Should Scotland be an independent country?
Yes 48%
No 52%
More details to follow eventually. I'm physically blogging this from the Davis Cup semi-final in Glasgow, so it's not straightforward...
Friday, September 16, 2016
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
Drama as TNS poll reveals that Brexit has increased support for independence by more than expected
Back in May, in the run-up to the EU referendum, the polling firm TNS asked Scottish voters how they would vote in a new independence referendum if Brexit occurred. The results were a tad surprising, given that other firms had reported that a Leave vote would significantly boost support for independence.
MAY 2016 POLL :
It is possible that Scotland may vote to remain in the EU, but the UK as a whole votes to leave. In those circumstances, if there was a new referendum on Scottish Independence how would you vote in that independence referendum?
Yes 44%
No 56%
As you can see, TNS were suggesting that Brexit would for some reason lead to the Yes vote being very slightly lower than in the first independence referendum in September 2014. But, of course, respondents to polls are not always terribly wonderful at answering hypothetical questions. And sure enough, now that we have the 'before' and 'after' photos to compare, it appears that the reality of Brexit is less palatable than people had anticipated, and that the result in June has indeed increased rather than decreased support for independence. A new TNS poll hot off the press has found that the Yes vote is actually 2% higher than it was in the 2014 vote.
NEW POLL :
Should Scotland be an independent country?
Yes 47%
No 53%
Other polls have been better still for Yes. There have now been six credible polls on independence since the shock of 23rd June, and HALF of them have shown an outright Yes lead. ALL of them have shown a higher Yes vote than in September 2014 - and bear in mind that most firms now weight by recalled referendum vote, so there's no good reason to doubt that the increase is real. What we would have given for these numbers when the last indyref campaign got underway...
* * *
UPDATE : There wasn't much more I could say about the poll last night, because only the headline results had been made known. But the datasets are now out, so here are a few more miscellaneous points...
* TNS have, as expected, continued with their excellent practice of including 16 and 17 year olds in their sample, in line with the voting age of 16 that has now become the norm for Scotland-only elections and referendums. This again puts to shame YouGov's laziness in excluding 16 and 17 year olds from their Scottish polls, and highlights the fact that YouGov's recent figures of Yes 46%, No 54% cannot be regarded as reliable. It's unlikely that they under-reported the Yes vote by more than 1% (and over-reported the No vote by more than 1%), but when the race is so tight, such small errors make a big psychological difference. YouGov should be called out on this basic flaw in their methodology until they put it right. No more excuses. If they innocently claim to be a politically neutral organisation (and they do), they simply can't get away with knowingly excluding a Yes-friendly part of the electorate from their polls.
* John Curtice had a go at winding up Yes supporters this morning by claiming that the TNS poll shows a "6% swing to No". That's technically a justifiable claim, but he's measuring that swing from an ancient poll conducted a year ago - which strictly speaking was the last time TNS asked a voting intention question on independence, and which reported figures of Yes 53%, No 47%. The problem for Curtice is that we also have the much more recent TNS poll from May that I mentioned above, which showed that in the event of Brexit the Yes vote would be only 44%. For some reason TNS didn't bother taking the obvious step of simultaneously asking a straight voting intention question on independence for the purposes of comparison, but we know from polls conducted by other firms that, if they had done so, it's very unlikely that the 'real' Yes vote would have been higher than the hypothetical 'Brexit' Yes vote. It's more probable that it would have been somewhat lower (ie. lower than 44%). So it seems clear enough that today's Yes figure represents an increase since the spring - perhaps an increase within the margin of error, but certainly enough of an increase to open up the possibility that a genuine change has occurred.
The poll from last September looks like an oddity in retrospect. It may well have been a rogue poll, but as TNS have polled on independence so infrequently since the indyref, it's impossible to say that for sure. The alternative possibility is that they may have picked up a spike in support for Yes that occurred last year, but if that is the case, it certainly seems to have long since faded by the time of the May poll. It doesn't change the fact that today's poll appears to represent an improvement for Yes since the spring.
* There have been no fewer than NINETEEN voting intention polls on independence from TNS since the start of 2013 - and today's is the THIRD-BEST for Yes. The only better ones were last September's, and the one immediately before polling day in 2014. At one point, in August 2013, No had an almost two-to-one lead, so we've come a long, long way since then.
* There's a gender divide in the new poll - but it's not the one we're used to. TNS are reporting that women are now significantly more favourable towards independence than men are. Among men, No have a double-digit lead, but among women the race is a statistical tie. When you see a finding as unexpected as that, it does make you wonder whether there's something strange about the sample.
* The age divide is the familiar one, with younger people breaking more for Yes - but it's particularly extreme in this poll. Among under-65s, Yes have a healthy enough lead of 55% to 45%. But that's overturned by over-65s breaking for No by a whopping 80% to 20% margin. Quite honestly, I think it's unlikely that No have a four-to-one advantage in that age group (or any other age group), but of course you can't necessarily cherry-pick one part of a sample and say that only that bit is implausible.
