A few months ago, the press regulator IPSO also upheld a complaint against the Sun on Sunday for lying about the results of a Scottish independence poll

You might remember that a few weeks ago, the "press regulator" IPSO (in reality a self-regulator set up by the press themselves in an attempt to head off calls for proper statutory regulation) upheld my complaint against the Scottish Daily Express for lying about the results of a Scottish independence poll.  However, they perversely allowed the Express to publish a bogus "correction" containing a slightly modified version of the same lie.  I had battled unsuccessfully for months to persuade IPSO to instruct the Express to publish a genuine correction, and the subtext of the responses I received was basically: "But can't you see that the severity of the lie has been reduced a bit?  What more do you expect from us?  Golden elephants?"  Instead of calling themselves a press regulator, IPSO should perhaps be billed as a "Lie Severity Reduction Body (but only if we happen to be in the mood, you understand)".

The reason I had to lodge that complaint myself was that a few weeks earlier I had suggested that Scot Goes Pop readers might want to complain about the Sun on Sunday's lies about another independence poll.  Several readers took up that suggestion, and I think the stress of the complaints process meant that they understandably didn't want to rush into a second complaint when I made a similar suggestion about the Express!  Because the complaints about the Sun on Sunday and the Express were running on a similar timetable, I had intended to write a single blogpost covering the outcome of both complaints - but in the end, the story of my own complaint against the Express was so complex and lengthy that I didn't have space for both.  So here, belatedly, is the story of what happened with the Sun on Sunday complaint.

The lie published by the Sun on Sunday was that support for independence had "plummeted" as a result of the Queen's death.  The drop in support quoted to justify the word "plummet" was seven percentage points from 49% in an earlier Panelbase poll to 42% in a newer Deltapoll survey.  That was a wholly bogus claim, because the two numbers weren't comparable - the 49% from Panelbase was after Don't Knows were excluded, and the 42% from Deltapoll was before Don't Knows were excluded.  A like-for-like comparison between the two polls showed only a statistically insignificant two-point drop, far lower than the Sun on Sunday were suggesting, and not enough to credibly support the word "plummet".  (Of course technically the publication shouldn't even have been making a comparison with a Panelbase poll which used a completely different methodology from the Deltapoll survey - the only meaningful comparison would have been with a previous poll from Deltapoll.)

Now, you might think this is an open and shut case of IPSO's code being breached on the "accuracy" clause.  But I was genuinely unsure whether the complaints would even get over the first hurdle, because IPSO have a track record of heroically "interpreting" their code in such a way as to allow newspapers to say whatever the hell they like about poll results, no matter how misleading.  There was an earlier incident in which a Scot Goes Pop reader had complained about the Daily Record falsely claiming that a poll had shown a drop in support for independence.  To make that claim, the Record were basing their comparison on an earlier poll that they had cherry-picked to suit themselves - it wasn't the most recent poll from the same firm, and it wasn't the most recent poll from any other firm either.  But IPSO's "bouncers" refused to allow the complaint to proceed, on the grounds that the Record were entitled to make a comparison between any two polls they liked.  Just think about the implications of that logic for a moment.  Suppose there was a poll which showed Yes support dropping like a stone from 48% to 39%.  What IPSO are saying, what IPSO are literally saying, is that it would be perfectly OK - and not a breach of the accuracy clause of the code - for The National to report that as a big surge in independence support because there was a previous poll in 2013 showing Yes on 34%.  That's the absurdity of what passes for "press regulation" in the UK.

So I was half-expecting IPSO to dismiss the complaints about the Sun on Sunday on the grounds that newspapers are perfectly entitled, if they wish, to make a bogus comparison between figures including Don't Knows and figures excluding Don't Knows.  But amazingly, it turned out that the Sun on Sunday's lie was a step too far even for IPSO, and the complaints were allowed to proceed.  Because there were multiple complainants, IPSO invoked a procedure whereby one person is selected as the 'lead complainant' and effectively makes decisions on behalf of all complainants from that point on.  It's far from clear how that person is selected.  Is it a random choice?  Is it whoever happened to complain first?  In this case, Stephen Duncan - who occasionally posts here as "Duncanio" - was chosen, which was a good outcome from our point of view because he proved to be a determined complainant who argued his points extremely intelligently.

The Sun on Sunday's initial response to the complaint was to delete the online version of the article and to offer to publish a correction of sorts.  This made it highly likely that the complaint would at least be nominally upheld if Stephen pursued it to the end of the process - but in the Kafkaesque world of IPSO complaints, the whole aim of the Sun on Sunday's concession was to ensure that the complaint was *not* upheld, because if Stephen was coaxed into saying he agreed that the complaint had been resolved to his satisfaction, IPSO would then mark the complaint as closed and effectively treat it as if it had never existed.  There would be no public record of an upheld complaint, or that the Sun on Sunday had been found to be lying.

Fortunately, Stephen didn't play along with that game, and pressed on with his complaint on the basis that the proposed correction was inadequate.  He felt it should have contained an apology, that its offered location was not prominent enough, that it should have made explicitly clear that the comparison was bogus because of the different treatment of Don't Knows, and that it should have made clear that the polls were also not comparable because one of them included 16 and 17 year olds in the sample, and the other did not.  Personally, I also felt that the proposed correction was inaccurate because it claimed that in reality there was a drop in Yes support of between two and four percentage points "depending on assumed variables in the polling".  In fact, the true figure is incalculable because no-one knows what the effect of one of the variables was, ie. the decision of Deltapoll not to interview 16 and 17 year olds.

In a distinct echo of my own complaint against the Express, IPSO's Complaints Committee upheld Stephen's complaint (or "partially upheld" it) but refused to impose any sanction on the publication beyond what had already been done and/or offered.  The need for the correction to refer to the point about 16 and 17 year olds was dismissed with two of the most jaw-dropping sentences you'll ever have the misfortune to read.  Effectively they agreed in every particular with Stephen's line of argument, but then rather optimistically tried to weaponise it against him - 

"It was therefore unclear as to the precise impact that this particular age group, which had been allowed to vote in the Scottish Independence in 2014, had upon the poll’s findings and by extension the accuracy of its comparison to the second poll. Taken in this context, and where readers would understand that a comparison between two different polls, undertaken by two separate organisations, at separate times, under different conditions and employing different methodologies, would have their own limitations, the Committee did not consider that this rendered the article inaccurate or misleading."

