The black hole where the US media's coverage of third party candidates should be

It was an interesting experience watching CNN's election coverage as one of the roughly 1% of voters who had plumped for someone other than Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. Although I'd been in that position before, in past elections I'd voted for the relatively high-profile Ralph Nader. This time it was as if third party candidates didn't exist, and indeed as if their voters didn't exist either. The subliminal message was "if you didn't vote Democrat or Republican, you didn't participate in this election". Psychologically, it's very hard to swim against that tide, and I found that I had to remind myself a few times why the easy option of a vote for Obama really wouldn't have been such a great idea.

This subtle pressure on voters to conform is undoubtedly very convenient to some. At about 6am, I saw a former Clinton adviser talking about his party's "growing up" process in 1992, which included an embrace of the death penalty. The Democrats "wouldn't have been ready" to make that change four years earlier, he added with a degree of smugness. This repugnant notion that putting people to death somehow equates with "maturity" is enabled by the assumption that left-liberal voters have nowhere else to go - or if they're uppity enough to think they do have somewhere else to go, that they can and should be browbeaten back into line. Witness the disgraceful attempt to pin the blame for Bush's 2000 election victory on Nader and his supporters. Seemingly it had never occurred to the "centrists" and "moderates" (ahem) that their complicity in maintaining a discredited electoral system might just have consequences for them, as well as for the constituencies of opinion that they are happy to patronise and marginalise.

On a more positive note, it's conceivable that CNN may have been kind enough to actually count my Senate vote, because I happened to vote for the winning candidate - an unashamedly socialist independent. Which is a timely reminder that if enough people persevere with voting for third party candidates for long enough, eventually some of those candidates will make a breakthrough, and then they can't be ignored anymore.

It should also be pointed out that the US media's treatment of third parties is infinitely worse than anything we've ever seen in this country. Even when British politics was a genuinely straight fight between the Conservatives and Labour, the BBC used to faithfully report the results for Liberals and fringe candidates (indeed they probably did so more faithfully than they do now).

* * *

A quick update on my previous post - somewhat surprisingly, Puerto Rico seems to have broken the habit of decades by voting against the constitutional status quo. The most popular option was to become the 51st US state, so it'll be intriguing to see if their wishes are respected, or if "only English-speaking states are welcome here". Unfortunately, the attempt to abolish the death penalty in California failed, which is without question a considerable setback for the abolitionist movement throughout the US. I do still firmly belief that America will join the civilised world eventually, but it may take a few more decades yet.

It's independence referendum day...

...in Puerto Rico.  The fact that you probably didn't know that (no offence to anyone who did!) should perhaps cause us to question our assumption that any independence referendum is bound to attract considerable international interest.  After all, Puerto Rico is only slightly smaller than Scotland.  Having said that, today's vote follows on from a series of past referenda on the island that have always produced negligible support for outright independence.  There's no reason to expect anything different this time round, so that perhaps explains the lack of excitement.  The real interest will be whether the electorate opt for the status quo, for a free association agreement with the US, or to become the 51st state of the union.

Yes, you read that right.  This is a multi-option constitutional referendum.  The Scottish Liberal Democrats are understandably bemused - everyone knows that if you want constitutional change short of independence, the sure-fire way to get it is to insist that your preferred option is excluded from the ballot paper.

I must say that the status quo in Puerto Rico looks like the worst of all worlds - it gives the territory most of the bad things associated with being an integral part of the US, but without any of the voting rights.  Statehood might do the US and the wider world a favour by moving Congress slightly to the left, and increasing the chances of a Democratic victory in presidential elections. It would also make the US a much more unambiguously bilingual nation.  However, assuming independence isn't a realistic option, I think free association is what I'd be looking towards if I lived on the island.  In a way it's strange that option has never really been floated for Scotland - perhaps that's because as a proud historic nation it's unthinkable for us to have the same constitutional status as the Marshall Islands.  But the fact remains that free association is a rung on the ladder above Devo Max - we'd be sovereign, and outside the United Kingdom.

Another referendum taking place today will decide whether California should abolish the death penalty.  I'm quite glad I'm not involved in that campaign, because the Yes side have made a tactical decision to abandon the moral arguments against capital punishment, and are instead advancing the 'fiscal conservative' case that life imprisonment without parole would be more cost-effective.  They seem to be gaining some traction that way, but it must be hard to try to win a victory for a deeply-held moral principle by pretending you don't really care about that principle.

I was amused to see this defence of the death penalty on a forum the other day -

"We all have consciences to some degree HB....

