Sinister Euro 2020 selfies from Hampden Park

I've been meaning to post these for quite some time, and I'd probably better do it now, just in case events on Sunday evening mean we never want to think about Euro 2020 ever again (not that we'll be given a choice in the matter, of course).

One of the stories my dad used to dine out on was that he went to the World Cup final at Wembley in 1966 (I believe he wanted England to win, so "like father, like son" doesn't always hold true), and he couldn't sit down for the entire match because he'd just been inoculated against smallpox.  He showed me his programme once or twice when I was growing up - we've probably still got it somewhere, but God knows where.  

So when I heard that Scotland would be co-hosting a major tournament for the first time, I decided Euro 2020 was going to be my nearest equivalent.  It wasn't looking very promising for a long time, though - I had almost given up hope on the tickets I bought about twenty-seven years ago, but somehow I came through the automatic lottery that decided which of the original ticket-holders would still be able to go.  Naturally, then, I wanted to prove for posterity that I was actually there, so I took a truly excessive number of selfies.  I must say I didn't fully appreciate until I looked back on them how downright sinister I would look in poor lighting, wearing a mask, but who knows, this could be a whole new art-form.  (The first one is a screenshot from a video I just happened to be taking as the second Czech goal flew in.)

There's a serious point here, though.  At the very start of the pandemic, I had a ticket for the Scotland v France rugby match at Murrayfield.  I assumed the game would be cancelled, because the Irish authorities had already done the sensible thing and cancelled the Ireland v Italy match, but oh no.  That was when Jason Leitch and Catherine Calderwood were hellbent on herd immunity and actively wanted the population to be infected in an orderly manner.  Mass events like rugby matches and Stereophonics concerts were rather useful for them in that respect.  The SRU sent out emails with fatuous quotes from Calderwood about how there was going to be a "public health drive" at the game - simply meaning that people would be asked to wash their hands.  Eventually I decided I didn't want to be part of such a reckless experiment, so I stayed at home and accepted there would be no refund - and watched on the TV, to my astonishment, a game in front of a virtually full house.  Can you imagine how many people must have been infected that day, with no masks, no social distancing, and the virus raging uncontrolled?  That's perhaps why we should be a bit cynical about any pious comments made by political leaders about the likes of Margaret Ferrier.  The impact of what she did was trivial compared to the untold deaths caused by the unforgiveable irresponsibility of decisions made in February and March 2020 by our leaders, and by advisers like Leitch.

Apologies that these photos aren't all in the correct order, by the way.  See if you can work out which game is which: as David Frost used to say, "the clues are there..."

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Donations made to the Scot Goes Pop general fundraiser until the end of next week will be put towards our next opinion poll.  If you'd like to donate, please click HERE.

Scotland at a crossroads: will the SNP give up the fight against the virus, or the fight for independence, or both?

So I'd like to recommend a couple of articles to you this morning.  The first is written by someone beyond these shores, about how Britain has just become the first country in the world to surrender to Covid.  It's an absolutely excoriating piece, and reading it may permanently change how you see the situation.  All that's really missing is the ceremony on an aircraft carrier where Boris Johnson hands over the instrument of surrender to the virus.  This isn't even about a horrendous summer, autumn and winter to come - in other words, taking the hit and getting it over with.  The point made is that we're surrendering to an occupying army that will be with us for years or decades to come - Covid will now become endemic in Britain with new seasonal variants every year.  We will all catch the disease again and again and again, and in spite of the relentless propaganda from the BBC's in-house pro-virus correspondent Nick Triggle, that's a choice we're making.  There's nothing inevitable about it - other countries are choosing a radically different path.

And there's also a choice to be made here in Scotland.  SNP spokespeople at Westminster have criticised Boris Johnson's strategy, but as per usual we're not departing from it properly.  There'll be a slight delay in the lifting of restrictions, and mandatory mask-wearing will remain in place for the time being, but the bottom line is we're still ludicrously 'going back to normal' at the exact moment that cases are soaring.  We're engaging in a partial surrender rather than a total one, and that is a matter of national shame.  There is still, however, time to reverse course.

