the impression that's not the case, and that the source of embarrassment might be the very large number of votes received by someone who did far, far better than would have been expected, with the concern being that people would start pondering what the real explanation for that was.

All of this is really bizarre in a small party that is now going places due to two recent high-profile defections and the alliance with Angus MacNeil.  The excitement of that ought to be enough to pull everyone together in a common endeavour, but instead the in-fighting (and despair in some quarters) seems to be worsening.  I'm not sure whether I should be heartened by the really good result I had in the office bearer elections or disheartened by my disappointing result in the NEC ballot, but either way my intention is to keep standing in these internal elections and to do so with the aim of increasing democracy and transparency, and to dispense with destructive factionalism.

UPDATE: Just by coincidence, not long after this blogpost was published, an email went out to Alba members offering an explanation for the issues that beset the internal elections.  It's stated that the office bearer elections had to be re-run because of rumours of problems with the voting process.  However, my recollection is that at the time it was made clear that those rumours would not have been enough to scupper the vote and that the reason for the re-run was the targetting of individuals on secret groups.

The reasons given for the secrecy over the NEC ballot are that a) candidates polling very low numbers of first preference votes would have been vulnerable to attack from Alba's political opponents if they subsequently stood for parliament, and b) the candidates hadn't given their consent for their election data to be shared.  The latter reason seems odd - I've stood in the NEC elections for the last three years in a row, and there was never previously any problen with sharing election data.  I would have thought standing as a candidate ought to constitute tacit acceptance that the result can be published.  I mean, in what sense does a candidate "own" the votes they receive?  They're not copyrighted, surely?  As for the first reason, the priority of democratic transparency ought to very easily trump any inconvenience that may be caused.  Also, I'd just note that STV is not the reason for candidates receiving very few first preference votes - the same thing would have happened under first-past-the-post.  The real reason may be that one of the eighteen candidates in the male ballot somehow managed to take roughly half the votes, if the information I've been given is correct.

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I am currently fundraising in the hope of running a new Scot Goes Pop opinion poll in the New Year - details can be found HERE, and the fundraiser page itself is HERE.

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Stewart McDonald's wizard "plan for winning independence": do exactly the same thing that has completely failed four times already, but do it HARDER!!!!!!!

What puzzles me about Stewart McDonald's call for the SNP to back down yet again, and totally abandon its plans to try to win independence in the foreseeable future, is not so much that he's done it (we all know exactly where he's coming from on this) but that The National decided to make it a front page splash and prominently place the entire text of his "report" (ie. extended opinion piece) on their website.  As the saying goes, "retweets are not necessarily endorsements", and by the same token "front page splashes are not necessarily endorsements", but the unspoken words that follow in both cases are "but more often than not, they are".  It must be hoped that this is one of the exceptions - perhaps The National's plan is to encourage and facilitate the widest possible debate in the run-up to the special conference in March, and we can look forward to equivalent front page splashes about the release of "reports" strongly making the case for the de facto referendum to be moved ahead to an early Holyrood election in October of this year, which a growing consensus within the independence movement recognises to be the option with by far the greatest chance of delivering a successful outcome.

McDonald's piece contains an enormous number of words but it boils down to the following: "A de facto referendum cannot deliver independence because the UK Government will not respect the result. We should therefore instead use the next election to seek a mandate to hold a referendum, and start a campaign to increase support for independence."  It really is as thin as that, when you strip away the frills.  The fundamental contradiction in it is that McDonald is arguing that any plan that cannot deliver independence must by definition be rejected, and yet the evidence that his own plan cannot deliver independence is considerably stronger than the equivalent evidence that a de facto referendum cannot do the trick.  Why?  Because his own plan has already been tried, and it has failed.  Indeed it has been tried multiple times, and it has failed on each and every occasion. McDonald tacitly acknowledges this himself in a passage that unwittingly borders on the comical -

"By reinforcing such an unambiguous mandate with the issue front and centre of our campaign - even putting the commitment into a form of words on the ballot paper itself - coupled with existing support for a second independence referendum, we will have steeled the mandate to such an unprecedented level that no Prime Minister can misinterpret, delay, or ignore it. It would be the fifth parliamentary election across two parliaments with such a commitment [to a referendum in our manifesto], but there must be a noticeable difference in the prominence that the issue is given compared to previous elections."

In other words, we've tried this four times before and it's had zero effect, but the fifth time, yeah baby, the fifth time it'll work for sure, as long as we're a wee bit more enthusiastic about it than we previously were.  As my old American gun nut buddy Kevin Baker used to say, "Do it again, only HARDER!!!!"  Stewart, mate, if you think your wholly untested assumption that victory in a de facto referendum will not result in independence negotiations is a fatal flaw, then I'm afraid it's a massive problem for you that we already have such overwhelming evidence that a mandate for an independence referendum does not, and never will, result in an independence referendum.

Aha, Stewart will say, you're overlooking my cunning plan for an independence campaign to take place at the same time, and that will ingeniously tip the balance and ensure the UK Government cannot possibly ignore the fifth mandate for a referendum in the way they have the previous four!  Well, this begs the obvious question of why the hell the SNP have not been campaigning for independence thus far (if Stewart thinks they haven't).  But more importantly, there are sound reasons for thinking that the UK Government would become even less likely to agree to a referendum if a campaign successfully pushed Yes support higher than it currently is.  From London's point of view, there is only strategic sense in facilitating a referendum if they believe they at least have a realistic chance of winning it.

