Friday, June 26, 2020

Plan A is dead, long live Plan B

Sir Keir Starmer may have unwittingly done the SNP a huge favour yesterday by more or less putting the luckless "Plan A" out of its misery and forcing us to look at more viable options. If there had been any realistic prospect of a future Labour government looking more favourably upon a Section 30 order than the Tory government do, the 'delay' faction within the SNP would undoubtedly have been tempted to hold on until 2024 or 2029 or however long it might have taken, and in the meantime just string the rank-and-file membership along with the illusion of activity. Of course Starmer's stance doesn't mean that the 'delay' faction will automatically embrace "Plan B", but it does massively complicate any efforts they might make to hold the line. It'll be difficult for them to credibly claim that they're still in favour of independence if they're angrily denouncing any suggestion that we should actually try to bring our objective about in any circumstances that are remotely likely to exist within the next ten or fifteen years. Back in the 1990s, we used to scoff at the London media's ignorance in referring to the "devolutionist" and "pro-independence" wings of the SNP, but we're perhaps on the verge of genuinely seeing a small, de facto devolutionist wing take shape for the first time, particularly at Westminster - and that will fundamentally change the relationship of those parliamentarians with activists and members who are for the most part deadly serious about making independence happen.

Is there no hope at all that Plan A could still work? I can only see two paths by which it might be reactivated as a viable option, and both of them are long shots -

1) Labour might do so badly in next year's Holyrood election that they embark on yet another round of soul-searching. I discuss this possibility in a forthcoming column for iScot magazine - Labour are probably nursing the hope that they're going to make some sort of recovery in the election due to Keir Starmer's encouraging Britain-wide polling numbers, but at the moment Scottish polls still put them firmly on course to lose yet more seats and slump to a new all-time low, which would be a shock to their system. It doesn't necessarily follow that Starmer will provide a boost once the campaign is actually underway, because it's Richard Leonard that will be leading the campaign and facing up to Nicola Sturgeon in the TV debates - a comparison that could look almost embarrassing. Remember that this time Ian Murray won't be able to disingenuously blame any seat losses on Corbynism - his own fingerprints will be all over the results, and his constitutional extremism may take a hefty share of the blame. From the SNP's point of view, this outcome is certainly worth pursuing, and probably the best way of maximising the chances of a Labour slump is to foreground the question of independence and coax the electorate into making a polarised choice between SNP and Tory. However, the reason it's a long-shot is that bouts of Labour soul-searching always seem to follow the same pattern - once the initial shock of an election defeat wears off, they revert to type and decide that the fault lies with the voters and not with themselves.

2) The 2024 election could result in a hung parliament, thus forcing Starmer to do a deal with the SNP if he wants to become Prime Minister. No-one can deny this is theoretically possible, but the problem is that hung parliaments happen by random chance - there's no way of campaigning for them or making them more likely to occur. There have been twenty-one general elections since 1945, and only three of them have not produced a majority for a single party - a 14% strike rate. And of course one of the three hung parliaments was in 2017, when the SNP had more than 5% of the seats in the Commons, but still didn't hold the balance of power. So you don't just need a hung parliament, you need the right sort of hung parliament. I would guess the chances of it happening in 2024 are 10% at the absolute most, and we simply can't bet the house on that kind of outside hope.

Which moves us on, if we're sensible, to "Plan B". Fortunately, the people of Scotland seem to be firmly behind both of the two main options for seeking an independence mandate in the absence of a Section 30 order...

Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, 28th-31st January 2020:

 There are differing legal opinions on whether the Scottish Parliament currently has the power to hold a consultative referendum on independence without Westminster’s permission. If the UK government continues to refuse to give permission, do you think the Scottish Parliament should legislate to hold a referendum and then allow the courts to decide whether it can take place?

 Yes 50%
No 39%

With Don't Knows excluded...

Yes 56%
No 44%

Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, 1st-5th June 2020:

 If Boris Johnson and the UK Government manage to block an independence referendum, do you think that pro-independence parties such as the SNP and the Greens should consider including an outright promise of independence in their manifestos for a future election, to give people an opportunity to vote for or against the idea?

 Yes 49%
No 29%

With Don't Knows excluded...

