So what WAS the thinking behind the SNP's notorious "and for no other party" leaflet?

I'd just like to draw your attention to yesterday's column in The National by the chair of the Alba Party, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, in which she expresses her astonishment at the now-notorious leaflet and letter that the SNP have been sending out, urging people to "ask their friends and family" to only rank SNP candidates and "no other party".  I'm still trying to make some sense of what happened, because even from the SNP's narrow partisan interest, the message seems utterly self-defeating.  Imagine you saw a TV advert for Travelodge that told you to "never stay in any other hotel", or an advert for Twix that told you to "never eat any other biscuit".  Would those brands become more attractive to you, or would you just think you were viewing the last days in the bunker?

It was fascinating that the message was totally contradicted a day or two later by the controversial SNP MSP Emma Roddick, who wrote a lengthy Twitter thread correctly urging people to use the "vote til you boak" strategy in the local elections - meaning that you rank as many candidates/parties as you feel you can bear to.  She obviously knew she was repudiating her own party's letter and leaflet (even thought she didn't mention them directly), but the million dollar question is: was she speaking only for herself, or had she been urged to post the thread by a leadership that knew a terrible mistake had been made?  In other words, was the letter and leaflet the work of some naive and over-excitable interns, and had it slipped through the net in a catastrophic failure of quality control?

When I praised Ms Roddick for her thread (quite possibly the first and last time I'll ever praise her for anything), she became deeply uncomfortable, probably because she saw that I'm an Alba member, and in the hysterical McCarthyite atmosphere currently gripping the SNP she regarded it as vital to distance herself instantly.  She made two points of supposed 'clarification':  a) she's not part of the SNP leadership, and b) she would "boak" before reaching Alba on the ballot paper, if there was an Alba candidate in her ward.  The latter point isn't especially important, because it doesn't change the fact that her thread was 100% correct about how the STV voting system works.  Exactly where and when a voter "boaks" is very much an individual thing.  That said, it was a fascinating insight into Ms Roddick's own mindset as a supposedly pro-independence parliamentarian, and raises the obvious question of whether she would rank unionist candidates ahead of pro-independence Alba because she regards identity politics issues as more important than independence.

As for the point about her not being part of the SNP leadership, that was a statement of the obvious but it was also very carefully worded.  It doesn't exclude the possibility that she was speaking at the leadership's urging.  She's known, after all, as one of the darlings of the leadership, and it would be startling if she ever spoke on questions of electoral strategy without their blessing.

Another possibility is that the message on the leaflet was the work of the leadership, but they hadn't anticipated the fallout from it.  Because it was apparently only sent out to SNP members, former members and people who had at some point donated to the party, the leadership maybe thought they could get the "no other party" message to spread by word of mouth, while keeping it deniable by not putting it on leaflets aimed at the general public.  If so, that was extraordinarily naive.  There are enough former members who are alienated from the party that the message was bound to become publicly known within about fifteen seconds of it landing through people's doors.

As has been pointed out many times, the SNP telling its voters not to use lower rankings on other pro-independence parties will not help SNP councillors to get elected.  Literally the only effect it will have is to make it easier for unionist candidates to get elected at the expense of the Greens and Alba.  So if the message on the leaflet was leadership-approved, the only rational conclusion to draw is that they think it is strategically important that non-SNP representation in local councils should be as unionist-dominated as possible.  That would make no sense if it's really true, as the likes of Paul Kavanagh believe, that the SNP are serious about holding an independence referendum next year.  If that was the case, you would want as you head into a referendum campaign to have as many pro-independence elected representatives as possible, and as few anti-independence elected representatives as possible.  But it might start to make a sort of perverse sense if the strategy is instead geared towards a world in which the SNP have privately decided that a referendum isn't going to take place for the foreseeable future, and in which they're just trying to maintain their own power within the devolved settlement beyond 2026.  Looked at in that way, paranoid fears about Alba winning a modest number of local council seats have a kind of logic, because 'great oaks from little acorns grow'.

In other words, if the messaging in the leaflet was intentional and properly thought through, it indicates that the overriding strategic objective of the SNP in these elections is not to bring independence closer. It's instead to try and ensure that a fellow pro-independence party is "strangled at birth", to borrow the ugly words Cyril Smith famously used about the nascent Social Democratic Party in 1981.  Readers must decide for themselves whether they want to have any part of such a breathtakingly cynical and self-serving project.

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To catch up with my Scot Goes Popcast interview with Alba candidate Lisa Keogh, please click HERE (video version) or HERE (audio only).