MAY 2016 POLL :
It is possible that Scotland may vote to remain in the EU, but the UK as a whole votes to leave. In those circumstances, if there was a new referendum on Scottish Independence how would you vote in that independence referendum?
Yes 44%
No 56%
As you can see, TNS were suggesting that Brexit would for some reason lead to the Yes vote being very slightly lower than in the first independence referendum in September 2014. But, of course, respondents to polls are not always terribly wonderful at answering hypothetical questions. And sure enough, now that we have the 'before' and 'after' photos to compare, it appears that the reality of Brexit is less palatable than people had anticipated, and that the result in June has indeed increased rather than decreased support for independence. A new TNS poll hot off the press has found that the Yes vote is actually 2% higher than it was in the 2014 vote.
NEW POLL :
Should Scotland be an independent country?
Yes 47%
No 53%
Other polls have been better still for Yes. There have now been six credible polls on independence since the shock of 23rd June, and HALF of them have shown an outright Yes lead. ALL of them have shown a higher Yes vote than in September 2014 - and bear in mind that most firms now weight by recalled referendum vote, so there's no good reason to doubt that the increase is real. What we would have given for these numbers when the last indyref campaign got underway...
* * *
UPDATE : There wasn't much more I could say about the poll last night, because only the headline results had been made known. But the datasets are now out, so here are a few more miscellaneous points...
* TNS have, as expected, continued with their excellent practice of including 16 and 17 year olds in their sample, in line with the voting age of 16 that has now become the norm for Scotland-only elections and referendums. This again puts to shame YouGov's laziness in excluding 16 and 17 year olds from their Scottish polls, and highlights the fact that YouGov's recent figures of Yes 46%, No 54% cannot be regarded as reliable. It's unlikely that they under-reported the Yes vote by more than 1% (and over-reported the No vote by more than 1%), but when the race is so tight, such small errors make a big psychological difference. YouGov should be called out on this basic flaw in their methodology until they put it right. No more excuses. If they innocently claim to be a politically neutral organisation (and they do), they simply can't get away with knowingly excluding a Yes-friendly part of the electorate from their polls.
* John Curtice had a go at winding up Yes supporters this morning by claiming that the TNS poll shows a "6% swing to No". That's technically a justifiable claim, but he's measuring that swing from an ancient poll conducted a year ago - which strictly speaking was the last time TNS asked a voting intention question on independence, and which reported figures of Yes 53%, No 47%. The problem for Curtice is that we also have the much more recent TNS poll from May that I mentioned above, which showed that in the event of Brexit the Yes vote would be only 44%. For some reason TNS didn't bother taking the obvious step of simultaneously asking a straight voting intention question on independence for the purposes of comparison, but we know from polls conducted by other firms that, if they had done so, it's very unlikely that the 'real' Yes vote would have been higher than the hypothetical 'Brexit' Yes vote. It's more probable that it would have been somewhat lower (ie. lower than 44%). So it seems clear enough that today's Yes figure represents an increase since the spring - perhaps an increase within the margin of error, but certainly enough of an increase to open up the possibility that a genuine change has occurred.
The poll from last September looks like an oddity in retrospect. It may well have been a rogue poll, but as TNS have polled on independence so infrequently since the indyref, it's impossible to say that for sure. The alternative possibility is that they may have picked up a spike in support for Yes that occurred last year, but if that is the case, it certainly seems to have long since faded by the time of the May poll. It doesn't change the fact that today's poll appears to represent an improvement for Yes since the spring.
* There have been no fewer than NINETEEN voting intention polls on independence from TNS since the start of 2013 - and today's is the THIRD-BEST for Yes. The only better ones were last September's, and the one immediately before polling day in 2014. At one point, in August 2013, No had an almost two-to-one lead, so we've come a long, long way since then.
* There's a gender divide in the new poll - but it's not the one we're used to. TNS are reporting that women are now significantly more favourable towards independence than men are. Among men, No have a double-digit lead, but among women the race is a statistical tie. When you see a finding as unexpected as that, it does make you wonder whether there's something strange about the sample.
* The age divide is the familiar one, with younger people breaking more for Yes - but it's particularly extreme in this poll. Among under-65s, Yes have a healthy enough lead of 55% to 45%. But that's overturned by over-65s breaking for No by a whopping 80% to 20% margin. Quite honestly, I think it's unlikely that No have a four-to-one advantage in that age group (or any other age group), but of course you can't necessarily cherry-pick one part of a sample and say that only that bit is implausible.
Saturday, September 3, 2016
Humiliation for "electable" Owen Smith as bombshell YouGov poll reveals the Scottish electorate prefer Jeremy Corbyn as leader
Let's start with a detail from yesterday's new full-scale Scottish YouGov poll that may not be the most important, but is certainly the most amusing. As we all know, pretty much the sole selling-point of Owen Smith's campaign to become Labour leader is that he is supposedly much more "electable" than the incumbent Jeremy Corbyn. Well, this poll begs to differ -
If you had a vote in the Labour leadership election, who would you vote for?