Yes 63%
No 37%

And the choice between those two possibilities isn't necessarily binary. I think the most logical approach is to legislate for a consultative referendum first, and if the Supreme Court blocks it (a very big "if"), use that ruling to demonstrate to voters that the referendum route has been closed off, and that an election will have to be used instead.
Posted by James Kelly at 6:15 PM 116 comments
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Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Back to school?





















Posted by James Kelly at 7:47 AM 72 comments
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Monday, June 22, 2020

Memo to Pete Wishart: "Plan A" has left Scotland in a "hellish limbo" already. Do you have a single credible proposal for getting us back out of it?

There's a principle in science that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".  I sometimes think that certain leading figures within the SNP regard any suggestion that "Plan A" might not work, and that there might be a more viable alternative means of obtaining an independence mandate, as such an extraordinary claim that it must be held to a higher standard of proof.  It's hard to think of any other explanation for the double-standards that abound in this debate.  "Plan A" simply isn't subjected to the same degree of scrutiny and scepticism as its rivals.  We are told that one of the hurdles that any plan must clear is that it has to be capable of actually delivering independence - and yet "Plan A" clearly fails that test catastrophically.

What is "Plan A"?  It's the idea that if you just ask for a Section 30 order persistently enough, it will be impossible for the Westminster government to say no.  Well, that's been proved wrong.  Twice.  Theresa May said no, and Boris Johnson said no.  There's every indication that even if we twiddle our thumbs for the next four years and wait for a Labour government that might never actually arrive, Sir Keir Starmer would then say no anyway.  It's unclear why "Plan A" fans are so convinced that a strategy that has so conspicuously failed to work for several years will suddenly start working if we wish hard enough, but if they do believe that, the onus is on them to supply some proof that they're not asking us to flog a dead horse for another few years.  The onus is most certainly not on those who make the eminently reasonable point that a failed strategy must be replaced - and that if you don't replace it, you don't believe in independence in any meaningful sense.

And that's the nub of the issue, isn't it?  "Plan A" diehards demand to be shown absolute certainty that "Plan B" will lead to independence, but the reality is that "Plan B" would be demonstrably superior to "Plan A" even if it only has a chance of delivering indy.  There is no such chance with "Plan A", which requires the Scottish Government to take no further action when the Westminster veto is deployed.  If anyone can explain to us how quite literally doing nothing can lead us to our objective, I'm sure we're all ears.

But you'll search in vain for any answers of that sort in Pete Wishart's latest blogpost (which like all his previous ones he'll inevitably describe as "the blog that everyone is talking about!").  His lack of self-awareness is truly astounding - he sneers at the idea that, having refused a referendum, the UK government will accept an election result as a mandate for independence.  And yet Pete's own implicit argument is that, having refused a referendum, the UK government will suddenly do a U-turn and grant a referendum because of opinion polls showing that Scots aren't happy.  In other words, Boris Johnson will be far more impressed by opinion polls than by election results.  Oh-kaaaaay, Pete.  Best of luck with that one.

Back in the real world, it's the obvious fact that election results are harder to ignore than opinion polls that gives "Plan B" a realistic chance of gaining some traction.  I'm not necessarily claiming that it would "work" in the sense of forcing London to negotiate an independence settlement straight away, although I do think that's possible if the mandate is strong enough.  But at the very least I think that a crisis of legitimacy would be created, and that the UK government might end up at the negotiating table to resolve it.  That could, for example, lead to an agreed referendum.

Pete asserts that "Plan B" could take us into a Catalan-style "hellish limbo".  But let's turn that on its head for a moment and imagine what would have happened if the Catalans had adopted the "Scottish model" of asking politely for a referendum and then taking no as a valid answer.  It's not hard to work out: nothing would have happened.  Madrid would have said no, Barcelona would have said "that's fine", and Catalonia would currently be living through precisely the kind of "hellish limbo" that Scotland is living through.  What exactly is your point here, Pete?

Oh, and I must just address a very silly straw man from Pete's blogpost -

"[Plan B] would therefore mean that the 2021 election ceases to be a General Election in the conventional sense and instead becomes a single issue plebiscite exclusively on the proposition that if the SNP secures a majority we move towards becoming an independent state. If it was to happen there would be no programme for Government, no defence of a record in power, just a straight forward one issue independence question."