The main difference here, is OUR consciences are activated by seeing a multiple murderer/child rapist be released, or escape from prison..

and do his horrible deed to yet another child....

yep, this drives my conscience absolutly NUTS.

While YOU'RE conscience activates over SAVING the pig knowing full well that they can escape, or be released....to do their dirty deed over & over.....

You sure you want to talk about a pro's conscience?"

So the main justification for capital punishment is that prisoners "might escape" if you don't kill them? Crikey, just how insecure are these American maximum-security prisons?

Questions to which the answer is 'if you don't stop asking these horrid questions, I'll shame this family by becoming an arsonist'

Gordon Brown may not have been the greatest ever PM, but it's now clear that was not the summit of his political career. No, the role that history has been preparing him for is to resurrect Labour Hame's legendary Questions To Which The Answer Is "Er..." feature, which has been so shamefully neglected by its creator Tom "Admin" Harris for over a year now. For the uninitiated, the feature consisted of a series of 'impossible' questions for Nationalists. They were 'impossible' for the following reasons -

1) Approximately 728 answers from Nationalists would be received for each question, of which approximately 701 would be deleted. They simply didn't exist.

2) The remaining 27 answers would be declared "non-answers".

3) When asked why they were non-answers, "Admin" would explain that a legitimate answer could only consist of a 'Yes' or a 'No', without qualification.

4) Subsequent legitimate answers consisting of an unqualified 'Yes' or 'No' would be greeted with the words : "Thankyou for attempting to answer this week's Question To Which The Answer Is "Er...". Unfortunately, your answer was incorrect."

5) The question would then be declared UNANSWERED.

What a lark. Sadly missed.

But now Big Gord has made up for lost time, with more than twenty absolute belters. I feel like a kid let loose in a sweet shop, but I really don't want to make myself ill, so for now I'll just restrict myself to my absolute favourite -

"What happens if the Scottish Parliament has a different view on the line of succession for the Monarchy?"

First of all, the fact that this genuinely appears to be one of the questions keeping Gordon awake at night says something rather profound about his sense of priorities. As Johann Lamont might put it : "a male heir to the throne is no substitute for having a job".

But as it seems to be so important to Gordon, let's try and put this matter in some kind of perspective for him. There are currently sixteen Commonwealth Realms, ie. countries which share our monarch as their Head of State. All of them could in theory take their own view on the line of succession, but all of them have decided that would be extremely silly, and have agreed that any change (most probably allowing a girl to take precedence over any younger brothers) would have to come about through consensus. Scottish independence would simply add a seventeenth Commonwealth Realm to that process.

Now my own question for any passing Labour activist, if they can find the time -

Given the theoretical but unlikely possibility that the parliaments of New Zealand, Jamaica or Papua New Guinea could take a different view on the line of succession for the monarchy, does this mean that the independence of those countries is unviable?

In your own time, chaps...

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Suffering from Denis MacShane withdrawal symptoms? Get fast relief by trying out the Scot Goes Pop Denis MacShane word-search from last year.

Phil's Fallout Feeds My Five-Year-Old

Brit Nuke chief Phil Hammond today BLASTED the parochial Jock First Minister for his "crazy obsession" with averting global nuclear catastrophe.

Speaking on flagship radio show Mornings Are Better Together, Hammond announced that an extra SEVENTEEN nuclear-related jobs could be created in Scotland - but this would ONLY happen in the event of nuclear war. In a devastating blow for the separatist pipe-dream, he confirmed that Scotland was highly unlikely to be part of a nuclear war if it left the United Kingdom.

"Mr. Salmond may be a tad slow on the uptake," said Hammond with a glint in his eye, "but the people of Scotland have always known that nuclear explosions create jobs. Once our cities have been destroyed, seventeen Scots will be leading the firefighting efforts, and handing out comfort biscuits to survivors. That's even better than it sounds, because those seventeen people will constitute an incredible 97% of the remaining workforce.

"Are Scots really going to throw away the chance to fulfil John Smith's goal of full employment? I think not. We're better together."

And in a clear sign that Joke Jock Alex has misread the mood of his own people, Hammond was greeted by hundreds of well-wishers as he left the studio. Some were carrying placards featuring slogans such as "Phil's Fallout Feeds My Five-Year-Old".

With depressing predictability, however, Hammond's intervention was greeted with somewhat less enthusiasm by his coalition 'partners'.

"Steady on, chaps," said a Lib Dem source. "We may well be up for a job-creating nuclear war eventually, but we've yet to go through our traditional 'looking reluctant' phase. That will take at least two weeks."

