Just another quick update for the people who contributed to the crowdfunder for this blog's forthcoming poll on independence. The fieldwork has now been completed, and I've been given a tentative indication of the likely result on the main question. But I'm not going to drop any hints at all, because it's provisional and may change. I should have the full results by Monday at the latest, and then I'll probably drip-feed them to you over a few days.
Meanwhile, I have an article in today's edition of The National expressing my scepticism about the ultra-cautious approach set out by Nicola Sturgeon yesterday. You can read it HERE.
Saturday, February 1, 2020
Friday, January 31, 2020
It gives me no pleasure to say this, but a major strategic error has just been made
I only caught the last few seconds of that, but it sounded like Nicola Sturgeon has firmly chosen the Andrew Wilson magical thinking approach of "persuade and the obstacle will somehow vanish by some unspecified means"? If so, I have to be honest and say that's a mistake.— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) January 31, 2020
Rule No 1: It is impossible, literally *impossible* to be sure of a win before a referendum is called. The really big changes in public opinion (in whatever direction they occur) will happen once the campaign is underway.— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) January 31, 2020
Compared to the 2014 campaign, 51-49 is in "beyond wildest dreams" territory as a starting point. Are we really waiting for unachievable levels of support (like 60% or 67%) before doing anything? If so, the leadership have given up on independence. They just don't know it yet.— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) January 31, 2020
You're missing the point. If we're "learning the lesson from David Cameron" that polls can be wrong, that's an argument for saying we shouldn't call a referendum even if we're 20, 30, 40 points ahead. In other words we can never do it.— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) January 31, 2020
Oh for heaven's sake. There's nothing "illegitimate" about legislating for a referendum and then allowing the Supreme Court to decide whether it can take place.— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) January 31, 2020
Her tone was entirely off caution is fine (up to a point) if you sound convincingly like trying to push things forward. Nicola missed the target today.— Chris ward (@rampitchfork) January 31, 2020
* * *
I have more analysis of yesterday's sensational YouGov poll in an article at The National - you can read it HERE.
Thursday, January 30, 2020
Drama as YouGov poll shows a pro-independence majority
The first post-election poll on independence has been published, and it suggests that the long-anticipated (but highly elusive) swing to Yes by Remainers who voted No in 2014 may have finally taken place on a really telling scale.
Should Scotland be an independent country? (YouGov, 22nd-27th January 2020):
Should Scotland be an independent country? (YouGov, 22nd-27th January 2020):
Yes 51% (+7)
No 49% (-7)
Bear in mind that YouGov have in recent years been one of the most No-friendly firms, so it shouldn't be assumed that 51% is as good as it's going to get for Yes - it's conceivable that other firms will show something a little better, but we'll have to wait and see. On the other hand, the 7% swing to Yes may be a touch exaggerated, because the previous YouGov poll looks very much like an outlier in retrospect - it showed a sharp dip in the Yes vote that wasn't picked up by other pollsters. But it seems highly probable that YouGov's new numbers are reflecting some sort of genuine swing on the ground - 49% was the highest Yes vote they reported last year, and they haven't shown an outright Yes lead since 2015.
An intriguing supplementary question attempts to measure the depth of both support for and opposition to independence, and finds that absolutely definite Yes and No voters are tied on 35% apiece. For my money that's a highly encouraging finding, because there's always a danger that a sudden swing might be based on rather shaky foundations. That doesn't appear to be the case here - there's no longer any underlying 'natural majority' for No.
The unionist parties will of course ignore the headline result on independence and point to the finding that a majority are opposed to holding an independence referendum this year. But the snag is that 44% are in favour of holding a referendum within the next five years (ie. within the next Holyrood parliamentary term) and only 39% are opposed. With Don't Knows excluded, that's a pro-referendum majority of around 53% to 47%. Given that the Tory government take the extremist and ludicrous line that no referendum can be held until after Nicola Sturgeon's death (which could potentially mean another fifty years of delay!), it's safe to say that the public are a lot, lot closer to the SNP's view on referendum timing than they are to the Tories' view.
Thoughtful Scottish Tory MSPs (if such a thing exists) will be deeply concerned that this poll shows they are about to make an error of historic proportions by confirming Jackson Carlaw as their official leader. It looks like he can't be absolved of blame for the election disaster last month - he has a dismal net personal rating of -29, which is 29 points worse than Nicola Sturgeon's and almost as bad as Richard Leonard's. (Yes, it's that bad.)