The whole point, of course, is that the vast majority of readers would NOT have understood - or not without having it explained to them - that the two polls were conducted by two separate organisations using different methodologies, or the serious implications of that fact.  They would have wrongly assumed that they were being presented with a like-for-like comparison and that the drop in the Yes support being reported was meaningful and accurately measured.  That's precisely WHY the Sun on Sunday's article was so seriously in breach of IPSO's own code (which forbids "misleading" claims as well as outright inaccurate ones), and that's why any Complaints Committee acting in good faith would have instructed the publication to amend their proposed correction accordingly.

You can read the IPSO ruling in its full dismalness HERE.

So we've now had two (or at least two) complaints upheld by IPSO in recent months about newspapers telling lies on Scottish independence polling.  Those might only seem like partial successes, given that IPSO allowed the papers in question to get away with murder in their published corrections (and in one case the Express were even allowed to tell a further lie in their "correction"), but the important point is that those upheld complaints are now a matter of public record.  They demonstrate that it's not some kind of tinfoil hat conspiracy theory to point out that the mainstream media are lying to the public on this topic for partisan reasons.  And if upheld complaints against certain publications become an established pattern, that can begin to seriously detract from the credibility of those publications' reporting.  To give an example, it's well-known that there have been a disproportionately high number of complaints upheld by IPSO against the Jewish Chronicle, and that has undoubtedly led to people taking the Jewish Chronicle's output less seriously.

So I would certainly urge Scot Goes Pop readers to continue complaining to IPSO about the misreporting of independence polls, especially if they spot a lie that is blatant enough that they think there's a chance a complaint will get past IPSO's "bouncers".  I can attest to the fact that seeing a complaint through to its final - and almost inevitably unsatisfactory - conclusion can be very stressful, but it may well pay useful dividends in the long run.

*  *  *

I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2023 a few weeks ago, and the running total has now passed £2000.  The target figure is £8500, however, so there's still quite some distance to travel.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue by making a donation, please click HERE.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

Westminster REELS IN SHOCK as support for independence SURGES in new BOMBSHELL Redfield & Wilton poll - but Humza Yousaf's personal popularity slumps again, and the SNP are clinging on to a barely-there lead

Should Scotland be an independent country?  (Redfield & Wilton Strategies, 1st-2nd July 2023)

Yes 48% (+3)

No 52% (-3)

To some extent that's a reversion to the mean, because the 45% in the previous poll for Yes was unusually low, but a three-point jump does give me the opportunity to use the word "surges" in the headline in almost a non-ironic way.  The evidence that independence support is holding up irrespective of what happens to the SNP is now overwhelming - no matter how far the SNP slip, the Yes vote seems to remain in the familiar range, and that's a pattern across all polling firms.  Perhaps even more importantly, this is the second Redfield & Wilton poll in a row to show that a plurality of voters (41% to 40% in this case) want an independence referendum to be held within the next twelve months, providing a timely reminder that the likes of Alex Massie have no factual basis for their repeated claims that Scotland does not want a referendum.

Voters are almost split down the middle on what they think the result of an early independence referendum would be - 38% think Yes would win, and 42% think No would win.  That's potentially significant, because people will be basing their expectations on the views of their friends and families.  There's clearly still a lot of enthusiasm for independence out there, and not just among the members of volunteer online polling panels.

And now to the bad news - away from the independence numbers, this poll makes grim reading for the SNP in general and Humza Yousaf in particular.  The leadership will doubtless point out that the SNP are in the lead on all three ballots (Westminster, Holyrood constituency and Holyrood list) but as in yesterday's Survation poll, that lead is now barely there in all three cases.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election:

SNP 35% (-2)

Labour 32% (+4)

Conservatives 21% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 7% (-2)

Greens 2% (-1)

Reform UK 2% (-1)

Seats projection (with changes from 2019 election): SNP 24 (-24), Labour 22 (+21), Conservatives 8 (+2), Liberal Democrats 5 (+1)

Among the predicted carnage here, Alison Thewliss, Anne McLaughlin, Stewart McDonald, Patrick Grady, David Linden, Tommy Sheppard and Deidre Brock would all be losing their seats, and ironically a big part of the reason for that is the unpopularity of the man most of them pressurised SNP members to install as leader, even though Kate Forbes was clearly far more liked by the public.  Humza Yousaf's net personal rating has slipped back to -10 in this poll, putting him well behind Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar (+4) and also behind UK Labour leader Keir Starmer (-1). And although he's ahead of Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross (-19), it's not exactly the gap of light-years you would customarily expect.

The leadership were clearly thinking on the right strategic lines when they reversed course to some extent by saying they will allow people to vote directly for independence at the general election.  With independence now so much more popular than the SNP (a gap that appears to be growing even further), it plainly makes sense to make a big offer to independence supporters who have drifted off to Labour, and who quite simply have little interest in the SNP unless independence is back on the table.  But it does look like the leadership problem is going to have to be addressed too if the SNP are to have any chance of averting electoral disaster next year.  Either Yousaf will have to go, or he'll have to belatedly swallow his pride and bring Kate Forbes, Ash Regan, and one or two key Forbes supporters into senior positions in a Unity Cabinet with essentially a collective leadership.