I don't think Stewart has quite thought through the psychological impact of the SNP putting an outright commitment to independence in its manifesto, campaigning seriously on that commitment, and then winning more than 50% of the vote on it.  For the first time, the 2014 mandate to remain in the United Kingdom will no longer be uncontested - and indeed the mandate for independence will be seen to be of superior quality to the 2014 result because it'll be much more up to date.  I don't know whether independence negotiations will follow thereafter - perhaps they won't, but what I do think is that there would be a recognition that there is a constitutional crisis that needs to be resolved by negotiations of some sort, especially if the mandate is followed up by either disruption at Westminster or a deadline for withdrawing Scottish MPs from the Commons, thus seriously calling into question the legitimacy of continued London rule.  It's certainly far more likely to move us on from the current deadlock than the magical thinking of "the fifth mandate for a referendum will be the straw that breaks the camel's back in the way the fourth wasn't".

Stewart claims that the whole idea of a de facto referendum is bogus because only one side of the argument will be fighting the election on that basis.  Well, the 1918 election in Ireland is generally regarded as the mandate for an independent Ireland, even though only Sinn Féin fought that election as a de facto independence referendum.  Exactly the same point could be made about any other mandate sought via a manifesto commitment - including, for example, a fifth mandate for a referendum.  Is Stewart saying that such a mandate would only be valid if unionist parties agree that the election is about whether a referendum should be held?  And if so, why on earth should they conveniently play along?  What Stewart is actually arguing for is a losers' veto - a sentiment that Alister Jack would thoroughly approve of, but it's nonetheless nothing short of an anti-democratic outrage.

To delegates at the forthcoming conference, let me say this.  The de facto referendum was an indispensable part of Nicola Sturgeon's strategy for going to the Supreme Court.  It had to be there, because it was the only way of ensuring that no matter what the judges' verdict was, it would not be a defeat for the independence cause, and there would still be a way for Scotland to make its choice.  What Stewart McDonald wants to do is turn the Supreme Court's decision into a real defeat - one that bestowed London with a permanent veto over Scotland's right to democratic self-determination.  Moreover, it's a veto that McDonald has utterly failed to show he has any even remotely credible plan for overcoming or circumventing.  Don't waste even five seconds' thought on his craven plea that we should haul up the white flag at this moment of all moments.

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#Referendum2023 : All Systems GO! The starting gun has been FORMALLY fired, and either a Referendum Bill or a TIMESCALE for a Referendum Bill will be set out SHORTLY

Today has seen multiple further hammerblows for the dwindling band of cynics who are inexplicably sceptical about the majority SNP-Green government's cast-iron guarantee that an independence referendum will be held in 2023.  When asked if the Scottish Government's new paper about independence meant that she was formally starting the Indyref 2 campaign, Nicola Sturgeon replied "yes".  That's crucial, because of course the SNP leadership have started the Indyref 2 campaign on many previous occasions, so the fact that they are doing so "formally" on this occasion is tremendously heartening.  That ol' starting gun will actually stay fired this time.  And it's also emerged that one of two things will happen "shortly" - either a Referendum Bill will appear, or a timescale for a Referendum Bill appearing will appear.  I'm hugely reassured that there's no third possibility that a timescale for a timescale will appear - if that had been the case, I might have worried that we were being strung along.  So the only remaining concern is that when we see the timescale shortly, it'll just say that the Referendum Bill will be along shortly or "in due course".  But I'm sure there'll be far more specificity than that.

At the third stroke, the time sponsored by the SNP leadership will be Shortly, and In Due Course, precisely.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEEEEP.#Referendum2023

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 13, 2022

Let's celebrate this latest thrilling landmark with another update of the #Referendum2023 Countdown Clock.

SCOT GOES POP #Referendum2023 COUNTDOWN CLOCK

There are just 206 days until the earliest possible date for #Referendum2023 (5th January)

There are just 556 days until the last possible date for #Referendum2023 (21st December)

(Note: the Countdown Clock calculations assume that tradition will be maintained by holding #Referendum2023 on a Thursday, and that it will be before Christmas.) 

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Team Muirhead scale the Scolympic heights - which is more than can be said for the Mirror and the Express...

First of all, huge congratulations to Eve Muirhead and her team for securing what will undoubtedly be regarded as one of the all-time great Scottish sporting achievements.  I'm sure I was one of many tens of thousands who stayed up to watch the whole game against Japan in the wee small hours.  However, if you'll forgive the shameless self-indulgence, I really must take a moment to mark the fact that the Olympic curling over the last couple of weeks has also unexpectedly provided me with a little highlight of my own blogging career.  

As long-term readers will know, I genuinely am a big curling fan.  I think it probably goes back to the fact that there seemed to be someone in the BBC Scotland hierarchy when I was growing up in the early 90s who was sympathetic towards curling and used to make generous space in the schedules for highlights packages from events like the Scottish Junior Championships.  (Those days are long gone, sadly.)  So I was exposed to the sport back then, and since around 1999 I've been religiously glued to either Eurosport or the World Curling channel on YouTube every November, March and April, when 99% of people probably don't have a clue anything is even happening.  I've been to the Scottish finals day in Perth a few times, and I remember in 2016 a very nice chap from UK Sport approached me in Braehead when I was practically the only spectator (an exaggeration, but only a slight one) for the Norway v Sweden men's semi-final in the European Championships, and said "bit of a disappointing turnout, isn't it?"  So I think it's reasonable to say I'm not exactly a fair-weather fan, unlike the jingoistic Brit journalists who jump on the curling bandwagon for a couple of days every four years and then immediately forget the sport even exists.