Absolute rubbish.  To gain a credible mandate, independence would have to be Item 1 in the manifesto, but there would be lots of other items as well.  Independence would take months or years to negotiate, and no party putting itself forward for government for such a long period would ever present the electorate with a blank sheet of paper.  So, no, it wouldn't be a single-issue election - merely one in which the independence issue is predominant.



* * *

Yesterday, Iain Macwhirter gave Nicola Sturgeon what was quite possibly the worst piece of advice she's ever received. He told her to just "go with the flow" and abandon the 2 metre rule if that's what England decides to do. Has he learned no lessons at all from the catastrophe of March? How many more thousands of innocents must die because some people seem to perversely think that the purpose of devolution is to obediently rubberstamp decisions made in London?

I was trying to work out what Iain's tweet reminded me of, and I suddenly realised it was the philosophy of passivity put forward by a rather sinister rabbit in Watership Down -

"Take me with you, wind, high over the sky. I will go with you, I will be rabbit-of-the-wind...

 Take me with you, stream, away in the starlight. I will go with you, I will be rabbit-of-the-stream..."





Posted by James Kelly at 5:34 AM 109 comments
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Sunday, June 21, 2020

Whichever way you cut it, there's more support for independence now than there was in 2016

The news that the pro-independence vote has reached an all-time high of 54% with Panelbase was characterised by a certain website as Yes going "back to where it was four years ago" - a rehashing of the bogus claim from a couple of weeks ago that Yes support has not really budged for years.  This is getting a bit silly now.  There were twelve independence polls conducted between the EU referendum result becoming known and the end of 2016.  Eleven of them had a Yes vote lower than last night's poll.  Nine of them had No in the lead.  By contrast, six of the eight polls in 2020 so far have had Yes on 50% or higher, with an average Yes vote of 50.9%.  (And it's a smidgeon higher if the YouGov / Hanbury poll, which used a non-standard question, is excluded.)

Furthermore, if you're going to compare one individual poll with another individual poll, both have to be conducted by the same firm.  If they're not, you're comparing apples with oranges, because each firm has its own 'house effects'.  The 54% recorded in June 2016 was in a Survation poll, not a Panelbase poll.  But as it happens there was a Panelbase poll conducted at around the same time, and it had Yes on 52%.  So, whichever way you cut it, there's more support for independence now than there was back then.

The new poll is also unusual in that it shows a Yes lead that is big enough not to be considered what the Americans call a 'statistical tie'.  In other words, even if the poll's margin of error is taken into account, Yes would still be ahead.  As far as I can see, this is only the third time that has happened in any poll from any firm since the indyref in 2014.  

Furthermore, this is only the second poll since the indyref that has shown Yes on 50% or higher even before Don't Knows are excluded.  (The other one was the Ipsos-Mori poll from 2015 that I mentioned last night.)  I'm not sure how important that is, because there's no good reason why undecideds should be left in.  But it does give us a useful response to unionist commentators who like to portray Don't Knows as "presumed No voters".
Posted by James Kelly at 6:57 PM 22 comments
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The earth shakes as support for independence soars to 54% - the highest EVER in a Panelbase poll

So you've probably seen the headline in the Sunday National about a poll that appears to show this...

Should Scotland be an independent country?  (Panelbase)

 Yes 54% (+2)
No 46% (-2)

 I don't have any further information yet, but having done my usual Kremlinology on Twitter, it does look like a credible poll rather than a subsample - which makes sense, because we know there was a Panelbase independence poll in the field over recent days.  I don't know whether it was commissioned by Wings, or whether the Sunday National themselves commissioned a question as part of the same composite survey.  Either way, if it's confirmed as a full-scale poll this is the highest ever Yes vote in a Panelbase poll - the previous highest was 52%, which has been recorded on a few different occasions, most recently in the poll for Scot Goes Pop earlier in the month.

I'm also struggling to remember a higher Yes figure than 54% in any poll from any other firm.  The highest figure in the indyref campaign was 54% in an ICM poll published on the Saturday before polling day (although the firm pretty much disowned it straight away as being a likely rogue poll).  The highest since the indyref was 54% with Survation.  So if it's ever been 55% or higher, it must have been many, many years ago.

When the Scot Goes Pop poll showed a 2% increase to 52%, I did worry that it might be a temporary effect caused by anger over Dominic Cummings' jaunt to Barnard Castle, and that it would quickly recede.  But it now appears to have been more like a springboard than a high watermark.  The supplementary questions from that poll showed the handling of the pandemic had caused a remarkable shift in underlying attitudes towards constitutional change, and that probably explains the further boost.  Let's hope the transformation stands the test of time.