One glimmer of light for the SNP is that the net rating for the whole party is -2, which is only very slightly behind Labour's +1.  So there isn't necessarily a mountain to climb if only the leadership problem can be sorted out before the general election.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot: 

SNP 33% (-3)

Labour 30% (+1)

Conservatives 21% (-)

Liberal Democrats 10% (+2)

Greens 2% (-)

Reform UK 2% (-)

Alba 1% (-)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot: 

SNP 28% (+3)

Labour 26% (-1)

Conservatives 19% (-)

Liberal Democrats 12% (+2)

Greens 8% (-5)

Reform UK 4% (+2)

Alba 2% (-)

Seats projection (with changes from 2021 election): SNP 40 (-24), Labour 38 (+16), Conservatives 26 (-5), Liberal Democrats 15 (+11), Greens 10 (+2)

Off the top of my head, I can't recall a worse projection than that for the SNP in well over a decade.  40 seats is seven lower than they had when they first took power under Alex Salmond by the slenderest of margins in 2007.  It's possible that they could repeat the trick given that on these numbers they would remain two seats ahead of Labour, but I'm not at all convinced.  The momentum against the SNP would be such that Labour might feel justified in using external support from the Tories to install a Labour-Lib Dem minority coalition government.  An additional problem here is the five-point slump for the Greens on the list vote - we'll have to wait to see whether that's a freak result or the start of a trend caused by the public losing patience with the key role played by Green ministers in some of the Scottish Government's most high-profile failures.  The SNP and Greens in combination are projected to have just 50 seats, far behind the combined total of 79 for unionist parties.

*  *  *

I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2023 a few weeks ago, and the running total has now passed £2000.  The target figure is £8500, however, so there's still quite some distance to travel.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue by making a donation, please click HERE.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

New Survation poll shows independence support continuing to hold up impressively, while the SNP under Yousaf cling on to a precariously slender lead at both Westminster and Holyrood

So let's start with the customary good news - in common with all other recent polls, the new Survation poll shows support for independence holding up well, apparently unaffected by the trials and tribulations of the SNP.  There's a small decrease in the Yes vote from the previous Survation poll, but it's statistically insignificant.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Survation, 23rd-28th June 2023)

Yes 47% (-1)

No 53% (+1)

As far as party political voting intentions are concerned, I'm not sure this poll really takes us forward on the questions we want answered.  After the recent Panelbase poll showing the SNP level-pegging with Labour on the Westminster ballot, Team Humza must have feared that the next poll would show an outright Labour lead.  That hasn't happened, but the snag is that Survation's results have recently been more favourable to the SNP than we've seen from other firms, and a 3-point SNP lead is in fact the worst result for the SNP in a Survation poll since Yousaf became leader.  So it's perfectly consistent with the trend shown by Panelbase, suggesting that the SNP vote has drifted further downwards over Yousaf's three months in charge.  That could conceivably mean that if other pollsters tested opinion right now, they'd find a small Labour lead or a dead heat.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election:

SNP 37% (-1)

Labour 34% (+3)

Conservatives 17% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 9% (-)

Seats projection (with changes from 2019 election): SNP 26 (-22), Labour 22 (+21), Conservatives 6 (-), Liberal Democrats 5 (+1)

Of course there's the endless argument over whether the SNP are suffering because of Humza Yousaf's unpopularity with the public or because of the police investigation into people associated with the former Sturgeon leadership, but those two concepts are not hermetically sealed from each other.  Part of the problem Yousaf has with the public is that he is seen as Sturgeon's placeman, and so for as long as there is a cloud over her, it's a problem for him and for the SNP as a whole.  That problem can only be solved by fresh leadership, or by a unity team which puts an end to faction-only rule by Team Humza and brings Yousaf's rivals (who in many cases are also Sturgeon-sceptics) into senior positions, thus challenging the public perception that the current leadership is Continuity Sturgeon in all but name.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 38% (-1)

Labour 33% (+3)

Conservatives 16% (-3)

Liberal Democrats 10% (+1)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 30% (-2)

Labour 29% (+3)

Conservatives 17% (-2)

Greens 10% (-)

Liberal Democrats 9% (+2)

Reform UK 2% (-)

UKIP 1% (+1)

Seats projection (with changes from 2021 election): SNP 49 (-15), Labour 37 (+15), Conservatives 23 (-8), Greens 10 (+2), Liberal Democrats 10 (+6)

Once again, this poll shows the SNP practically being reduced to the same seat tally they had when they first took power by the skin of their teeth in 2007.  The pro-independence majority at Holyrood would be lost by some distance on these numbers - the SNP and Greens in combination would have 59 seats, and the unionist parties would have 70.

I must just note the weirdness and inconsistency of Survation's treatment of Alba.  In their previous poll in May, they included Alba as an option on both the Westminster and Holyrood list ballots, but this time Alba seem to have been totally excluded across the board - in spite of the fact that Alba took a decent 3% of the list vote in the previous poll, and also in spite of the fact that the obviously less popular UKIP are still being included as an option.  It literally makes no sense, except from a London-centric perspective in which Scotland-only parties are lazily assumed to be of less interest to poll respondents than UK-wide parties, however tiny.

I raised an eyebrow or two yesterday at the claim from one of Somerset's most-read Tory-voting bloggers that Mhairi Black was standing down because she knew she was going to get pumped at the general election, and because she also knew that if she switched to the Scottish Parliament, she would probably get in on the list.  The latter suggestion is curious due to Campbell's repeated vehement claims when he was floating the idea of a "Wings Party" that the SNP couldn't win list seats no matter how many list votes they took.  It's intriguing that he's now tacitly acknowledging that he led people up the garden path on that point.  And his other claim is innumerate, because Mhairi Black's seat is actually one of the 26 the SNP would hold on the above projections.  It would be a close-run thing, within a few percentage points, and any further worsening of the SNP's national position (which is entirely possible) could put the seat in the Labour column.  But the idea that the SNP aren't even in contention in the seat at this stage doesn't stand up to the remotest scrutiny.  The paradox of the claims that Black is deserting a sinking ship is that the SNP would have had a much better chance of holding her seat if she had been the candidate, because she presumably carries with her a small but important personal vote as an unusually well-known incumbent MP.

The criticism that I think can be fairly levelled at Black is over her claim that Westminster is a toxic work environment.  If you believe that, the logical response is to move the SNP decisively into the endgame for independence so that no-one in Scotland has to work in that environment ever again.  Instead, Black is planning a personal solution for herself only by (if the rumours are true) seeking to switch parliaments.  It seems she finds the ongoing prospect of Scotland's involvement in Westminster toxicity perfectly acceptable provided she isn't personally at the heart of it.