But what if we don't? That brings me on to the second recommended article - Lesley Riddoch's piece in The National stating with admirable clarity that an independence referendum must be held in 2022, otherwise we'll miss the boat for this whole parliament.  The irony is, of course, that if the SNP leadership urgently change direction and act responsibly on Covid, it would become somewhat easier for them to make the case for delaying an indyref beyond 2022.  But as I've said before, they can't have it both ways - if they stick with their current intention to join Johnson in giving up the fight against the virus and telling us "we must learn to live with it", there are no remaining excuses for giving up the fight for this country's independence.  So which is it to be, guys?

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Donations made to the Scot Goes Pop general fundraiser until the end of next week will be put towards our next opinion poll.  If you'd like to donate, please click HERE.

Now is the time to partition Plague Island

I was rather alarmed last week that three people independently said to me that Jason Leitch and co appear to have reverted to their March 2020 position of trying to achieve herd immunity through mass infection.  I've long since stopped watching the briefings, so I wasn't entirely sure what this referred to, but unfortunately it's become clearer and clearer over the last 48 hours or so.  Boris Johnson has decided to end the fight against the virus on an arbitrary date that is only a fortnight away.  "If not now, when?" he asks fatuously - the obvious answer to that question being when vaccine coverage is as comprehensive as it can possibly be, which is far from being the case at this stage.  I presume what this is really about is that we're now in summer, and any scientific advice to wait until the autumn must be disregarded because the cretins on GB News and in the Daily Mail will be whingeing about missing out on their month in Santorini.

It also should be a statement of the blindingly obvious that even when it's safe enough to remove the bulk of restrictions, common sense, non-onerous rules like the mandatory wearing of masks on public transport and in shops should remain in place for as long as the virus is in wide circulation.  That actually enhances personal freedom because it allows people to travel and to do normal things in relative safety.  But no, apparently the danger of Neil Oliver's nose developing a slight itch is more important than public health, and Johnson has decreed that masks can go as well.

As per usual, what appears to be happening in Scotland is that we're just going along with whatever the London strategy is, with a slight delay and with a few modifications to give us the illusion of being more careful.  That would explain the change of mood music from Leitch, because sooner or later he'd need a narrative to justify removing restrictions while the virus is ripping through the population.

One thing I would say is that the SNP leadership can't have it both ways on this.  Their stated reason for indefinitely delaying the calling of an independence referendum is that we're in the middle of a public health emergency and their sole focus has to be on that.  But if we're about to fall into line with Johnson's "to hell with it" approach by getting everything back to normal from mid-August onwards, there's no longer any excuse for failing to use the mandate for an indyref as a matter of urgency.

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Any donations to the Scot Goes Pop general fundraiser over the next couple of weeks, up to a total of £5000, will be put towards our next opinion poll.  If you'd like to donate, please click HERE.

Ski Monday

Three days ago, I made a call for donations to the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser in the hope of commissioning another opinion poll later in the year - anything donated in the next couple of weeks, up to a total of £5000, will be put towards the next poll.  The response has been great so far, with around £600 raised, so thank you for that.  However, I've paid the penalty in another way - I've been bombarded for 72 hours (and I use the word 'bombarded' advisedly) with unpleasant email messages from a certain individual.

Let me say something in all seriousness.  People who have donated to Scot Goes Pop fundraisers over the years have been vitally important in keeping the blog going (and more recently in making it possible to commission opinion polls, which are very expensive and are usually the preserve of mainstream media outlets).  But I simply cannot be expected to hand over editorial control to anyone who may have donated months or years ago.  I know the vast majority of people are grown-up enough to understand that, and would never dream of thinking they should be able to dictate what I can and can't say here.  But apparently this principle does need to be spelt out for the benefit of a small minority, or at least for one person.

There's no way that 'crowdfunded editorial control' could possibly work anyway.  There will always be moments when a parting of the ways occurs - for example, in March 2020, the independence movement was split between people who were critical of the Scottish Government for putting lives at risk by staying in lockstep with Boris Johnson's catastrophic herd immunity stategy, and people who wanted to remain loyal by saying that anything the Scottish Government had decided must be for the best.  That division will have been reflected among people who had previously donated to the blog - so the only way to avoid offending donors would have been to say nothing or to blandly sit on the fence.  But would that have made anyone happy? Of course it wouldn't.  People didn't donate to pointlessly preserve a blog that says absolutely nothing and that stays neutral on all of the big issues.  Quite the reverse.  What most people want is a strong pro-indy new media that is truly free and forthright.

