Looking for a "mature" way forward? Start with a pragmatic acceptance that a big increase in Yes support is only possible AFTER a referendum is actually called

In the wake of Joyce McMillan's clarion call for inaction and passivity last week, Kevin Williamson of Bella fame posted the following risible tweet -

"Plenty of vitriol directed at @joycemcm and @AndrewWilson for suggesting not rushing into #indyref2.  @NicolaSturgeon will get same - called a Unionist/Britnat/traitor from the Wings/Kelly/Murray/Bell/fundamentalist wing of Yes - if she doesn't call #indyref2 in the next six weeks."

It isn't the main point of this blogpost, but it is just worth pausing for a moment and marvelling at the sheer comical absurdity of Kevin's attempt to lump together as "fundamentalists" four people who hold such wildly different views.  Just for starters, Craig Murray will not be remotely bothered if Nicola Sturgeon doesn't call a referendum within the next six weeks, because as I understand it he doesn't even want a referendum - he favours an alternative method of attaining independence.  Indeed, I'd have thought one of the basic requirements for anyone to qualify as a "fundamentalist" would be support for UDI, and only two of the four names mentioned (Craig and Peter Bell) have gone down that road.  For my part, I don't think Westminster can ever hold a veto on Scottish self-determination, so I suppose it's true that if absolutely every other option was exhausted (ie. if there was a clear mandate for independence that was completely ignored), I might eventually start thinking the unthinkable, but we're a long, long way from that point yet.

At least three of the four of us have an impeccable track record of supporting Nicola Sturgeon when she announced a delay in the indyref timetable in the summer of 2017, whereas Kevin can't even boast a track record of backing Nicola Sturgeon in the 2016 Holyrood list vote.  So it's something of a mystery as to where Kevin is getting the idea that we're going to start behaving totally out of character by branding her a "traitor" if she doesn't take a certain course of action within a six-week timetable that I'm not aware any of us have even mentioned.  And to the best of my knowledge none of us are in the habit of throwing around nasty insults like "traitor" anyway - I'm certainly not, and I know that Stuart Campbell has a setting on the comments section of Wings that automatically intercepts any attempt to use the word "traitor" and changes it to "tractor".

(Not that I'd want to embarrass Kevin, but if you want to know the rather amusing real reason why he's so eager to smear me as a "fundamentalist", just click HERE and HERE.)

Anyway, my initial response to Kevin's tweet was to point out to him that he appears not to have caught up with the growing and impressive ideological diversity of the "fundamentalist wing of Yes", because it seemed that his fellow traveller Robin McAlpine was considerably more impatient for a referendum than the likes of me.  I now realise that I did Robin a disservice, though, because his latest CommonSpace article makes clear that the action he is impatient for is a renewed independence campaign, and that he partly agrees with Joyce McMillan that it would be "immature" to call for a referendum until that campaign has succeeded in growing support for independence to the point where the London government cannot possibly deny a request for a referendum.

I don't doubt Robin's sincerity, but I have to say what he's suggesting is strategically naive, and is frankly a recipe for Scotland never holding a referendum and never becoming independent.  There are two questions to consider - a) would the Tories magically drop their opposition to a Section 30 order if Yes were on 55% rather than 47%, and b) is there any possibility whatsoever that a campaign without the focus of a referendum or election date could gain enough traction to get Yes to that level of support?  The answer to both questions is self-evidently "no".  The reason the Tories don't want to grant a Section 30 order is because they don't want Scotland to become an independent country - an increased Yes vote in the polls would just make them even more intransigent.  (Look at the current situation with Brexit: has majority support for Remain in the polls led to the Tory leadership dropping its opposition to a second EU referendum?  Er, no.  Of course it hasn't.)  And as for the limitations of any non-referendum campaign for independence, you only have to look at the relatively minor effect of the emotional shock of the surprise referendum outcome in June 2016.  There were a couple of polls in the aftermath of the Brexit decision that had Yes in the low 50s, and then normal service was quickly resumed.  If Robin thinks that any random, unfocused independence campaign, one that the mainstream media can easily and happily ignore, can somehow surpass the impact of Scotland being dragged out of the EU against its will, all I can say is that's wildly optimistic.