Alba's allure affirmed: Alex Salmond's new pro-independence party storms to best poll result since 2021 election in BMG belter

I'm not entirely sure when the Herald published them, and an online search has drawn a blank, but it's been brought to my attention that there are Holyrood numbers from the new BMG / Herald poll - and they're extremely healthy for the Alba Party.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 44%

Labour 22%

Conservatives 21%

Liberal Democrats 8%

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 33%

Labour 22%

Conservatives 20%

Greens 10%

Liberal Democrats 8%

Alba 3%

That's the first time Alba have been above 2% in any poll from any firm since the 2021 Holyrood election, and confirms the impression of other recent polls that Alba have recovered from a very rocky patch in the latter half of last year when they were barely registering.  One explanation for the rebound is probably the determination of Alba members to keep the party visible.  Certainly anyone who travels on the M80 between Glasgow and Stirling will be reminded in a very in-your-face way that Alba is still very much around.

Again, it looks like the SNP might be suffering a bit of a dip in popularity, although BMG's polls are so infrequent that it's hard to be sure.  I'd imagine Labour will be a bit underwhelmed by their own showing, because although they're in second place on both ballots, they haven't opened up a significant gap in the way they have on the Westminster results.  

And talking of the Westminster results, it turns out that the Herald reported the wrong numbers - a bit amateurish of them given that they commissioned the poll themselves.  Here are the correct figures...

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election:

SNP 42%

Labour 26%

Conservatives 19%

Liberal Democrats 6%

Greens 4%

Reform UK 1%

So not as bad for the SNP as we originally thought, although 42% is still unusually low for them.  And Labour's showing is also better than we were led to believe - placing them roughly where they were at the time of their mini-recovery in the 2017 general election (although the SNP's lead over Labour is still bigger than it was in 2017, which is absolutely crucial in a first-past-the-post election).

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To catch up with my Scot Goes Popcast interview with Alba candidate Lisa Keogh, please click HERE (video version) or HERE (audio only).

Impudence! Betrayers! Puffins! TIME!!!!

Yes folks, it's a blogpost title in the inimitable style of Peter A Bell (well, inimitable except in the sense that I've just imitated it), which can mean only one thing - after two and a half weeks of putting this off, I'm finally going to reply to Peter's latest blogpost about me, in which he refers to me with uncharacteristic restraint and maturity as a "lying wee s***e", "the Scot Goes Pffft blogger" and "James 'Creepy' Kelly".  

Now, before we go any further, let's make sure we're all on the same page and have correctly identified who the man calling me "creepy" actually is.  Here's a genuine poster from a few years ago that features Peter.  (Posted without comment, as they say.)

Moving on to the actual content of Peter's post, I'm not going to deny that this has been a monumental struggle for me.  As I've said before, I find Peter's prose to be almost physically painful to read, and usually the best I can bear to do is skim-read his posts to get the general gist and to pick out the two or three most pompous or ludicrous sentences.  However, I've done my level best this time to read the whole thing so I can reply properly.

First of all, Peter seems deeply upset about me "misquoting" him (which apparently means he can't tell the difference between a direct quote and a tongue-in-cheek paraphrase) and about my use of "straw men".  I must say that's a bit rich given his repeated attempts to put words in my mouth and to take issue with points that I simply never made. For example, he says this - 

"Fully a year after I started asking questions about how Alba Party intended to honour the terms of its 2021 manifesto – far less live up to the overblown rhetoric of its more ‘enthusiastic’ devotees – someone giving the impression of speaking with some authority for the party has attempted some kind of response...According to James Kelly at least, Alba Party has retreated somewhat from the more grandiose assertions and notions contained in its 2021 manifesto...Where a year ago the talk was of a ‘supermajority’ and forcing an extraordinary election and making that election substitute for a referendum, now the aim is rather more modest."

That is complete fiction from beginning to end.  I did not state that the Alba Party has "retreated" from anything in its 2021 manifesto.  Nor, incidentally, do I think that holding an extraordinary election and using that as a de facto referendum is a bad idea - in fact I suggested such a course of action myself multiple times before Alba was even founded.  And last but not least, I wasn't speaking on behalf of the Alba Party in anything I wrote, except to the small extent that I have one voice out of the 15 or 16 on the Alba NEC.  As I explicitly stated in my blogpost, there are differences of view within Alba on what the party can realistically expect electoral success to look like over the next couple of years, but I do believe that the utopianists who think Alba can suddenly replace the SNP as the largest party are very much in the minority.  I think most members realise that we'll be doing well if we start regularly polling at 4-5% of the vote or higher, thus forcing the SNP to start looking over their shoulders and thinking about what policy measures will be required to stop more of their own voters drifting to Alba.

"Alba Party’s ‘plan’ assumes we can afford to wait until the next Holyrood election in 2026 before acting to dissolve the Union and restore Scotland's independence."

Again, this is another straw man, on two different counts.  Firstly, it wrongly characterises my own analysis of how Alba can be electorally effective and achieve its objectives as "Alba Party's plan".  And secondly, it suggests that my analysis referred specifically to the 2026 Scottish Parliament. I did not state that, I did not imply that, and I certainly did not mean that.  There are council elections next month in which Alba could start to achieve its electoral objectives and thus put pressure on the SNP to become more radical on its independence strategy.  That pressure can also come, incidentally, from Alba doing well in opinion polls - and to state the bleedin' obvious, we won't need to wait until 2026 for opinion polls to be conducted.

