Ringing in the new

Just a quick note to let you know that I have a New Year article in the International Business Times, which looks at the SNP's prospects for 2015, and compares them to the way things looked for the Yes campaign twelve months ago.  You can read it HERE.  (It's also on Yahoo HERE.)

Dan Hodges : The gift that keeps on giving

A couple of quotes from Dan Hodges' keenly-awaited New Year address to the nation, which this year is on the thrillingly novel topic of "why Ed Miliband won't be Prime Minister".  (Good to see him expanding his range.)

"The idea of a “Nat Pact” has become the talk of Westminster. The odds on Sturgeon entering the cabinet have been slashed to 6-1."

"Those speculating about a Labour/SNP deal do not understand the basic psychology of how politics operates north of the border."

So a man who thinks that a Labour/SNP deal would somehow involve Nicola Sturgeon becoming a UK Cabinet minister, even though she is not standing as a candidate for Westminster, is lecturing others about their failure to understand Scottish politics.  Righty-ho.

I dare say it all makes sense in Hodges' head, and probably has something to do with Princess Diana.

Welcome to Enforced Vow Delivery Year

I'm on a disturbingly static bus which is supposed to be taking me home from the Edinburgh street party, so I just thought I'd take the opportunity to wish you all a Happy New Year.

If I ever get back, I'll post some photos from the party, but you know the drill with the camera on my phone - I might as well be posting photos of Jupiter.

People on the bus are passing the time by swapping New Year's Resolutions.  Mine is to point out Mike Smithson's inaccuracies ten times more often than before, just to irritate the sanctimonious anonymous poster from last night...

UPDATE : OK, here are the "photos", so feel free to try to decipher some sense from them.  The first one is actually Glasgow from last night, which is slightly irritating, because it's the only half-decent one!

I learned from going to the street party two years ago that moving around after 9pm is a choice that can only lead to pain and despair, so I just made my way to Frederick Street (where the Scottish stage was) and stayed there for most of the evening.  The three musical acts were Breabach, Eddi Reader and Ross Ainslie & Jarlath Henderson.

It seems that any splash made by Fairground Attraction in Australia twenty-five years ago must have well and truly worn off by now, because the Aussies behind me were taking bets on which one of the male backing musicians would turn out to be Mr Eddie Reader.

And the reaction of two women to Ross Ainslie/Jarlath Henderson : "I love this band, I don't know who they are, oh I wish I was Scottish."  Slightly unfair on Jarlath Henderson, who hails from Northern Ireland!

Who would be the SNP's Cabinet ministers in a Westminster coalition government?

And so we arrive at the final day of this most extraordinary of years.  As it happens, it's Alex Salmond's 60th birthday, and it's also the eve of general election year - an election which could leave Salmond in an even more powerful position than he enjoyed as First Minister.  There was an article in the Herald yesterday that claimed the SNP were talking about the possibility of full coalition with Labour for the first time, although I struggled to reconcile that interpretation with the actual quotes from Stewart Hosie.  The conventional wisdom remains that the SNP want a confidence-and-supply deal that would not entail taking up ministerial office in London.  But let's just suppose for the sake of argument that a full-blown coalition does happen.  Who might be the SNP's Cabinet ministers, and what portfolios might they hold?

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER : Alex Salmond.  He would probably inherit his predecessor Nick Clegg's "special responsibility for constitutional reform", although the difference is that he might actually do something about it.

SCOTTISH SECRETARY : Stewart Hosie.  The deputy leader of the SNP would take over from the deputy leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats.  Yes, that's right, folks - Alistair Carmichael is Willie Rennie's deputy.  How does that work, exactly?

CULTURE SECRETARY : Angus Robertson.  The SNP's Westminster group leader used to be a BBC journalist, so who better to oversee the long-overdue transfer of broadcasting regulation to Holyrood control?  Of course, sport comes with the culture brief, which technically means that Robertson would inherit responsibility for the UK government's bizarre commitment to make the England football team better than the Scotland football team.  Perhaps he could delegate that one to an enthusiastic Labour Minister of State, such as Ian Davidson.

WORK AND PENSIONS SECRETARY : Philippa Whitford.  Health is already (thankfully) a devolved matter, so Ms Whitford can't take on her natural brief, but it's hard to think of anything that has a bigger indirect impact on health than the war that has been waged on the poor and vulnerable by means of welfare "reform".  There could be no more satisfying a replacement for Iain Duncan Smith.

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT SECRETARY : Angus Brendan MacNeil.  Obviously the SNP wouldn't want to go within a thousand miles of responsibility for London's foreign or defence policy, but ensuring justice for the world's poorest is a different story.