There is, however, one hard-headed, mature and realistic way of potentially bringing about a big and fast change to public opinion, and that is to actually call a referendum (or an election that doubles as a referendum).  We've seen it time and again now - voters are open to changing their views in the heat of a referendum/election campaign, when their minds are focused on a real and impending choice.  They are considerably less open to changing their views at any other time, when they may rather resent even being asked to think about the subject in any depth.

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Scotland's shame: the disgraceful behaviour of the Daily Record and David Clegg

I was trying to remember this morning when it was that the scales first fell from my eyes about what a disgusting, disreputable publication the Daily Record is.  It was actually long before the independence referendum and the notorious "Vow".  About ten or fifteen years ago, there was a documentary on Channel 4 that featured fly-on-the-wall footage of a young brother and sister being interviewed by a Record reporter.  They were in an incestuous relationship, and wanted to bring to wider public attention a phenomenon called Genetic Sexual Attraction (GSA), which causes siblings who didn't know each other during childhood to feel a strong attraction to each other when they meet as adults.  The Record reporter gave every indication that he was primarily interested in GSA and that the subject would be treated sympathetically, but he must have known even as he was sitting there that he was about to betray their trust.  The documentary later showed their shock as they opened the newspaper to discover a splash that essentially branded them as perverts, and only mentioned GSA in passing.  The quotes that were included from the interview were all taken out of context and were presented as a feeble 'defence' against accusations that had been ranged against them.  Needless to say, the Record hadn't even bothered to give them the courtesy of a warning about what was about to hit them.

Would the Record attempt a story like that now?  I suspect not, simply because public attitudes about sex have become more liberal and it would rebound on them.  Incest is still regarded as wrong in all circumstances, but there would be a greater willingness to listen sympathetically to a reasonable explanation.  But even if the parameters within which the Record are able to ruin lives have changed, their readiness to ruin lives in pursuit of a sensationalist story has not changed at all.  Their appalling front page today is just the latest in a long line of examples, and David Clegg's eagerness to promote that front page on social media will be a mark of shame until his dying day.

There is a gloating, mocking air to the words "Alexander Elliott Anderson Salmond, you are accused of..." which leaves no room for doubt that the Record's agenda is political revenge.  I suspect that any complainant would be deeply distressed to see their accounts weaponised in that way, and also trivialised by the unmistakeable use of "Cluedo"-type language.  Meanwhile readers are clearly being invited to believe that the only salient point is that Salmond has been charged with the offences that are itemised in huge lettering.  There is only the tiniest of token nods to the fact that the charges have yet to be tested in court.  Essentially Mr Salmond's right to a presumption of innocence has been totally disregarded.

In case you had any remaining sliver of doubt about what game the Record are playing, Salmond is branded at the bottom of the page as "the face of independence", a point expanded on by an article by Clegg that tries to argue that the independence cause has been seriously damaged.  Anyone would think it was the Yes movement that had been charged with sexual offences.  Anyone would think that politicians from other movements and other parties are immune to criminal charges, or to the possibility of personal misdemeanours that are self-evidently unrelated to their politics.  Even very recent history tells us otherwise.

And yes, I know the front page of The Sun is, if anything, even worse.

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A polite request

In the light of today's big news story, I'd like to gently ask readers not to speculate in any way at all about the legal proceedings against Alex Salmond in the comments section of this blog.  As you probably know, now that Mr Salmond has been charged, contempt of court rules apply to comments made online.  I'm not a legal expert, so I'll be erring on the side of caution and deleting anything that might even conceivably be problematical.  I've already had to delete a couple of comments on the previous thread for that reason.  For your own sake and for mine, your restraint will be appreciated.  I won't be making any comment myself until proceedings are over, except to emphasise the basic legal point that Mr Salmond is innocent until and unless proved guilty.  That's a principle we all think we understand, but it's easy to lose sight of the full implications of it.

