Thoughts on election strategy for the Alba Party

For very technical reasons to do with Alba's internal election rules, I was given an unexpected opportunity today to submit a few lines about my thoughts on the party's general election strategy.  Having done that, I thought I might as well share what I've written with Scot Goes Pop readers, because it will hopefully be of interest to anyone voting in the Membership Support Convener election, and the general NEC ballot that will follow at conference.

"My view on general election strategy is simple: whatever resources Alba commit to the election should be totally concentrated in the two constituencies we are defending, and perhaps also in support of Angus MacNeil in the Western Isles, to the extent he feels that would be helpful.  Success in those three constituencies, whether in the form of outright wins or substantial vote shares, constitutes by far the best opportunity to build Alba's profile and credibility, and to propel us towards a Holyrood breakthrough in 2026.  Putting up Westminster candidates in other constituencies would be a lose/lose, because it would deflect resources (especially human resources) away from the priority seats, and would risk creating a mythology among independence supporters that Alba were responsible for needless Labour and Tory victories due to a widespread split in the pro-indy vote."

I think we all know from the mood music that the above advice is unlikely to be heeded in full, but nevertheless it's my honest view and I believe the reasoning is fairly inescapable.  Alex Salmond has said that Alba's main strategic focus must be on Holyrood 2026 - that's entirely right, and with that in mind I really do struggle to see the logic of spreading our resources too thin with risky interventions in too great a number of seats in Westminster 2024, which of course is a first-past-the-post election.  However, the SNP have made any number of far bigger strategic missteps in recent years, so if Alba make a collective decision I'm dubious about, I'm sure I'll come to terms with it.

It would perhaps be easy to caricature my views as cautious and always veering towards the least belligerent strategy, but the reality is that if I had been on the NEC a few weeks ago I would have been strongly arguing for Alba to stand in the Rutherglen by-election, as long as there had been a big name candidate. And I'm not being Captain Hindsight in saying that, because I repeatedly said so at the time on this blog.  It was a missed opportunity to build Alba's profile and transform Alba's credibility, and again, I don't really understand the thinking behind the decision.

One thing I would add is that if I'm elected to the NEC, I would strive in the same way as I did in 2021-22 to be a voice of realism about where Alba truly stands in respect of public opinion, and the challenge it faces in reaching the level of support required to win a decent number of list seats in 2026.  As long-term readers will remember, I was a bit disturbed last year about an analysis of the local election results that I felt was somewhat divorced from reality.  There was a seductive argument being put around that any voter who had ranked an Alba candidate higher than any party other than the SNP could be counted as a likely Alba list voter, which to be blunt is nonsensical.  In many cases, these were people who had voted SNP 1, SNP 2, Alba 3, or even SNP 1, SNP 2, SNP 3, Alba 4.  The obvious likelihood is that they would have been "both votes SNP" in a Holyrood election, and yet they were being prayed in aid as an indication that Alba's "real" vote was much, much higher than 2%, that very substantial progress had been made since the Holyrood election the previous year, and that the party was already firmly on course for multiple list seats - all of which unfortunately was without foundation.  I believe that list seats

are absolutely attainable, but we're far more likely to get there if we're honest with ourselves about the distance we still need to travel.

Of course I entirely understand that in an attempt to generate momentum, it can sometimes make perfect sense to publicise poll results suggesting 20%+ of voters would consider voting Alba, and to point out the number of list seats that could theoretically translate into.  But the problem kicks in if we start to internalise that messaging and take it too literally ourselves, which I sometimes feel is exactly what is happening.  As I always point out, Archie Stirling commissioned a YouGov poll in 2007 which showed 20%+ of voters would consider voting for his new Scottish Voice party - but on election day a few weeks later, only 0.1% actually did so.  Archie Stirling-type polls count for little in the real world.  I don't want us to get into a groupthink belief that 20 list seats can be easily won through enthusiastic campaigning, and then wake up on the day after the election wondering how on earth we've ended up with zero again.

Six or eight seats, which might be won on around 6% of the national list vote, will be a Herculean effort.  That would be a tripling (in fact almost a quadrupling) of the Alba vote from 2021.  We need to have a hardheaded, rooted-in-reality think about where those extra votes might come from and how they can be won over.

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If you're a member of the Alba Party, and haven't yet voted in the party's internal elections, I'd be grateful if you'd consider giving me your first preference for Membership Support Convener.  The email link to vote should be in your inbox from just over a week ago.