From a personal point of view, I breathed a sign of relief when I read through the list of questions that YouGov asked. As you know, this blog will be publishing a poll in the very near future, and I was slightly concerned that there might be a significant amount of overlap between YouGov's questions and the ones that I asked. But as it turns out, there's no real duplication at all, except on the independence question itself. (Unless of course YouGov have a second batch of questions that they haven't released yet, but time will tell.)
Bear in mind that YouGov have in recent years been one of the most No-friendly firms, so it shouldn't be assumed that 51% is as good as it's going to get for Yes - it's conceivable that other firms will show something a little better, but we'll have to wait and see. On the other hand, the 7% swing to Yes may be a touch exaggerated, because the previous YouGov poll looks very much like an outlier in retrospect - it showed a sharp dip in the Yes vote that wasn't picked up by other pollsters. But it seems highly probable that YouGov's new numbers are reflecting some sort of genuine swing on the ground - 49% was the highest Yes vote they reported last year, and they haven't shown an outright Yes lead since 2015.
An intriguing supplementary question attempts to measure the depth of both support for and opposition to independence, and finds that absolutely definite Yes and No voters are tied on 35% apiece. For my money that's a highly encouraging finding, because there's always a danger that a sudden swing might be based on rather shaky foundations. That doesn't appear to be the case here - there's no longer any underlying 'natural majority' for No.
The unionist parties will of course ignore the headline result on independence and point to the finding that a majority are opposed to holding an independence referendum this year. But the snag is that 44% are in favour of holding a referendum within the next five years (ie. within the next Holyrood parliamentary term) and only 39% are opposed. With Don't Knows excluded, that's a pro-referendum majority of around 53% to 47%. Given that the Tory government take the extremist and ludicrous line that no referendum can be held until after Nicola Sturgeon's death (which could potentially mean another fifty years of delay!), it's safe to say that the public are a lot, lot closer to the SNP's view on referendum timing than they are to the Tories' view.
Thoughtful Scottish Tory MSPs (if such a thing exists) will be deeply concerned that this poll shows they are about to make an error of historic proportions by confirming Jackson Carlaw as their official leader. It looks like he can't be absolved of blame for the election disaster last month - he has a dismal net personal rating of -29, which is 29 points worse than Nicola Sturgeon's and almost as bad as Richard Leonard's. (Yes, it's that bad.)
From a personal point of view, I breathed a sign of relief when I read through the list of questions that YouGov asked. As you know, this blog will be publishing a poll in the very near future, and I was slightly concerned that there might be a significant amount of overlap between YouGov's questions and the ones that I asked. But as it turns out, there's no real duplication at all, except on the independence question itself. (Unless of course YouGov have a second batch of questions that they haven't released yet, but time will tell.)
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
First post-election YouGov subsample has the SNP at a heady 50% of the vote
The first post-election YouGov poll of GB-wide voting intentions has been published, which is significant for us because YouGov appear to be the only firm that structure and weight their Scottish subsamples separately. The figures are therefore the first proper clue about what a full-scale Scottish poll will show - although they can only be a very vague clue, because the small sample size means there's a large margin of error.
SNP 50%, Conservatives 27%, Labour 13%, Liberal Democrats 6%, Greens 2%, Brexit Party 1%
If those figures turn out to be in the right ball-park (and that's still a big "if"), it would bear out my theory of the other day that both the SNP and the Scottish Tories will enjoy a post-election honeymoon, with the Tories deriving their boost from the election result south of the border, and with their extra support taken from other unionist parties.
And if full-scale polls show a similar increase in support for the SNP, there may be two distinct factors behind it. One would be a genuine change in public opinion on the ground, but the other will be methodological changes that correct for the underestimation of the SNP in the run-up to the election. YouGov have attached a methodological note explaining that 2017 past vote weighting has been replaced with 2019 past vote weighting, and that demographic weighting has been updated as well.