This might also be a convenient moment to make a couple of other housekeeping points.  I've been wanting to say this for some time: could people please, please, please refrain from using filthy language in the comments section.  I know that using the word 'filthy' makes me sound like a latter-day Mary Whitehouse, but anyone who has dipped into the comments of late will know that I'm not exaggerating. It's not uncommon for me to have delete well over a dozen comments per day now. Obviously there's one culprit above all others, and that individual does not have the best interests of this blog at heart, but nevertheless I would hope I can make an appeal to his own self-interest.  Heaven only knows why he wants to devote his entire life to winding people up on this blog, but he clearly does, and that being the case I presume he would also like his comments to remain visible for more than a few minutes.  There's no way on Earth I can leave up the sort of comments he's been making in recent months.  What I'm asking for would be a win/win situation for all concerned - I wouldn't have to waste half my life deleting comments (and it's really not easy at all when I'm on the move) and others wouldn't be wasting their lives writing comments that aren't going to stay up anyway.

On a happier note, Scot Goes Pop is now doing better than ever in the Traffic Estimate rankings of Scottish alternative media sites - not only is it still in fourth place, it's in a strong fourth place.  The following figures are estimates for the last 30 days...

1) Craig Murray: 246,100 unique readers
2) Wings Over Scotland: 172,600 unique readers
3) CommonSpace: 102,400 unique readers
4) Scot Goes Pop: 86,800 unique readers
5) Talking Up Scotland: 69,700 unique readers
6) Wee Ginger Dug: 58,900 unique readers
7) Bella Caledonia: 58,400 unique readers
8) The Ferret: 29,800 unique readers
9) Random Public Journal: 23,600 unique readers
10) Indyref2: 20,400 unique readers

Traffic Estimate's figures are just ballpark estimates, so who knows how accurate the rankings are.  But if they're favourable I may as well shout about them!

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On the subject of blogging etiquette...

Disappointingly, Mhairi Hunter reacted to the polite criticism in the previous post by blocking me on Twitter.  It's never pleasant being blocked by someone 'on your own side', especially an elected councillor.  But I have to say in this particular case it's almost a relief, because she does seem to have a major problem with dissenting views, no matter how courteously expressed.  (She once tried to shut down a point I was making by telling me to go on diversity training.)  I think it's worth just making a general comment about "blogging etiquette" here, because Mhairi is not the first person to react to having her name mentioned in a blogpost as if that is in itself a form of abuse. You might remember I was once accused of persecuting a pro-independence columnist because I mentioned her name in two different blogposts (!).  Perhaps some people just object to the whole concept of political blogging, but if it's going to continue to exist, it will unavoidably involve commentary about named individuals.  That's a feature, not a bug. We've all heard of the snowflake generation, but we're getting into the realms of the ridiculous if we now have a generation of journalists and elected politicians who have thrust themselves into the public sphere but don't want their names to actually be mentioned in public.

In her parting shot about me after the blocking, Mhairi made two complaints - firstly that it was a "poor show" for me to mention her without advance warning, and secondly that the namecheck had led to her being harassed by others, including by one who called her a "Britnat plant".  Call me cynical, but I have to say I am extremely doubtful as to whether Mhairi would have been any happier if I had sent her an email in advance - I think she just doesn't want to be mentioned without permission, knows that there's no particular reason why she shouldn't be, and is therefore scrabbling around for some plausible-sounding technical objection to the way it was done.  I haven't asked other bloggers whether they usually give advance warning to elected politicians about forthcoming criticisms, but I will openly admit that it isn't my own personal practice to send a telegram to Downing Street or the White House every time I make a comment about Theresa May or Donald Trump.  I'll keep that policy under review, but I do think it would get a bit tedious for all concerned.

If for the sake of argument there is a valid point of etiquette here, by definition that would mean personal criticisms in a blogpost must somehow be qualitatively different from personal criticisms on social media, because Mhairi and others who have objected to being named on this blog have no qualms whatsoever about criticising others on Twitter without prior notification.  (And I can say that with confidence, because over the years I've been on the receiving end of occasional snide comments from Mhairi on Twitter that I only found out about by chance later on - indeed that happened most recently just a few hours ago.)  So is the implication that a blogpost is "properly published" in a way that a tweet isn't?  I have to say I can't see it.  Twitter now provides viewing stats, and I've learned that my most popular tweets regularly generate more impressions than my blogposts.  Tweets may feel casual and disposable, but a personal criticism in a tweet is just as likely to be read by a large number of people, and just as likely to remain visible indefinitely, as a personal criticism in a blogpost.