Jeremy Corbyn 27%
Owen Smith 25%
Owen Smith 25%
Those figures are for the whole electorate. Ironically, among the rump Labour vote, Smith does a little better (he's tied with Corbyn at 35% apiece), which gives the lie to the idea that he's better-placed than Corbyn to grow Labour's support. At least in Scotland, Smith is very much the 'comfort zone' candidate for Labour, whereas Corbyn is the more attractive candidate for people currently minded to vote SNP. 42% of SNP voters (who of course make up roughly half the electorate) would back Corbyn if they had a vote in the leadership election, and just 20% would vote for Smith. It's true that Corbyn has so far failed to make good on his suggestion last year that he could actually coax those SNP voters back to the Labour fold, but based on these numbers, the idea that Smith would have a better chance of doing so is risible in the extreme.
Turning now to the meat of the poll...
Journalists always (and rightly) get a good roasting when they make misleading claims about opinion polls for the sake of a good headline, or to push some political agenda. It's therefore only fair that YouGov themselves should get a similar roasting when they do exactly the same thing. Matthew Smith's article on the YouGov website about this poll makes two extremely dodgy claims -
1. "Scots don't support a second independence referendum...With the SNP set to relaunch their campaign for independence, 50% of Scots oppose a second referendum."
In fact, the poll didn't ask about the general idea of a second referendum. Respondents were instead asked whether they support a referendum before the UK leaves the EU, which could of course be in the very near future. There will be people who answered 'no' to that question because they don't favour a referendum until 2021 or whenever, but who have been wrongly categorised by YouGov as opposing a second referendum, full stop. If YouGov want to make such sweeping claims without being criticised, they shouldn't ask such narrow questions.
2. "Should [the SNP government] be successful in forcing another vote, the results would be almost identical to last time, with 54% of Scots voting against independence and 46% in favour."
The question on independence specifically asks how people would vote if there was a referendum "tomorrow". The chances of the SNP getting the requisite legislation through by teatime today do seem rather remote. It's disappointing to see YouGov fuelling the lazy journalistic myth that polls are predictions, rather than snapshots of public opinion at a given moment in time (and indeed snapshots which may not be entirely accurate).
On their Twitter account, YouGov also make a third claim -
"Ruth Davidson is now more popular among Scottish voters than Nicola Sturgeon"
To be fair, that's a fractionally less outrageous statement, because there is a convention of headlining the 'net satisfaction' figures for political leaders, ie. subtracting the percentage of voters who have a negative view of the leader from the percentage who have a positive view. If you do that, Ruth Davidson's satisfaction rating is indeed 1% better than Sturgeon's (a trivial difference which is of course well within the margin of error). But the fact remains that Sturgeon is significantly more popular than Davidson in absolute terms - 53% think Sturgeon is doing a good job, compared to 46% for Davidson. It's the negative ratings that swing the balance, and given that Sturgeon is actually in government making decisions, it's hardly surprising that she arouses stronger feelings than Davidson does among those who don't like her. But bearing in mind that the target figure for an absolute majority under our electoral system is the mid-to-high 40s, the question has to be asked : if 53% of voters like you, does it really matter that much if 33% of voters don't?
On all measures, Sturgeon is considerably more popular than Theresa May, in spite of the fact that May is still enjoying her honeymoon as Prime Minister. Just 35% of the electorate think that May is doing a good job - 18% lower than the figure for Sturgeon. And May's net satisfaction rating is 7% lower than the First Minister's.
Alas, I'm not done with dodgy claims about the poll yet. Step forward the maestro : Mr George Eaton of the New Statesman -
"Scottish independence support falls again: No side ahead by 54-46"
What? I mean, what?! There have been five credible polls on independence since the EU referendum : an online Panelbase poll showing a significant increase in support for independence, telephone and online polls from Survation which both showed a significant increase in support for independence, an online YouGov poll showing a modest 1% increase in support for independence, and then yesterday's online YouGov poll showing that the 1% increase had been reversed, returning us to the position in the poll before last. On what planet does that sequence of results justify the statement "Scottish independence support falls again"? Answers on a postcard, folks. Eaton is either cynically intending to mislead, or just doesn't have a clue what he's talking about - I'm struggling to see a third option.
Can YouGov's figures of Yes 46%, No 54% be regarded as reliable? As I alluded to in my TalkRadio article yesterday, every pollster has its own 'house effect', and there's no guarantee that other firms will report the same basic trend, let alone the same headline numbers. One point about YouGov's methodology that has become increasingly controversial is their failure to include 16 and 17 year olds in the polling sample. You could call this institutional inertia, but really it boils down to Anglocentricity. If the Westminster parliament had reduced the voting age to 16, it's unthinkable that YouGov would still be conducting Westminster voting intention polls without interviewing 16 and 17 year olds. It's unlikely in most cases that this deficiency will lead to the Yes vote being underestimated by more than 1%, but when the contest is so evenly balanced, even that can make a big psychological difference. By definition, the Yes vote being 1% too low means that the No vote is 1% too high, so it's perfectly possible that the No lead is being overestimated by a full 2% in the new poll - even assuming the methodology is otherwise correct. YouGov might shrug their shoulders and say that this is a relatively minor flaw, but if they're not polling the correct electorate and some of their competitors are, we're entitled to point out that their results should be regarded as comparatively unreliable.