It's the same story with the split between the SNP and Alba in March of this year.  Most pro-indy voters may have stuck with the SNP, but if the Twitter polls I ran were any guide, readers of the blog were much more evenly split - indeed, probably the slightly greater number switched to Alba.  No matter which way I'd jumped, then, I would have upset a substantial number of readers - but I did need to jump one way or the other.  Sitting on the fence just wouldn't have been credible.

Anyway, I know most people understand that perfectly well, and I thank you once again for your amazing support over the years.  The current fundraiser can be found HERE.

Funding for future Scot Goes Pop polling

Last Sunday, I was very, very close to trying to raise funds for a snap opinion poll, because there had been no independence polling for well over a month, which seemed crazy given that the SNP and Greens have only just won a resounding mandate to hold an independence referendum.  In theory there could have been a marked swing to Yes and we'd have been totally oblivious to it.  Literally a couple of hours after I had that thought, the Panelbase poll for the Sunday Times appeared right on cue, so there's no longer any great urgency.  However, it looks like the monthly ComRes polls for the Scotsman have been discontinued now the election is over, and with the SNP leadership and the mainstream media seemingly reaching an unspoken agreement to jointly take independence off the agenda for the foreseeable future, we may well find that polls are few and far between during the rest of the year.  I think it might be an idea to try to have some funding ready to go so I can fill at least one of the long gaps.  I'll keep an open mind about the exact timing - just the most suitable moment that crops up over the next few months.

Apart from the independence question, there are quite a few other subjects that I think should be asked about - for example, attitudes to the renewed mandate to hold a referendum and whether people think it covers all Plan B options, voting intentions for the local elections next year, the issue of the Royal family's interference in Scottish politics, and perhaps also the devolution of broadcasting to tie in with our petition.  And if any or all of these subjects are adequately covered by other polls before I run mine, there are plenty of other questions worth asking.

Because the Scot Goes Pop general fundraiser for 2021 hasn't reached its target yet (I stopped promoting it before the election so as not to distract from fundraising by pro-indy parties), I don't think it would be a good idea to have two fundraisers underway at the same time, so I've once again done what I did earlier in the year - I've increased the target figure of the general fundraiser by a few thousand pounds, and any money that is donated within the next couple of weeks, up to a total of £5000, will be set aside specifically for the next poll.

Part of the reason I've decided to get the ball rolling is that Scottish Skier has been trying to blackmail me with the notion that donations will dry up now that I'm no longer running the blog in a way that he approves of.  (He in all apparent seriousness believes that Scot Goes Pop is now an "anti-Yes blog" run by either Stuart Campbell or the British government.)  He might well be right for all I know, so let's find out!  Seriously, though, I'm sure you all know me well enough by now to realise that I try to handle these polls responsibly, and that I always ask questions that will be of interest to the whole pro-indy movement.

If you'd like to donate, please click HERE.  (Or an alternative payment method can be found HERE.)

Surprise Batley & Spen result boosts independence movement by keeping hopeless Starmer in harness

I've compared by-elections to the 1983 Darlington contest several times in the past, but the surprise Labour hold in Batley & Spen is perhaps the closest comparison of all.  Just as in 1983, it was expected that a Labour defeat might help to finish off a weak and unelectable Labour leader, but just as in 1983, a Labour win against the odds has instead shored up that weak and unelectable leader.  Ultimately that's bad for Labour and good for Labour's opponents, including the SNP and the whole independence movement.  Even those who have a favourable view of Anas Sarwar must accept that Sarwar is not the leader of the Labour party, Keir Starmer is. The public have made up their minds about Starmer, and yet Labour now seem to be stuck with him.

You also have to give George Galloway some credit - although he's failed in his main objective of bringing down Starmer,  his 8000 votes were vastly in excess of the derisory support I expected him to get.  Clearly he's still taken seriously in some quarters.  Perhaps the lesson is that he should stick to posing as a socialist, rather than the de facto Tory he's become in Scotland.