*  *  *

I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2023 a few weeks ago, and the running total has now passed £2000.  The target figure is £8500, however, so there's still quite some distance to travel.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue by making a donation, please click HERE.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

The incompatibility between NATO membership and signing the treaty banning nuclear weapons is actually a golden opportunity for the SNP to get themselves off the NATO hook

It's not often that one of the unionist usual suspects on Twitter makes me grudgingly say "good point", but that happened a week or two back when it was pointed out that Humza Yousaf was using coded language to shield anti-nuclear Yes supporters from the fact that the SNP government do not intend that an independent Scotland should sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  He apparently said that Scotland would join NATO on the same basis that Finland recently joined - which is indirectly getting at the fact that Finland started opposing the treaty in line with NATO wishes, having previously abstained in the relevant UN votes.  

It was also suggested (and I don't know whether this is true or not) that Alyn Smith attacked the treaty more directly, saying "a piece of paper isnae going to keep us safe".  If so, and just as an aside, could I appeal to all politicians and political activists to stop abusing our wonderfully expressive Scots language by only switching to it when they want to make a particularly stupid point that they know they can't justify through rational argument.  It's like: "How do we bypass the voters' adult intelligence to win us a hearing on this one?  I know, let's switch to Scots, and then they'll all revert to childhood."

My own view is that the existence of the relatively new treaty is a golden opportunity for the SNP to get out of the mess of trying to oppose nuclear weapons and support NATO membership simultaneously, which is practically a contradiction in terms given that NATO largely exists to extend the so-called American nuclear "deterrent" to European countries who join up.  The SNP was traditionally anti-NATO to maintain consistency with the anti-nuclear policy, but got cold feet in the run-up to the 2014 referendum due to polls showing overwhelming support for NATO membership.  But here's the thing - polls also now show substantial support for the nuclear ban treaty.  I asked that question myself in one of the polls I commissioned for Scot Goes Pop - 

Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, 21st-26th April 2021:

Nuclear weapons were banned by an international treaty that came into force in January this year.  However, the nine countries that are currently believed to possess nuclear weapons, including the UK, have so far refused to sign the treaty. Do you think the UK should join the treaty and dismantle its nuclear weapons?  

Yes: 47%

No: 33%

With Don't Knows removed -

Yes 59%

No 41%

If the public start to understand that there's an either/or choice here, and that they can't have both the things they want (ie. NATO membership and signing the treaty) they might start to be a bit more forgiving towards a political party or government that rejects NATO membership for the specific reason that it wants to join the treaty.  It would be interesting to see a poll in which a straight choice is presented to respondents to see what they regard as more important.  If I ever commission another poll in the future, I might ask that question (assuming no-one does it before me).

*  *  *

I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2023 a few weeks ago, and the running total has now passed £1800.  The target figure is £8500, however, so there's still quite some distance to travel.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue by making a donation, please click HERE.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

Alex Massie was the architect of a notorious piece of TV fakery during the 2014 indyref - but he's now attempting a much more outrageous deception

In the 2014 referendum, Alex Massie got on a TV debate by posing as an "undecided voter". That was TV fakery on a par with Major Charles Ingram winning Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 29, 2023

I'm slightly bewildered as to why a certain blogger in Somerset is identifying himself so strongly with Alex Massie's view that Team Humza's new independence plan reveals them to be "unserious people", because Massie's critique of the SNP in recent times has been the literally the opposite of Campbell's.  He was almost adulatory of Nicola Sturgeon in the days when she was forever backtracking on strategy and kicking independence into the long grass, but then he took it practically as a personal affront when she shocked him by actually trying - after a fashion, anyway - to implement her manifesto promise on independence, which he had apparently assumed was never meant to be taken seriously.  He also apparently assumed that everyone else 'knew' it was never meant to taken seriously, and would be as outraged about the implementation of the will of the electorate as he was.

The basis for his anger remains precisely the same under Yousaf as it was in the closing days of Sturgeon - he thinks it's utterly preposterous that anyone should think jumped-up little Scotland can just decide to have a vote on independence when we were 'given' one 'only' nine years ago. To the extent that he might graciously consider dropping his objections to a democratic vote, he would only do that if people in Scotland wanted one, which he apparently knows they don't because the views of the millionaire businessmen he has sweaty mud baths with in members-only clubs represent the will of the people much more accurately than the results of elections in which everyone over the age of sixteen is able to vote - even (gasp) the people who didn't go to private schools.

Future generations will fall about in hysterics at the notion that Scotland could have had a referendum if only there had been any sign that the voters wanted one.  It's hard to think of any policy in modern British political history that has obtained such overwhelming popular assent at the ballot box, and so consistently over multiple consecutive elections.  Pro-independence parties went to the people with manifesto commitments to a referendum in the 2016 Holyrood election,  the 2017 Westminster election, the 2019 Westminster election, and the 2021 Holyrood election.  On all four occasions they emerged with clear majorities and thus clear mandates for a referendum.  It's hard to imagine how many more consecutive times the voters would have to say exactly the same thing before Massie takes them seriously and notes the enthusiasm.   Eight times?  Fifteen times?

Of course what he really means is that he thinks opinion polls both do and should have a higher status under the British constitution than election results, but only on this one specific issue and on no other matters whatsoever.  He also thinks that only opinion polls with the 'right' results should have this unique status, and that any polls with 'wrong' results, such as the Redfield & Wilton poll earlier this month showing that a majority want an independence referendum within the next twelve months, should be totally disregarded.  That, I'm afraid, is the prescription for a banana republic, not for a country that regards itself as an advanced democracy.

Oh, and as for the idea that democracy consists of getting one day of choice which you're then stuck with for the rest of your lives, good luck with the verdict of history on that one too, Alex.