Yes, Douglas Dickie of the Mirror, and yes, David Walker of the Daily Express, I'm looking at you.  Thanks to James Sellars on Twitter, I've only just found out that my occasional wind-up tweets about "Scottish and European curling" and "Scolympic silver medals" have triggered no fewer than two barking mad articles in national newspaper websites - one in the Mirror yesterday entitled 'Scottish nationalists hijack Team GB curling silver medal for divisive agenda', (which cluelessly uses a photo of David Murdoch's silver medal-winning team from eight years ago!) and one in the Express way back on 8th February entitled 'Nationalist blogger slammed for 'hate-filled' anti-British comment on the Winter Olympics', with the sub-heading 'James Kelly, who is a pro-independence blogger and says he is an elected member of Alba's National Executive Committee, was criticised for his tweet about curling'.  Even better, the Express went to all the trouble of getting a Scottish Conservative spokesperson to make an official comment about my tweet.

Words fail me.  I've finally made the big time now, and it's all thanks to the Roarin' Game.  It's  amazing, isn't it?  Think of all the deadly serious topics I've covered at length on this blog over the years, from gun control to the death penalty, from Covid to the destruction of devolution.  Not even the remotest flicker of interest from the mainstream media.  But a bit of throwaway banter on Twitter about the indisputable fact that the "British curling team" are all Scottish, and it's like the end of civilisation as we know it.

One day, someone will write a book about the fascinating psychological phenomenon of a minority winter sport proving to be more "triggering" for the Brit Nat hordes than practically any other subject I can think of.  The Express noted that I was heavily criticised for my tweet, which is perfectly true, but what they didn't bother mentioning is that almost all of the criticisms came from borderline-fascists, many of whom seemed to think I couldn't be Scottish because I have an Irish surname.  "Is dat royt, James?" was a particular highlight.  Blair McDougall must be so proud.

I've learned something valuable over the last couple of weeks. If you want to *really trigger* the Brit Nats, you don't have to say 'It's Scotland's Oil' or even 'the Pentland Firth is the Saudi Arabia of tidal power'.

You just have to point out the curlers are Scottish.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) February 19, 2022

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Please bear with me as I continue promoting Scot Goes Pop's fundraising drive.  Opinion polls are so expensive that since I started commissioning them, fundraising has almost become like painting the Forth Bridge.  If you'd like to help this blog continue for another year, or to help us commission another full-scale poll like the six we've commissioned over the last two years, here are the various options for donating...

Via the new Scot Goes Pop general fundraiser for 2022.

Via the Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser for 2021-22, which I set up in the autumn and is part-funded.

If you prefer to donate directly, that can be done via Paypal or bank transfer:  

My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Or email me for my bank details.  (My contact email address is different from my Paypal address, and can be found in the sidebar of the desktop version of the site, or on my Twitter profile.) 

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Scot Goes Popcast: A brand new interview with Dr Yvonne Ridley on the Taliban's return to power, and on how mass demonstrations can win independence for Scotland

For Episode 11 of the Scot Goes Popcast, I spoke once again to the journalist and anti-war activist Dr Yvonne Ridley, who was the guest on the very first Popcast at the start of the year.  Back then I had asked her about her experiences as a prisoner of the Taliban in 2001, but it hadn't occurred to me that the Taliban were just six months away from resuming total control of Afghanistan.  For the first half of today's interview, Yvonne gives her take on Afghanistan's uncertain future under its new-but-familiar masters.  She also has some forthright views on the way forward for the Scottish independence movement, which she shares in the second half of the interview.  Here are some of the key points...

* She thinks the Taliban have matured since they were last in power, and that consequently there's unlikely to be a repeat of the worst excesses, such as the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan.

* She explains that Afghanistan under western occupation was not the land of milk and honey for women that it was sometimes portrayed as, and that there's a "low bar" for women's rights in the country.

* She puts the case for women to stay in Afghanistan.

* She thinks America's retreat from the conflict marks the end of western liberal interventionism to spread "freedom" and "democracy" at the point of a gun.

* She think marchers for Scottish independence should not just go back home at the end of the day and wait for the next march - they should stay where they are until the Scottish Government take action to bring independence about.

* She is not, to put it mildly, the greatest fan of the new Minister for Zero Carbon Buildings, Active Travel and Tenants’ Rights, namely Patrick Harvie MSP.

You can listen to the podcast via the embedded player below, via the direct link to the Soundcloud file HERE, or on either Stitcher or Spotify.

James Kelly · Scot Goes Popcast Episode 11: Yvonne Ridley

You can also catch up with previous episodes of the Popcast -

Episode 1: Yvonne Ridley

Episode 2: Tim Rideout

Episode 3: Denise Findlay

Episode 4: Ellen Höfer

Episode 5: Len Pennie (Miss PunnyPennie)

Episode 6: Alex Salmond

Episode 7: Chris McEleny

Episode 8: Election Results

Episode 9: Eurovision 2021

Episode 10: Maggie McNeill

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New Redfield & Wilton poll confirms the public want an independence referendum to be held - and shows 48% support for independence itself

We at last have our first independence poll since June, and it's also only the fourth to be conducted since the Holyrood election in early May.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Redfield & Wilton Strategies)

Yes 48%

No 52%

Redfield & Wilton are a relatively new pollster, and as far as I can see this is their first ever full-scale Scottish poll on independence.  That means there's nothing to directly compare these numbers to, although they're pretty much in line with polls from other firms in the late spring and early summer which suggested either a slim No lead or a dead heat.  On the plus side, that means there's been no slippage for Yes, which is perhaps the most we can realistically hope for while the Scottish Government continue to shy away from campaigning for independence or firing the starting gun for a referendum.

The sample is close to being split down the middle on whether an independence referendum should be held within the next year: 40% are in favour and 47% are opposed.  Naturally, most Yes supporters are in favour, which gives the lie to Councillor Hunter's notorious recent claim that Yessers don't want an early referendum.  Once the time-frame is extended to the next five years, there is clear support across the population for a referendum.