Setback for "Scottish Labour" as first post-Rutherglen poll shows independence support at almost 50%

As I pointed out both before and after the Rutherglen by-election, the problem with any Labour victory was not what it would show us about public opinion, but the effect it would have on public opinion.  What happened was the nightmare scenario because the swing was far greater than expected and gave both the Scottish and London media the excuse they were dreaming of to paint the result as being of biblical significance.  There was a real danger that the early polling after Rutherglen would show a snowball effect with Labour pulling away into a big lead.  That hasn't happened, at least not in the first poll, although the big caveat is that fieldwork opened on the day after the by-election, so although most respondents would have heard about the result, the hysteria of the reporting might not have had its full effect by that point.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election (Savanta, 6th-11th October 2023):

SNP 35% (-3)

Labour 35% (+1)

Conservatives 19% (+2)

Liberal Democrats 6% (-1)

Seats projection (with changes from 2019 election): Labour 27 (+26), SNP 20 (-28), Conservatives 7 (+1), Liberal Democrats 5 (+1)

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 37% (-3)

Labour 33% (-)

Conservatives 18% (+2)

Liberal Democrats 6% (-2)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

Labour 29% (+1)

SNP 28% (-)

Conservatives 20% (+2)

Greens 13% (-)

Liberal Democrats 8% (-3)

Seats projection: SNP 42 (-22), Labour 39 (+17), Conservatives 24 (-7), Greens 16 (+8), Liberal Democrats 8 (+4)

My view remains that the SNP are in all sorts of trouble as far as the Westminster election is concerned, and that a poll like this may even exacerbate the problem by encouraging a "you know, we're not doing too badly in the circumstances, are we?" mindset, when in fact they really need to be taking drastic action to turn things around.  However, as far as Holyrood is concerned, it probably is fair to suggest that Sarwar's fan club may have got over-excited about the significance of Rutherglen.

And they certainly got over-excited about their belief that Scots were turning their backs on independence in favour of "real change" (a phrase that curiously seems to mean continued right-wing rule from London, ie. no change at all).

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 49% (-)

No 51% (-)

We're seeing a continued decoupling between the SNP and the Yes vote, which means by definition that a huge number of current Labour supporters actively support independence (excluding likely abstainers, roughly one-third of Labour voters in this poll would vote Yes). That may not make for the most stable of long-term relationships.

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If you're a member of the Alba Party, and haven't yet voted in the party's internal elections, I'd be grateful if you'd consider giving me your first preference for Membership Support Convener.  The email link to vote should be in your inbox from last Friday.

Lisa Cameron: what a pointless waste

The more I read about Lisa Cameron's thinking about her decision to join the Tory party, the more I think that a) she's extremely muddled, and b) she's thrown away a golden opportunity to advance the causes she really cares about.  On the muddled aspect of it, she can't seem to make up her mind whether she still supports independence or not.  She's given several different versions of that to the media.  I was quite tickled by the version in which she still supports independence in principle but doesn't trust the SNP to run an independent Scotland (rather similar to Stuart Campbell's claimed reasons for drifting towards voting for the Tories and away from supporting independence-in-practice), because that would have technically meant the Tories were stuck with their first ever pro-independence MP.  But presumably her new handlers quickly realised that would never do, and primed her with the new "oh I'm just so exhausted with nationalism" schtick.

The missed opportunity, though, is on her thoughts about intolerance within the SNP towards religion, and anti-abortion views in particular.  My own party Alba is by no means dominated by pro-life Christians, indeed if there's any dominant worldview within the party it's radical feminism.  But its tolerance towards the type of views Lisa Cameron espouses is beyond question - you need look no further than the identity of the Alba General Secretary.  By joining Alba, or even by following Angus MacNeil's example of becoming a non-partisan pro-independence MP, Ms Cameron could have really made a difference and opened some minds among her constituents about how it's possible to vote for independence without necessarily always voting for the SNP or signing up to the SNP leadership's increasingly narrow and intolerant worldview.

But who in East Kilbride will follow her to the Tories?  Who will even give her a hearing now?  All she's done is trash her own reputation, made herself a hate figure, and closed off any chance of a lasting legacy.  I get the impression it was almost wholly an emotional decision based partly on strategic flattery and lovebombing from the Tory side, and partly on a desire to maximise the sting of her own personal revenge against the SNP.  She probably should have followed the old advice to count very slowly to 1000 before finalising her decision.

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If you're a member of the Alba Party, and haven't yet voted in the party's internal elections, I'd be grateful if you'd consider giving me your first preference for Membership Support Convener.  The email link to vote should be in your inbox from last Friday.

Yousaf's craven backtracking: when a "vote for independence" somehow means a vote for more devolution or to give "consideration" to doing something later on, but only maybe

I wanted to wait until I had a chance to read through the full text of the SNP's new "strategy for winning independence" before passing comment.  Well, where to start.  Maybe with the sole positive part: Yousaf has not reversed his dramatic announcement from a few months ago that the first line of the SNP's election manifesto will state that a vote for the SNP is a vote for an independent Scotland.  That's important, because whatever the SNP's own views on whether the election is a de facto independence referendum, it at least gives voters the theoretical opportunity to use it as one.  They had no such opportunity in 2019 because the manifesto did not contain that language (which is why people are mistaken in thinking the SNP are asking for a mandate they already have and are not using).