*  *  *

I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2023 a few weeks ago, and the running total has now passed £1900.  The target figure is £8500, however, so there's still quite some distance to travel.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue by making a donation, please click HERE.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

Yousaf has at least half-listened to SNP members about using the election to win independence - but for the plan to work *without* him being replaced by a more popular leader, he'll have to dispense with the destructive factionalism and bring his rivals back into government

For the three months since the nightmare scenario unfolded in late March, I've been consistently saying that the SNP needed to do *at least* one of two things to have any realistic chance of avoiding a dreadful result at the general election next year - they needed to either replace Humza Yousaf as leader, or to U-turn on the decision to ditch Nicola Sturgeon's de facto referendum plan.  They've now sort of half-done the latter - the details of the plan are a dog's breakfast, but nevertheless, if Yousaf sticks to his word (admittedly a very big if) and puts the phrase "a vote for the SNP is a vote for Scotland to become an independent country" in the opening line of the manifesto, and if that proposition receives majority support at the election, it would represent a mandate for independence in exactly the same way as would have been the case if the Sturgeon plan had been successfully implemented.  So in my view it counts as "good enough", although as I said the other day, all the ambiguities and grey areas are unhelpful because they may prevent Yes supporters from taking the notion that this is a vote on independence seriously.

But the million dollar question is this: having taken one of the two steps that had a chance of turning things around, is this enough for the SNP without taking the other step too?  In other words, will the good sense of becoming a born again independence party be sufficient on its own to counterbalance Yousaf's personal unpopularity and thus avert general election defeat?  I still have my doubts.  In the comments section of this blog, "YesIndyref2" suggested it would now be a mistake to continue pressing for Yousaf's departure because that might lead to his independence plan being watered down or abandoned.  That's absolutely a very real danger, and so in normal circumstances I would agree with the logic, but in this particular case the Yousaf leadership problem is so severe that it trumps all other considerations. The net personal ratings in polls consistently show that he is less popular than Anas Sarwar, and often show that he is less popular even than Keir Starmer, which is a major handicap when there is already considerable momentum behind Labour.  Having a theoretically workable independence plan is of limited value if you are 80-90% sure that the SNP are heading for defeat on the current trajectory.

There is, however, a middle option between the status quo and ditching Yousaf altogether that could at least be tried first to see if it solves the problem, and frankly it's an option that should have been a no-brainer even on 29th March.  Yousaf should swallow his pride and put an end to the folly of trying to run a government comprised of second-raters almost solely drawn from his own faction of the party.  That would mean inviting Kate Forbes and Ash Regan into the Cabinet, along with probably one or two of Forbes' key supporters, and yes, it would also mean offering them senior positions with considerable influence, because it's already been established that they will not just accept any old tat.  For a unity Cabinet to work, it would have to be an informal coalition between distinct wings of the SNP, with the balance of power accurately reflecting the strength of those wings in the leadership vote - ie. Forbes and her allies would need to wield power in proportion to the 48% of the vote she received.  Yousaf's derisory offer to her in March treated her as if she had received 10% of the vote, and thus it was hardly surprising that she declined.

A unity Cabinet would have any number of positive effects.  It would transform morale among the substantial minority of the SNP membership who feel with absolute justification that the leadership election was stolen from them by underhand means.  It would reduce the public perception that the SNP is a divided party, which is absolutely crucial, because one of the oldest and truest electoral maxims is that parties seen as divided rarely win elections.  It would for the first time at least challenge the public perception that the SNP leadership is continuity Sturgeon in all but name, which is important given the polling evidence that Sturgeon is now a somewhat discredited figure.  And it would ensure that Kate Forbes' popularity with the public starts working in favour of Yousaf and the SNP.  Now, there's a limit to the latter benefit - politics is so presidential these days that you can't get the full advantage of having Kate Forbes as leader without actually having Kate Forbes as leader.  But if the SNP presented themselves as having a much more collective leadership than in the past, and if Forbes was clearly established as the second most important person in that collective leadership, she could at least help to offset some of Yousaf's unpopularity.

Yousaf and his seemingly rather naive advisers lacked the nous back in March to recognise that their plan for faction-only rule weakened rather than strengthened their pet project (ie. the ill-defined "progressive agenda" and the identity politics stuff).  It weakened the SNP as an electoral force, and anything that has that effect is bound to result in a change of leadership sooner rather than later.  They seemed to imagine that demoting or sacking Kate Forbes would be like flicking a switch that automatically transformed her into a diminished and marginalised figure, but in truth her political importance is derived not from any job title but from the fact that she came within a whisker of winning the leadership on an explicit platform for change.  What her de facto sacking has actually transformed her into is a Queen Over The Water figure who is totally unsullied by the unpopularity of any decisions made by the current administration, and who is thus perfectly placed to pick up the pieces when and if Yousaf crashes and burns.  It's in Yousaf's own overwhelming interests to change the dynamic his own handiwork has created.

Lastly, just a thought for anyone who is still in despair about independence because they think the SNP are bound to fall below 40% of the vote at the general election, no matter how central independence is to the campaign, and no matter what (if anything) is done to address the Yousaf problem.  Remember this: all that really needs to happen is for the SNP leadership to be convinced that seeking an outright mandate for independence helped to save at least some seats that would otherwise have been lost.  If it's established that the strategy was clearly a vote-winner rather than having a neutral effect or being a vote-loser, it becomes much more likely that the SNP will use it again at the 2026 Holyrood election, where it's far more plausible that 50% + of the vote can be achieved, especially bearing in mind the ongoing strength of the Green party on the list ballot. By then, it's entirely possible that a Labour government at Westminster will have entered into a period of mid-term unpopularity, and in any case Holyrood elections are 'home fixtures' for Yes parties and there'll be fewer distractions from the independence message.  So there's actually a strong incentive for the independence movement to ensure that the Yousaf plan 'works' next year, at least within the confines that it's realistically possible for it to work, which is probably more about winning a majority of seats than it is about winning a majority of votes.

*  *  *

I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2023 a few weeks ago, and the running total has now passed £1800.  The target figure is £8500, however, so there's still quite some distance to travel.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue by making a donation, please click HERE.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

So where do we go from here?