"The aspect of reality that James Kelly chooses to disregard as he refutes claims not made by me is time. This blithe discounting of time is a ubiquitous feature of Alba Party rhetoric. He also denies political reality. But that may be a matter of perspective. Not so time. Time is real. The electoral cycle is real...What James takes absolutely no account of is what the British state will be doing while we wait for Alba to gain enough electoral support to have some influence."

Alba are currently on 2% of the vote.  I'm suggesting they'll be doing well and can start producing results if they get to 4-5% of the vote.  Now, I fully appreciate that jumping from 2% to 4% is not all that easy, but from the way Peter is talking you'd think I was proposing a manned mission to the third moon off Jupiter. In reality we're talking about something that in the best case scenario can be achieved within a few weeks or months.  I dare say that the British state is more than capable of getting up to all sort of nefarious activities within a few weeks or months, but this begs the obvious question: why does Peter think his alternative strategy will be so much quicker that it can successfully head the British state off?  What is it about Peter's plan that is just so God-damn speedy?

The snag is, of course, that to answer that question, we'd first have to work out what Peter's plan is, and that's far from a straightforward task.  Indeed it's not entirely clear that he has a plan at all.  Let's start with what we know for sure: he wants people to reject Alba and stick with the SNP as the sole vehicle for independence.  So to that extent it's a 'do nothing' strategy and is unlikely to produce faster results than a strategy that involves taking some actual action.  He does, however, want the SNP to be much more radical than they currently are.  In fact, he wants them to do a lot of the things that Alba are proposing and that the SNP leadership have rejected out of hand.  Or, to put it another way, he wants to achieve Alba policy by staying with the SNP and opposing Alba.  In some respects, he also wants things to be done that are far more radical than what Alba are proposing.  So he wants to bring about greater radicalism than Alba's policy by sticking with a party that is much less radical than Alba.  Can anyone make sense of this?  I can't.

My best guess is that we're supposed to believe that the sheer force of Peter's personality and the unique persuasiveness of his blogging skills is just about to completely transform the SNP out of all recognition.  Any time now.  Probably before breakfast tomorrow.  Thanks to Peter, the SNP will suddenly be more Alba than Alba.  Nicola Sturgeon will become a revolutionary who is just gagging to declare UDI.  At the moment of epiphany, she'll probably break down in tears and scream "WHY couldn't I see that Peter A Bell was right all along?!  He's a thinker AND listener."

Once we all realise that TIME is the enemy, we'll realise that we must avoid all distractions such as actually doing anything positive to try to bring about a change in strategy on independence, and instead turn with religious fervour to Peter's booming voice.  Because that, and that alone, can slay TIME.

"I ask the questions James Kelly neglects to ask. Why would the SNP be troubled by Alba taking four or five per cent of the vote in the Council elections? Why would this bring about the change in Sturgeon’s approach to the constitutional issue when all else has failed to do so? How would Alba translate that relatively tiny vote in the almost wholly irrelevant (to the constitutional issue) local elections into a lever with which to move the Scottish Government?"

So yes, in a thrilling and unexpected plot twist, Peter suddenly seems to understand that we're not talking about waiting until 2026, which of course totally contradicts everything he has previously said. But hey-ho, let's not quibble.  To answer his question, all I can do is refer him back to the blogpost he's replying to, because that's where the point is explained.  If Alba's vote share can no longer be dismissed as negligible, then the damage being done to the SNP's own vote share also ceases to be negligible.  Vote share is what wins you seats, vote share is what keeps you the dominant force in Scottish politics.  The SNP can't afford to lose one-tenth, let alone one-fifth, of its vote to another pro-independence party.  If there's a danger of that, they'll have to take action to stitch their coalition of support back together - and that means speaking to the concerns that SNP-to-Alba switchers have.  Overwhelmingly, what those people want is greater urgency on independence and a U-turn on GRA reform.

Next, Peter quotes Jonathon Shafi saying "influence campaigns on the SNP leadership have failed" because the SNP organisation is so centralised.  Peter appears to be completely missing the point here, because it looks like Shafi was talking about internal influence campaigns within the SNP.  It's precisely because the internal influence campaigns failed that Alba was created, ie. to change the approach to that of applying external influence.  It's Peter who wants to persevere with a strategy that has already failed.

"What rational reason is there to suppose that the SNP leadership would buckle under the weight of a 5% vote for Alba in the local elections? Does Nicola Sturgeon look like she might be impressed by this?"

What would you expect her to look like, Peter?  What would be the big clue?  Something to do with her eyebrows, perhaps?