Friday, September 2, 2016
The art of conversation
Just a quick note to let you know that I have a new article at the TalkRadio website about the launch of the new national conversation on independence. It also touches a little on today's new full-scale Scottish poll from YouGov. You can read the article HERE.
You might also be interested in an article by Alasdair Soussi on the Al Jazeera website, which weighs up David Cameron's legacy as Prime Minister, and includes quotes from myself, Paul Goodman of ConHome, and Professor Tim Bale. It can be read HERE.
I've been having a truly manic day, but I'll hopefully find time to write more about the YouGov poll later on!
You might also be interested in an article by Alasdair Soussi on the Al Jazeera website, which weighs up David Cameron's legacy as Prime Minister, and includes quotes from myself, Paul Goodman of ConHome, and Professor Tim Bale. It can be read HERE.
I've been having a truly manic day, but I'll hopefully find time to write more about the YouGov poll later on!
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Conventional Wisdom 1, Don Brind 0 : YouGov poll suggests Corbyn is on course to crush the coup
For some time now, Stormfront Lite's resident Labour 'moderate' Don Brind (he seems a decent enough chap in spite of the dodgy politics, so I won't call him a 'Blairite') has been trying to convince both the world and himself that the conventional wisdom is wrong, and that Owen Smith could be heading for victory in the Labour leadership election. He's repeatedly prayed in aid highly dubious propaganda claims from "Saving Labour", and yesterday excelled himself by reading epic significance into the "fascinating" thought processes of an individual voter called Laura or Loz, who unexpectedly plumped for Smith because of something to do with her boyfriend.
That all looked like pretty risible stuff (Corbyn could still win handily even if there are 5000 Smith voters called Loz), but in truth there was no way of being completely sure - there had been so little polling done during the leadership campaign that it was just conceivable that Don Brind was right and everyone else was wrong. The last credible poll had been conducted way back when Angela Eagle was still a candidate and Owen Smith was a complete unknown, so it was theoretically possible that the Labour selectorate had indeed been won over by a man saying "that's not leeeee-dership, Jeremy" a hundred billion times.
But it appears not. A new YouGov poll has been released -
Jeremy Corbyn 62%
Owen Smith 38%
YouGov themselves are putting all sorts of health warnings on those numbers, but the reality is that Corbyn is well ahead among all three segments of the selectorate with voting already underway. The polling methodology would have to be catastrophically wrong for there to be any genuine chance of Smith pulling off an upset.
Among many other potentially huge consequences, this means that the breach between London Labour and the Scottish branch office isn't going to be healed any time soon. Kezia Dugdale's display of rebelliousness (culminating in the grotesque appointment of the ex-political editor of the Scottish Daily Mail to her backroom staff) was probably initially intended as a gesture of fealty to what she assumed would shortly be the incoming London regime. Instead she seems to have crossed the Rubicon with an accidental declaration of independence.
Sunday, August 28, 2016
Athens of the North, no more?
Because of the disruption on the trains from Queen Street, I spent much less time than usual in Edinburgh over the first half of the year. But I've been there quite a bit during the festival, and I've found myself becoming increasingly transfixed (and not in a good way) by the large construction site between Calton Hill and the Royal Mile. My first reaction was that the powers-that-be are not complete idiots, and that they must have something very tasteful and carefully considered in mind for such a sensitive area. So I consulted the internet for some reassurance, and naturally discovered that every expert in the field has blasted the plans as barking mad, and that the city council had only narrowly given approval on the grounds that the buildings were not quite "hideous enough" to reject. That's the kind of logic that I'd expect to hear in relation to Cumbernauld town centre, not the UN-designated World Heritage site at the heart of our capital city. I really must stop kidding myself that the internet is ever going to provide me with reassurance about anything.
I at least drew some small comfort from learning that the height of the buildings had been reduced after the initial objections. But even over the course of the last few weeks, the shape of the large hotel has become suddenly apparent, and 'unobtrusive' is not the first word that springs to mind. It's already tarnishing the view from Calton Hill. The completed Costa and Premier Inn buildings aren't so noticeable, but that's mainly because they're obscured by the equally hideous council building which has presumably been there for decades. I wandered down to Market Street today, and when you're actually in between the council building and the Premier Inn, the whole concept of being within the Old Town ceases to have any meaning.
Not being a resident of Edinburgh, I can't get a clear image in my head of what that area used to look like, and maybe if I could I'd realise that less is being lost than it appears. I also appreciate that the whole of modern history has been punctuated by a war between conservation and opportunistic "development", and that you have to be philosophical and recognise that the forces of conservation aren't going to win every single battle. But you'd think local councillors might just be intelligent enough to recognise that it's counterproductive to attempt to economically exploit the heritage of a city in a way that fundamentally taints that heritage.
Last year, I spent about ten days in the Balkans, and went to the Old Towns of both Mostar and Dubrovnik, which are also World Heritage sites. In contrast to Edinburgh, the Old Town of Dubrovnik is pristine and almost perfectly preserved. The famous bridge in Mostar was destroyed during the Bosnian war in the 1990s, but was swiftly and lovingly reconstructed, even using the original stones where possible. You kind of feel that if Edinburgh city council had been in charge, they'd have said "ah well, it's gone now, we may as well stick a Starbucks and a car park there instead".