As regular readers will recall, I was in absolute despair when Humza Yousaf was narrowly elected SNP leader in controversial circumstances three months ago, largely because it brought to an end the SNP's eight-decade-long history as a party seeking to win independence.  Yousaf's announcement about independence strategy at the weekend does to some extent reverse that process, and there's not much doubt that it's a genuine U-turn.  The briefings to the press suggest that the parliamentarians who backed Humza for leader precisely to get rid of Nicola Sturgeon's de facto referendum plan, because they believed independence to be a drag on SNP support, have rapidly changed their minds because the polls in recent weeks have made them realise the complete reverse is true.

So the underlying reasoning is more cynical than we'd like, and it appears that the SNP leadership seem relaxed in the belief that they won't have to negotiate independence irrespective of the general election outcome.  Does that bother me?  Not as much as you might think, because I've always made the point that the value of a plebiscite election, or anything equivalent to one, does not hinge on whether it will automatically result in independence.  People who ask the supposedly 'killer' question "and what do you do when Westminster ignores the result?" are only demonstrating that they are missing the whole point.  No matter what strategy we adopt, we have no control whatever over how Westminster react to it.  Our job is to get on with what is actually within our province.  An outright mandate for independence is an absolute prerequisite if independence is ever going to happen.  It is wholly within our power to bring such a mandate about, because it can be done via scheduled elections, but we have conspicuously failed to do so thus far.  Putting that right has to be the priority, and if we manage it, the independence movement will progress into an entirely new sphere.  For the first time in our lives, the Scottish people will have decided to become independent, and from then on the task will be to apply pressure on the UK government from every quarter to give effect to that decision.  There'll be no guarantee of success, but that's the nature of the beast.

If Yousaf is true to his word and puts "a vote for the SNP is a vote for independence" as the opening words of the manifesto, it gives voters an opportunity to vote directly for independence in a way that we didn't think was going to be possible.  It doesn't matter what the SNP's motivations are for allowing this, what matters is that the opportunity is there.  So it seems to me that we as rank and file independence supporters now have three priorities we need to concentrate on -

1) Keep Yousaf to his word.  We've seen countless promises on independence strategy broken by the SNP leadership since 2017, so the fact that Yousaf says he'll do something does not necessarily mean it will happen.  The slightest sign of backtracking or watering down must be called out loudly.

2) Continue the pressure on Yousaf to step down if he fails to turn around the SNP's slump in the opinion polls, or to win the Rutherglen by-election.  This one almost seems like a contradiction, because a change of leader could open up the question of the independence plan yet again and we could end up with something worse.  But that's a risk worth taking, because the single most effective step towards garnering the needed votes for pro-independence parties would be for the SNP to install a more voter-friendly leader.

3) Take the fight to Labour.  I have no time whatever for the notion that the purpose of the general election is to "target" particularly useless SNP MPs and divert enough of their votes away to smaller pro-indy parties to ensure that they lose their seats to Labour or the Tories.  No matter whether the SNP keep Humza in place as leader (and as I've already said, they would be foolish to), seeing off the Labour threat will still have to be the absolute priority for the whole independence movement.  My suspicion is that many voters are turning to Labour because of nothing more than a residual cultural pull.  Most of us grew up surrounded by people who would say in sheep-like fashion "ah'm a Labour man because ma faither was a Labour man and his faither before him", and those kind of unthinking impulses don't, sadly, just vanish within a single decade.  There's still this vague sense that Labour are "the good guys" from people who probably don't have a clue that Labour under Starmer are a right-of-centre party which passionately supports Brexit and opposes public ownership, and which would essentially represent a continuation of Tory rule under different personnel.  We need to find innovative ways of confronting Labour-curious voters with some hard truths.

*  *  *

I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2023 a few weeks ago, and the running total has now passed £1800.  The target figure is £8500, however, so there's still quite some distance to travel.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue by making a donation, please click HERE.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

Until such time as there is a democratic mechanism by which Scotland can freely choose to leave the UK, we are to all intents and purposes a colony - and if the description makes unionists in England deeply uncomfortable, that's exactly as it should be

I'm a bit tired today, because I was up to 3am last night as a result of the director of a Labour think tank (or technically the Labour director of a 'non-partisan' think tank, which is probably a distinction without a difference) having a five-hour long temper tantrum at me.  This is the sort of wacky incident that makes my life so thrilling, you guys really don't know what you're missing out on.  Sunder Katwala's claimed justification for the intensity of his anger (he literally said that one of my replies was "the most offensive" thing he had ever been sent) was that he believes it is "racist" to suggest that Scotland is subjected to London imperialism, because that somehow trivialises the experience of "real" colonies of the past.  

However, given his anger was self-evidently disproportionate to the mild-mannered nature of my tweets, it seemed pretty clear that the convoluted claims of racism were a distraction technique and that he was actually deeply uncomfortable with the points I was confronting him with.  Like many Labour people in England (and indeed in Scotland), Sunder imagines himself to be an anti-imperialist and a supporter of liberation movements all over the world, and yet will not apply the same principle to Scotland.  And we all know why - it's got nothing to do with conviction or with logic, and everything to do with Labour self-interest and the imposition of internal discipline within the party in furtherance of that self-interest.  So people have to tie themselves up in knots trying to explain why Scotland is, for example, fundamentally different from Ireland - even though Ireland was (and part of it still is) an integral part of the United Kingdom, and thus technically exempt from some people's definition of the word "colony" in exactly the same way Scotland is.  Push them far enough and they'll get to the risible point of arguing that the difference is that Scotland shares the same island with England, and Ireland does not.  Yeah, as if there is no other example anywhere in the world of one country sharing a landmass with another.  