You can still come across the odd zealot on social media who risibly believes that Alba - a party that is largely ignored by the media - is somehow, God knows how, responsible for the fact that we no longer have the outright Yes majority that we enjoyed for so long last year, and even into the start of this year.  A supplementary question in the poll provides a somewhat more plausible explanation.  Slightly more respondents say that the pandemic has strengthened the arguments in favour of the Union than say it has weakened those arguments.  My guess is that the opposite result would have been obtained a year ago, and that it's the vaccine rollout that has changed the dynamic.  But the story of the pandemic is far from over yet, and there's still the potential for the pendulum of perception to swing once again.

A very significant result is that Keir Starmer's personal ratings are now well into negative territory.  Labour are the only party that can realistically depose the SNP as Scotland's leading political force, and that simply will not happen for as long as they have such a deeply unpopular leader.

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I'm continuing to fundraise for forthcoming polling via the Scot Goes Pop general fundraiser - please click HERE if you'd like to donate.

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Le Royaume-Uni, nul points: Big majority of public demand a SCOTTISH ENTRY in the Eurovision Song Contest, in bombshell for the BBC from Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll

So you've got to allow me the occasional indulgence, OK? Out of a large number of questions in the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, I asked just ONE about the Eurovision Song Contest.  Frankly, you should be praising me for my restraint, because I can think of at least two follow-up questions I could have asked.

At the forthcoming Eurovision Song Contest, there will be a United Kingdom entry.  However, in 2019, Scotland and Wales both competed in the Eurovision Choir event as countries in their own right.  In future years, how would you prefer Scotland to be represented in the Eurovision Song Contest?

By a Scottish entry: 60%

By a United Kingdom entry: 40%

That's much more decisive than the slim 53-47 majority in favour of a Scottish Olympic team in the Scot Goes Pop / Survation poll in January.  I can think of a few possible explanations for the difference: a) it could simply be caused by pollsters' house effects, ie. perhaps Survation have fewer people in their panel with a strong Scottish identity, b) it may be that people have more of an emotional attachment to Team GB at the Olympics due to specific memories from the past (Torvill & Dean, Linford Christie, Steve Redgrave or whatever), or c) people might have been deterred from abandoning Team GB because larger countries tend to win more medals.  The latter worry is irrelevant to the Eurovision, where smaller countries are not disadvantaged against larger ones.  (Ireland are still the most successful country in the contest's history with seven victories, although they now have Sweden breathing down their necks with six.)

Another difference with the Olympics is that there's no rule that would prevent Scotland competing without first having to become independent - as can be seen not only from the participation of Scotland and Wales in the Eurovision Choir event, but also from Wales having twice had entries in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest.  BBC Alba are believed to have toyed with the idea of a Scottish entry in Junior Eurovision but decided against it - although whether that was because of pressure from London isn't clear.  The bottom line is that it's up to the BBC - if they tell the EBU they want a Scottish entry, it would almost certainly happen.  Now that we know what licence fee payers in Scotland want, will they listen?

As I always point out, no Scot has even represented the UK since Scott Fitzgerald in 1988.  Incredibly, Cyprus and France have both been represented by Scots more recently than that.  (Karen Matheson of Capercaillie fame sang for France in 1996.)  The lack of Scottish representation deprives us of a golden opportunity to promote Scottish culture and boost tourism.

I shall now embark on the unusual task of giving you the Eurovision preferences of various demographic and political groups.  Women are significantly keener on a Scottish entry - the majority is 64-36 among female respondents, compared to a narrower 55-45 among men.  Yes voters from 2014 are overwhelmingly in favour of Scottish representation, and among current Yes supporters there's near unanimity - only 7% want to be represented by the UK.  The position isn't quite so clear-cut among No voters - 34% of people who voted against independence in 2014, and even 25% of people who would vote No in a new referendum, would like a Scottish entry.  Labour voters are close to being evenly divided (44% for Scotland, 56% for the UK), which suggests that even the rump Labour vote still includes a decent number of people who strongly identify as Scottish.

There's a big age divide - under-35s prefer Scottish representation by a majority of almost 3-1, while over-55s are split right down the middle.  And fascinatingly, there's a narrow majority among English-born respondents (53-47) for a Scottish entry.

It's worth making the point that because the Eurovision question is to some extent a proxy for Scottish/British national identity, and because 40% of respondents plumped for the British option, it may well be that certain people in the SNP are over-optimistic about the prospect of Yes support rising consistently above 60%.  The idea that we should wait for that to happen before firing the starting gun on a referendum may be tantamount to giving up on independence completely.

Now, I'm not necessarily going to claim there's a strong thematic link here, but the next two questions in the poll are about nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons were banned by an international treaty that came into force in January this year.  However, the nine countries that are currently believed to possess nuclear weapons, including the UK, have so far refused to sign the treaty. Do you think the UK should join the treaty and dismantle its nuclear weapons?

Yes: 47%

No: 33%

With Don't Knows removed -

Yes 59%

No 41%

There have been polls in the past that have purported to show support for Trident in Scotland, so this could be an early indication that the new treaty is a game-changing moment that will make it a lot easier for campaigners to make the case for disarmament.  As you'd expect, the figures for SNP and Tory voters are reverse mirror images of each other (71% of SNP voters support disarmament and 71% of Tory voters oppose it), but what's much more significant is that Labour voters break 46-37 in favour of joining the treaty and disarming.  That suggests the type of 'atomic unionism' espoused by Jackie Baillie has the potential to cost Labour a lot of votes.  Additionally, 30% of people who voted No in 2014, and 22% of people who would currently vote No, want to sign up to the nuclear ban - which highlights a possible means by which a future Yes campaign could win more converts.