71% of the Scottish subsample think that Britain was wrong to leave the EU, and only 26% think Brexit is right. That's a bigger majority than usual, which may indicate that the subsample is a bit too "Remainy", and that may in turn cast a little doubt on the voting intention numbers. But at the same time it's encouraging, because the Yes movement desperately needs to ensure that the public don't "move on" from Brexit (whereas the British establishment, from Boris Johnson all the way through to the BBC and the Sun, will be trying to achieve the opposite effect and get us to accept Brexit as an unchangeable historical fact as soon as humanly possible).
SNP 50%, Conservatives 27%, Labour 13%, Liberal Democrats 6%, Greens 2%, Brexit Party 1%
If those figures turn out to be in the right ball-park (and that's still a big "if"), it would bear out my theory of the other day that both the SNP and the Scottish Tories will enjoy a post-election honeymoon, with the Tories deriving their boost from the election result south of the border, and with their extra support taken from other unionist parties.
And if full-scale polls show a similar increase in support for the SNP, there may be two distinct factors behind it. One would be a genuine change in public opinion on the ground, but the other will be methodological changes that correct for the underestimation of the SNP in the run-up to the election. YouGov have attached a methodological note explaining that 2017 past vote weighting has been replaced with 2019 past vote weighting, and that demographic weighting has been updated as well.
71% of the Scottish subsample think that Britain was wrong to leave the EU, and only 26% think Brexit is right. That's a bigger majority than usual, which may indicate that the subsample is a bit too "Remainy", and that may in turn cast a little doubt on the voting intention numbers. But at the same time it's encouraging, because the Yes movement desperately needs to ensure that the public don't "move on" from Brexit (whereas the British establishment, from Boris Johnson all the way through to the BBC and the Sun, will be trying to achieve the opposite effect and get us to accept Brexit as an unchangeable historical fact as soon as humanly possible).
Sunday, January 26, 2020
Mid-Galloway and Wigtown West by-election
No polls overnight as far as I can see, but I realised I had completely overlooked the first Scottish local by-election to be held since the general election.
Mid-Galloway and Wigtown West by-election:
SNP 25.5% (+1.9)
Greens 6.4% (+4.2)
Labour 6.3% (-0.6)
At first glance that looks like an absolutely terrifying result, but it makes much more sense once you realise that independent candidates took 28% of the vote in the ward last time around, and those votes had to go somewhere because there weren't any independents standing this time. In Dumfries and Galloway, people who vote for independent candidates are often Tory voters in other circumstances, so that will account for most or all of the huge boost in the Tory vote.
A 2% increase in the SNP vote can at best be described as "OK", given that the change is measured from 2017, when the SNP were doing significantly less well than at last month's general election. But perhaps they were hampered in this by-election by the modest success of the Greens.
The result is an indication that the Tory honeymoon effect isn't necessarily stopping at the border, and given the reach of the London media in Scotland, we shouldn't really have expected it to. It may seem ironic in the wake of the Scottish Tories losing half their seats, but it's quite possible that the next Scottish poll will see an increase in the Tory vote - although if that does happen I would expect it to be largely at the expense of other unionist parties.
Saturday, January 25, 2020
Poll/crowdfunder update
So just a very quick update for the 349 people who have between them contributed an amazing £6186 to help Scot Goes Pop commission an opinion poll on independence. I haven't been idle on your behalf, and I think I've now got things more or less sorted. If everything goes to plan, I should have some results for you within around 7-10 days.
I now think it's highly unlikely that our poll will be the first post-election poll on independence - a number of people who are members of online polling panels have mentioned being surveyed over the last couple of weeks. With the Sunday papers appearing tonight, we might even see the first poll (perhaps even the first couple) within a few hours. However, I think a Scot Goes Pop poll is still a very worthwhile exercise. Different polls produce different results, and the more independence polls there are, the better idea we'll have of how the Yes campaign is faring in the post-election environment. And there's particular value in asking our own supplementary questions, because the mainstream media outlets who usually commission polls have their own preoccupations, and those are reflected in the questions that are asked.
Monday, January 20, 2020
Could excessive timidity lead to us squandering a golden opportunity to win independence?