Essentially Sunder was trying to "pull rank" on me by praying in aid his mixed race background, and saying that he therefore gets to set the parameters within which Scottish pro-independence discourse may exist.  If we step outside those parameters, ie. by suggesting that Scotland's current relationship with London is colonial or quasi-colonial in nature, we are being "racist".  I must say it's rather convenient for an English Labour supporter who actively propagandised for a No vote in 2014 to believe he should be universally recognised as the legitimate setter of ground rules for Scotland's national debate. When I challenged him to identify what was remotely racist about any of the dozens of replies I had sent to him last night, the best he could come up with was the word "visceral" and the phrase "close to the bone" (ie. I had said that his reaction to being confronted with his cognitive dissonance about Scotland was "visceral" because the points being made were "close to the bone").  I then challenged him to explain exactly *what* was racist about those words, and he was curiously evasive for half an hour - before finally blurting out that in his view they were synonymous with the word "coconut".  That's just about the most fantastical, desperate line of argument I've ever encountered.  His final tactic was to argue that it didn't matter if I was using the words according to their plain dictionary definitions - what mattered is that he had "received them" in a completely different way and I should therefore apologise to him for what his own mind had generated!

Unfortunately for Sunder, the visceral reaction I noted in him has nothing to do with his ethnic background, and everything to do with his party affiliation and the British Nationalist dogma that is part and parcel of that affiliation.  I've encountered exactly such a reaction in the past from many white Brit Nats, most notably when I used to post on the Political Betting website (aka Stormfront Lite) and pointed out that the United Kingdom is essentially "Greater England".  The heat of the fury generated was quite something to behold.  They felt their country was being compared to Nazi Germany, because Hitler's conquests were known as "Greater Germany".  But was the characterisation accurate?  After all, Wales was conquered by the Kingdom of England and then annexed.  Ireland was conquered by the Kingdom of England, which then imposed a puppet regime which eventually voted through a de facto annexation against the wishes of the population.  Scotland is the odd one out because our own homegrown independent parliament did vote through the Treaty of Union, but it wasn't exactly the freest of choices given that there were military threats and heavy personal bribery involved.  As in Ireland, the general population was opposed - dare I say 'viscerally' opposed - to the London takeover, and certainly by the time you get to the consequences of the Jacobite defeat at Culloden, with the suppression of the Gaelic language and culture, and the genocidal characteristics of the Highland Clearances, it's murderously difficult to argue that the treatment of Scotland did not resemble in at least some respects that of other colonial possessions of London.

And now in the modern day, we have the UK Supreme Court and the UK Government declaring that Scotland has no right to determine its own future.  On that point, Sunder was last night totally behind the London line - he would only support independence once Scotland had voted for it, but Scotland would not be allowed to vote for it and therefore he would never have to support it.  The justification for denying a democratic vote was his own personal opinion that Scotland does not want a vote.  When I pointed out that the last two Westminster general elections and the last two Holyrood elections had all produced pro-referendum majorities, he started muttering stuff about opinion polls, which apparently he believes have a higher status under the British constitution than actual election results produced by real sentient human voters resident in Scotland.  When I then pointed out that a Redfield & Wilton poll only this month showed a majority of the Scottish public want an independence referendum within the next year, he fell silent, although it does appear that opinion polls with the 'wrong' results also have considerably lower status under the British constitution than opinion polls with the 'right' results.  Bloody flexible constitution we've got, I must say.

Don't want to be accused of imperialism and/or colonialism?  It's really simple, guys: find for us the democratic mechanism by which Scotland can choose to leave the UK without external permission, and then by all means we can have a chat about your fragile feelings.

PS.  The funniest part of the whole exchange was when Sunder mused that a "member of my own tribe" would probably be having a quiet word with me to 'explain' why the director of a Labour think tank does actually get to decide the parameters of our discourse and that if we stray beyond those parameters we are being "racist".  I don't think he was aware that my "tribe" is now Alba, and that half the members of Alba joined specifically to get away from the insufferable SNP thought police represented by the Fiona Robertsons of this world.

*  *  *

I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2023 a few weeks ago, and the running total has now passed £1800.  The target figure is £8500, however, so there's still quite some distance to travel.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue by making a donation, please click HERE.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

In spite of Team Humza's optimistic attempts to use the heckler incident to turn their man into Gandhi, the polling evidence continues to suggest he's leading the SNP to big losses at the general election

The team around Humza Yousaf obviously felt they'd pulled off a masterstroke yesterday by quietly changing the definition of victory for whatever-they-think-they're-seeking-a-mandate-for-at-the-general-election ("we've narrowed it down to two!").  Now they'll claim to have won if they come out of the election with most seats, with no requirement for an absolute majority of the popular vote.  The radical end of the independence movement is furious with the SNP for re-embracing independence as primarily a way of saving seats at Westminster, but to the extent that's what's going on, it doesn't actually bug me.  As I've said many times, although independence will probably only happen after Yousaf is replaced as leader, there needs to be something left for his successor to inherit.  The situation may not be recoverable if, hypothetically, Kate Forbes were to take over after the general election with the SNP having just been reduced to six, or to two, Westminster seats.  So the self-interest of the careerists at Westminster and the interests of the independence cause do actually overlap to some degree, at least in this particular scenario.

However, what does not overlap is the self-interest of those MPs and Yousaf's own self-interest as leader, because the evidence continues to grow that his personal unpopularity is leading us all onto the rocks.  The latest straw in the wind is the Scottish subsample from the newest GB-wide YouGov poll, which shows the SNP slipping into second place: Labour 37%, SNP 32%, Conservatives 11%, Greens 10%, Liberal Democrats 5%, Reform UK 1%. YouGov's subsamples are of more interest than those from other firms because they seem to be correctly structured and weighted, meaning the only problem is the small sample size - which admittedly is still more than enough to produce highly misleading individual results.  So we'll have to wait to see whether this new result is a red herring or not, but it coincides with an Opinium poll showing the SNP slipping to an unusually low 2% of the GB-wide vote.