But Labour insisted that allergic-to-divorce Scots shouldn't be disheartened by the apparent coalition tensions.

"In fact, this brings the creation of these seventeen much-needed jobs even closer," explained Alistair Darling of the Marriage Conciliation Service. "We now have a very real chance of a nuclear war between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party. This would never happen under separation. Let's say it loud and proud - we're better together and we'll burn together."

Read more about this story in the print edition of your super soaraway Scot Goes Pop.

Why are YouGov so convinced they can "improve" on the referendum question?

I overlooked this YouGov poll on independence the other day, which essentially shows an identical position to the previous poll by the same company a week earlier -

Yes 29% (-1)
No 55% (-1)

(Note : In my post about the earlier poll, I incorrectly gave the figure for Yes as 31% rather than 30%, because the question had been asked two different ways with slightly different results.)

A supplementary question asked whether Yes Scotland (the Yes campaign) or Better Together (the No campaign) had produced better evidence to support its case. The results were strikingly different -

Yes Scotland 33%
Better Together 32%

One point stressed in the reporting of this poll is that the main question asked by YouGov was the actual referendum question proposed by the Scottish Government. This would indeed constitute progress for a polling company that has for years much preferred questions like "Do you REALLY think that Scotland should be WHOLLY separate from its dear brothers and sisters in the rest of the United Kingdom, cast adrift in the North Atlantic without food, shelter or warmth?". But, alas, the story isn't quite so simple. YouGov apparently still believe their panel are far too thick to understand the meaning of the words "Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?", and felt obliged to offer an 'explanatory' preamble to the question, pointing out (you've guessed it) that what the referendum is really about is Scotland leaving the United Kingdom.

There's no great mystery as to what's going on here. Peter Kellner, the head of YouGov, recently penned an article in which he once again lambasted the SNP for proposing a 'loaded' question. Well, he's perfectly entitled to that faintly ludicrous opinion, but what he isn't entitled to do is allow his personal beliefs about what would constitute a "better" question to continue to skew his polls, however subtly. It should surely be self-evident that the most robust, credible and reliable polls will be those that ask the actual referendum question in a straightforward, unadorned manner.

Incidentally, Kellner's article also contained the jaw-droppingly hubristic claim that he knows - literally knows for a fact two years in advance - that there will be a No vote in the referendum, a conviction for which he offered a string of spurious justifications. Now, it would be extremely easy to dismiss this as a partisan stunt by a known Labour sympathiser (and the husband of Baroness Cathy Ashton), but in truth I think that Kellner is a serious analyst who just has some pretty major blind spots. Anyone who watched the replay of the BBC's 1992 election coverage earlier this year will have seen him make a series of utterly bizarre predictions - one was that Brussels would soon somehow 'force' the UK to use proportional representation for its national elections. Twenty years on, it's sad to say that his bolder predictions are no more soundly-based.

What's done is done, but let's try not to bring back the tawse

There probably isn't a good way for a political party to lose a member of its parliamentary group, but there are very bad ways and less bad ways. The worst is either (depending on your point of view) straight defection to another party or a resignation forced by a criminal charge or conviction. The next worst is a resignation caused by an internal party squabble, à la Margo MacDonald or Dennis Canavan. MSPs who resign on a specific matter of conscience, but who remain on good terms with their former party leadership and pledge to remain supportive on most parliamentary votes, is the least worst of all. Indeed, it reminds the public of the strong principles that attracted people to the SNP in the first place - this isn't a party of careerists or narrow nationalists, but of idealists who see independence as a vehicle for a better nation and a better world. Additionally, to the extent that the electorate stand to be reassured by the change in policy on NATO, this underscores for them that the shift is not cosmetic, but is genuine and has had consequences.

Nevertheless, the departure of John Finnie and Jean Urquhart is still highly regrettable, and I can't help but feel that the leadership have to take a share of the blame. Loyalty and the maintenance of unity isn't a one-way street. Before indicating their desire for a change in policy, did the leadership take steps to ascertain whether resignations were likely? That should certainly have been a factor in their thinking - there may be some (small) tactical advantage in being seen to be more in step with public opinion on NATO, but there's also a tactical advantage in a party remaining united. A natural majority clearly exists within the SNP for leaving NATO (the narrowness of the vote suggests that it was swung by delegates who didn't want to embarrass the leadership), and the most appropriate way to maintain unity is to ensure that the majority voice is respected.