It seems to me that the rhetoric of the "caution" faction within the SNP is aimed more at changing the behaviour of Yes supporters than of the UK government. Essentially the intention is to put Yes supporters into a kind of trance by insistently and repeatedly saying: "Stop asking how the SNP are going to bring the promised referendum about, those are bad thoughts. Instead, try to grow support for independence, that would be a good thought". It's not really working, partly because people have minds of their own and their preoccupations can't be so easily directed from on high, but mostly because there's such an obvious flaw in the "grow support for independence and don't worry your pretty little heads about process" schtick. It would all be so much more persuasive if there was a concrete plan for bringing about an indyref (with or without a Section 30) once that greater Yes support has been achieved, but in place of that plan is magical thinking, ie. "the UK government's position will prove to be unsustainable once we have overwhelming support, you'll see".
There's actually quite a strong case to be made that higher percentage support for Yes in the opinion polls would make the UK government even more intransigent, not less so. That could be especially true if the Tories remain in power indefinitely. If they had stayed in power after 1997, they would never have granted devolution, or a devolution referendum, in spite of the fact that support for a Scottish Parliament was running at 70-80% in the polls. (And yet I'm sure there would have been people chanting the mantra of "this is totally unsustainable!")
It remains to be seen how much influence the caution faction has with the SNP leadership, but until that becomes clear, all that the rest of us can do is continue making the counter-argument as forcefully and respectfully as we can.
There's actually quite a strong case to be made that higher percentage support for Yes in the opinion polls would make the UK government even more intransigent, not less so. That could be especially true if the Tories remain in power indefinitely. If they had stayed in power after 1997, they would never have granted devolution, or a devolution referendum, in spite of the fact that support for a Scottish Parliament was running at 70-80% in the polls. (And yet I'm sure there would have been people chanting the mantra of "this is totally unsustainable!")
It remains to be seen how much influence the caution faction has with the SNP leadership, but until that becomes clear, all that the rest of us can do is continue making the counter-argument as forcefully and respectfully as we can.
In reality, when you're approaching a strategic crossroads, that's exactly the moment to speak up. There's not much point in remaining silent until just *after* the die is cast.https://t.co/TjOPRS6LAz— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) January 18, 2020
We do need to win. But we don't need to win "big". That's the red herring in Andrew's narrative (which is, presumably, a tacit call for indefinite delay).https://t.co/2ifA1vMf8X— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) January 19, 2020
If the Lib Dems are crazy enough to urge their supporters to abstain in a legal referendum, that should not deter the SNP from holding one. Rather the reverse. A majority Yes vote might not resolve matters, but it would self-evidently be a leap forward.https://t.co/HlZaYzCCfq— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) January 20, 2020
Saturday, January 18, 2020
An overwhelming majority of Labour party members are open to supporting an independence referendum, reveals SHOCK YouGov poll
As you may have seen yesterday, YouGov have published their second poll of Labour members for the forthcoming leadership contest. The results are billed as "Sir Keir Starmer strengthening his lead", but the difference from the last poll is modest and can perhaps be explained by margin of error effects. The good news is that Jess Phillips and Lisa Nandy, with their Neanderthal attitudes toward Scotland, still appear to be completely out of the running.
Of most interest to us is a supplementary question that reveals more than twice as many Labour members support a second Scottish independence referendum as oppose one. Taking into account members who are open to a referendum with a view to doing a deal with the SNP, there is more than a four-to-one majority in favour of keeping the referendum option open.
Now thinking about a referendum on Scottish independence, do you think Labour should...?
Support having one: 33%
Oppose having one: 16%
Not actively support one, but be open to supporting one as part of a coalition deal with the SNP: 44%
Embarrassingly for Jess Phillips, only one-third of her own supporters share her implacable opposition to an indyref.
So the stance of the self-styled Labour "moderates" is not only rejected by the lost voters they ought to be trying to win back in Scotland, but also by their party's own membership across the UK. The intransigence of these politicians has clearly got nothing to with listening to people or with electability, which leaves just one plausible possibility - dogmatic British nationalism.
* * *
Panelbase independence poll incoming?
Well, it's sod's law, isn't it? Just 48 hours after this blog's successful fundraiser to break the post-election drought of polls on independence, a commenter on this blog revealed that he had been polled by Panelbase on the subject. It remains to be seen whether that's a private poll or one for public consumption, but judging from the nature of the questions I could well imagine it was commissioned by the Sunday Times, in which case we might see it as early as tonight. If so, the results will be fascinating - Panelbase have in recent years been a relatively No-friendly pollster, but that'll have been at least partly due to their weighting scheme, which will presumably now have been updated to introduce weighting by recalled 2019 general election vote. If there were previously problems caused by false recall or by the high SNP abstention rate in 2017, the new weighting could potentially make a significant difference. But we'll see.