"James Kelly would no doubt retort that the SNP would be bound to worry that they might lose 5% to Alba in the next Holyrood election. Again, I ask the question he neglects to ask. Why would they worry?"

Because, as I have been pointing out for well over a decade, the list ballot is the most important ballot in Holyrood elections.  The SNP cannot rely on retaining such an abnormally high number of constituency seats forever, and once they start losing constituency seats they'll desperately need all the list votes they can get.  Yes, Peter, losing five percentage points of support on the list to Alba would worry the SNP.  It would worry them considerably.

"A certain success for Alba in the council elections might even suit the SNP. If the British parties end up with control of more local authorities then we can be sure Alba will be blamed. Whether they are culpable or not is irrelevant. If they can be portrayed vividly enough as the culprits then enough of the mud will stick to do some damage to Alba’s prospects in the 2026 Scottish Parliament election."

That's a desperately weak line of argument, I have to say.  In a preferential voting system, the only conceivable way Alba can do any damage to the SNP is if Alba voters don't bother giving second and third preferences to the SNP.  In reality, Alba will be urging its voters to rank all pro-independence candidates - the complete opposite of the advice that the SNP themselves have been giving so far.

BMG poll is a big wake-up call to independence supporters: we can't afford to muck around at the local elections by not ranking all pro-indy candidates

The last set of Scottish local elections five years ago heralded a downturn in the SNP's fortunes and a boost for both the Tories and Labour, which was followed up in the general election shortly afterwards by the loss of 21 of the SNP's 56 seats, leading to an independence referendum being kicked into the long grass.  We're fortunate this time that the local elections are self-contained and not the first part of a two-act drama, because there is some polling evidence that history may be repeating itself to some extent - ie. the SNP may be dipping and Labour may be recovering, although luckily the Tories are going backwards on this occasion.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election (BMG / Herald):

SNP 38%

Labour 24%

Conservatives 18%

Liberal Democrats 5%

Greens 4%

I haven't included percentage changes, because it looks to me as if there's a 10-point drop in the SNP's vote since the last BMG poll a year ago, and yet the BMG spokesman in the Herald piece says it's only a 6-point drop.  I'm not sure of the explanation for the discrepancy, but either way it's a substantial shift and takes the SNP back down to roughly the share of support they had at the 2017 general election.  The hope must be that margin of error effects are exaggerating the slippage - and indeed the recent Survation poll reported a much smaller drop in SNP support for Westminster.  

Nevertheless, this is a massive wake-up call for any independence supporter who is more interested in fighting the SNP or Alba at the local elections, rather than our real opponents in the unionist parties.  It's imperative that pro-independence voters give their top rankings in the ballot to all of the pro-indy candidates in their ward.  You can guarantee that Tory supporters won't be mucking around by only ranking one candidate or by spoiling their ballot papers.  We would be mad to let the unionists start with an in-built advantage.

There are also independence numbers in the poll, which are identical to the results of the recent YouGov and Survation polls - 

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 47%

No 53%

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To catch up with my Scot Goes Popcast interview with Alba candidate Lisa Keogh, please click HERE (video version) or HERE (audio only).

Question about the local election voting system: "Should I rank all (or most) of the candidates?" Answer: YES, especially if you want to stop the Tories

In the wake of my April Fool (which alarmingly about 10-20% of people took seriously, even though I thought I had made it self-evidently absurd), I was planning to write a genuine guide to how the Single Transferable Vote system for the local council election works.  That's been slightly overtaken by the insanity of certain leaflets that have been dropping through people's doors recently, but there is one specific question that several people have asked me and that I feel I should respond to. In a nutshell, it's...

"I know I should rank all of the pro-independence candidates in my ward, but should I rank all (or most) of the other candidates as well?"

The answer is yes, and I'll explain why.  Suppose I lived in a ward which returns three councillors.  Suppose also that the SNP were putting up two candidates (a typical number in a three-seat ward where the SNP are strong), Labour were putting up one, Alba one, the Greens one, the Tories one, the Liberal Democrats one, and there was also one inoffensive independent candidate with no apparent stance on the constitutional question.  I would probably rank the candidates as follows -

1) Alba

2) SNP

3) SNP 

4) Green

5) Inoffensive Independent

6) Liberal Democrats

7) Labour

8) Conservatives

Most of those decisions are no-brainers.  I have the SNP ahead of the Greens because, at least on paper, independence is the SNP's number one objective, whereas for the Greens it's a somewhat lower priority.  The inoffensive independent is ranked below all of the pro-independence candidates, but ahead of all the unionist candidates, on the logic that a non-unionist is usually preferable to a unionist.  The Tories are ranked last because they're obviously the most objectionable party in all sorts of ways, and more specifically because it's important to reject their "muscular unionism" as emphatically as possible.  The only real dilemma is whether to have Labour ahead of the Lib Dems or vice versa, but I've given the Lib Dems the nod on the theory that Labour poses the greatest medium-term threat to the hegemony of pro-independence parties in Scottish politics.  It's worth giving Labour a ranking to help bury the Tories, but I'm inclined to think every other party apart from the Tories should be ranked ahead of Labour.