Here's the red line: an independence referendum must take place by the end of 2023 *at the latest*

Thank you for the kind words about the previous blogpost, which suggested that the SNP leadership have become an obstacle to independence.  It was bound to polarise opinion, but I would say around 80% of the reaction was positive and only around 15% was negative.  (The remaining 5% was a niche group who wanted to know when I was going to apologise to Stuart Campbell, but God alone knows what I'm supposed to be apologising to him for.  For not reacting with a cheery smile when he emailed to call me a "c**t", or when he got his solicitor to threaten me at the dead of night, presumably.)

One common theme of the negative comments was that instead of urging people to pile on the pressure for an independence referendum to actually be held, I should instead be encouraging them to "prepare for the referendum".  It's difficult to know whether to laugh or cry at that sort of comment.  Nobody could accuse me of not assuming good faith on the part of the SNP leadership for many, many, many years.  When Nicola Sturgeon "called an independence referendum" in 2017, I took that at face value and I encouraged people to donate to the "ring-fenced referendum campaign fund". That referendum, let me gently remind people, never took place.  After well over four years, I think we're entitled to say that definitively.  It was a fantasy, a mirage, a work of fiction.  The money in the ring-fenced fund was cynically spent on other things.  This time around, I have no intention of wasting my life "preparing" for a vote that is not being held, or of deceiving other people into doing so.  Having breached the faith of their members and voters once, the onus is now on the SNP leadership to prove that they are not pulling the same trick twice - and brazenly briefing the Sunday Times that there won't be a referendum this side of the 2024 general election is, to put it mildly, not the way to do that.

Incidentally, my trust in the SNP leadership did not even end in the summer of 2017 when they broke their word that a majority of Scottish seats in that year's general election would constitute a "triple lock" mandate for the referendum they had already "called" (they won 35 out of 59 seats - that's roughly 60%).  You can check the archives of this blog if you don't believe me - I spent the first couple of weeks after the election urging the SNP leadership not to backtrack (I remember being interviewed in the Financial Times about that), but as soon as Nicola Sturgeon made her statement about deferring, not cancelling, the referendum until the end of the Brexit process, I took her at her word and urged people to unite behind the strategy.  I continued to urge trust and patience when the timetable slipped well beyond Brexit day, and then when coronavirus struck I naturally accepted that a referendum couldn't be held in the middle of the biggest international crisis since the Second World War.  But Brexit is the casus belli for an independence referendum, and Brexit occurred eighteen months ago.  If the pandemic is the genuine and only reason for the further delay in holding the vote, it's logical to expect that there will be a referendum as soon as practically possible after the crisis eases.  Although it's not possible to pinpoint exactly when that moment will arrive, it's likely to be some time next year.  At the very latest, the year after.  When we instead hear that a referendum is unlikely to be held until after the 2024 election, any reasonable person has little choice but to conclude that this is a leadership that is completely taking the mick, and that the priority for the Yes movement has to be to do something about that.  As I pointed out in my previous post, a referendum 'delayed' beyond the UK general election is unlikely to take place at all, because any SNP seat losses at that election will once again be used as an excuse for shelving the whole idea, just as it was in 2017.

But even if there's a genuine intention to hold a referendum in 2025 or whenever, the reality is that will be five years after Brexit, which makes a mockery of the idea that we're holding the vote because it's intolerable for Scotland to have been dragged out of the European Union against its will.  It must be fairly tolerable if we're content to live that way for five long years.  Essentially we're chucking the material change of circumstances out of the window, in which case we might just as well go back to waiting for the fabled "generation" to pass.  I'm beginning to suspect that was the idea all along.  The people I feel sorriest for are the EU citizens who were persuaded to stay in Scotland on a bogus promise from the SNP leadership that the Scottish vote for Remain would be upheld.

I want my faith in the SNP leadership to be restored.  Until very recently, I had a reputation as a leadership loyalist and I would be delighted to become one again.  But enough is enough.  No more words, it's time for action.  We need two things: the date for the referendum needs to be set, and that date needs to be before 31st December 2023.  

From my perspective, there can be no further compromise.  We've waited far, far, far too long already.

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You can catch up with the latest episode of the Scot Goes Popcast HERE.