Apparently one of the biggest criticisms of "New Waverley" is the plan for a public square, which is alien to the architectural traditions of the Old Town. But quite honestly, I hope the square fills up as much of the space as possible - that's the only part of the whole thing that won't be an eyesore.
I'll reserve judgement on whether New Waverley will turn out to be an even worse idea than allowing Donald Bloody Trump of all people to "stabilise the doons". (Which the SNP have to accept a share of the blame for, although it has to be said that every political party apart from the Greens seemed to be wildly enthusiastic about it for some unfathomable reason.)
* * *
I'm writing this on the train back to Glasgow, and I'm sitting opposite two Canadians who have been sneering about the Quebec sovereignty movement to anyone who will listen. "That'll never happen! They'd never survive!" Just those same words over and over again. Calm, Mr Kelly, calm calm calm...
Friday, August 26, 2016
It's a flippin' Fife phenomenon as stormin' SNP secure a super 9.5% swing from Labour in local by-election
The Lochs was the second-weakest ward for the SNP in the whole of Fife in the 2012 local elections (the only worse one was the rarefied setting of St Andrews). They put up only one candidate, who finished third and received just 19% of the vote, a whopping 27% behind the combined support for Labour's two candidates. Remember all of that happened on a day when, across Scotland, the SNP defeated Labour in the popular vote by 1%. So on paper, this should be just about as tough a ward for Nicola Sturgeon's party as you'll find anywhere - but you certainly wouldn't know that from the by-election result yesterday. The SNP stormed into second place, and slashed Labour's lead to just 8.5%.
Labour 47.1% (+0.7)
SNP 38.6% (+19.6)
Conservatives 9.6% (+7.0)
Communists 3.1% (n/a)
Greens 1.6% (n/a)
As almost always seems to be the case, the quirks of the STV voting system are allowing some fairly extreme misinformation to do the rounds about the result. Labour are claiming to have "turned the tide" with a "gain". Well, yes, it's technically true that they "gained" the seat, in the sense that the vacancy was caused by the retirement of an independent councillor - but Labour topped the poll in the ward last time and did so again yesterday. Their vote effectively flatlined, in spite of the fact that a huge number of votes that had previously gone to the independent were now up for grabs.
On the other extreme, some people have claimed that the swing from Labour to the SNP was as high as 17%. I've squinted at the result in a number of different ways to try to understand where that figure has come from, but I'm mystified. Suffice to say it's inaccurate - the real swing was around 9.5%, which is plenty enormous enough to be getting on with.
UPDATE : It turns out that the 17% swing is not measured from the 2012 result at all, but from another by-election in the ward that was held in June 2014. Well, I suppose that can be justified, although 2012 is the more natural baseline, and allows for direct comparisons with other recent by-elections.
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Glitter, Murder, Echoes...
So I sat down to write a long blogpost in response to a bizarre Twitter dispute I had with Stephen Bush of the New Statesman a few hours ago. (It was on the relatively obscure topic of a wildly inaccurate Populus poll that was conducted towards the end of the EU referendum campaign.) However, just before I started, I noticed that Stephen had sent me a very gracious email after the exchange. It didn't touch upon his absolutely ridiculous (and now deleted) suggestion that challenging his claims about polling somehow made me a racist, but in the circumstances I'm happy enough to draw a line under the whole thing. In future I'm just going to try to avoid replying to his tweets altogether, because we do seem to rub each other up the wrong way - which is unfortunate, because as regular readers know, I've sung his praises more than once for his uncanny powers of political prediction.
Instead of the blogpost I was planning to write, here's something else I've been meaning to do for a while - the annual ritual of my Edinburgh Fringe mini-reviews. The Fringe only has a week left to run, so it's probably now or never anyway.