Even if there is a poll tonight or tomorrow, I'll be proceeding with my own, and it'll still ask the Yes/No question. But if mine isn't the first post-election independence poll, the supplementary questions will become more important. I already have a list of questions drawn up, but if anyone has any brilliant suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments section below and I'll mull them over.
Rest assured that I won't be asking any questions about the proposed "Wings party". Long-term readers will know that I think credible polling needs to be done on that subject, but it wouldn't be appropriate to do it in a crowdfunded poll that will have been backed by both Wings-sceptics and Wings supporters. I'll be sticking strictly to questions about independence that should be of interest to all Yes supporters. I did ponder the idea of asking for Holyrood voting intentions, but I'm inclined to think polling about independence and the rights and wrongs of an indyref is of more value at this point.
Of most interest to us is a supplementary question that reveals more than twice as many Labour members support a second Scottish independence referendum as oppose one. Taking into account members who are open to a referendum with a view to doing a deal with the SNP, there is more than a four-to-one majority in favour of keeping the referendum option open.
Now thinking about a referendum on Scottish independence, do you think Labour should...?
Support having one: 33%
Oppose having one: 16%
Not actively support one, but be open to supporting one as part of a coalition deal with the SNP: 44%
Embarrassingly for Jess Phillips, only one-third of her own supporters share her implacable opposition to an indyref.
So the stance of the self-styled Labour "moderates" is not only rejected by the lost voters they ought to be trying to win back in Scotland, but also by their party's own membership across the UK. The intransigence of these politicians has clearly got nothing to with listening to people or with electability, which leaves just one plausible possibility - dogmatic British nationalism.
* * *
Panelbase independence poll incoming?
Well, it's sod's law, isn't it? Just 48 hours after this blog's successful fundraiser to break the post-election drought of polls on independence, a commenter on this blog revealed that he had been polled by Panelbase on the subject. It remains to be seen whether that's a private poll or one for public consumption, but judging from the nature of the questions I could well imagine it was commissioned by the Sunday Times, in which case we might see it as early as tonight. If so, the results will be fascinating - Panelbase have in recent years been a relatively No-friendly pollster, but that'll have been at least partly due to their weighting scheme, which will presumably now have been updated to introduce weighting by recalled 2019 general election vote. If there were previously problems caused by false recall or by the high SNP abstention rate in 2017, the new weighting could potentially make a significant difference. But we'll see.
Even if there is a poll tonight or tomorrow, I'll be proceeding with my own, and it'll still ask the Yes/No question. But if mine isn't the first post-election independence poll, the supplementary questions will become more important. I already have a list of questions drawn up, but if anyone has any brilliant suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments section below and I'll mull them over.
Rest assured that I won't be asking any questions about the proposed "Wings party". Long-term readers will know that I think credible polling needs to be done on that subject, but it wouldn't be appropriate to do it in a crowdfunded poll that will have been backed by both Wings-sceptics and Wings supporters. I'll be sticking strictly to questions about independence that should be of interest to all Yes supporters. I did ponder the idea of asking for Holyrood voting intentions, but I'm inclined to think polling about independence and the rights and wrongs of an indyref is of more value at this point.
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
The "no legal shortcuts to independence" article relies as much on political arguments as legal ones - and those political arguments are deeply flawed
You might have seen the other day that a couple of SNP MPs tweeted a piece by the constitutional law experts Chris McCorkindale and Aileen McHarg, setting out their thoughts on the legality of an independence referendum. It was suggested that the article would explain why the Scottish Government have settled on the approach they have. So I read it with an open mind, wondering if it would identify a legal opportunity that will arise if we're cautious enough at this stage. But by the time I'd reached the end, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, because it's infused with magical thinking. It summarily dismisses pretty much every practical step that could realistically be taken to bring about a mandate for independence (and in some cases the dismissal is based at least partly on rather vague and dubious political arguments rather than legal ones), but then suggests that an SNP win in next year's Holyrood election may somehow break the logjam, without really explaining how. And I thought: "Seriously? Is that honestly the plan? The last three immaculate SNP mandates were ignored by Westminster, but next time it's going to be different because reasons?" If that really is the "strategy", there's going to have to be a rethink, because the flaw in it can be spotted from outer space. In fairness to the authors of the article, it looks like they wrote it before the Secretary of State for Scotland announced that no Section 30 order would be granted until after Nicola Sturgeon dies from old age - in other words their reasoning is a little out of date, because they were working on the assumption that a post-2021 Section 30 order hadn't yet been ruled out by the Tories. It most definitely has been now.