*  *  *

UPDATE: I've been going through the records just to make sure what I said above is accurate.  There was an Ipsos-Mori poll conducted in August 2015 for STV which showed Yes on 53%, No on 44%, and Don't Knows on 3%.  I've looked and looked and none of the reporting seems to mention what the figures were with Don't Knows excluded, so perhaps Ipsos-Mori never made that calculation.  But it must have been either Yes 54%, No 46%, or Yes 55%, No 45%.  As far as historical polling is concerned, it looks like Yes might have slightly exceeded 54% with Don't Knows excluded in research conducted in 2006.  People forget that it wasn't unusual for polls to show a pro-independence majority in the early years of devolution, long before the surge during the indyref campaign.  But of course in those days any choice on independence seemed an extremely long way off, so it's debatable whether people who said they were in favour had thought about the issue in any great depth.  That caveat doesn't apply now.

*  *  *

UPDATE II: It's just been confirmed that the new poll is indeed a full-scale Panelbase poll, and the client is Business for Scotland.  I think it's worth making the point that there have now been seven polls in this calendar year that have asked the standard independence question, ie. 'Should Scotland be an independent country?'.  Three were commissioned by alternative media sites (Scot Goes Pop and Wings Over Scotland), two were commissioned by pro-independence organisations (Business for Scotland and Progress Scotland), one appeared to be self-funded by the pollster itself (YouGov) and only one was commissioned by a mainstream media outlet (the Sunday Times).  Unionist journalists love nothing better than a good sneer about the pro-indy alternative media, but it's getting to the point where in one specific respect we're actually doing a job that the mainstream media used to do and is now failing to do.
Posted by James Kelly at 12:15 AM 41 comments
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Saturday, June 20, 2020

Plan B, and dual mandates

A reader kindly let me know a few days ago that there was another Scottish poll from Panelbase in the field.  It asked the standard independence question, but in the middle of a sequence of questions that were primarily about social attitudes (some of them were bordering on philosophical in nature).  I couldn't see any unifying theme at all, or even hazard a guess as to who the client might be.  The mystery has now been partly solved, because Wings Over Scotland has released the results of a "mini-poll", which presumably means it was a composite survey conducted for more than one client.  So there are three possibilities about the independence question, the results of which are not publicly known as of yet: a) it was part of the Wings mini-poll, b) it was asked by Panelbase for technical reasons so the Wings results could be properly weighted, or c) it was part of the poll commissioned by the other client.  I'd imagine c) is the least likely of those options.

The results that we do know about show that respondents, by more than a 2-1 margin, do not think the UK government will "grant a second independence referendum" if pro-independence parties win a majority of votes or seats in next year's Holyrood election.  As I've pointed out before, there are some questions on which public opinion is all-important and others on which it barely matters at all, and I'd suggest this is one of the latter.  If by any chance the UK government were minded to grant a Section 30 order, it wouldn't make much difference whether the public saw it coming or not - although admittedly voter scepticism might make it tougher for the SNP to fight the election on the premise that victory will make Westminster cave in.

As it happens, I agree with the public verdict on this occasion - I think there's precious little chance of the current Tory government conceding a Section 30, although remember that isn't the same thing as "granting a referendum".  The Scottish Parliament still has the option of legislating for a consultative indyref and waiting to see if the UK government challenge it (and more to the point waiting to see the Supreme Court's verdict after the UK government do inevitably challenge it).

I can't see any particular reason why Stuart Campbell would have commissioned this poll unless he was trying to strengthen the case for a 'Plan B' on independence.  That makes it even more incomprehensible that he made such an angry attempt last week to undermine the impact of this blog's Panelbase poll showing a large majority in favour of 'Plan B'.  He really does cut off his nose to spite his face sometimes.

*  *  *

On the subject of cutting off noses to spite faces, that's what the SNP are doing by considering a rule-change to forbid "dual mandates".  The move seems to be motivated by a tribal desire to thwart Joanna Cherry's path to a Holyrood seat, and thus make it harder for her to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader.  But the reality is that Ms Cherry already seems to have made up her mind to seek to become an MSP, and she's unlikely to be deterred by the prospect of being forced to resign her Westminster seat.