DIRTY GLITTER : A comedy-drama about two unlikely Private Eyes in 1970s America, and their investigation into the disappearance of a girl at a nightclub. Some of it is very, very funny, although the logical part of my brain was struggling with one of the recurring jokes, about a character who constantly denies being Spanish even though he is clearly a native Spanish speaker. If you were in America, why would you even assume he was Spanish in the first place, rather than, say, Mexican? Ah well. Leaving that quibble aside, the show is well worth seeing - fast-paced, breathless, with a relentless soundtrack of 70s hits. RATING : 8/10
THE MURDERER : This is apparently a loose adaptation of a poem about an alternative universe in which murderers have 'carers' who help them reintegrate into society. Even though the focus is firmly on the 'caring' dynamic, I don't think there's any real excuse for the fact that the murderer just comes across as a random, bland person, rather than someone you can actually believe committed a serious crime or has been affected by many years in jail. There's just not enough meat on the bones, although the play does deserve credit for its sterling efforts to cultivate greater usage of the tragically-neglected expression "catch you later". RATING : 5/10
ECHOES : An absolute tour-de-force. In all honesty, it was a struggle to work out what the hell was going on for at least the first fifteen minutes, but the dialogue was so lyrical and beautiful that the meaning didn't seem to matter - you could just bathe in the words. Basically (and I hope I've got this right) it's about a bloke who returns to the woman he got pregnant and abandoned several years earlier...but then dark secrets emerge about the fate of the child. An act of extreme violence is depicted about ten minutes from the end, and I found myself wanting it to be over at that point, because I'm not a big fan of gore. But if you happen to have a very, very strong constitution, I can't deny you'd be hard-pressed to see anything better this year. RATING : 10/10
A TALE OF TWO CITIES - BLOOD FOR BLOOD : I studied Tale of Two Cities at secondary school, but it's so long ago I can barely remember anything about it, and unfortunately this is a production that does seem to assume knowledge of the text (probably because liberties are taken with it, and half the fun is supposed to be in the divergence - that was the impression I got, anyway). But what I can say is that the acting is excellent, and the staging is much more elaborate and impressive than you see at many Fringe productions. The review I read before going said that there was an inexplicable scene at the start that seems to be set in Edinburgh for no apparent reason, so I set myself the mission of trying to make sense of it - but I had to admit defeat. It really is totally baffling. RATING : 8/10
EN FOLKEFIENDE : I had very little pre-knowledge of An Enemy of the People either, but thankfully this is a much more accessible production - although ironically the acting isn't quite up to the same standard as in Tale of Two Cities, probably because it's a young cast cutting their teeth. Again, the staging is very imaginative and works wonders with limited space - everything takes place within or just outside of a rotating 'cube', and there are repeated instances of the exterior of the cube 'censoring' politically sensitive words that are spoken inside. RATING : 7/10
LE BOSSU : I had to keep reminding myself it wasn't Christmas, because this has the feel of the sort of family show you'd see at that time of year. (Although ironically I don't know how suitable it is for children, because there are one or two mildly adult references.) A kind of halfway house between a play and a musical, based on The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, with some limited audience participation thrown in. I'm not sure how much of the music is original and how much is borrowed, but it really works - I had one of the tunes going round in my head for hours afterwards. RATING : 8/10
LADIES IN WAITING - THE JUDGEMENT OF HENRY VIII : A great show, although I was more than a little harassed when I sat down at the start. The venue is a hotel, and no matter how hard you try to mind your own business while waiting, you can't seem to do anything right - you're queue-jumping even though there is no discernible queue, you're in a corridor you shouldn't be in even though you were just following the signs, you're in the way of a scooter even though you've got your back pressed hard against a wall...and then you take your seat and find you've got a horribly restricted view, even though you're only in the second row. You'd think it wouldn't be beyond the wit of man to raise the stage slightly (or organise a comprehensible queuing system, for that matter). Anyway, the idea is that Henry VIII has found himself in purgatory and must submit himself to the judgement of his six wives, who are now free to speak their minds in his presence without fear of being executed or anything unfortunate like that. The funniest bit is when Henry seems disconcerted that Catherine Howard is so pleased to see him. "But Catherine, I had your head chopped off." "Oh, that was ages ago!" RATING : 9/10
I can also highly recommend a version of Northanger Abbey with puppets, which I saw two or three years ago and is on again, albeit at a slightly awkward time of day. It's one of those things that sounds horrific, but is actually fantastic.
Instead of the blogpost I was planning to write, here's something else I've been meaning to do for a while - the annual ritual of my Edinburgh Fringe mini-reviews. The Fringe only has a week left to run, so it's probably now or never anyway.
DIRTY GLITTER : A comedy-drama about two unlikely Private Eyes in 1970s America, and their investigation into the disappearance of a girl at a nightclub. Some of it is very, very funny, although the logical part of my brain was struggling with one of the recurring jokes, about a character who constantly denies being Spanish even though he is clearly a native Spanish speaker. If you were in America, why would you even assume he was Spanish in the first place, rather than, say, Mexican? Ah well. Leaving that quibble aside, the show is well worth seeing - fast-paced, breathless, with a relentless soundtrack of 70s hits. RATING : 8/10
THE MURDERER : This is apparently a loose adaptation of a poem about an alternative universe in which murderers have 'carers' who help them reintegrate into society. Even though the focus is firmly on the 'caring' dynamic, I don't think there's any real excuse for the fact that the murderer just comes across as a random, bland person, rather than someone you can actually believe committed a serious crime or has been affected by many years in jail. There's just not enough meat on the bones, although the play does deserve credit for its sterling efforts to cultivate greater usage of the tragically-neglected expression "catch you later". RATING : 5/10