As for me supposedly being indirectly responsible for a Twitter pile-on, for that to be a credible point you'd have to believe that it was somehow disproportionate for me to draw attention to Mhairi's approving words about Joyce McMillan's article.  But I'm afraid that it's impossible to sustain the idea that it wasn't newsworthy or noteworthy that an elected SNP politician endorsed an article that suggested an independence referendum should be put on the backburner for up to two decades, thus ripping up a flagship manifesto pledge.  I could have mentioned Mhairi, I could have mentioned Andrew Wilson, I could have mentioned one or two other politicians who endorsed the article.  But it self-evidently wouldn't have been disproportionate whichever name I had cited.  As a blogger I don't see why I have some sort of duty to hush up 'sensitive' tweets posted by elected representatives.  And yes, if those tweets reach a wider audience, people will react to them, and some people will react in a highly inappropriate way - but ultimately other individuals are responsible for their own words and actions.  I have no intention of tying myself up in knots trying to predict what the knock-on effect might be every time I make a perfectly reasonable point in a blogpost.

To return to the substance of the dispute, I saw Mhairi being challenged yesterday about the dubious claim that a consultative referendum would be "illegal".  Oddly, her reply was that it didn't really matter whether it would be technically legal or not.  She said that what people were really getting at was that any referendum that the UK government didn't agree to would be functionally illegal, because Scotland can only become independent if London recognises a referendum result as valid.  I can't make head nor tail of that point.  The whole purpose of a consultative referendum would be to pressurise London into coming to the negotiating table by demonstrating that there is a mandate for independence.  If it's possible to apply that pressure legally rather than illegally, of course that's not a technical or meaningless distinction.

And I've been thinking some more about Joyce McMillan's claim that independence has to wait until "consensus" and "harmony" have been established, in much the same way that devolution had to wait two decades after 1979.  It's worth remembering that SNP, Labour and Liberal/SDP politicians of the 1980s did not recognise any need to wait - they were all trying to establish a Scottish Parliament as soon as possible.  It would be interesting to know whether Joyce McMillan and Mhairi Hunter, if they could time-travel and go back to the 1983 or 1987 election campaigns, would advise opposition politicians to "cool your jets, let Thatcher do her worst, don't try to take any action for another 15 years".

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Joyce McMillan's article calls for the SNP to become a unionist-for-now party and to betray its promise to give the Scottish people a choice on their own future in the event of Brexit. We should have no truck with any of that.

I know I'm not the only person who was disappointed and deeply concerned to see the Glasgow SNP councillor Mhairi Hunter, and one or two others close to the party leadership, give the seal of approval to an absolutely extraordinary article by Joyce McMillan that amounts to a counsel of despair for the independence movement, and a call for an indefinite delay for any meaningful push towards independence.  The main points of the article were as follows -

* Nicola Sturgeon should not even request a Section 30 order (because the request would be rejected) and SNP supporters shouldn't be pushing her to do it.  This point is implied by the article rather than explicitly stated, but I defy anyone to dispute that the implication is readily apparent.  It effectively paints as a form of extremism any suggestion that Ms Sturgeon should do what she's already done once in 2017, and what we've been strongly led to believe she's about to do again.  It would also mean that it's somehow outrageously militant to merely ask that the SNP stick to their own manifesto commitment - and remember that the manifesto arguably went further than simply pledging a Section 30 request.  It certainly didn't acknowledge any Westminster veto on the holding of an independence referendum in the event of Brexit.

* The example of Catalonia demonstrates that the holding of a referendum without the agreement of Westminster would set the cause of independence back 10 years.  This is a really appalling piece of victim-blaming on McMillan's part.  The Spanish authorities trampled all over the Catalan people's democratic rights, meted out arbitrary violence against citizens casting a peaceful vote, and took political prisoners.  But apparently this is all the Catalans' fault for failing to meekly take "no" for an answer.  In actual fact, hardly anyone is seriously talking about following Catalonia's example by holding an illegal referendum - what is being suggested is instead that the current powers of the Scottish Parliament should be tested by passing a Referendum Bill and then seeing if the Supreme Court upholds it.  If they don't, no harm done, and alternative methods for seeking an independence mandate would then have to be considered.  But if they do, the referendum would become the law of the land, so what exactly would be the problem?  Why are some senior SNP people in such a hurry to brand something as "illegal" when a) we don't know whether it is yet, and b) there'd definitely be no illegality in simply putting the matter to the test?