So who actually loses from this?  It may well be the SNP as a whole, who will needlessly end up facing a Westminster by-election in potentially tricky Edinburgh terrain.  Alex Salmond held a dual mandate for his first three years as First Minister, and the sun didn't fall out of the sky, so it's not as if there's actually a problem to solve here.
Posted by James Kelly at 5:37 AM 31 comments
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Friday, June 19, 2020

I'm in the dughoose

Just a quick note to let you know that I'm the guest on the latest edition of the Wee Ginger Dugcast, hosted as always by Paul Kavanagh.  Topics discussed include the recent Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, the disgraceful British nationalist thuggery in Glasgow, the risks of attempting to 'game' the Holyrood voting system, the alternatives for securing an independence mandate if a Section 30 order is refused, and the cautious easing of the lockdown in Scotland.  You can listen to the podcast HERE.
Posted by James Kelly at 3:24 PM 23 comments
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Thursday, June 18, 2020

Ruth Davidson's catastrophically misjudged attack on Devi Sridhar may unwittingly reveal a lot about the toxic culture of the Scottish Tory party

Ruth Davidson made a catastrophic error of judgement yesterday - not just morally, but also from a public relations point of view.  She questioned the independence and integrity of Professor Devi Sridhar, someone who has earned a deserved reputation with the public during the pandemic for fearlessly speaking truth to power when many other experts have been silent or overly cautious.  Sridhar is not ideological - she'll praise any politician who she thinks is doing the right thing from a public health point of view, and castigate any politician who she thinks is doing the wrong thing.

What led to Davidson's gaffe was a misunderstanding - probably an honest one - on the part of the ITV journalist Peter MacMahon, who thought a tweet from Sridhar calling for schools to reopen properly in mid-August constituted an implied criticism of the Scottish Government's policy.  In fact, Sridhar was calling for the virus to be suppressed so thoroughly that it would actually be safe to relax social distancing in August, which puts her on precisely the same page as Nicola Sturgeon.  (Not a coincidence, because she almost certainly played a part in persuading Ms Sturgeon to adopt that policy in the first place.)  She categorically wasn't saying that we should throw caution to the wind and abandon restrictions while the virus is still present in the community at dangerously high levels, which is essentially the position of the Scottish Government's most vocal critics.

I'd suggest the misunderstanding came about because of a difference in communication style between politicians and journalists on the one hand, and academics on the other.  When stating what she thinks should be done, Sridhar has always been careful to honestly point out the other side of the story and the potential downsides.  When lockdown was announced in March, something she was firmly in favour of, practically the first thing she did was to stress the harms of lockdown and the undesirability of continuing with it for too long - ironically echoing some of the language of the "let the virus rip" brigade she opposes.  Any spin doctor would have been tearing their hair out at her 'naivety', because there was an obvious danger of undermining her own main objective.  Politicians in her shoes would instead have had a laser-like focus on making the case for lockdown, and would have played down or ignored any counter-arguments.  But it's Sridhar's honesty in painting a complete picture that has won her so much trust.  That's what she was doing on schools - she was saying the virus needs to be suppressed and that children need to be back in school as soon as possible.  Both of those statements are true, not just one of them, and there is no contradiction between the two.  Sticking with stronger restrictions now is what will hopefully make a relaxation in August feasible and responsible.

Having posted a second tweet to clear up any misapprehensions, it was fascinating that her clarification was automatically assumed to be dishonest by Ruth Davidson - even though anyone who follows Sridhar knows it is absolutely consistent with what she has been saying for months.  It seems that Davidson could not conceive of the possibility that anyone, even a leading academic, might have nuanced thought-processes they would actually want to share with others.  Instead, the former Scottish Tory leader thought the only plausible explanation was that Sridhar had been leaned on by Ms Sturgeon and had cravenly 'walked back' her original statement.  The even bigger misjudgement was to assume other people would find that a plausible explanation too.  Almost nobody did.