It's all very well shifting the goalposts to make "victory" easier, but if you then end up falling short of your new much lower target for a win, you're going to have egg all over your face.  Once again, I can only urge SNP parliamentarians and members to face up to the problem of the Yousaf leadership before it's too late.  If it's a straight choice between a little pain now in the shape of a second leadership election, and a lot of pain later in the shape of a crushing general election defeat, the decision ought to be a no-brainer.  Unfortunately, though, Team Humza are using the incident with the heckler yesterday (which won't have impressed the public in the slightest) to try to shore up their guy's position within the party by weaving a mythology that he is some sort of Gandhi figure.  I thought the way he handled the situation was interesting, and it certainly contrasted sharply with the approach to hecklers taken by Tony Blair - who tended to whip up Labour conferences into a state of righteous outrage by booming "go on, sir, make your protest, but just thank GOD you live in a free country where protest is allowed!", drowning out the hecklers' words as they were speedily manhandled out of the hall by bulky security-men, thus demonstrating powerfully that this is a country in which they do not in fact have a right to protest.  But perhaps the distinction between Yousaf and Blair is one without a difference, given that a BBC journalist later noted that Yousaf "helped" the heckler out of the hall - an interesting use of the word "helped" unless she actually wanted to leave.  The full-on invasion of her personal space didn't seem entirely solicited either.

*  *  *

I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2023 a few weeks ago, and the running total has now passed £1800.  The target figure is £8500, however, so there's still quite some distance to travel.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue by making a donation, please click HERE.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

The "Schrodinger's De Facto" announced by Yousaf today is a deliberately ambiguous and contradictory policy - but it may still represent a step forward *if* he can be held to it

The minutes immediately after Humza Yousaf reached the key part of his speech were rather comical, with the BBC claiming that he had announced a de facto independence referendum, LBC claiming that he had announced something even more radical than a de facto referendum, and Kenny "Devo or Death" Farquharson claiming that he had announced that the de facto referendum had been scrapped.  The confusion was, of course, wholly intentional.  Yousaf's team had callibrated the speech so that everyone would hear precisely what they wanted to hear, and if someone didn't have any particular preference, they would just hear one of the three possibilities roughly at random.  

The formulation the leadership have come up with is what happens when you try to please both the people who want the SNP to be seeking an outright mandate for independence, and the people who want the SNP to only be seeking yet another mandate for a Section 30 order that everyone knows will never be granted.  It's a pretence that you can seek both types of mandate at one and the same time, which of course you can't. But for as long as that pretence is the holding position, you can kind of say that all of the journalists were both right and wrong simultaneously.  What Yousaf has proposed can't really be described as a de facto referendum, because the retention of a conventional referendum as the preferred outcome of post-election negotiations with the UK Government implies that an election victory would not in itself be a sufficient mandate for independence.  But it also can't really be described as *not* being a de facto referendum, because if you clearly state in the SNP manifesto that a vote for the SNP is a vote for independence, and if the SNP win more than 50% of the vote, that would plainly constitute the first ever democratic mandate for independence.  The more fair-minded journalists down south would actually acknowledge that, and it could potentially build some pressure on the UK Government.  There would be a very clear contrast with earlier SNP election victories in the devolution era, when Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon and others always replied to the question "is this a vote in favour of independence?" with "no, it's a vote for an SNP government which will give people a choice on independence at a later stage".  

So it isn't a de facto, it isn't *not* a de facto - it's some sort of weird purgatory that hovers ambiguously in between the two concepts.  An alternative interpretation of how we've ended up here is that it wasn't a straight compromise between two warring camps, but instead a case of the opponents of a de facto referendum winning the leadership election and then completely changing their minds very soon afterwards due to the opinion poll evidence showing that independence is now far more popular than the SNP.  They had previously assumed that independence would be a drag on SNP support, and then suddenly realised the opposite was true, but because they had made such a song and dance about a de facto referendum being the worst idea since the "Ed Stone", they had to find a dignified way of making a U-turn.  So they hurriedly came up with a plan very similar to a de facto referendum, but called it something else as a face-saving exercise.  I don't think that interpretation really holds water, though, because this plan must have already been devised a couple of weeks ago when both Yousaf and Jamie Hepburn were persevering with the line that there needed to be a sustained supermajority in order to somehow force the UK Government into granting a Section 30 order.

Which of course flatly contradicts the apparent revelation today that Team Humza will define a mandate for independence as being a majority of seats, not a majority of the popular vote, meaning that they're actually setting a lower threshold for victory than Nicola Sturgeon did.  No obvious sign of joined-up thinking there.  Last year, I found myself among a small minority within the Alba Party, because I said that it was actually perfectly reasonable for Sturgeon to declare that a majority of votes would be required - I felt she was just stating the obvious, because nobody (not the public, not the London establishment, not the international community) would be remotely impressed by a mandate that fell short of that, and if she didn't acknowledge that truth upfront, the voters would think she was trying to win independence by tricksy or underhand means.  But most Alba people, all the way up to Alex Salmond, disagreed with me and felt strongly that a majority of seats should be sufficient for an independence mandate.  Logically they ought to now welcome the unexpected fact that Yousaf has decided they were right and Nicola Sturgeon was wrong, although he could have a hell of a job defending that position during the general election campaign.

To my mind, the biggest problem with what Yousaf has announced is that the creative ambiguity he's deliberately built in will be picked up on by voters, who won't believe that they would 'really' be voting for independence if they put their cross in the SNP box.  That could cancel out any benefit of trying to galvanise the independence vote, in a way that wouldn't have happened if Yousaf had simply stuck with the clarity of Sturgeon's de facto referendum message.  Nevertheless, if the SNP and other parties with similar language in their manifestos were to somehow pull off a popular vote majority, in spite of Yousaf making that majority less likely due to his own strategic missteps, it would be the first time in history that Scotland has voted in favour of independence, and for that reason I would have to say that today marks a step forward - provided that Yousaf doesn't backtrack on what he's said, which is always the million dollar question given how many cowardly U-turns the SNP leadership have performed since 2017.  I had thought that the way Nicola Sturgeon practically signed in blood the original de facto referendum policy meant that it couldn't be scrapped, and yet they still found a way of backtracking by the extreme method of changing leader.  

So nothing can be relied upon - although the alternative way of looking at it is that what happened today is evidence that it wasn't actually possible to reverse the Sturgeon plan after she announced it, or not in full anyway.  You pays your money and you takes your choice.