In any case, the United Kingdom is not Spain.  Disappointingly, it probably is the case that there's a natural majority within the UK population for denying Scotland's right to democratic self-determination for the time being, but what there most certainly isn't a majority for is the deploying of Spanish-style tactics in pursuit of that policy.  There would be an outcry if any such thing happened.  The UK government are in practice much more restricted in their options than the Spanish government were, and they know that full well.

Not that any of this has got anything to do with politely requesting a Section 30 order, an act that would be fully in line with the UK's constitutional arrangements, but which for some bizarre reason McMillan also regards as unconscionable.

* There can be no move towards independence until "consensus" and "harmony" are achieved, and this may well take 20 years, as was the case with devolution.  Blimey.  Where do you start?  First of all, it implies that the UK government were entirely right to ignore the narrow 52-48 vote in favour of devolution in 1979 (an outrage that McMillan herself has spoken out against plenty enough times).  It drives a coach and horses through the SNP's long-standing position on a referendum, which has always been that a simple majority of 50% + 1 is sufficient.  In the 2014 referendum, the SNP were certainly seeking consensus between Yes and No voters, but the form of that proposed consensus in the event of a narrow Yes vote would have been a compromise involving a "soft" form of independence - ie. a currency union, a monarchical union, a social union and so on.  (Much of that remains on the table - the only exception is the currency union, and the blame for the failure of that idea can be placed squarely at the London Treasury's door.)  Now it seems that the only appropriate form of "consensus" if there's a narrow majority for independence is no independence at all.  A suitably Orwellian proposition.

Isn't it also a bit odd that someone who cautions against hasty action that could put the cause of independence back 10 years would then advocate doing nothing for 20 years anyway?  I mean, doesn't the latter put the cause back by 20 years rather than 10?  What am I missing here?

And last but not least, putting a referendum on the backburner for 20 years until this utopian state of "harmony" is achieved would also mean that the SNP's current stated position, and the position stated in their manifesto, ie. that the Scottish people should have the right to another say on their own constitutional future in the event of Brexit, is a sham.  The idea that anyone would have taken that promise to mean "but only once you've had a chance to mull it over for a couple of decades" is risible.

McMillan's stance is not technically anti-independence, but it can be summed up as "unionism for the foreseeable future, and then we'll see".  It reminds me very much of the original constitutional policy of the current governing party of Quebec (the Coalition Avenir Québec) which was a ten-year moratorium on any talk of an independence referendum.  That then gradually mutated into "we will never hold a referendum, but we might seek more powers for Quebec within the Canadian federation".  Why any elected SNP representative would be flirting with this stuff is beyond me.  I would suggest our response to this disturbing development should be the opposite of what McMillan wants - we should redouble our urgent calls for Nicola Sturgeon, in the first instance, to renew her request for a Section 30 order within the next few weeks.  That, frankly, is a position of moderation not extremism, and we should have no patience for any attempts to gaslight us into believing the contrary.

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Bewildered Farquharson wonders "do these stupid voters actually LIKE civil wars?" as bombshell YouGov subsample puts the SNP close to 50% of the vote

So the usual health warnings at this point - what you're about to see is not a "poll", it should not be referred to as "the latest Scottish poll", and it's not in any way equivalent to recent full-scale Scottish polls with less favourable results.  Nevertheless, YouGov's Scottish subsamples do appear (unlike those from other firms) to be correctly structured and weighted, which means the only real problem with them is a large margin of error caused by the small sample size.  That being the case, this rather extreme result is an interesting straw in the wind...