ECHOES : An absolute tour-de-force. In all honesty, it was a struggle to work out what the hell was going on for at least the first fifteen minutes, but the dialogue was so lyrical and beautiful that the meaning didn't seem to matter - you could just bathe in the words. Basically (and I hope I've got this right) it's about a bloke who returns to the woman he got pregnant and abandoned several years earlier...but then dark secrets emerge about the fate of the child. An act of extreme violence is depicted about ten minutes from the end, and I found myself wanting it to be over at that point, because I'm not a big fan of gore. But if you happen to have a very, very strong constitution, I can't deny you'd be hard-pressed to see anything better this year. RATING : 10/10
A TALE OF TWO CITIES - BLOOD FOR BLOOD : I studied Tale of Two Cities at secondary school, but it's so long ago I can barely remember anything about it, and unfortunately this is a production that does seem to assume knowledge of the text (probably because liberties are taken with it, and half the fun is supposed to be in the divergence - that was the impression I got, anyway). But what I can say is that the acting is excellent, and the staging is much more elaborate and impressive than you see at many Fringe productions. The review I read before going said that there was an inexplicable scene at the start that seems to be set in Edinburgh for no apparent reason, so I set myself the mission of trying to make sense of it - but I had to admit defeat. It really is totally baffling. RATING : 8/10
EN FOLKEFIENDE : I had very little pre-knowledge of An Enemy of the People either, but thankfully this is a much more accessible production - although ironically the acting isn't quite up to the same standard as in Tale of Two Cities, probably because it's a young cast cutting their teeth. Again, the staging is very imaginative and works wonders with limited space - everything takes place within or just outside of a rotating 'cube', and there are repeated instances of the exterior of the cube 'censoring' politically sensitive words that are spoken inside. RATING : 7/10
LE BOSSU : I had to keep reminding myself it wasn't Christmas, because this has the feel of the sort of family show you'd see at that time of year. (Although ironically I don't know how suitable it is for children, because there are one or two mildly adult references.) A kind of halfway house between a play and a musical, based on The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, with some limited audience participation thrown in. I'm not sure how much of the music is original and how much is borrowed, but it really works - I had one of the tunes going round in my head for hours afterwards. RATING : 8/10
LADIES IN WAITING - THE JUDGEMENT OF HENRY VIII : A great show, although I was more than a little harassed when I sat down at the start. The venue is a hotel, and no matter how hard you try to mind your own business while waiting, you can't seem to do anything right - you're queue-jumping even though there is no discernible queue, you're in a corridor you shouldn't be in even though you were just following the signs, you're in the way of a scooter even though you've got your back pressed hard against a wall...and then you take your seat and find you've got a horribly restricted view, even though you're only in the second row. You'd think it wouldn't be beyond the wit of man to raise the stage slightly (or organise a comprehensible queuing system, for that matter). Anyway, the idea is that Henry VIII has found himself in purgatory and must submit himself to the judgement of his six wives, who are now free to speak their minds in his presence without fear of being executed or anything unfortunate like that. The funniest bit is when Henry seems disconcerted that Catherine Howard is so pleased to see him. "But Catherine, I had your head chopped off." "Oh, that was ages ago!" RATING : 9/10
I can also highly recommend a version of Northanger Abbey with puppets, which I saw two or three years ago and is on again, albeit at a slightly awkward time of day. It's one of those things that sounds horrific, but is actually fantastic.
Friday, August 19, 2016
In vain I have struggled. It will not do.
Just a quick note to let you know that I have a new article at the TalkRadio website, which allows me to fulfill a lifetime ambition by mentioning Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett in a piece about a progressive alliance between Labour and the SNP. (We're Elizabeth, obviously.) You can read it HERE.
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Fundraiser update : Thank you for your amazing support since I started promoting last year's fundraiser again, which remains open for donations because it's in the 'In Demand' phase. Around £1600 has been raised since Monday. I'm relieved to say the problem with Paypal has been resolved much more quickly than I feared, so it's now possible to contribute by either Paypal or credit/debit card. You can visit the fundraiser page HERE. To make a donation during 'In Demand', simply click on one of the 'perk' options - if the exact amount you want to donate isn't listed, select the £10 perk and the next page will allow you to customise the donation.
* * *
Fundraiser update : Thank you for your amazing support since I started promoting last year's fundraiser again, which remains open for donations because it's in the 'In Demand' phase. Around £1600 has been raised since Monday. I'm relieved to say the problem with Paypal has been resolved much more quickly than I feared, so it's now possible to contribute by either Paypal or credit/debit card. You can visit the fundraiser page HERE. To make a donation during 'In Demand', simply click on one of the 'perk' options - if the exact amount you want to donate isn't listed, select the £10 perk and the next page will allow you to customise the donation.
Monday, August 15, 2016
The best time to hold a second independence referendum is while there is still a pro-independence majority at Holyrood to make it possible
Iain Macwhirter had a piece in the Sunday Herald yesterday arguing that Nicola Sturgeon won't and shouldn't hold a second independence referendum for several years (2021 at the absolute earliest), because there needs to be much greater clarity about what Brexit will actually look like before pulling the trigger. Now, as you know, I'm inclined to favour a much earlier vote (not necessarily next week, but perhaps some time between next year and 2019), and that's mainly because I worry about the momentum we built up in 2014 gradually evaporating. I certainly don't subscribe to the 'demographic inevitability' theory - if we sit around twiddling our thumbs, waiting for a glacial shift in public opinion towards Yes, I suspect we'll get a nasty shock and see a less-than-glacial shift towards No. But whenever you think the right time is, it's worth bearing in mind that this is a discussion about fantasy politics unless you can be sure that there will actually be a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament at the relevant moment. Without that, there will never be a referendum. The biggest difference between arguing for a referendum in 2019 and arguing for a referendum in 2022 is that we know with reasonable confidence that the parliamentary arithmetic will be there in 2019. All bets are off as far as 2022 is concerned.