I'm not going to take issue with the legal arguments in the article, but as stated above, the critique of alternative routes to an independence mandate is often based on political points, or points that hover ambiguously between law and politics. And some of those points really ought to be challenged. (For the avoidance of doubt, the words in italics below are paraphrases rather than exact quotes.)
'There is no legal requirement for an independence mandate to be secured via referendum but there is arguably a constitutional requirement due to precedent.' This reminds me of Alan Trench back in the day arguing on his Devolution Matters blog that there was a de facto constitutional bar on Westminster legislating on devolved matters without consent, due to the precedent of the Sewel Convention being repeatedly respected by successive UK governments. And yet when a Tory government suddenly decided not to respect the Sewel Convention anymore, the Supreme Court judges said "that's fine" because they were only impressed by the letter of the law, not by informal constitutional conventions or established practice. In any case, major constitutional changes have in the past been enacted in the United Kingdom without a referendum - most obviously, there was no referendum before the Heath government took the UK into the Common Market in 1973. It may have become the norm since then to seek constitutional mandates by referendum, but if that option has now been made much more difficult due to factors outwith our control, it seems logical and natural to at least consider reverting to the previous practice of seeking a mandate via a scheduled election, and it's a statement of the obvious that there is no constitutional bar on doing so. (Persuading the UK government to respect that mandate would be harder, of course, but that's a separate issue - the first step is to actually get the mandate.)
'If the Scottish Parliament pass a Referendum Bill without a Section 30 order, the UK government might pass legislation to unambiguously make the holding of referendums a reserved matter.' Well, yes, it might do, but then it could pass such legislation at any time, and so far it has not done so, presumably because there would be a political cost attached. If McCorkindale and McHarg feel it's a viable strategy to seek yet another mandate for a referendum in the 2021 election and cross our fingers that it's respected this time, I'm struggling to see why it would be any less viable to pass a Referendum Bill and cross our fingers that there is no blocking legislation at Westminster.
'A referendum held without a Section 30 order might be boycotted by unionists.' Yes, it might be, and in that case the challenge for the Yes campaign would be to secure enough votes (roughly 1.8 million) to demonstrate that victory would have been secured even with a 2014-style turnout on both sides. It's not an argument against holding such a referendum.
'Using the 2021 election to secure an outright mandate for independence wouldn't work for three reasons: a) the Scottish Government have already said they are opposed to the idea, b) the UK government wouldn't accept the mandate, and c) the process wouldn't be accepted as legitimate in Scotland, the UK and the international community.' These are all circular arguments. The first one is a nonsense because to pursue this strategy the Scottish Government would first have to change its mind on the principle of using an election to seek a mandate, and if it changes its mind it would clearly no longer be opposed to the idea! Similarly, if the Scottish Government and UK Government reach an agreement that retrospectively recognises an election result as a mandate for independence, all doubts over legitimacy would fall away. The international community certainly wouldn't raise any objections if the UK government were on board.
So it all boils down to the central question: how do you get the UK government to respect a mandate? And McCorkindale and McHarg have failed to explain why challenging London to respect an outright mandate for independence is any less promising a strategy than challenging London to respect a fourth mandate to hold a referendum. I would argue that it's a more promising strategy, because it would decisively move the narrative forward. The SNP would no longer even be arguing for a referendum - it would be arguing that Scotland has already opted for independence and would be seeking negotiations to bring that into effect. If the London parties (most obviously Labour and the Liberal Democrats) wanted to counter that by saying that major constitutional changes should only happen by referendum, it would be up to them to make the case for a second independence referendum, which would radically change the dynamic.