If Davidson's hopelessly faulty instincts on this matter are the product of her personal experience of human nature over the last few years, I would suggest that she's unwittingly revealed rather a lot about the toxic culture of the Tory party.  It's fear and bullying that make the world go round, but only if you happen to live in a world where nobody has any integrity, or principles they're willing to abide by.
Posted by James Kelly at 6:25 AM 96 comments
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Tuesday, June 16, 2020

This is the problem with not being an independent country

At the outset of the pandemic, New Zealand was on one end of the spectrum in controversially arguing that the virus could be completely eliminated.  On the other end was the UK, which insisted (in defiance of evidence that already existed from China and South Korea) that it was literally impossible to contain the epidemic, and that it was therefore pointless - and somehow harmful - to even try.  I lost count of the number of times Chris Whitty put on a patronising little smile as he spoke about those naive souls who thought that the goal of the government should be to actually prevent people from being infected, rather than to ensure that the majority of the population was infected in the most 'orderly' way.  "Look at the map," he would say.  "Look at all the countries around us where the virus is.  The idea that this thing is going away does not strike me as terribly plausible."

That's the sort of statement that superficially appears to be highly intelligent and grounded in realism, but is actually totally daft.  It rests on the implication that the virus can somehow move from one country to another in a way that cannot be stopped, which in the case of the UK means that it would have to be able to fly across the English Channel on its own propulsion.  It cannot do that, which means Whitty was wrong: if a country can control its own borders, and can eliminate the virus within those borders, there's no need to fret so much about what's happening elsewhere.  We know that the UK can, if it wishes, control its borders, so that leaves only one question: is it feasible to eliminate the virus on this island?

Initially, Devi Sridhar (Professor at Edinburgh University and one of the voices of sanity throughout this crisis) seemed sceptical that outright eradication could be achieved, and instead tended to argue for the virus to be suppressed as much as possible while we wait for a vaccine or effective treatments to arrive.  But she's come round more to the idea of eradication now that New Zealand has proved its critics wrong.













The Scottish Government, to its credit, has been increasingly bullish about using the word 'eradicate' -



But the snag, of course, is that the Scottish Government does not have all of the tools required to eliminate the virus, because it is not the government of an independent sovereign state. A devolved government can, as we've seen in recent weeks, have success in pushing the virus back and suppressing it, but total elimination requires control over borders and the ability to quarantine people who arrive from countries (such as, for example, England) where the epidemic is far from being extinguished. That doesn't mean elimination is impossible, but it does mean it can only happen if the UK Government are persuaded of the need to attempt it, which at the moment looks a distant prospect. (I suspect the penny will drop eventually, but on past form every painful lesson seems to take far too long.)

The cost of not being independent will on this occasion be counted in the loss of human lives.

* * *

On the other extreme from Devi Sridhar's thread is one from former Scottish Tory spin doctor Andy Maciver, who seems to have learned no lessons at all over the last few months. He's arguing that, in spite of the success of New Zealand and other countries, it's for some reason not possible to stamp out the epidemic in this particular country, and that we should therefore accept that the virus might be around into the long-term. Essentially what he wants is for the Scottish Government to throw caution to the wind on the reopening of schools. He sticks his head firmly in the sand on two points in particular -

"There is a reason why we never hear about children dying or even becoming ill from Covid - it’s because it is not happening."

"I know, I know, it’s not about the children, it’s about who they contact. Firstly, it is worth noting that there is no hard evidence that children infect adults at all."

The idea that we don't hear about children even becoming ill is ludicrous. I personally know of a young child who was symptomatic for several days after being infected. But even leaving aside anecdotal evidence of that sort, there's well-documented evidence of children suffering from a rare inflammatory condition as a result of coronavirus. As for there being "no evidence" of children infecting adults, you'd think we might by now have grasped the point that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and that the precautionary principle dictates that you don't take risks with people's health when there just isn't enough information to know one way or the other.

* * *

I've said a few times that I don't see the need for a new pro-indy party, but that if one is formed it's really important that it has a purpose in life other than 'gaming the system'. If your Party Election Broadcast is an embarrassing three-minute monologue about the d'Hondt formula, you can safely assume you've gone badly wrong somewhere. Alas, judging from the website of the freshly-formed Independence for Scotland party, that mistake has not been avoided. One of the first articles on the site is a tortuous explanation of why the SNP failed to win a list seat in the north-east in 2016, and of how the ISP can supposedly remedy that on behalf of the independence movement if they win "just" 7% of the vote.