So why isn't ranking the pro-indy candidates enough to properly reject the Tories? Well, it might be, but only if you strike it lucky.  In my hypothetical example above, let's imagine that Alba are eliminated early on - which means that my vote will transfer to whichever SNP candidate I ranked highest. Then let's imagine that the two SNP candidates reach the quota and are duly elected.  That means there is one remaining seat to be filled, and it can only be filled by a non-SNP and non-Alba candidate.  Any surplus votes from the two SNP candidates (ie. the number of votes they exceeded the quota by) will be transferred to other candidates and will help to determine the winner of the final seat.  The upshot is that a portion of my vote will be transferred - but only if I gave a ranking to one of the candidates still in contention.  So if I only ranked pro-indy candidates, I'm banking everything on the Greens doing well enough to have a chance of the final seat.  If the Greens are eliminated, I've effectively abstained on the question of who I want to be the third and final councillor from the ward.

Maybe I'll be fortunate and the final count will come down to a straight fight between the Greens and the Tories.  A portion of my vote will transfer to the Greens, and I'll have done everything I conceivably could to freeze the Tories out.  But really it's up to other voters to decide whether the Greens are in with a shout.  If instead the final count is a straight fight between Labour and Tory, a portion of my vote will only transfer if I gave a ranking to Labour - and if I haven't done that, I've sat on my hands and thus could effectively have helped the Tories win the last seat. 

This is what is so bonkers about the leaflet and letter the SNP have just sent out.  There's no joined-up thinking at all.  The content of the letter makes clear that the priority of the SNP's campaign is not independence, but instead to "send a message to the Tories".  And yet it then goes on to recommend an electoral strategy (only ranking the SNP candidates and abstaining on all other rankings) that is tailor-made to help Tory candidates get elected.  That is not an exaggeration at all.  The SNP have huge influence over where the lower preferences of pro-independence voters go - either they'll help elect pro-indy councillors and non-Tory councillors, or they'll go nowhere and be wasted.  At present, the SNP are urging the latter.  If you think you can make any sense of that whatsoever, you're...well, you're probably drunk.

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To catch up with my Scot Goes Popcast interview with Alba candidate Lisa Keogh, please click HERE (video version) or HERE (audio only).

Urgent message for SNP members and supporters: Please contact party HQ and your local representatives to ask them to sort this out. It's genuinely vital for the cause of independence.

Now, let me deal at the very outset of this blogpost with the objection a cynic may raise, ie. "Kelly's only saying this because he's on the Alba NEC these days". You can categorically be assured that I would be saying exactly the same thing if I was still a member of the SNP.  And here's the proof: during the campaign for the 2017 local elections, when I was still very much inside the SNP, The National asked me to write a lengthy guide to how the voting system works and how independence supporters would be best advised to use their votes.  I was absolutely crystal-clear in my piece that Yessers should rank ALL pro-indy candidates in their ward, regardless of party.  For the majority of people that would have meant using the top rankings for SNP candidates, and then using the next highest ranking for the Greens if there was a Green candidate in their ward.

I gave that advice in the full knowledge that it contradicted the advice that SNP HQ was quietly giving to doorstep campaigners, which we heard anecdotally was that voters should be urged just to rank SNP candidates and nobody else.  I had no qualms at all about advocating the opposite of what my own party wanted, because it was an absolutely open-and-shut case - it was beyond all dispute that what the SNP were saying was stupid, counter-productive, destructive and electorally illiterate.  Their message could only have been devised by people who didn't understand how the STV voting system worked - or perhaps more accurately didn't want to understand how it worked.  I never had any problem with the SNP being a bit tribal when the logic of a given electoral system supported that - for example, "both votes SNP" was a perfectly defensible message for the Holyrood voting system, because under AMS, voting for different parties on the two ballots can have perverse results.  But the STV system used for the local elections is totally different from that: there is literally NO DOWNSIDE to ranking as many of the candidates and parties as you feel able to.  By using your lower preferences on other parties, you literally CANNOT HARM your first choice party in any way, because those lower preferences will NOT EVEN BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT unless your first choice candidate is either elected or eliminated.  And if SNP strategists really don't understand that, they need to be politely but firmly told to sit down and shut up by the people who do understand it.

At least in 2017 the SNP were only peddling their naive strategic advice on the quiet - anecdotally, it appeared that they were only doing it if a voter specifically raised the issue of giving lower preferences to other parties.  But we've learned today that the SNP have been sending out actual LEAFLETS to voters instructing them to "ask friends and family to ONLY vote SNP 1, SNP 2 and for no other party". Whether this is a localised or national message isn't as yet clear, but either way it is breathtakingly idiotic.  What they are effectively saying to people is "please urge your friends and family to ABSTAIN on whether they want pro-independence councillors or unionist councillors". 