Of course in reality there would probably be a better gender balance than that, but with so few candidates having been selected so far, I've ended up looking mainly at the SNP's existing MPs by default.

The credibility of the Political Betting website hits a new low - because of hypocrisy as much as inaccuracy

When I started writing this blog way back in May 2008, it was literally attracting about three or four readers per day.  I thought it was an absolute miracle after a few weeks when I got 71 unique visitors in one day, but even that only happened because it was Eurovision weekend.  Compare that to the last six months, when there have been hardly any days during which the blog hasn't attracted at least 1000 unique visitors.  There have been a few occasions when the number has reached almost 7000.

I really have only one man to thank for that transformation, and it's Mike "can't be arsed" Smithson.  For years, I used to spend more time posting at his Political Betting site than I did here, but since he banned me (seemingly for life) for refusing to pretend that his spiteful banning of a fellow pro-independence poster had never happened, I've had the time to build up Scot Goes Pop.

As long-term readers may remember, my banning took on a Kafka-esque afterlife, with Smithson's Tory moderators first of all deleting any posts that linked to this blog or even mentioned it, and then ultimately deleting posts that mentioned my name.  Even after all this time, you'd be taking your life into your hands by uttering the words "James Kelly" at PB.  My charismatic Labour MSP namesake is absolutely raging about it.

The moderators (or specifically the notoriously dishonest moderator TSE) did dream up a thin excuse for banning links to Scot Goes Pop, albeit one that was based on a downright lie.  TSE claimed that I had once been "forced to apologise" to a polling company for posting inaccurate information about one of their polls, and that PB regulars should therefore "understand" the moderators' "concerns" about this blog.  In fact, his claim was wrong on two counts - there was no inaccuracy, and I most certainly had not been forced to apologise.  What I had done was speculate that an Ipsos-Mori independence poll may not have asked the real referendum question - but I made clear that was only speculation, and not a statement of fact.  I then received an email from Ipsos-Mori which claimed that they had used the referendum question in unadorned form, so I issued an immediate correction, and apologised as a matter of courtesy.

That sequence of events may be ringing a few uncanny bells for those of you unfortunate enough to have visited Political Betting today.  There was a wildly speculative post from Smithson this morning inviting readers to conclude that the SNP's failure to publish any voting intention figures from their recent Panelbase poll must mean that the party's lead over Labour has slipped.  I knew that was garbage straight away, because one of the advantages of Scot Goes Pop's hugely expanded readership is that I often get tipped off about polls in the field, and I've therefore known for days that Panelbase didn't ask a voting intention question.

Buried at the bottom of the PB post, you'll now see an update admitting that the SNP and Panelbase have both made clear that there were no voting intention numbers.  But in contrast to what I did in the case of the Ipsos-Mori poll, Smithson hasn't bothered correcting the body of the post, so anyone who doesn't read to the bottom will still be totally misled.  There is certainly no sign of an apology.

In the interests of consistency, I now look forward to Smithson being banned from his own site, and to the mere mention of his name being declared verboten.  After all, "you can understand our concerns".

Sorry, Kenny Farquharson, but your wish-fulfillment fantasy looks like a non-starter

Somewhere, deep down, we all have our own tailor-made wish-fulfillment fantasy.  Maybe it's that your ex who ran off with your best friend eight years ago will turn up at your door sobbing, and beg to be given a second chance.  Or maybe it's that your mysterious dinner guest will turn out to be the managing director of Hovis, and will find your home-made bread so irresistible that he'll offer you£250,000 a year to take over as head of quality control.

In the case of Kenny "Devo or Death" Farquharson, the long-nurtured fantasy seems to be that next autumn's SNP conference will turn out to be a Clause 4 moment, with Nicola Sturgeon confronting her party with the painful truth that it must grow up and forget about the idea of a second referendum over the next five-year parliamentary term, and instead get on with that blasted wonderful (not to mention mature) devo thing that has always been Scotland's manifest destiny.  There was a Scotland on Sunday editorial along those lines yesterday, and although it was anonymous, it bore all the classic Farquharson hallmarks.

As with almost all wish-fulfillment fantasies, I fear Kenny is going to end up bitterly disappointed.  Both Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond have laid so much groundwork for the argument that impending "Brexit" would re-open the debate on early independence, that I find it inconceivable that they even want the SNP's 2016 manifesto to totally exclude the possibility of a second referendum.  The most likely outcome is conditional language that makes clear that a referendum is only ruled out if certain circumstances persist - most obviously that Scotland remains part of the EU, and possibly also that sweeping powers are devolved to Holyrood.  There's also a chance that a consultative referendum on Devo Max, rather than on independence, will be proposed.