This is a point that worried me even before the EU referendum. There seems to be a complacent attitude in some quarters that the SNP ascendancy at Holyrood is going to remain in place indefinitely, and that Nicola Sturgeon can just gaze down at the polls from an Olympian height and choose the absolutely ideal moment. The reality is that the 2021 election could be a very tough one indeed, and by that point we may have much more to worry about than passive-aggressive "tactical voting" campaigns run by a certain RISE-supporting website. The SNP will have been in power for fourteen years by 2021 - that's one year longer than the Blair/Brown government lasted, and it's only four years short of the record set by the Thatcher/Major government. No party is immune to the changing of the seasons (as even the ANC are starting to find out). It's true that the Tories overtaking Labour as the largest opposition party makes a fourth successive SNP victory somewhat more probable, because Scotland scarcely seems likely to elect a Tory-led government any time soon. But unfortunately there's a very obvious middle possibility - the SNP could be re-elected with a significantly weaker mandate, and without a pro-independence majority even after the Greens are taken into account. If that happens, the 'patient' plans for a second indyref in the early 2020s will look a bit bloody silly in retrospect.
Both Iain Macwhirter and David "and on the third day He reactivated His Twitter account" Torrance point to supposed polling evidence that there hasn't been much of a boost for Yes in the aftermath of June 23rd. I strongly suspect that they're both mainly talking about a single YouGov poll showing only a 1% increase for Yes, and assuming that's going to prove typical. Well, it might do, but there again it might not do. Drawing too many conclusions from an individual poll is a dangerous game for any commentator, and we'll just have to see whether they've jumped the gun. It's particularly worth remembering that even before the EU referendum, telephone polls had Yes in the lead. There has only been one telephone poll since the referendum, and again, it had Yes in the lead. Anyone who claims to know for certain that there is a currently an anti-independence majority is either being dishonest or doesn't know what they're talking about.
As for Torrance's claim that the SNP got carried away with their rhetoric on a second indyref because they bought into their own "hype" about the effect of Brexit on public opinion, that strikes me as being silliness on stilts. Nicola Sturgeon and the people around her are not idiots - they'll have seen the pre-referendum polls suggesting that Brexit might only increase support for independence by a modest amount, and yet they went ahead with the early statement that an indyref was "highly likely" without waiting to see what the post-referendum polls would show. They would never have done that unless it was a carefully-thought-through strategy that was not dependent on short-term polling trends.
This is a point that worried me even before the EU referendum. There seems to be a complacent attitude in some quarters that the SNP ascendancy at Holyrood is going to remain in place indefinitely, and that Nicola Sturgeon can just gaze down at the polls from an Olympian height and choose the absolutely ideal moment. The reality is that the 2021 election could be a very tough one indeed, and by that point we may have much more to worry about than passive-aggressive "tactical voting" campaigns run by a certain RISE-supporting website. The SNP will have been in power for fourteen years by 2021 - that's one year longer than the Blair/Brown government lasted, and it's only four years short of the record set by the Thatcher/Major government. No party is immune to the changing of the seasons (as even the ANC are starting to find out). It's true that the Tories overtaking Labour as the largest opposition party makes a fourth successive SNP victory somewhat more probable, because Scotland scarcely seems likely to elect a Tory-led government any time soon. But unfortunately there's a very obvious middle possibility - the SNP could be re-elected with a significantly weaker mandate, and without a pro-independence majority even after the Greens are taken into account. If that happens, the 'patient' plans for a second indyref in the early 2020s will look a bit bloody silly in retrospect.
Both Iain Macwhirter and David "and on the third day He reactivated His Twitter account" Torrance point to supposed polling evidence that there hasn't been much of a boost for Yes in the aftermath of June 23rd. I strongly suspect that they're both mainly talking about a single YouGov poll showing only a 1% increase for Yes, and assuming that's going to prove typical. Well, it might do, but there again it might not do. Drawing too many conclusions from an individual poll is a dangerous game for any commentator, and we'll just have to see whether they've jumped the gun. It's particularly worth remembering that even before the EU referendum, telephone polls had Yes in the lead. There has only been one telephone poll since the referendum, and again, it had Yes in the lead. Anyone who claims to know for certain that there is a currently an anti-independence majority is either being dishonest or doesn't know what they're talking about.
As for Torrance's claim that the SNP got carried away with their rhetoric on a second indyref because they bought into their own "hype" about the effect of Brexit on public opinion, that strikes me as being silliness on stilts. Nicola Sturgeon and the people around her are not idiots - they'll have seen the pre-referendum polls suggesting that Brexit might only increase support for independence by a modest amount, and yet they went ahead with the early statement that an indyref was "highly likely" without waiting to see what the post-referendum polls would show. They would never have done that unless it was a carefully-thought-through strategy that was not dependent on short-term polling trends.
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