I'm finally compelled to admit it: the SNP leadership have become the biggest obstacle to independence

A couple of weeks ago, an SNP leadership loyalist on Twitter (I think it was Marcus Carslaw) framed the debate on indyref timing as supposedly being between the official SNP position of holding a referendum in 2023, and the preference of Alba and people like Joanna Cherry for an earlier vote.  That was completely bogus, because there is no official SNP commitment to a referendum in 2023, and if there was, most people in Alba would be reasonably happy with that - our actual fear is that there won't be a referendum at all over the coming five years, and that the mandate will be allowed to expire yet again.  That concern has, to put it mildly, not been allayed by a comment in the Sunday Times' write-up of their new Panelbase poll, which states that people in SNP leadership circles are privately going around saying that there isn't going to be a referendum this side of the next UK general election, which isn't due until 2024.  

There's a stock line in many a courtroom drama where the defence attorney says "do I have the court's permission to treat this witness as hostile?", and I think I've finally reached that point with the SNP leadership.  Until very recently I was genuinely unsure whether they were serious about holding a referendum or whether they were just stringing indy supporters along, but I'm now forced to conclude that it's the latter.  If they were intending to use the mandate for an indyref, they would be doing it before the UK general election. Waiting until afterwards means in practice that yet another mandate would be required, because we know from the experience of the 2017 general election that any seat losses for the SNP will lead to a consensus between the media and the 'caution' wing of the SNP that an indyref is unthinkable for the foreseeable future, which would push it back to beyond the 2026 Holyrood election.  And the balance of probability points towards seat losses, because the SNP won an exceptionally high 48 seats out of 59 at the last general election.  No-one should expect electoral gravity to be defied forever.  Besides which, waiting until 2024 carries the strong whiff of "hoping for something to turn up" that might bring about a Section 30 order - perhaps the SNP holding the balance of power in a hung parliament, which is a 5% chance at best.  (And even if by some miracle it did happen, the SNP's caution faction would then be telling us that "now is not the time" to press home that advantage, because the voters would never forgive us for "playing games".)  We've got to have a more credible plan for bringing about independence than this.

The term "neverendum" was coined in Quebec, and even though it originally meant the repeated holding of referendums on the same subject, what it's instead come to mean in both Quebec and Scotland is endless debate about a referendum that somehow never actually takes place.  The SNP leadership and the Tories are colluding in the neverendum process - they have a shared self-interest in an indyref remaining an apparent prospect, but perpetually just over the horizon. The election that will supposedly determine whether an indyref takes place is always the next election, and when the SNP win each successive election we somehow find out the next day that another election two or three years down the road will need to be won - and that all "grown-ups" and "realists" understand this to be true. 

Here's a thought we need to consider.   Perhaps what "grown-ups" and "realists" think they know most of all is that Scotland cannot and will not leave the United Kingdom.  After all, no integral part of a stable democratic state anywhere in western Europe or North America has become independent since the Second World War.  (Even going a little further back, the only example I can really think of is Iceland's independence from Denmark, and that's a special case given the physical distance between the two countries.) Secession is not part of the 'normal', 'safe' political process as it's practised by statesmen and stateswomen across the democratic world.  We should never forget that our political goal is an intensely radical one - bordering on revolutionary. To bring it about will require equally radical thinking about process and strategy.  Staying within the normal 'safe', 'mature' parameters means staying within the United Kingdom - it's as simple as that.

This is not, incidentally, a call for Nicola Sturgeon to stand down or to be replaced.  Apart from anything else, my guess is that her successor would probably be equally cautious about strategy.  But I do think we now need to be hardheaded about the fact that the SNP leadership have become the biggest obstacle to progress, and if it's pointless to change that leadership, what we'll need to do instead is change the leadership's thinking.  That will require the building up of tremendous external political pressure - both from direct electoral opponents like Alba, and also from non-party organisations like Now Scotland.

Just a word on the Panelbase poll itself - it shows Yes on 48% and No on 52%.  The Sunday Times are portraying this as a significant drop in independence support, which on paper they're entitled to do because the last Panelbase poll had Yes on 52% - but the snag is that previous poll was an outlier.  A week before it was published, another Panelbase poll (commissioned by this very blog) had Yes on 49%, which was much more in line with what other firms were showing at the time.  So it looks to me like nothing much has changed since the election - either Yes are holding steady, or any drop has been very minimal.  There is, frankly, no evidence yet to justify John Curtice's rather odd claim in the Sunday Times piece that there has been a post-election "cooling" of public attitudes towards independence.