However, what's done is done. Let's hope the lessons have been learned, and that there are no further attempts to push the party membership further than they are prepared to go on their core principles - ie. no innocuous policy "updates" on reintroducing the tawse!

Lastly, I don't want to say I told you so, but I told you so. I suggested in May last year that the SNP ought to think twice about installing Tricia Marwick as Presiding Officer, because it would slightly increase the risk of them losing their overall majority at some point during the five-year parliament. Eighteen months on, the majority is already down to two seats. It's unlikely to make much practical difference if the majority is eventually lost, but you can be sure that the symbolism would be gleefully seized upon by the unionist parties.

No campaign's own poll shows increase in support for independence

Another day, another mildly encouraging poll - but this one is courtesy of the No campaign. I seem to recall this isn't the first time that a Better Together poll has backfired in this way - thanks again, chaps. Here are the figures...

Yes 31% (+4)
No 56% (-4)

It's a YouGov poll, so the percentage changes are from the last YouGov poll on independence in August. It pretty much entirely reverses the Olympic blip that our unionist friends got so excited about at the time - the pre-Olympic figures were Yes 30%, No 54%.

The poll also shows that as many as 21% of Labour supporters will vote for independence. It strikes me that either Tom Harris' sneering claim that the Labour for Independence group must be "Nats pretending to be Labour" is wrong, or else Labour activists are utterly failing to represent the views of their own voters. I hope (and believe) it's the former.

It's probably already been widely discussed elsewhere, but I've also just spotted that there was a YouGov poll commissioned by the SNP a few days ago -

The 'Yes' campaign is deploying a series of arguments as part of their campaign to achieve a 'Yes' vote for an independent Scotland in the referendum in 2014 – for example they point to statistics showing that Scotland generates 9.6% of UK taxes, but receives just 9.3% of UK spending in return. If the 'Yes' campaign could persuade you that you and your family would be economically better off with Scottish independence, in these circumstances, how likely or unlikely would you be to vote 'Yes' for an independent Scotland in 2014?

Likely 45%
Unlikely 36%

So we now know that the Scottish people will vote for independence if they think the Tories will win the next general election, or if they think they would be economically better-off. Hmmm. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this somehow doesn't strike me as being the hopeless position for the Yes campaign that the London media would have us believe.

Panelbase poll : independence within touching distance

Thanks to Marcia on the previous thread for alerting me to today's Panelbase poll on independence, which is far more encouraging than the recent Ipsos-Mori and TNS-BMRB polls. The main question has independence just eight points behind -

Yes 37% (+2)
No 45% (+1)

However, there is also a supplementary question asking how people would vote if they thought the next election would result in a Tory victory, or a renewed Tory-Lib Dem coalition. This produces a dramatic turnaround -

Yes 52%
No 40%

It would be interesting to know exactly how that question was framed, because there's always a danger with these hypothetical questions of giving respondents the impression they're 'supposed' to produce a different answer. Nevertheless, it does demonstrate a plausible reason for believing this referendum can be won, and one which will not please Tom Harris and friends, who will doubtless step up their attempts to lecture the Scottish people that wanting rid of the Tories is not a good enough reason to vote for independence. I dare say it all makes sense to a man who moved heaven and earth to install David Cameron in Downing Street.

UPDATE : Judging from the details of the poll that have been mentioned on the SNP website, it appears that respondents were actually asked both about how they would vote if they thought the Tories were going to win the election, and about how they would vote if they thought Labour were going to win. This increases the credibility of the findings (because it means the questioning was even-handed), but what's particularly fascinating is that support for independence also increases sharply when voters anticipate a Labour government, with the lead for the No side decreasing to four points.

* * *

Although I switched on the TV in time to catch the result of the SNP conference vote on NATO the other day, I missed the debate itself. If I had been a delegate I would have voted to maintain the existing policy, so I was a bit troubled by suggestions that proponents of a change had used inflammatory language such as "grow up". RevStu's summary of proceedings has been very helpful in making sense of what happened -

"The real killer blow, though, came in a closing speech from Angus Robertson, the proposer of the motion.

Reminding the conference that he’d been in charge of the SNP’s two historic Holyrood victories, he led them onto the sucker punch – that even in the 2011 landslide they’d only secured 44% of the vote, and 44% wasn’t enough to win a referendum. It was a devastating point..."