The UK government argues that its nuclear weapons protect the public due to a 'deterrent' effect.  However, others argue that the presence of nuclear weapons on the Clyde puts the public in greater danger by making the area a target for nuclear attacks, and by creating a risk of serious accidents.  Do you personally feel more safe or less safe due to the presence of nuclear weapons on the Clyde?

More safe: 24%

Less safe: 42%

Makes no difference: 34%

After I saw this result, it occurred to me that some of the 34% who chose the "makes no difference" option may be people who live nowhere near the Clyde and are naive enough to think that makes them safe.  In reality, you'd probably need to be in Shetland to escape the effects of a nuclear attack on Faslane.

There's an age and gender divide on the nuclear questions as well.  Although a plurality of over-55s want rid of the UK's weapons and say they feel less safe because of them, it's a fairly tight result in each case.  And women are significantly less likely than men to think Britain should not disarm or that nuclear weapons make them safer.

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There are still more results to come from the poll.  If you'd like to be the first to know, feel free to follow me on Twitter HERE.

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Believe in Scotland conference

Those of you taking part in or following the very impressive Believe in Scotland virtual conference may have seen me earlier this evening in a panel event with Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp and Mark Diffley.  It was pre-recorded a couple of days ago.  I felt slightly sheepish when I watched it back, because I noticed the tagline of the conference is "getting Yes to 60%", something which I had said during the recording isn't actually achievable.  (I did add that it isn't totally impossible that there might be the odd individual poll putting Yes at 60%, but that a sustained 60-40 lead is highly unlikely.) Of course we should aim to get Yes as high as possible, but it would be a terrible mistake to set an overly-ambitious threshold for firing the starting gun on Indyref2 - and Gordon stressed that he agreed with the latter point.

One interesting point that Mark Diffley made is that he feels demographic changes are one of the three main factors that have driven movement to Yes (the other factors being the pandemic and Brexit).  As regular readers will know, I've always been very sceptical about the idea of passive demographic drift producing a Yes majority, because people tend to become more conservative as they get older.  But it's not outlandish to suppose it could have been worth one or two percentage points to Yes over the last six years, which is not to be sniffed at.

On a personal note, I'd also like to clarify that I did not in fact widen my eyes disapprovingly when Gordon mentioned that Mark had worked for the No side in 2014.  It was actually a look of surprise because I noticed that my microphone had been temporarily cut off.  The timing was totally coincidental.  Just wanted to clear that up!

I very much enjoyed watching Mary Ann Kennedy's musical contribution immediately after the discussion.  Although I was vaguely aware that she came out for Yes in 2014, it was fascinating to hear her say that she was "born indy" and that even as a schoolgirl she was incensed by the events of 1979.  Not only is that a useful reminder of how many musicians are Yes, it's also a reminder that having a long association with the BBC does not preclude support for independence.  At the start of 2014, I was in the audience at a ridiculous hour of the night for a live World On 3 episode presented by Mary Ann, and I recall that she asked Yves Lambert for his thoughts on the upcoming indyref based on the Quebec experience in 1995.  He gave an answer that I suspect may have horrified BBC bigwigs listening in London - it was along the lines of "if you become organised, something really special can happen".  After a second or two I realised there were microphones everywhere, and that if I started applauding enthusiastically it would be heard live on Radio 3!

I believe that an edited version of the Believe in Scotland panel discussion may be posted on Facebook at some point, so keep an eye out for that.

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Are we finally moving towards clarity on the general election date?

The successful Letwin amendment "rules out No Deal", or so we're told.  Doesn't that sound strangely familiar?  How many times has such-and-such a vote or such-and-such an action supposedly ruled out No Deal? Presumably if No Deal had actually been already ruled out, it wouldn't be necessary to keep doing it again and again and again.  I don't think the Letwin amendment will be any more effective at taking No Deal off the table than the previous attempts - although admittedly it does significantly reduce the risk of a No Deal exit on Halloween.  Without Letwin, the government might have been able to hold a gun to the head of MPs and say that they had a straight choice between approving the legislation implementing the deal in unamended form, or an immediate No Deal crash-out in the absence of the Benn Act safety-net (although presumably they could still have got around that by seizing control of the timetable again and passing Benn Act II).

If there's any light at all at the end of the tunnel, it's the approaching clarity on the date of a general election.  In principle, Johnson appears to have the numbers to pass his deal - but the devil is in the detail, and all it would take to kill the deal (at least this side of an election) is a successful amendment that makes the legislation depart significantly from what was agreed with the EU.  If the DUP seek to amend the arrangements for Northern Ireland, for example, it's not impossible to imagine some Tory Brexiteers abstaining rather than voting with the government.  Either way, though, we'll know very soon.  If the legislation is passed to the EU's satisfaction, Britain will officially leave the EU in less than two weeks' time and it would make obvious sense to then move on to an election to ensure a proper mandate for whichever government enters into the next round of negotiations with Brussels during the transition period.  If, on the other hand, the legislation hits the rocks, it's likely that the EU will reluctantly agree to parliament's request for a three month extension, which on the face of it would satisfy Jeremy Corbyn's stated condition for agreeing to an election.

Would Labour still look for an excuse for further delay, given their unpromising showing in most current opinion polls?  Maybe, although it's no longer clear that playing it long will actually improve their position.  They had previously thought that if they just held on for a bit, Boris Johnson would be boxed into campaigning for No Deal at the election, which would have allowed Labour to portray themselves as the only viable alternative to an extremist government.  But whenever the election is held now, Johnson will be able to sell his deal as a grand compromise, and so arguably Labour might as well just get on and face the music.