When Yousaf became leader, I noted that it meant the SNP had ceased to be a party actively seeking to win independence for the first time since at least 1942.  His announcement about the content of the first line of the manifesto (which he was almost certainly forced into by circumstance) caused me to tentatively reverse that assessment, and I suppose because that now forms part of the finalised "strategy", I must concede that the SNP do remain an actively pro-independence party.  But it's a finely-balanced call, because almost everything else in the text seems designed to undermine the meaning and clarity of the manifesto's opening words.

How do you signal to voters, the UK Government and the international community that an SNP vote is not really a vote for independence, even though you say it is?  Well, how about by going on to say that a vote for the SNP is actually a vote for certain limited powers to be devolved, which would obviously be unnecessary and impossible if Scotland is already independent.  Or how about by saying that you want the power to hold a referendum transferred to Holyrood, which would be unnecessary if Scotland has already voted for independence in a meaningful way.  Or how about by dropping in the subtext that even if you get the power to hold a referendum, you might not use it any time soon, thus implying the 2024 manifesto is even less of an urgent attempt to win independence than its 2019 counterpart. Or how about by suggesting that if no progress is made as a result of an SNP victory, you might then give 'consideration' to using the 2026 Holyrood election as a de facto referendum, with the implication that - in spite of all appearances - the wording of the manifesto cannot really be construed as making the 2024 election a de facto referendum even if voters wish to use it as one.

That word "consideration" is the most snivelling part of the whole exercise, because at least if there had been a clear statement of intent to use 2026 as the de facto, we'd have a roadmap towards independence.  As it is, we instead have the very real prospect of continuing with election after election of just kicking the can a bit further down the road.

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If you're a member of the Alba Party, and haven't yet voted in the party's internal elections, I'd be grateful if you'd consider giving me your first preference for Membership Support Convener.  The email link to vote should be in your inbox from last Friday.

VIDEO: Vote James Kelly #1 for Alba's Membership Support Convener to democratically empower *all* party members

 

* Voting for Membership Support Convener opens TODAY and all current Alba Party members can vote.

* If I win, I will use my long experience as one of Scotland's leading pro-independence bloggers to engage with members creatively and re-engage with inactive members to make it less likely that they will drift away and leave the party.

* I will also try to help ease some of the communication problems that have bedevilled the party.

* I support the democratic empowerment of *all* Alba members.  Roughly half of the NEC are currently only elected by conference attendees - those voting rights should be extended to all members.  All other national committees should also be elected by the whole membership, which is not the case at present.  And all members should be able to vote on conference resolutions, regardless of whether they are in the hall or not - this is perfectly achievable by online vote.

* A fully democratised party will have a far better chance of attracting new members, who will know that they're not just joining a fan club or a chat show.

* Only full democratic empowerment of Alba members can protect against a "Sturgeon / Starmer scenario" in which a future new leader comes in and bypasses the members to take the party in a new direction, for example by putting independence on the backburner.  Once that happens it's too late to put the genie back in the bottle - the only protection is to get the structures right *before* it happens.

Vote James Kelly #1 for Alba's Membership Support Convener: Thoughts on how to radically democratise Alba's conference

As I said in yesterday's post, part of my reason for throwing my hat in the ring for the Membership Support Convener election is to hopefully kickstart a debate about thoroughly democratising the Alba Party's internal structures.  Of course if I was elected nothing would change automatically, but I'd at least be able to raise these issues and I'd have a mandate behind me to do so.  The most important thing in my view is that the ruling body of the party, the NEC, should become fully elected by the whole membership.  That's not the case at the moment, with only around half the spots on the NEC elected by the rank-and-file - and, as it happens, all of those positions were filled without a vote last year, meaning that the outgoing NEC has a very limited democratic mandate. But I think there is a broader test that ought to be applied and it goes beyond the issue of NEC elections.  Is there any actual good reason why the members should not be in full control?

As far as the NEC is concerned, the answer to that question is obviously no.  The only logical reason I can think of for not allowing most members to vote for ordinary members of the NEC is to give people an incentive to pay the registration fee to attend conference and thus gain voting "privileges", and that isn't a remotely good enough reason.  It's wrong as a matter of democratic principle, because people shouldn't have to pay extra for what should be their automatic democratic rights as members, and nor should the opportunity to purchase those rights be finite on a "first come, first served" basis.  But it's also completely needless, because I think we all know that enthusiasm for attending the conference would be just as great even if there was no exclusive right for attendees to elect ordinary members of the NEC.  That's not the main attraction by any means.

It's the same story for the other committees being elected by the tiny subset of members who have voting rights at National Council - is there any good reason why the wider membership couldn't be making that choice for themselves?  Of course not.  If it's just to give the National Council something to do, well...come on.  That's not more important than maximising the power of members, not by a long chalk.