I'm not sure about that. The SNP enjoyed a victory last year of extraordinary proportions, and the idea that they might have topped 50% if only they had been pro-NATO seems fairly fanciful. As RevStu reminds us later in his piece, polling evidence suggests that only 11% of the electorate want to leave NATO, so that clearly wasn't a bar to at least another 33% voting SNP. Indeed, it was probably a greater number than that, because some anti-NATO voters would presumably have voted Green, SSP, Solidarity or Respect.

The Greens have also been quick to correctly point out that this doesn't even mark a shift in the stance of the Yes campaign, which is multi-party and thus does not take a view on NATO. Of course some unionists and commentators will always insist on conflating the SNP's policy with "what will automatically happen under independence", so from that point of view there may be some tactical benefit to this change. But I very much doubt it will make a huge difference.

"The second-weakest argument, incidentally, was that staying in NATO would prevent Scotland from leading the entire globe to multilateral disarmament. With the best will in the world, the notion that what Scotland does could ever have even the tiniest impact on the nuclear policies of the USA, Russia or China is delusional tree-hugging insanity of the absurdest order."

True, but it's not unreasonable to suppose that Scotland refusing to join NATO would have a modest international impact, because it might check the momentum in favour of the organisation's seemingly relentless expansion. It could stiffen the resolve of a country like Finland to remain on the outside, for example.

"If you’re underneath a bomb, you don’t much care what kind it is.

This is something that’s puzzled us for decades, frankly. We really don’t get the hysterical opposition to nuclear weapons as opposed to other kinds of weapons. Go and ask the people of Tokyo or Dresden if they’re relieved that they got attacked with nice cuddly “conventional” weapons instead of nukes."

On that point I part company entirely with RevStu. The devastation wreaked on Tokyo and Dresden may have been comparable to the effects of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but that's because nuclear weapons technology was in its infancy in 1945. Modern nuclear weapons have the potential to virtually (and some would argue literally) wipe out the human species. In that sense they are comparable to chemical and biological weapons, but not to conventional weapons. WMDs are quite rightly in a special category, and it should be the goal of every civilised nation to eliminate them.

However, as I've said before, a change in the SNP's stance on NATO membership isn't the end of the world (no pun intended). We're sure as hell not going to get out of NATO for as long as we remain in the UK, so the first priority is to achieve independence, and then those of us who want to leave NATO can set about campaigning to achieve that goal.

* * *

NOTE : I've temporarily removed Better Nation from the blog list in the sidebar, because for some reason it was triggering a doom-laden warning on Chrome urging people to leave this blog immediately. It's almost certainly a false warning, and I'll put BN back on as soon as the issue is resolved.

Iain McKenzie, coincidence, and cosmic beauty

A woman walks along a random street, hundreds of miles from home. She passes a phone box where the phone is ringing, and out of curiosity answers it. On the other end of the line is her husband, who addresses her by name. He thinks he is talking to her on her mobile phone, but has got the wrong number.

Some people are scared by a coincidence like that. They assume that it could not possibly happen by random chance, and must have some underlying meaning. In many ways that's the foundation of superstition - and perhaps of one or two religions as well.

But, in truth, science tells us that it's statistically inevitable that these amazing coincidences will occasionally occur - so much so, in fact, that we ought to be far more frightened if they don't happen. So when we discover that Inverclyde's Labour MP Iain McKenzie rented a flat using taxpayers' money, and by completely random chance discovered later that he had accidentally ended up with a fellow Labour MP as his landlady, we shouldn't be scared, and we certainly shouldn't be sceptical of his story. We should simply embrace it as one of those extraordinary phenomena, like the aurora borealis, that enrich our world with so much beauty. And when we discover that, even more remarkably, three other MPs also accidentally rented flats from fellow MPs, we should feel even more enriched.

This is, it must be said, a special moment for those of us who predicted that something truly wonderful would happen if the people of Inverclyde had the good sense to elect McKenzie as their MP.

* * *

I've just heard that George Osborne has been caught sitting in the first-class compartment of a train with a standard-class ticket. He asked the conductor for special permission to stay where he was to avoid having to mix with the plebs, but was refused. As per what happened on a ScotRail train last year, I trust a "big man" arrived on the scene to deliver swift and violent justice to the fare-dodger, with the cheers of fellow passengers and the right-wing press ringing in his ears?

Ipsos-Mori poll : SNP retain solid Holyrood lead

Ipsos-Mori's latest Scottish poll suggests that the SNP's lead in voting intention for the Scottish Parliament has narrowed, but still stands at a reasonably healthy five points. The party's raw share of the vote is, at 40%, some seven points higher than when Alex Salmond first took power in 2007. Here are the full figures -

SNP 40% (-5)
Labour 35% (+3)
Conservatives 13% (+1)
Liberal Democrats 8% (+2)

There is also a question on voting intention for the independence referendum.