SNP 47%, Conservatives 24%, Labour 14%, Liberal Democrats 8%, Greens 5%, UKIP 2%

That's obviously not the true position, but nevertheless I think we can safely assume that Labour are not going to be taking the lead in Scotland any time soon.  At 47%, the SNP have equalled their best recent showing in a YouGov subsample, which makes it appear somewhat unlikely that the fallout from Alex Salmond's legal victory has had the effect that the unionist media clearly expected.  It looks like voters actually care more about resolving the chaos of Brexit than about minor tensions between people in the SNP - who'd have thunk it? 

This is also a rare example (rare by the standards of the last two years, I mean) of the pro-independence parties in combination having an outright majority of the vote in a YouGov subsample.

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No, Lady Hermon's support does not give the government a DUP-proof majority

There's a rather odd little article on the New Statesman website by Patrick Maguire, claiming that Lady Hermon's announcement that she will never back any motion of no confidence means that Labour will have to find a vote on the Tory side if they are ever to have any chance of bringing down the government, even if the DUP change sides.  (The implication being they've got very little chance.)  But in fact there's nothing remotely new about what Lady Hermon said, and as things stand it makes no difference to the parliamentary arithmetic anyway.  As expected she voted against the no confidence motion last night, but the government still won by fewer than 20 votes - meaning that if the DUP had backed the motion, the government would have lost.  No need for any Tory defections at all - the DUP could have swung the balance on their own.

That said, it was initially rather alarming to realise that the margin of defeat for the government in those circumstances would have been just one vote.  On the face of it, that raises the possibility that the DUP might eventually decide to bring about a general election, but fail to do so.  Remember that on a tied vote, the Speaker is supposed to exercise his casting vote in line with the status quo, which in the case of a no confidence motion means voting to save the government.  So the arithmetic with the DUP opposing the government looks very close to being a coin toss.

Thankfully, it turns out that three ex-Labour MPs who now sit as independents abstained last night - Fiona Onasanya, the odious John Woodcock, and Ivan Lewis.  Mr Woodcock is clearly a lost cause, and I don't know what the situation with Mr Lewis is, but I would guess Ms Onasanya probably just couldn't be bothered to turn up, because she's no longer subject to Labour discipline and she knew the motion was going to fail anyway.  So it's likely that the combined opposition forces can count on an extra vote or two in any truly competitive no confidence vote, which should ensure that only the DUP are required - assuming, that is, Ms Onasanya remains out of jail.  She obviously wouldn't be able to vote from prison, and if any jail sentence is of a duration of one year or longer, she would automatically forfeit her seat in the Commons, triggering a by-election in a marginal constituency that the Tories could conceivably win (if the current opinion polls are to be believed).  In that scenario, the parliamentary arithmetic would become that bit more daunting.  But it hasn't happened yet, and it may not happen at all.

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There was an even more peculiar article on the Corbynite alternative media website Evolve Politics last night, with a ludicrous headline claiming that the SNP were plotting with the Lib Dems to prop up the Tories in future no confidence votes.  The mind boggles as to how clueless any reporter would have to be about the realities of Scottish politics to give even the remotest credence to that story.  Sure enough, Kirsty Blackman immediately informed them in no uncertain terms on Twitter that they were wrong.  They hilariously reacted as if they had just succeeded in extracting some sort of 'concession' from her under pressure, but of course she was merely stating the blindingly obvious.  The SNP are in fact considerably more determined and more united in their attempts to bring down the government than the Labour party are, as evidenced by their tabling of a no confidence motion in December when Labour were holding back.

And if you think about it, the SNP's stance effectively kills the story as far as the Lib Dems are concerned as well.  Although it's not hard to see why the Lib Dems might want to threaten to abstain on a no confidence vote in an attempt to pressure Labour into backing a second referendum, there's no way they'd be able to see that threat through unless they had the safety-blanket of another party doing the same thing.  Single-handedly propping the Tories up at this stage would be electoral suicide for Cable's mob.

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Last night increased the chances of a People's Vote - but it probably increased the chances of No Deal even more

"If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?"