Prior to the election, Mark McGeoghegan doused himself in parfum d'obsession and insisted that although he could not prove that the bastards in Alba were to blame for the fact that Yes no longer had a clear lead, anyone who didn't believe that to be the case was a zoomer.  Well, let's be blunt - anyone who still holds McGeoghegan's view is the real zoomer, because Alba have had practically no coverage in recent weeks.  The explanation for the small No lead must therefore lie elsewhere.  Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP leadership quite rightly expected their fair share of credit for building up a sustained Yes lead last year - and it would be equally fair for them to accept the lion's share of the blame for any slight reversal of fortunes that has occurred since.  The most plausible explanation is the complete failure to make the case for independence.

I'll leave you, though, with one piece of very good news from the Panelbase poll: 54% of respondents want a referendum in the next five years, and only 46% don't.

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You can catch up with the latest episode of the Scot Goes Popcast HERE.

Swing against the unionist parties in Murdostoun by-election

I've lived in North Lanarkshire all my life (or rather in places that the Tories creatively reimagined as North Lanarkshire as part of their botched mid-90s gerrymandering effort), but I must admit I didn't have a clue where Murdostoun ward is until I looked it up for the purposes of this blogpost.  It's unusual in that it's a central belt ward in which an independent candidate topped the poll in the last two rounds of local elections.  That pattern continued in yesterday's by-election, and the winning candidate had exactly the same name as before - because he's the son of the late Councillor Robert McKendrick, whose untimely death caused the vacancy.

Murdostoun by-election result (24th June 2021):

Independent - McKendrick: 41.3% (n/a)

SNP: 24.3% (-3.3)

Labour: 16.9% (-6.8)

Independent - Arthur: 8.0% (+5.6)

Conservatives: 7.2% (-5.7)

Greens: 1.7% (n/a)

Independence for Scotland: 0.4% (n/a)

Reform UK: 0.2% (n/a)

I haven't given a percentage change for Mr McKendrick because he's technically a new candidate, but he increased his father's vote share from four years ago by a whopping 13.7%.

A few people on Twitter are suggesting this is a terrible result for the SNP, but I think that's a bit of a stretch - there were clearly unusual local and personal factors in play.  The SNP's vote dropped by less than their two main party political rivals, ie. Labour and the Tories - or to put it another way, there was a net swing from Labour to SNP and from Tory to SNP.  So it's not too bad an outcome, really.  The SNP candidate was Julia Stachurska, who is a New Scot (I presume she's from Poland if her surname is any guide), so even in defeat, that sends out a strong message about the ongoing electoral rights of EU citizens in Scotland.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is the first time Independence for Scotland have actually stood in an election, because of course they withdrew their planned candidates from the Holyrood election last month and backed Alba instead.  I must say I can't really understand why they're continuing in existence, given that they're in total agreement with Alba on their main policy preoccupations (ie. greater urgency on independence and women's sex-based rights).  I wonder if this result will give them pause for thought, because it's markedly worse than Alba's supposedly 'disastrous' result a few weeks ago.  It does answer one question I had, though - I thought the 'Ronseal' name of Independence for Scotland might in itself attract a few votes, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

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You can catch up with the latest episode of the Scot Goes Popcast HERE.

Will identity politics zealotry on both sides scupper the SNP-Green deal?

First of all, thanks for all the kind words about the podcast with Maggie McNeill the other day.  It turned out to be extremely timely, because as you may have seen in the Scotsman today, the SNP's plans to introduce the Nordic model on prostitution law may end up scuppering the proposed deal between the SNP and the Greens on a programme for government. 155 members of the Green party have written an open letter to Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, citing the Nordic model as one of the main reasons for not pushing ahead with a deal.  If you'd like to learn more about why there is such strong opposition to the Nordic model, you can catch up with the podcast HERE.