As explained above, the lower preferences of SNP voters will not be taken into account unless all SNP candidates have been either elected or eliminated.  So if that's what happens, if for example the final seat on the ward comes down to a straight fight between Labour and the Greens, by telling people only to rank the SNP, it means anyone who follows that advice will be sitting out the final choice between anti-indy Labour and pro-indy Green.  By contrast, if the SNP told their supporters to rank all pro-indy candidates, there would be lots more votes for the Greens on the all-important final count, and Labour would be more likely to be defeated.  It's not rocket science - but incredibly the SNP are instructing their supporters to go out and to actively harm the cause of independence.

What is most disgraceful about this is that the leaflets contain an implicit lie.  Because most people don't know how the STV counting system works, they would probably infer from advice to only vote for SNP candidates that using lower preferences on other parties can somehow 'dilute' the impact of higher preferences for the SNP.  That is the polar opposite of the truth, and the SNP should be ashamed of misleading people in that way.

This stuff really matters.  Around one-third of wards in Scotland will have an Alba candidate in May.  I don't know how many candidates the Greens are putting up but it will undoubtedly be a substantial number.  I know some SNP supporters believe Alba are an irrelevance and that it doesn't matter if they rank Alba or not - I firmly believe they're wrong about that, but one thing they cannot seriously dispute is that the Greens have a chance of getting a substantial haul of councillors elected if they receive enough transfers from SNP voters.  How can the SNP justify telling people to abstain on the question of whether their own pro-independence coalition partners should be preferred to unionist parties like the Tories? It makes no sense whatever.

It's no secret that I've been urging Alba supporters who don't want to give second or third preferences to the SNP to change their minds.  Rest assured that I'll continue to do that, but please: we need some sanity on the other side of the fence too.  All pro-indy parties should be encouraging their voters to rank all pro-indy candidates, and at the very least they should not be instructing their voters to do the complete opposite of that.  If you're an SNP member, please get in touch with your party and urge them to reverse this catastrophic strategic blunder before we all needlessly wake up to newly-elected anti-independence Tory and Labour councillors in May.

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UPDATE: Thanks to a reader for getting in touch and clarifying that there are 239 Green candidates - meaning the Greens are standing in the majority of wards.  I don't think they're going to be very happy with their coalition partners, because they stand to suffer the most from what the SNP are doing.  Only the unionist parties will benefit.

You won't send the Tories much of a message if you use election leaflets to tell your own voters not to rank other candidates ahead of the Tories. The main message you're sending is: let's have more Tory councillors.https://t.co/I3MtGOekvD

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) April 7, 2022

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To catch up with my Scot Goes Popcast interview with Alba candidate Lisa Keogh, please click HERE (video version) or HERE (audio only).

Alba AHA! New Survation poll reveals Alex Salmond's upstart new pro-independence party is continuing to make headway

So the answer to the question "James, why haven't you covered yesterday's Survation poll yet?" is, of course, that I didn't actually notice there was a Survation poll yesterday. Polls have been so thin on the ground recently that I keep forgetting to check for them, so if anyone could devise some sort of alarm system for me, that would be splendid.  Anyway, this is an interesting one because it contains independence, Westminster, Holyrood, AND local election voting intention numbers - which to the best of my knowledge makes it only the second poll to specifically ask for voting intentions for the 2022 local elections (the previous one was the Panelbase poll I commissioned myself in the autumn).

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Survation, 24th-28th March 2022)

Yes 47% (-1)

No 53% (+1)

The percentage changes are measured from the most recent Survation poll, which was conducted way back at the time of the Holyrood election last spring.  The movement towards No is statistically insignificant, and while we might normally regard a 47/53 split as mildly disappointing, I think in the difficult context of the Ukraine war we just have to be happy that the Yes vote is holding up.  We'll get a better sense of where we stand when the war ends - which will hopefully be very, very soon for the sake of the people suffering on the ground.

While I'm on the subject, I should mention that there's also been another poll on independence with even more recent fieldwork, conducted by YouGov on behalf of the deeply eccentric anti-independence propaganda outfit "These Islands".  Bearing in mind that YouGov's results tend to be on the No-friendly end of the spectrum, it confirms the impression that nothing much has changed.