The north-east is actually a really poor choice of example, because the SNP succeeded in taking a list seat there in 2011 in spite of winning every constituency seat in the region. A repeat of that type of scenario is not guaranteed, but it's certainly infinitely more likely than a fringe party taking 7% of the vote on its first attempt. What really gives the game away, though, is the fact that the article openly prays in aid Gavin Barrie's pseudoscientific 'analysis' from last year, which many authoritative voices have pointed out was deeply flawed.

It's stated that a voting system designed to prevent a single-party majority means that the forces of unionism have an in-built advantage due to being comprised of three major parties rather than just one. That is, frankly, absolute rubbish. It's the complete opposite of the truth. The SNP's dominance of the Yesser vote has worked firmly in favour of the pro-indy camp - in 2016, a pro-indy majority of seats was won without an absolute majority of the popular vote on either ballot.

I'm troubled also by the suggestion that the ISP exists to challenge a "single party system". That characterisation is simply not accurate - the SNP run a minority government at Holyrood and can't get anything through the Scottish Parliament without the support of at least one other party. But the claim echoes the chorus of spurious unionist complaints from 2015-17 about a "one-party state" - and that period did not end well for the Yes movement. Avoiding self-inflicted wounds is always a good idea.
Posted by James Kelly at 1:59 AM 90 comments
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Saturday, June 13, 2020

Who or what is "tone deaf"? Perhaps it's mainstream journalism - which has misread the public mood on independence so completely in recent weeks

There's a deeply puzzling piece in the  Herald today by Tom Gordon.  He refers to the finding from the Panelbase poll commissioned by this blog that a large majority of the public (if Don't Knows are excluded) are supportive of the 'Plan B' option for seeking an independence mandate - ie. if an indyref is blocked by Westminster, the SNP and Greens would simply go ahead and put an outright commitment to independence in their manifestos for a scheduled election.  Tom notes that the SNP's two leading proponents of the idea have seized on the poll results and are pushing for the proposal to be considered at conference - a reaction he considers to be "tone deaf". In fact it's worse than that, what he actually says is...

"There's tone deaf, and there's this."

The implication being that Angus MacNeil and Chris McEleny are out of tune with the public mood, and that what voters really want is for the SNP to kick independence into the long grass for a considerable number of years.  Tom thinks the party should use that time to "develop a new prospectus", whatever that means, rather than doing what they were actually elected to do - ie. giving people an urgent choice on Scotland's constitutional future due to the material change of circumstances brought about by Brexit.  

All of this begs an extremely obvious question - one that Tom mysteriously doesn't even attempt to address.  If voters don't want Plan B to be explored, why have they just told a leading polling company that they do?  Do they not know their own minds?  Did they somehow misunderstand the question?  As a reminder, here's the exact wording -

If Boris Johnson and the UK Government manage to block an independence referendum, do you think that pro-independence parties such as the SNP and the Greens should consider including an outright promise of independence in their manifestos for a future election, to give people an opportunity to vote for or against the idea?

That seems pretty difficult to misconstrue.  Remember that a large part of the reason the poll showed such a strong majority in favour is the overwhelmingly positive reaction from both SNP voters and people who would currently vote for independence.  Less than 1% of Yes supporters think it's a bad idea, while 86% give the thumbs up.  You don't have to be much of a mystic to work out what's going on here - a sizeable chunk of the electorate (a majority in this particular poll if Don't Knows are stripped out) want independence, and they're actually serious about it.  They're unhappy that Westminster is using undemocratic means to thwart a referendum, and want a way to be found of overcoming that obstacle.  That shouldn't be any great surprise, given that it was only six months ago that Scotland gave the SNP a landslide majority of seats on a manifesto pledge to hold a referendum this year.  The pandemic has pushed the timing back - no-one in their right mind still wants action to be taken imminently.  But people do want a sense of urgency once the crisis is over, rather than years and years of unproductive thumb-twiddling.

At the start of the pandemic, unionist journalists (Deerin, Massie, et al) were almost unanimous in their assessment that fate had dealt the independence movement a crushing blow, and that the British 'family' was coming back together in a time of adversity.  An avalanche of polls since then - from YouGov, Ipsos-Mori, Survation and Panelbase - has told a radically different story.  Having misread the public's instincts and mood so completely, you'd think these individuals might have the humility to ponder whether it's actually mainstream journalism in this country that has yet again proved itself to be "tone deaf".  But, as per usual, it's doubling down that we're seeing.
Posted by James Kelly at 8:36 PM 102 comments
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