But it won't surprise you to hear that the other main objection to a deal raised in the letter is the SNP's supposed "transphobia".  It's difficult to know whether to laugh or cry about this, because whatever position you take on the trans debate, it's beyond all credible dispute that the SNP leadership have come down decisively on the side of trans activism. To still accuse them of transphobia, even after Nicola Sturgeon's notorious "hostage video", even after the treatment of Joanna Cherry, smacks of zealotry and extremism. What more are they supposed to do?  Are they supposed to expel or hound out of the party every single SNP member that holds gender critical views?  Incredibly, it appears the answer is yes.  Dare I say it, some Green members seem to be liberally partaking of the parfum d'obsession.

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Over the last 24 hours or so, I've taken a complete break from moderating comments on this blog - I haven't even read the comments that have come through to my inbox, so apologies if you're innocently caught up in this and are still waiting for your comment to be approved.  I've once again reached saturation point with the whole thing, this time because one of our long-term regular commenters has been having a bit of a meltdown on the basis that not all of his comments have been approved quickly enough for his liking.  The nadir was reached a few days ago when he attempted to post an epic rant that literally accused me of being Stuart Campbell (!).  He also sent me a long email a week or two back that was chummy in tone, but that basically tried to dictate to me what my moderation policy should be - and that just ain't on.  Anyone is welcome to post comments here (well, apart from two or three specific individuals who I've told are not welcome), but whether comments are approved or not is entirely at my discretion.  That's a feature, not a bug.  

I probably would have responded to the email eventually, but finding the time became a bit tricky because the same person continued to attempt to post multiple War and Peace length diatribes every day, and I had to wade through those and decide what to do about them.  To give you a general rule of thumb about the sort of comments that are at risk of not getting through, obviously I have to be careful about anything that may cause legal problems or that contains extreme swearing.  But there's a broader category of comments that waste my time in some way or another, because the only way I can realistically publish them is if I take the time to reply.  For example, personal attacks on me, attempts to troll me, or determined attempts to call into question the factual basis of the blogpost that is being commented on.  It's one thing if stuff like that appears elsewhere on the internet, but if I allow it to appear here without any rebuttal, that can be taken (wrongly) as tacit acceptance on my part that the comments are valid.  So a lot depends on whether I have the time to reply at any given moment, and if I don't, it's not unusual for me to keep a comment in the moderation queue in the hope that I'll have time later on.  But obviously if the comment contains paragraph after paragraph after paragraph of trolling or attacks, there's a much greater likelihood that I'll never have enough time.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.  I recently wrote a blogpost that pointed out that the SNP had asked voters to use the 2017 Westminster general election to give them a "triple lock" mandate for an independence referendum. The commenter in question posted a long comment - which I reluctantly approved - that falsely claimed that the SNP manifesto did not mention anything about a triple lock mandate, and that he would not have voted SNP if it had.  I politely told him to read the manifesto again - and he responded with another epic comment insisting that he had checked the manifesto and that the words weren't there.  He supplied lengthy quotes as supposed 'proof'.

Here's the thing, though: I actually went to the SNP's manifesto launch for the 2017 election in Perth.  Everyone who attended was given a free copy of the manifesto, and I clearly remember reading the triple lock section while I was actually sitting there.  I didn't have time to set the commenter straight by searching for the manifesto and trawling through it to find the relevant passage, but nevertheless I knew for a fact that he was misleading people.  Was I really supposed to approve, without rebuttal,  a comment that a) was factually inaccurate and b) would have falsely left me looking either deluded or like a liar?  For the record, here's what the 2017 manifesto actually said - 

"Last year’s Holyrood election delivered the democratic mandate for an independence referendum. The recent vote of Scotland’s national Parliament has underlined that mandate. If the SNP wins a majority of Scottish seats in this election, that would complete a triple lock..."

However, by far the biggest problem in recent days has been the sustained attempt to propagandise away the legitimate concerns about the £600,000 that was donated to the SNP's "ring-fenced indyref fund" and that mostly appears to have been spent on other things.  A recurring theme has been "if the police decide to take no action, that means the allegations are baseless and those who have made them must apologise".  My tolerance for that kind of nonsense is practically zero at this stage.  Not all breaches of trust reach the threshold for criminality - indeed the vast majority don't.  What the police do or don't do is essentially irrelevant to the question of whether members' trust has been betrayed in this case.