At any rate it's not hard to think of a range of options for the 2015 conference to choose from, all of which the gradualist and fundamentalist wings of the party would find little difficulty in uniting around, and certainly without the need for any gladiatorial blood-on-the-carpet theatre.  This is going to break Kenny's heart when the realisation dawns, but there's actually no need for Nicola Sturgeon to "slay the dragon of independence" in the way that Kinnock and Blair slayed the trade unions - not least because independence is even more popular than the SNP at the moment.  When did the SNP last get 1.6 million votes in an election?

Journalists must challenge Labour on their secret plan to go into coalition with the Tories

Do Labour know the meaning of the expression "no shame"?  This from Scotland on Sunday's report on the Craig Murray story -

"Labour last night seized on the row to challenge the SNP on whether they would do a deal on the Bedroom Tax to keep the Tories in power, which would be “a shocking betrayal” of the Scottish people.

Shadow Scottish secretary Margaret Curran said: “The SNP need to come clean about asking their prospective MPs if they would agree to keep the Bedroom Tax. This means they are willing to do a deal to keep the Tories in power.”"

The irony is, of course, that the intentionally extreme hypothetical question asked of the SNP's prospective candidates implicitly presupposed that Labour would insist upon retaining the bedroom tax in negotiations with the SNP.  There's no other way of making sense of the question, because the SNP have absolutely, explicitly, unambiguously, categorically ruled out doing a deal with the Tories under any circumstances whatsoever.

Labour, by contrast, have thus far failed to make any comment on whether they would refuse to go into coalition with the Tories and keep David Cameron in office.  That's highly significant, because "grand coalitions" between the main centre-right and centre-left parties are of course extremely commonplace in many continental European countries, and are not without precedent in the UK.

According to Curran-logic, a party that has categorically ruled out a deal with the Tories must be "willing" to do a deal with the Tories.  It presumably follows that a party like Labour which has not ruled out a deal with the Tories is absolutely certain to do such a deal?

Perhaps journalists should be asking them to "come clean" about that.

* * *

Of the comments from senior SNP people about the Craig Murray story, the one I found slightly troubling (and peculiar) was this from Andrew Wilson on Twitter -

"In his reaction to his failure to pass vetting Mr Craig Murray demonstrates why his candidacy was impossible. Old story."

Why is a decision that Craig Murray only found out about on Christmas Eve (ie. four days ago) an "old story"?

*  *  *

Congratulations to Bruce Anderson on having penned one of the top seventy most barking mad articles to appear in the Telegraph since the referendum - that's one of the toughest accolades to attain in journalism.  Here are a couple of particular highlights...

"There are no guillotines or concentration camps in Scotland. But even though most Nats have never heard of Rousseau, they are his disciples, behaving as if anyone who does not share their version of Scottishness is not a proper Scot."

You know, it's odd that you should say that, Bruce, because I was told by your fellow Brit Nats that I am "not a true Scot" due to the fact that I have Irish and French-Canadian ancestry, and that I don't believe in the most glorious political union in the history of the known universe (as presumably any "true-blooded" Scot would).  Any thoughts?

"The Scottish Highlands are a symphony of sea and loch and river, of moor and rock and mountain. It is as if a divine alchemist had transmuted grandeur into landscape – a landscape which nourishes splendid human beings...That said, nature costs money.   It has always been easy to make a small fortune in the Highlands. You just have to start out with a large one."

Ah, the Tory answer to the American Dream! Absolutely anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps in the Highlands, just so long as they have the odd half-billion to spare...

Craig Murray

I've been following Craig Murray's quest to become an SNP candidate at the general election with quite a bit of interest and curiosity, because the outcome was always going to be the most high-profile test of whether the SNP were following a 'broad church' or a 'tight discipline' approach in the wake of the referendum.  Craig's vision of how to fight for independence was almost the polar opposite of the SNP leadership's - as I understand it, he wanted no deals with the London parties and thought that more powers for the Scottish Parliament were a distraction or a trap, whereas the leadership want a deal with Labour to bring about as many powers for Holyrood as possible.  As it happens, I entirely agree with the leadership about strategy, and think that turning our back on the chance of a much more powerful parliament within the UK would be crazy.  But it doesn't necessarily follow that Craig's disagreement with the gradualist approach should have precluded him from standing for the SNP - there's a strong case to be made that the decision should have been left to the local constituency association wherever he decided to put himself forward.