If they do seek an excuse for a delay, it'll probably be the old favourite of "we can't annoy the voters at Christmas".  But pretty much any party would be quite happy to interrupt people's Christmas preparations if they thought there was the remotest tactical advantage.  Back in the day on Stormfront Lite, Tory posters used to complain that polls conducted over Christmas underestimated their party due to voters being away on holiday and whatnot, so who knows?  Maybe Labour will calculate that they're better off going to the country while Tory voters are disproportionately likely to be away skiing in Saalbach-Hinterglemm.

If the election is held before Brexit, each party is going to have a very obvious pitch -

Conservatives: Get Brexit done with our compromise deal and bring the country back together

Labour: Only we will let the people decide on Brexit

Liberal Democrats: Stop Brexit

SNP: Stop Brexit and reinforce our mandate for an independence referendum next year

All of those sound like potential winners, but self-evidently they can't all be.

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Regular readers might remember that a few months ago I wrote about the absence of a Scottish Gaelic course on Duolingo, and urged people to add their name to the campaign for that to be rectified.  After that post, I spoke to a couple of people who had been seeking to engage with Duolingo on the subject for many years, and they were extremely pessimistic that progress would be made any time soon.  But just for once, there's an unalloyed good news outcome to report: Gaelic will shortly be added to the site!  You can sign up in advance HERE.  It'll still be a few months before the course is fully up and running by the looks of things.  In the meantime, I can recommend the free Gaelic course on Glossika that someone directed me to.  (Glossika is mainly a pay-site, but Gaelic is one of a small number of languages that are currently offered for free, presumably due to being endangered.)

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Any indyref strategy that could leave us powerless to act until 2026 is a strategy that should be rejected

You may have seen a YouTube video doing the rounds of Nicola Sturgeon being unusually candid on Saturday about her strategy for seeking a mandate for independence if the UK government refuses a Section 30 order.  Here's a transcript...

"And the same would be true if we ended up trying to have a referendum that the other side would say was illegal.  The beauty of 2014 was that it was an agreed process.  So all this is taking me to the point of: I don't have an easy answer to this, because we may get into a situation where the UK government says 'No, we're not going to agree to a Section 30 order' and you know, I think if that happens we need to look above that, we need to make a case of how unreasonable that is, and ultimately if the only way through that is to take that to an election, and ask the people of Scotland to use an election to say no, we will absolutely have the right to do this, maybe that's what that would take."

Let's start with the good news.  Although some people are interpreting this as the first concrete evidence that Ms Sturgeon might be minded to adopt the Pete Wishart "Hold! Hold! Hold! Hold! Hold! Hoooold!  Hoooooooold! HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD!" strategy and let the current mandate for a pre-2021 independence referendum expire, on my reading that very clearly isn't what she is saying at all.  It sounds much more like she is at least planning to attempt to use the mandate, and will at some point over the coming weeks or months renew her demand for a Section 30 order.  If so, fantastic, that's just what most of us are crying out for.

The bad news is that her thinking on a consultative referendum doesn't appear to have moved on since early 2017 (a time when everyone still naively thought London would accept Scotland's right to democratic self-determination).  In other words, Ms Sturgeon still doesn't believe a referendum is worth holding unless it has London's consent, and therefore if a Section 30 order isn't granted, we won't go ahead in the immediate future.  That needlessly gives London a veto of sorts, at least in the short term, and that doesn't seem satisfactory at all.  I'm particularly puzzled by her use of the word "illegal", because any consultative referendum held without a Section 30 would almost certainly only go ahead if the Supreme Court upheld the legislation, which would remove any doubt about the legality of the process.  The Tories and Labour would just look silly if they tried to claim something the Supreme Court had endorsed was "illegal".

However, a needless aversion to a consultative vote isn't the end of the world as long as there is a credible alternative plan, and that's what makes the ambiguity in Ms Sturgeon's closing words so tantalising.  Most people are interpreting it as meaning she would use the 2021 election to seek yet another mandate for a referendum, even though we already have a perfectly good one.  (As our dear old American gun nut friend Kevin Baker used to say: "Do it again, only HARDER!!!!")  I agree that's probably what she meant, but it's not at all clear.  I would suggest that it's entirely possible to interpret "use an election to say no, we will absolutely have the right to do this" as meaning that the election will be used to seek an outright mandate for independence itself if a Section 30 order is denied.  That would be a strategy most of us could happily unite behind.

But if the 'seek yet another mandate for a referendum' interpretation is the correct one, I think we're going to have to speak out against it, because the problems with that strategy are pretty obvious.  If we win a pro-independence majority at the 2021 election (not a given, of course), and Westminster still says "no" to a referendum, what do we do then?  We already know that Ms Sturgeon is unlikely to go ahead with a consultative referendum, so even if she belatedly accepts at that point that an election must then be used to seek an outright mandate for independence, there would be the rather enormous problem that another Holyrood election wouldn't be due until 2026.  Any strategy that could leave us powerless for another eight years does not strike me as being a promising one.

Of course snap Westminster elections can sometimes appear out of the blue, and might offer an opportunity to seek a mandate (of whatever sort) more speedily than would otherwise be the case.  But relying on blind chance doesn't seem like a great idea either.

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Britain is now a prison - the SNP must set out its escape plan

Britain is no longer the country that most of us grew up in, and the transformation has been incredibly recent and sudden.  Every Prime Minister between Harold Wilson and David Cameron accepted that Scotland was only part of the UK on a voluntary basis and could leave any time it wished.  Even in the early days of Theresa May's premiership, Ruth Davidson was still explaining to journalists that it would be 'constitutionally improper' for London to block an independence referendum requested by a majority of the elected Scottish Parliament.  That immaculate principle of self-determination was not compromised until May's "now is not the time" schtick, which was intended to imply a deferral rather than an outright rejection of Scotland's right to choose.  But it's now clear that was merely a staging post on a quick transition towards the new colonial settlement, backed by both Tory and Labour, in which Scotland is told it will be remaining in the UK regardless of its own wishes.  The new Britain is the very Soviet-style prison that Jeremy Hunt, with a record-breaking absence of self-awareness, claimed the EU to be only the other day.  That is a truly staggering development, and the only thing even more staggering is the fact that our useless mainstream media don't seem to feel the attempted murder of Scotland's democracy is worthy of any note.