Should Scotland be an independent country?  (YouGov, 29th-31st March 2022)

Yes 47% (-)

No 53% (-)

Now let's move on to the Holyrood numbers from the Survation poll - and because this is the first Scottish poll conducted by Survation since last May's election, there are no percentage changes for this one.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot voting intentions (Survation):

SNP 46%

Labour 25%

Conservatives 20%

Liberal Democrats 7%

Scottish Parliament regional list voting intentions (Survation):

SNP 34%

Labour 23%

Conservatives 19%

Greens 11%
Liberal Democrats 8%

Alba 2%

That's the fourth poll in a row, across all firms, to have Alba on 2%, which is a marked improvement on the situation towards the end of last year when most polls were showing Alba on 1% or zero (although admittedly there were two Panelbase polls that didn't even offer Alba as an option).  So the hopes from certain quarters that Alba might be in the process of completely fizzling out appear to have been based on wishful thinking.  The SNP's low-ish 34% showing on the list, which is similar to what ComRes have been reporting recently, will perhaps raise a few eyebrows, but as I always say, the list results from both Survation and ComRes have to be taken with a pinch of salt because of the way the question is worded.  What probably is more significant is the comparatively good showing for Labour on both ballots.  If Labour do start to emerge as the main anti-independence challenger to the SNP, that may not be entirely optimal for the independence movement, because we'd probably prefer to frame the choice as being straightforwardly between Tory rule and independence.

Scottish voting intentions for next Westminster general election (Survation):

SNP 45% (-3)

Labour 27% (+7)

Conservatives 19% (-3)

Liberal Democrats 6% (-1)

Again, Labour's figure is a cause for concern here - it's higher than they managed in their mini-comeback year of 2017.  On a more positive note, the Tories on this showing would be heading for calamity.

Local elections first preference voting intentions (Survation):

SNP 44%

Labour 23%

Conservatives 18%

Liberal Democrats 6%

Greens 3%

Alba 1%

Independent Candidates 1%

I must say I feel slightly vindicated by this, because the local election results from the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll were criticised at the time on the basis that the SNP were clearly being overestimated, and that "if only there had been a generic independent candidate option", the supposed flaw in the poll would have been easily solved.  The Survation poll demonstrates that's a load of nonsense, because even with a generic independent option added, you still get an unrealistically low figure for the independents, and an unrealistically high figure for the SNP.  The reality is that unless a poll somehow lists the actual names of independent candidates standing in the individual respondent's ward, it will never accurately capture the support for non-party candidates.

The format of the Survation poll is different from the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, because instead of asking respondents which parties they'll give any sort of ranking to, it asks specifically for second preference and third preference votes. But the good news for Alba supporters is that the combined 7% of respondents who plan to give Alba one of their top three preferences is higher than the 6% in the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll who planned to give Alba any ranking at all.

Percentages of respondents who will give one of their top three rankings to each party:

SNP 56%

Labour 52%

Greens 37%

Liberal Democrats 31%

Conservatives 27%

Alba 7%

Independent Candidates 7%

I'm not sure this question format is ideal, though, because I doubt if most respondents were bearing in mind that in some wards it's possible to give your top two or even your top three preferences to candidates from the same party.

There's also a supplementary question that purports to find massive public support for proportional representation...

Proportional Representation is the collective name given to electoral systems which ensure that the proportion of seats a party receives in Parliament closely reflects the proportion of votes they received from voters. To what extent do you support or oppose such a system for elections to the UK Parliament?

TOTAL SUPPORT: 56%

TOTAL OPPOSE: 11%

I suppose we supporters of proportional representation can draw some technical satisfaction from the fact that a particularly favourable question wording can produce a good outcome, but I'm not sure what it proves in the real world.  If there was ever a referendum on switching to PR for Westminster, we all know the choice would instead be framed in terms of the importance of "decisive outcomes" and of maintaining the constituency link, and also the supposed danger of a small party (rather than the voters) deciding who to "put into government".

Final thought: I'm bemused by commentary on this poll that breathlessly refers to approval for "the SNP-Green cooperation government".  As Orwellian language goes, that's right up there with "special military operation".  Let's call a spade a spade: what we have is an SNP-Green coalition government, within which the junior coalition partner has negotiated some special exemptions (very similar in principle, incidentally, to the special exemption the Liberal Democrats negotiated for themselves in the 2010 Westminster coalition with the Tories).

*  *  *

To catch up with the my Scot Goes Popcast interview with Alba candidate Lisa Keogh, please click HERE (video version) or HERE (audio only).

STV for dummies

So no, this is not a reference to Scottish Television dumbing down even further, it's about the other STV, the Single Transferable Vote system which will be used to elect our local councillors in just over a month from now. Several people have asked me if I'll be writing another "idiot's guide" as I did in 2017, because STV has a reputation for being far more fiendishly complicated than just about any other electoral system.  However, that does it a disservice.  The real complexity is actually at the counting end of the system - as a voter, it should be relatively simple to use.  So here's my step-by-step guide to using STV, all the way from deciding your voting choices in advance of polling day, through to how to actually cast your ballot in the polling station.

1) STV is a preferential system, which allows you to rank as many of the candidates as you wish in order of preference - and if you want to maximise the impact of your vote, it's vital to rank as many of them as you can bear to (the "vote till you boak" principle).  That being the case, it's far more important than in other types of election to know how many candidates are standing in your ward, who they are, and what party - if any - they're standing for.  So find the name of your ward (which can often be the toughest part of the process!) and search online for the full list of candidates.