Yes 30% (-5)
No 58% (+3)

Which is very much in line with the drop in support for independence recorded recently by TNS-BMRB. As I said the other day in my guest post at PB, the obvious grounds for optimism is the possibility that we are currently witnessing a "London 2012" blip, which will shortly be reversed as memories of the summer gradually fade. It seems entirely plausible that will prove to be the case (after all, the Olympics were a complete one-off, and certainly won't be replicated by 'celebrating' the 100th anniversary of the start of a global catastrophe), but only time will tell.

Oh, and by the way, the Times seem to think Alex Salmond should regard his net personal rating of +10 as bad news. Just remind me of how far below zero Cameron, Miliband and Clegg currently are?

UPDATE : Ipsos-Mori have been in touch, and have asked me to correct this post, which originally stated -

"There is also a question on voting intention for the independence referendum. Caution should be exercised here, because from the little I've seen of the report in the Times, it looks very much like this is yet another example of a unionist newspaper commissioning a pollster to ask a question that bears little resemblance to the actual proposed referendum question. However, for what it's worth, here are the figures..."

In fact, the question asked was identical to the one proposed by the Scottish Government, ie. "Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?". The reason for my mistake is that I wrote the post overnight, when Ipsos-Mori hadn't yet (as far as I could see) posted the details of the poll on their website, so I was reliant on an extract from the Times report which gave the impression that respondents had been asked if they supported the union or independence.

I'm very happy to correct the error, and I also hope that Ipsos-Mori's excellent practice in using the real referendum question will now be followed by other pollsters, notably YouGov and TNS-BMRB. There really is no remaining excuse for them not to do so, especially now that we know the Scottish Parliament will ultimately control the wording of the question.

* * *

There are times when all you can do with Simon 'Says Separation' Johnson of the Telegraph is sit back and admire his unique artistry. Has there ever been such an exquisitely contradictory sentence as this?

"The FCO said independence could even result in customs posts at the Border as Scotland would no longer benefit from the UK’s opt-out to the Schengen Agreement, which guarantees free movement between EU member states."

OK, let's untangle this, if such a feat is humanly possible. Scotland would no longer benefit from NOT having the benefit of free movement between EU member states. So it seems the existence of border posts and a lack of free movement is in itself a benefit. Presumably this means that having even more border posts imposed on us by partitionists in London would constitute even more of a benefit? Er...no.

The sophistication of this theology is positively Harrisian. Border posts and restrictions on movement are simultaneously both a good thing and a bad thing. Okey-dokey.

"Although the document does not name specific threats to Britain’s influence, it is understood they fear Argentina would try and have the UK removed as one of the five permanent members of the UN’s Security Council."

I must say I'm extraordinarily relaxed about the idea of the UK losing its permanent seat on the Security Council. The veto power of the permanent members is a relic of colonialism, and should be scrapped as soon as possible - but won't be, for the obvious reason that a change in the rules would be vetoed by the permanent members. And there's the point - I'm sure Argentina and a whole host of other countries would be only too delighted to see the UK dislodged from the council, but they are powerless to make that happen. The only permanent member to have been previously cast out by a vote in the General Assembly was Taiwan - but that was done by the sleight of hand of redefining what was meant by "China", and replacing the Republic of China with the People's Republic of China. The automatic right of China itself to a permanent place on the council was never in question. I suppose Argentina could always try redefining what is meant by "the UK" (perhaps it means Scotland?) but I doubt if they'd gain much traction.

In other words : red herring. Alas.

"The UK’s criticism of regimes in countries like Iran and Syria would also be blunted, with their leaders likely to crow over Scotland deciding to separate."

Are we really supposed to believe that the Western Alliance is so feeble that it can't survive a tiny bit of "crowing"?

"Scotland would lose its representation on the Security Council or the G20 group of the world’s largest economies, the submission said."

Scotland doesn't have any representation to lose, Simon. Or perhaps you're talking about William Hague? Dear God...

"Its ability to influence the EU would also suffer under a new proportional voting system that favours larger nations being introduced in 2014."

Can an increase in voting power from zero to a proportionate share really be characterised as "suffering"?

"Scots abroad could also be put at greater risk of "child abduction, forced marriage or crime" through the loss of the UK's consular assistance."

Snigger. Will that happen before or after UK embassies cripple our economy by withdrawing their tireless promotional efforts for Scotch whisky?