I'm sure Donald Tusk is a very nice man and kind to animals, but the now-notorious tweet above just looks idiotic to me - unless of course he actually wants a no deal Brexit for some reason, and is trying out a touch of reverse psychology.  All he's succeeded in doing is vastly increasing the paranoia among Brexit supporters about a dastardly Brussels plot to overturn the 2016 referendum, which will pile the pressure on Tory MPs to take a hard line over the coming weeks, and to ensure that Britain leaves the EU on 29th March at all costs, etc, etc.

I've found over recent weeks that when I'm trying to work out what will happen next with Brexit, a useful starting point is to look at whatever Mike "impartial Lib Dem election expert" Smithson is predicting, because it can usually be pretty safely ruled out as a possibility.  Before Christmas, he famously gave us the all-time classic of: "The DUP will vote for Theresa May's deal because they're scared of a united Ireland.  Don't worry, I've thought about this for three seconds so you don't have to."  Undeterred by being proved catastrophically wrong on that one (who would ever have guessed?) he's now claiming that Theresa May is about to back a People's Vote, and will use the drive for cross-party consensus as her excuse for the U-turn.  For good measure, he adds that this means the ERG's strategy was "not very smart" - which presumably implies that a better "strategy" for them would have been the same highly sophisticated one he expected from the DUP if they wanted to avoid a united Ireland, ie. to pack up, go home, and stop making such a damn fuss.

Hmmm.  I suspect the ERG will want to wait to see if Smithson's prediction is actually correct before giving up on life completely.  The reality is that last night's vote did increase the chances of a People's Vote, but it also increased the chances of no deal.  This is a high stakes game, and anyone who claims to know for sure which side is going to win it is deluding themselves.  One thing I am confident about, though, is that if a People's Vote does happen, Theresa May will not be responsible for helping to bring it about (or not intentionally, anyway).  OK, we know she lies every day of her life, so her repeated insistence that she won't back a referendum can't be taken at face value.  But we can rely on what we've learned about how she will measure success or failure in her tenure as Prime Minister.  She wants her place in history to be the delivery of an orderly Brexit, and if that really isn't possible she would settle for just delivering Brexit.  A People's Vote would put Brexit at severe risk, so if forced to choose between a referendum and pretty much any alternative, she would always choose the alternative.

If you're trying to work out what the "May lie" was last night, I think the most promising candidate was her assurance that she is not trying to run down the clock.  I would not be at all surprised if running down the clock is the exact purpose of the forthcoming cross-party talks.  It's very hard to believe that she has any intention of reaching an understanding with Labour - yes, there might be a natural parliamentary majority for a much softer Brexit, but if she went down that road she would leave the most hard-line Brexiteers feeling they have nothing left to lose by breaking away from the Conservative party, which in turn could bring down the government.  I suspect she'll be happy enough to look like she's doing something urgently, but to no great effect - with the intended outcome being a miracle last-minute parliamentary approval for something approximating to the current deal, or a "nothing to do with me guv" no deal by default.

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Is it "inconceivable" for Sarah Smith to report Scottish politics objectively?

I stumbled across this tweet overnight -

Although I didn't hear the report in question, I have little difficulty imagining that Sarah Smith said exactly that, because she's been playing this little game ever since the election of June 2017.  She's been repeatedly informing viewers and listeners as a statement of fact that Nicola Sturgeon has a private position on indyref timing that bears no resemblance to her public position, and that the only question in any real contention is which tactic will be used to let the SNP rank-and-file down gently.  At no stage has Smith issued a disclaimer that this is pure speculation on her part and that alternative interpretations are available.  If her speculation is rooted in private gossip from SNP sources, at no stage has she made that clear or given the slightest information about the quality or the breadth of those sources.

I'd suggest it's fair comment to say that if the BBC are ever going to recover some of the trust they undoubtedly lost in Scotland in 2014, this kind of nonsense is going to have to stop.  The BBC's job is to report reality, not to attempt to shape reality in line with a worldview that places a premium on the unity of the British state, and thus wishes confusion upon the enemies of British unity.

Let's look at this in a way that Sarah Smith won't much appreciate.  It's only a week or so since Nicola Sturgeon started dropping heavy hints (indeed more than hints) that an indyref timetable would be set out very soon.  Given the expectations that have been generated on an already impatient Yes side, some would argue that it's "inconceivable" that there will be any further substantial delay.  If Smith thinks that logic is incorrect, it's incumbent upon her as the face of a public service broadcaster to explain why and to support her argument with hard facts.  Punditry masquerading as news just isn't good enough - not when the future of our country is at stake.