It may seem naive in retrospect, but the SNP's strategy in firing the starting gun for a referendum in early 2017 hinged entirely on the belief that Theresa May would not say "no".  It was a genuine surprise to the SNP leadership when she did, but even after that point the strategy continued to assume that her "no" had to really mean "maybe, when the pressure builds".  In the light of recent events, such wishful thinking must be dispensed with permanently.  We now know for virtually certain that a method for circumventing a London "no" will be required, and luckily two such methods exist - a consultative referendum held without a Section 30 order (which would probably need to be okayed by the Supreme Court), or a Holyrood election that doubles as an independence referendum. We need to hear from the SNP right now, or very soon, about how one or both of those methods will be used.  That does not in any way prejudge the issue of referendum timing, because regardless of whether the referendum is called next year, or in 2025, or at any point in between, it is clear that London will not give its blessing.  If the SNP is serious about Scotland leaving the prison of the UK at any point in the future, it's absolutely crucial that it now demonstrates that seriousness to the electorate by revealing its escape plan.  Not actually a difficult or challenging thing to do, but without it the credibility of the whole independence cause may start to wither, because the media will be all too eager to triumphantly have people believe that independence is automatically dead just because London says it is.

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What else has changed about Britain very recently?  Try the abrupt end of the devolution settlement as we know it.  The whole point of devolution was to end the situation that prevailed in the 1980s and 1990s when the Scottish Tories were manning the Scottish Office and arrogantly calling the shots in this country on the basis of 28% or 24% or 26% of the vote.  We appear to be right back to where we started.  Ruth Davidson, who has never led her party to anything better than second place and 29% of the vote in any election, seemingly has the right to tell the landslide winner of every recent election in Scotland to "sling her hook" when she tries to implement her manifesto.  As the defeated leader of the opposition, Davidson can apparently make "announcements" about which year in the distant future the elected First Minister of this country might possibly be "allowed" to implement the will of the people.  Oddly, our mainstream media believe this state of affairs is somehow inspiring, rather than the democratic outrage it so obviously is.

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Why I'm backing Chris McEleny for SNP depute leader

Because the candidates are perhaps a little less well-known than would usually be the case, I had planned to take my time before making a final decision about who to vote for in the SNP depute leadership race.  However, the three remaining candidates have now all expressed clear views on the timing of a second independence referendum.  Unless those views change, I think the decision to vote for Chris McEleny has effectively been taken for me. 

These are the positions of the candidates as I understand them -

Chris McEleny: There should be an independence referendum within the next eighteen months.

Julie Hepburn: We have a mandate for a referendum.  But the timing of the referendum is not what members should be thinking about right now.  We should trust Nicola Sturgeon to make the right decision.

Keith Brown: The SNP is not yet ready to fight an independence referendum, and we need to get ready before a referendum can be called.

Now, I know some people will argue that this contest should not even be about the timing of a referendum.  Julie Hepburn's exhortation to "just trust Nicola" is superficially seductive.  But here's the thing: although Nicola Sturgeon will ultimately be the person who makes the decision, she will do it after factoring in the views of other key players within the SNP.  It would be perverse if the voice of the membership is the only voice that is not heard in that decision-making process.  What "trust Nicola" really amounts to is saying that you'll be equally happy regardless of what is decided, and there can't be many of us who truly feel that way.  Even if a decision goes against you, it's a lot easier to accept the outcome if you've had a chance to express your view and to be heard.  This election is taking place at a time when the SNP is facing one of the biggest forks in the road in its history, and the idea that we should all just be ignoring that and choosing who to vote for based solely on other factors seems to me naive and unrealistic.

Some people will argue that Chris McEleny does not have a high enough profile to be depute leader.  The reality is, though, that because the SNP's big beasts are all sitting this contest out, the role of depute is going to be very different from before, regardless of who wins.  Keith Brown is the only parliamentarian standing, but even if he wins, he's plainly not going to suddenly become the second most important person within the SNP, and probably not the third or fourth most important either.  The new role of the depute could be as a bridge between the leadership and the grass-roots, and Chris McEleny is arguably best-placed to fill that role.

"Preparation and persuasion, not obsessing over timing" is another seductive argument, but my huge concern is that all the best preparation and persuasion in the world will count for absolutely nothing if the referendum never actually takes place.  That would be the risk we'd take if we flirt with allowing the mandate for a pre-2021 referendum to expire.  In fairness, Keith Brown isn't adopting the Pete Wishart/Jim Sillars stance - nothing he has said would specifically preclude a pre-2021 referendum.  However, it does seem to me that he is effectively ruling out a referendum in the spring of next year - if he's saying that the SNP is not ready now, it's hard to see how he'd be able to argue that everything had been turned around by the autumn, when the starting-gun for a vote in early 2019 would have to be fired.  I don't think that taking any option off the table is helpful at this stage.  At least Julie Hepburn appears to be genuinely neutral on timing (and her emphasis that "we have the mandate" perhaps points to the likelihood of a pre-2021 vote), so on that basis I'm currently minded to give her my second preference vote, behind Chris McEleny.  I'll continue to keep an eye on what is said, though.

Remember that even if Keith Brown wins due to name-recognition, a strong showing for Chris McEleny would still send a powerful message to the leadership about members' views on the urgency of a referendum.  So from that point of view I feel that a vote for McEleny is an each-way bet that is well worth taking.