* * *
Poll fundraiser: Thank you to everyone who donated - the fundraiser reached its target within only a few hours! It'll take at least a few days before I can access the funds (that would have been the case with pretty much any crowdfunding platform) but I'll move forward as quickly as I can. Given that independence has shot up the news agenda over the last 24 hours, it's entirely possible that a mainstream media outlet may finally produce a poll over the coming days, but even if that happens I'll still go ahead - there'll be no harm in more than one poll.
I'm not going to take issue with the legal arguments in the article, but as stated above, the critique of alternative routes to an independence mandate is often based on political points, or points that hover ambiguously between law and politics. And some of those points really ought to be challenged. (For the avoidance of doubt, the words in italics below are paraphrases rather than exact quotes.)
'There is no legal requirement for an independence mandate to be secured via referendum but there is arguably a constitutional requirement due to precedent.' This reminds me of Alan Trench back in the day arguing on his Devolution Matters blog that there was a de facto constitutional bar on Westminster legislating on devolved matters without consent, due to the precedent of the Sewel Convention being repeatedly respected by successive UK governments. And yet when a Tory government suddenly decided not to respect the Sewel Convention anymore, the Supreme Court judges said "that's fine" because they were only impressed by the letter of the law, not by informal constitutional conventions or established practice. In any case, major constitutional changes have in the past been enacted in the United Kingdom without a referendum - most obviously, there was no referendum before the Heath government took the UK into the Common Market in 1973. It may have become the norm since then to seek constitutional mandates by referendum, but if that option has now been made much more difficult due to factors outwith our control, it seems logical and natural to at least consider reverting to the previous practice of seeking a mandate via a scheduled election, and it's a statement of the obvious that there is no constitutional bar on doing so. (Persuading the UK government to respect that mandate would be harder, of course, but that's a separate issue - the first step is to actually get the mandate.)
'If the Scottish Parliament pass a Referendum Bill without a Section 30 order, the UK government might pass legislation to unambiguously make the holding of referendums a reserved matter.' Well, yes, it might do, but then it could pass such legislation at any time, and so far it has not done so, presumably because there would be a political cost attached. If McCorkindale and McHarg feel it's a viable strategy to seek yet another mandate for a referendum in the 2021 election and cross our fingers that it's respected this time, I'm struggling to see why it would be any less viable to pass a Referendum Bill and cross our fingers that there is no blocking legislation at Westminster.
'A referendum held without a Section 30 order might be boycotted by unionists.' Yes, it might be, and in that case the challenge for the Yes campaign would be to secure enough votes (roughly 1.8 million) to demonstrate that victory would have been secured even with a 2014-style turnout on both sides. It's not an argument against holding such a referendum.
'Using the 2021 election to secure an outright mandate for independence wouldn't work for three reasons: a) the Scottish Government have already said they are opposed to the idea, b) the UK government wouldn't accept the mandate, and c) the process wouldn't be accepted as legitimate in Scotland, the UK and the international community.' These are all circular arguments. The first one is a nonsense because to pursue this strategy the Scottish Government would first have to change its mind on the principle of using an election to seek a mandate, and if it changes its mind it would clearly no longer be opposed to the idea! Similarly, if the Scottish Government and UK Government reach an agreement that retrospectively recognises an election result as a mandate for independence, all doubts over legitimacy would fall away. The international community certainly wouldn't raise any objections if the UK government were on board.
So it all boils down to the central question: how do you get the UK government to respect a mandate? And McCorkindale and McHarg have failed to explain why challenging London to respect an outright mandate for independence is any less promising a strategy than challenging London to respect a fourth mandate to hold a referendum. I would argue that it's a more promising strategy, because it would decisively move the narrative forward. The SNP would no longer even be arguing for a referendum - it would be arguing that Scotland has already opted for independence and would be seeking negotiations to bring that into effect. If the London parties (most obviously Labour and the Liberal Democrats) wanted to counter that by saying that major constitutional changes should only happen by referendum, it would be up to them to make the case for a second independence referendum, which would radically change the dynamic.
* * *
Poll fundraiser: Thank you to everyone who donated - the fundraiser reached its target within only a few hours! It'll take at least a few days before I can access the funds (that would have been the case with pretty much any crowdfunding platform) but I'll move forward as quickly as I can. Given that independence has shot up the news agenda over the last 24 hours, it's entirely possible that a mainstream media outlet may finally produce a poll over the coming days, but even if that happens I'll still go ahead - there'll be no harm in more than one poll.