As far as the Alex Salmond controversy is concerned, my own view is that Nicola Sturgeon has got the emphasis slightly wrong throughout this process.  She rightly stated at the outset that the allegations against Mr Salmond could not be swept under the carpet and must be thoroughly investigated, but what was missing was a reminder that Mr Salmond was entitled to due process and a presumption of innocence while the investigation was underway.  By the same token, when Mr Salmond won his legal challenge against the Scottish Government, Ms Sturgeon rightly went out of her way to express regret for the negative impact on the two complainants, but failed to make what would have been an equally appropriate apology for the injustice done to Mr Salmond.  Essentially the impression that's been given is that the need for the allegations to be actually proved is just a formality.  For all the sanctimonious commentary a few months ago about how Mr Salmond's legal challenge and his crowdfunder had something to do with "toxic masculinity", the value of what he's done is to make it less likely in future that someone's career can be ended simply by an untested allegation -  which should never be the case for a person of any gender or at any pay grade.

So, yes, there are differences of opinion within the SNP on this topic, but the characterisation of those differences as a "civil war" is extremely silly, and the idea put about in one or two newspapers that Ms Sturgeon's leadership is seriously under threat is in the realms of fantasy.  I would also note that the one thing guaranteed to heal any slight rift and to bring the SNP together with a unity of purpose would be the swift timetabling of an independence referendum.  I very much doubt if I'm the only person that point has occurred to, even if it's yet to occur to Sarah Smith.

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Having just destroyed the devolution settlement, Nebulous Theresa makes bizarre claim that it would be unthinkable for Westminster to destroy the devolution settlement

Theresa May has got some nerve.  I know that as statements of the obvious go, that's right up there with "the Pope is a Catholic" and "Rory Stewart is from The Middleland", but sometimes it just needs to be said all the same.  Her latest wheeze, intended to shame her own MPs into backing her God-awful Brexit deal, must rank as some kind of new high watermark in her relentless attempts to perfect the art of hypocrisy -

"Imagine if an anti-devolution House of Commons had said to the people of Scotland or Wales that despite voting in favour of a devolved legislature, Parliament knew better and would overrule them. Or else force them to vote again."

Luckily we don't have to imagine such an extraordinary state of affairs. In a referendum held in March 1979, the people of Scotland voted in favour of a devolved legislature by 52% to 48% - EXACTLY the same margin by which the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in June 2016.  A Conservative-dominated, anti-devolution parliament under Margaret Thatcher decided it knew better than the people of Scotland, and overruled them.  No devolved legislature was set up - an act of utter, contemptuous defiance of a democratic referendum result.

Even the Labour party under Tony Blair insisted that Scotland couldn't have the legislature it had already voted for without being forced to vote on the subject again.  And that opportunity wasn't provided until some eighteen-and-a-half years after the first referendum result had been ignored. This time, Scotland voted by an overwhelming margin of 74% to 26% in favour of a devolved legislature that would have exclusive control over a range of policy areas such as agriculture and fisheries.

But two decades later, a Conservative-dominated, anti-devolution parliament under Theresa May decided it knew better than the people of Scotland, and overruled them.  Powers that the people had voted to give to the Scottish Parliament were taken back to Westminster without consent, driving a coach and horses through the democratic referendum result of 1997.  The Tories' cynicism was so overwhelming that they even legislated to retrospectively remove the Scottish Parliament's power to pass a bill it had only just passed.

In a nutshell, there have been two referendums in Scotland on devolution, and the results of both have been overturned either in whole or in part by the Westminster parliament.  What exactly is your point here, Theresa?

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I'm coming round to the idea that yesterday's story about a possible parliamentary "coup" may have just been misinformation emanating from the Downing Street camp, intended to spook Brexiteers into backing the May deal.  That theory is certainly consistent with the current spin about "no Brexit being more likely than No Deal" - the calculation seems to be that if anyone saves May's bacon, it'll be Brexiteers rather than Remainers.

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