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Why Pete Wishart is asking the wrong question about an independence referendum

As you may have seen, Pete Wishart has an opinion piece in today's issue of The National which effectively functions as his preliminary manifesto for the SNP depute leadership election.  The central thrust is a thinly-coded call for the party to allow its hard-won mandate for a second independence referendum to expire, and to instead try its luck at some unspecified point after 2021.  You won't be surprised to hear that I disagree with that entirely, which means that in spite of my huge regard for Pete Wishart, I'm almost certainly going to end up voting for someone else in the depute election.  Time will tell whether that'll be James Dornan or someone who has yet to throw his or her hat into the ring.

In fairness, Pete does half-heartedly leave open the possibility of supporting a referendum before 2021, but only if victory is "certain", which is an absurd threshold that is quite simply not going to be met.  Perhaps more pertinently, it's not going to be met after 2021 either.  We could wait twenty, thirty, forty years, but the fundamental point will not change - independence would be a rupture to the status quo, which means there will always be a considerable percentage of the population who fear it and instinctively oppose it.  The idea that gradual demographic changes or the long-term failures of Brexit are going to deliver us victory before we even fire the starting-gun is in the realms of fantasy.  Whenever the referendum happens, we'll go into the campaign uncertain of the outcome, and requiring a massive effort to emerge victorious.

Pete is correct in one limited respect - there is no guarantee that the big net swing to Yes during the 2014 campaign will be repeated next time.  The first independence referendum in Quebec in 1980 saw a substantial swing to No over the course of the campaign, while the second in 1995 saw a substantial swing to Yes.  It could very easily go either way, which means that all that can be said about the mid-40s showings for Yes in Scottish polls at the moment is that it leaves us within plausible striking distance of victory.  But the actual winning and losing will be done during the campaign, and that will be the case regardless of timing.  If we wait for certainty, we wait forever.  I'm not a big football fan, but I've heard it said of some football teams that they try to score the perfect goal and never actually shoot.  That's the first huge danger of Pete's strategy.

The second huge danger is that excessive patience may mean that we won't even be able to shoot for goal if we ever finally decide the timing is somehow 'optimal'.  It shouldn't be forgotten just how difficult it is to win a pro-independence majority in a Holyrood election fought under the Additional Member voting system.  Can you imagine the frustration if the SNP poll strongly in successive elections, but repeatedly fall just one, two or three seats short of a pro-indy majority, and consequently a referendum remains tantalisingly just out of reach for a couple of decades or more?  After the narrow defeat for Yes in the 1995 Quebec referendum, it was assumed it was only a matter of time before a third referendum would be called.  The sovereigntists duly won an overall majority in the 1998 election, but backed off from using that mandate - and as a result a referendum simply hasn't been possible for the last twenty years, because they haven't won a majority since.  They've been in power as a minority for a while during that period, but have never had the arithmetic to call a referendum.  I don't want the same fate to befall us.

Pete says the only question that matters is whether we win the next indyref.  But there's an even more important question that has to be placed before that - namely, "will we have the capacity to actually call an indyref?"  We know one thing for virtually certain - we'll have the arithmetic to call a referendum until May 2021.  We don't have a clue whether that will still be true at any point after May 2021.  Our window of opportunity is in this current parliament, and it would be a historic error to turn away from it.

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An independence referendum in 2019 or 2020 is looking increasingly likely

Somebody with more patience than I have will doubtless work their way line-by-line through Gerry Hassan's latest update of 'The Article'.  There are the familiar highlights - the claims that Nicola Sturgeon was "out-manoeuvred by Theresa May" during the spring of 2017 (presumably by the tactical brilliance of May calling an unnecessary election and throwing her majority away) and that the SNP are too "proprietorial" about the indy cause and don't give enough space to "independent initiatives" such as Common Weal and RISE.  (It's an abuse of the language to call RISE an "initiative" - it was/is a fully-fledged political party set up with the intention of taking list votes from the SNP and possibly depriving them of an overall majority at Holyrood.)

What really made my jaw drop to the floor, though, was this passage -

"It is understandable that Nicola Sturgeon hasn’t taken a future indy referendum officially off the table. Not only does it work as a discipline on SNP and indy supporters; critically it acts as a hypothetical big stick towards the UK Government in relation to Brexit. Yet, what the SNP leadership has failed to point out is that there is next to no chance of an indy referendum in 2019 or indeed before 2021 (and before the next Scottish elections)."

There is of course a very good reason why the SNP leadership have "failed to point that out" - ie. it isn't actually true.  It's the polar opposite of the truth.  I have no doubt that there are people in the SNP, including at quite a senior level, who wish that the whole idea of a second indyref before 2021 would just go away so that they can get on with other things.  But all of the mood music suggests that those people have lost the internal argument and that Nicola Sturgeon is serious about the option of a referendum in 2019 or 2020.  That doesn't necessarily mean it will happen - she's made clear that continued single market membership is her main red line, so if that improbable outcome emerges from the negotiations, an indyref will presumably be off the table until after 2021.  But the fact that the party leadership have made no effort whatever to downplay expectations that an indyref will be called if Scotland is dragged out of the single market is highly significant.  The idea that this is just empty talk intended to function as a "discipline" and a "big stick" just doesn't stack up - they would have been far, far cagier with their language if they were secretly gearing themselves up for a massive climbdown this autumn, because they know full well what the consequences for SNP internal unity would be if members feel they have been led up the garden path.  If anything, the statements have only been getting bolder in recent weeks.

Now, it's true that the mainstream media (especially in London but also in Scotland) have been paying precious little attention to the SNP's public comments about an indyref, and will probably be completely stunned if and when the starting-gun is fired.  But on the balance of probability, that is what appears set to happen.

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