2) Look carefully to see whether each candidate is a Red Code or a Blue Code candidate.  Blue Code candidates are relatively rare these days, but it's important to identify them because the quotient that applies to them is different.

3) If a candidate is Blue Code, they are required by Electoral Commission rules to incorporate a QR code into their election literature.  So when they send you a leaflet, scan the code and it will take you to a website setting out the quotient.  Alternatively, you can search for it manually.

4) On polling day, take your polling card to a polling station and hand it to staff - either that or just tell them your name and address.  (Thankfully, the Tories don't control this election and there will be no ID requirement.) 

5) The staff will then give you a ballot slip.  It will be colour coded if there are both Red Code and Blue Code candidates in your ward.  If there are only Red Code candidates, it will be white.

6) Take your ballot paper to a booth, and start by applying the quotient to all Red Code candidates.

7) If there are Blue Code Candidates, apply the Blue Code quotient separately.  The colour coding should assist you here, but to ensure your preferences for Blue Code candidates are correctly counted, you must ensure that each quotient is applied accurately.

8) Indicate your insistence.

9) Fold the ballot paper and place it in the ballot box.

10) Leave the polling station.

11) As an extra precaution to ensure that no mistakes have been made, re-scan the QR code, and if the quotient has been correctly applied, you should be taken to a page displaying a green "W" and a magenta "7".  

12) Excise the coupon.

And that's it, you're done. 

I can no longer defend the Scottish Government's approach to Covid - we're all the way back to "let it rip" and "take it on the chin"

This is beyond parody. We're at the peak of the pandemic. Infections have reached a record high. And yet this, apparently, is the moment to phase out mandatory mask-wearing indoors. We've now reached the point where the Scottish Govt's approach is no more defensible...

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) March 30, 2022

...than the UK Govt's approach. They've become slaves to the narrative of the right-wing 'libertarian' media - and that includes the BBC, who have been a disgrace throughout this process, not least because of their pro-virus propagandist Nick Triggle.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) March 30, 2022

We're straight back to where we came in - "let it rip" and "herd immunity". Just two snags - a) herd immunity is plainly a non-starter because people are being easily re-infected, and b) you can't treat a virus as a head cold when it's leaving a significant percentage..

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) March 30, 2022

...of people who catch it with long-term and potentially lifelong health conditions.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) March 30, 2022

But James, the time to fully relax is when the wave is at its apex. Oceania and Eurasia have always been in lock step following the science in a two continent approach. pic.twitter.com/0MaV7KSFpY

— Prof. Colin_Church (@ColinTKIrk) March 30, 2022

After two years of avoiding #Covid_19 I tested positive this morning. I will be self-isolating in accordance with the rules and will try to engage with @scotparl business if I feel better than I do just now.

— John Swinney (@JohnSwinney) March 30, 2022

Lisa Keogh, candidate for the Alba Party in the Arbroath West, Letham & Friockheim ward, is today's guest on the Scot Goes Popcast

For Episode 15 of the Popcast, I'm joined by Lisa Keogh, who is standing for election to Angus Council at the Scottish local elections in early May. She'll already be well known to many of you, because she made UK-wide headlines last year after Abertay University took disciplinary action against her for simply expressing gender critical views in an online seminar. She was eventually exonerated, but not before her final exams were badly disrupted by an investigation that needlessly dragged on for weeks. In the podcast, she discusses... 

* The events of the fateful seminar.

* How "the process was the punishment", even though she was cleared.

* How vexatious disciplinary action of this type is intended to scare people into self-censorship.

* The importance of upholding free speech, even when you find someone's views alien and offensive.

* Her misgivings about Facebook's decision to change its rules and allow violent speech in relation to the Ukraine war.

* Why tackling poverty and "standing up for the little guy" will be her number one priority in the election campaign.

* The challenges of explaining the Single Transferable Vote electoral system to voters.

You can listen to the episode as a traditional podcast via the embedded Soundcloud player below, or via the direct Soundcloud link, or you can watch it in video form via the embedded YouTube player.  The Popcast is also available on Stitcher and Spotify.

James Kelly · Scot Goes Popcast Episode 15: Lisa Keogh

You can also catch up with previous episodes of the Popcast -

Episode 1: Yvonne Ridley

Episode 2: Tim Rideout

Episode 3: Denise Findlay

Episode 4: Ellen Höfer

Episode 5: Len Pennie (Miss PunnyPennie)

Episode 6: Alex Salmond

Episode 7: Chris McEleny

Episode 8: Election Results

Episode 9: Eurovision 2021

Episode 10: Maggie McNeill

Episode 11: Yvonne Ridley

Episode 12: William Duguid

Episode 13: Denise Findlay

Episode 14: Ken McDonald