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
FUNDRAISER: Help Scot Goes Pop commission a post-election poll on independence
It was suggested to me earlier today that the time may now be right for Scot Goes Pop to crowdfund its first opinion poll, mainly because it's really, really odd that no media organisation has commissioned a poll measuring independence support since the general election. There are plausible grounds for thinking the SNP's victory may have triggered a Yes surge, which may last weeks, or months, or indefinitely - but we'll never know unless polling is actually conducted. Not for the first time, we may have no option but to take matters into our own hands.
Click here to go direct to the fundraising page.
Hi, my name's James Kelly, and I run the Scottish pro-independence blog Scot Goes Pop, which has a particular focus on opinion poll analysis. Remarkably, since the SNP's landslide general election victory in mid-December, there have been no opinion polls measuring support for independence. This leaves a major gap in our knowledge. In the immediate aftermath of the Leave vote in 2016, two polls were published showing a significant swing towards Yes - but if those polls hadn't been commissioned at the right time, we'd never have known that the surge had even happened, because it later subsided. It's possible (and I only say possible) that we're currently living through a post-election Yes surge that will be completely lost to the history books because nobody bothered to commission a poll. But this isn't just of academic interest - the publication of a poll showing a Yes lead at a time like this could in itself have an impact on public opinion, and help to shape the debate on Boris Johnson's outrageous attempt to stop the people of Scotland deciding their own future.
With your help, Scot Goes Pop will commission its first opinion poll, asking how people would vote on the referendum question "Should Scotland be an independent country?" There will hopefully also be supplementary questions.
A few points to bear in mind -
* There is absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that we'll get the result we want. Polls have surprised us plenty of times before. But even if the numbers are disappointing, it's surely a good thing if the independence question is no longer neglected by polls.
* If there are excess funds (or if not enough is raised to commission a poll), I'll consult with readers on what to do. Ideally the money would be ring-fenced for future polling, but if after a reasonable period of time no polling is possible or required, the funds could be dispersed to other pro-independence causes.
* There's always a chance that a poll will suddenly appear while this fundraiser is underway - if that happens, it would still be my intention to go ahead. There'd still be value in getting a second opinion from a different polling firm.
Let's break the silence on current support for independence - because the only person that silence suits is Boris Johnson.
Click here if you'd like to donate.
Click here to go direct to the fundraising page.
Hi, my name's James Kelly, and I run the Scottish pro-independence blog Scot Goes Pop, which has a particular focus on opinion poll analysis. Remarkably, since the SNP's landslide general election victory in mid-December, there have been no opinion polls measuring support for independence. This leaves a major gap in our knowledge. In the immediate aftermath of the Leave vote in 2016, two polls were published showing a significant swing towards Yes - but if those polls hadn't been commissioned at the right time, we'd never have known that the surge had even happened, because it later subsided. It's possible (and I only say possible) that we're currently living through a post-election Yes surge that will be completely lost to the history books because nobody bothered to commission a poll. But this isn't just of academic interest - the publication of a poll showing a Yes lead at a time like this could in itself have an impact on public opinion, and help to shape the debate on Boris Johnson's outrageous attempt to stop the people of Scotland deciding their own future.
With your help, Scot Goes Pop will commission its first opinion poll, asking how people would vote on the referendum question "Should Scotland be an independent country?" There will hopefully also be supplementary questions.
A few points to bear in mind -
* There is absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that we'll get the result we want. Polls have surprised us plenty of times before. But even if the numbers are disappointing, it's surely a good thing if the independence question is no longer neglected by polls.
* If there are excess funds (or if not enough is raised to commission a poll), I'll consult with readers on what to do. Ideally the money would be ring-fenced for future polling, but if after a reasonable period of time no polling is possible or required, the funds could be dispersed to other pro-independence causes.
* There's always a chance that a poll will suddenly appear while this fundraiser is underway - if that happens, it would still be my intention to go ahead. There'd still be value in getting a second opinion from a different polling firm.
Let's break the silence on current support for independence - because the only person that silence suits is Boris Johnson.
Click here if you'd like to donate.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)