So was today's decision to bar him from the candidates' register justified?  The general rule of thumb is that the minimum discipline required to remain part of a parliamentary party is that you follow the party whip on votes of confidence.  Strictly speaking, the question that apparently proved to be Craig's undoing (whether he would vote to retain the bedroom tax if a deal with another party required the SNP to do so) is not an issue of confidence in the government.  However, it could be argued that discipline on a wide range of issues is much more important for a smaller party that is attempting to become a junior partner in a 'governing arrangement' at Westminster (I call it that because it probably won't be a full coalition).  If, say, 2 or 3 of the party's 25 MPs were known to be unwilling to vote in line with the terms of any deal, that would significantly weaken its bargaining power in post-election negotiations.

The leadership were probably in a no-win situation on this one.  By taking this decision, they've bitterly disappointed many people, including myself, who admire Craig Murray and feel that the SNP would be enhanced by being broad enough to have a place for someone like him in its parliamentary ranks.  On the other hand, in these specific circumstances, I find it hard to criticise anyone too severely for having a laser-like focus on securing the prize of more powers, and ensuring that the momentum generated by the referendum isn't squandered.  I'm fairly convinced that's what lies behind this, and I don't think Craig's suggestion that there is a danger of "managerialism" creeping in is justified.  As I've said before, if the SNP end up surprising themselves by entering into a full-blown coalition with Labour, they'll do it not because they want to (they seem genuinely repelled by the idea), but because almost any price is worth paying to bring about self-government.

By the way, I don't think anyone should be concerned about the hypothetical question relating to the bedroom tax - I would imagine the interviewers just came up with the most extreme example they could think of, ie. could you vote for something that every single person in this party loathes if it was necessary to secure a bigger objective?  In reality, it's almost impossible to conceive of any Labour-SNP deal that wouldn't abolish the bedroom tax, but it's inevitable that one or two other painful sacrifices will have to be made.

One thing about this episode is that it should dispel the silly idea being put about by some commentators that the SNP aren't really interested in a deal with Labour, and are secretly hoping for a general election outcome that would leave them as a numerically strong but politically powerless opposition group.

Breathtaking poll from "gold standard" ICM gives the SNP a 17% lead

Heaven only knows what the Guardian are doing releasing a poll on Boxing Day, but that appears to be what's just happened...

Scottish voting intentions for the 2015 UK general election (ICM) :

SNP 43%
Labour 26%
Conservatives 13%
UKIP 7%
Liberal Democrats 6%
Greens 4%

There doesn't seem to be any word on fieldwork dates yet, which of course are all-important.  I'll update the Poll of Polls at some point, although let's not forget it's Boxing Day...

UPDATE : The fieldwork took place between the 16th and 18th of December, which means the poll is more than seven days out of date, and consequently I can't add it to the Poll of Polls.  On a positive note, it was entirely conducted after Jim Murphy became Scottish Labour "leader", so this adds extra weight to the evidence from Survation that there was no immediate "Murphy bounce".  Unlike Survation, though, there have been no other ICM polls since September to provide us with pre-Murphy baseline numbers.

I haven't been able to access the datasets properly yet (possibly because I'm on my mobile), but Anthony Wells has noted that without ICM's "spiral of silence" adjustment the SNP would have had a lead of 19%, almost identical to the lead they enjoyed in the recent YouGov poll.  The adjustment basically takes a portion of Don't Knows and allocates them to the party they voted for in 2010.  This is based on past evidence that undecideds are disproportionately likely to go back to the devil they know, but whether that general rule will hold true in these highly unusual circumstances is anyone's guess.  Some of the undecideds who ICM have allocated to Labour will be people who since 2010 have voted for the SNP in the Holyrood landslide, and voted Yes in the independence referendum.  Can Labour really be said to be the default choice for such people after all that?

A Queen-sized error of judgement

I didn't watch the Queen's speech today (I haven't bothered with it for years - paint dries in a more entertaining manner), but if it's true that she called for reconciliation between Yes voters and No voters, it was a spectacularly ill-judged comment.  For starters, as a Yes voter I'm getting a bit bloody sick of being treated by the London establishment as a belligerent in an unfortunate war that should be forgotten as soon as possible, rather than as a participant in the greatest exercise in democracy in British (let alone Scottish) history.  But more to the point, after the shocking revelation that the Queen breached her duty of impartiality to intervene on behalf of the No campaign just days before the referendum, what we needed to hear from her today was an apology, or more realistically an embarrassed silence on the topic.

I'm not a monarchist.  I don't necessarily think that getting rid of the monarchy should be the number one priority after independence, but it's high time for it to be slimmed down and totally stripped of its remaining political powers.  We've learned over the last couple of years that those powers are far more extensive than we realised, and include the right to secretly veto legislation affecting the Royal Family.  That's just not on in a supposedly democratic country.

Hope you're all having a splendid Christmas.  I should have pre-scheduled a quiz or a word-search or something, but I didn't think of it in time!