As was pointed out on the comments section of the previous post, the real reason why voting rights of members have been limited in this way may be more to do with making the party more controllable by the leadership of the day.  Which may well be an innocent enough state of affairs for as long as we have a leadership we all approve of (which is very much the case at present) but becomes much more of a problem in the Starmer or Sturgeon scenario where a new leader takes over and then moves the party in a dramatically different direction without any prior indication that this was what they intended.  Once that happens, it can very quickly be checkmate if the internal democratic processes do not allow the members to reassert control.

Which brings me onto the question of conference, which is the supreme decision making body of the Alba Party.  We use the term "conference delegates" but of course that's not accurate - they're not delegated by anyone, they're simply members who have registered for conference on a first come, first served basis.  The best analogy would be the annual public meeting in a direct democracy such as the Swiss canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden, where any citizen can simply turn up and be a lawmaker for the day.  It's wonderfully empowering, but there is a limitation in Alba's case - numbers are artificially limited due to the size of the venue, and in any case we all know that there are people who would love to go but are simply unable to do so due to personal circumstances.  Again, we come back to the principle I suggested earlier: is there any good reason why all Alba members should not form part of the supreme decision making body of the party and thus have absolute control over the party's destiny?  Due to the current state of technology, the answer is inevitably and obviously no.  The conference is already livestreamed for the benefit of non-attendees and it would be incredibly easy to allow those non-attendees to take part in votes on resolutions electronically.  It wouldn't be all that difficult to go even further and have a properly hybrid conference with remote speakers, but voting rights are always the bottom line.  Extending voting at conference to all Alba members is so obviously in keeping with the logic of a conference open to all that it's surprising it hasn't already happened.

If I'm elected as Membership Support Convener, I will be trying to spark discussion on these issues of internal party democratisation, but I also want to prioritise engagement with members, particularly re-engagement with less active members, and to help resolve some of the communication difficulties between Alba members and the leadership that have plagued the party over its two-and-a-half year history.

One beauty of standing is that even if I don't win, I can use my campaign to raise awareness of issues that are troubling members, and that might make it more likely that they'll be resolved regardless of who is elected.  So if you're an Alba member and there's anything you'd like to draw to my attention, feel free to drop me a line at:  icehouse.250@gmail.com

Voting opens tomorrow (Friday) and all current Alba members can vote.  You should receive an email link to the online ballot when the vote opens.  It's a preferential voting system, so although I'm asking you to give me (James Kelly) your first preference, you can if you wish give me your second or third preference instead, and of course I'd be equally grateful for that!

Vote James Kelly #1 for Alba's Membership Support Convener to kickstart a conversation about moving to a democratic one-member, one vote system for electing the NEC

First of all, many thanks again to everyone who nominated me - there was a late flurry at the end which got me well past the required twenty mark.  So now I want to share my thinking with you for putting myself forward for Membership Support Convener, and how that thinking has crystallised over the last couple of years by simply observing the way things have panned out within Alba.  

As you might remember, when we were all starting with a fresh slate in 2021, I stood as a candidate for ordinary member of the NEC and was lucky enough to be elected. During that election process, a number of people complained to me about two things: a) that ordinary NEC members were not being elected by the rank-and-file membership but only by the small minority of members who effectively paid a premium fee to register for conference, and b) that other crucial elements of internal party democracy were being stripped back, for example by not having direct elections for party chair or party treasurer.  I certainly agreed with the point about NEC members and made clear that I would be supportive of a change to election by one-member-one-vote.  In all honesty, though, once I was actually on the NEC it was a very new experience for me - when I was a member of the SNP I had never held internal office even at branch level, so there was a process of adjustment as I got used to how everything worked, and raising what I knew would be highly controversial and unwelcome points slipped down my list of priorities.

But I think what happened last year puts beyond all doubt that the current election system is not fit for purpose and has to change.  National Office Bearers on the NEC (including the position I am currently standing for) are elected by all Alba members - but that doesn't count for much if there is only one candidate for each position and no election is held.  That is exactly what happened in 2022.  Not a single vote was received by the Leader, the Depute Leader, the Women's Convener, the Equalities Convener, the Organisation Convener, the Membership Support Convener or the Local Government Convener.  It's highly likely that all or most of the people who took or retained office would have been elected anyway - but the bottom line is that members had no choice to make.  With glorious irony, though, there then followed an extraordinarily competitive election for ordinary members of the NEC, but most Alba members had no say in that either.  From memory, it was only something in the region of 5% of the membership who were both eligible to vote as conference attendees and actually did so.  To add insult to injury, there were severe problems with the vote, so even some of the people who tried to vote didn't succeed.  There were separate ballots for female and male candidates, and some people submitted their form without twigging that they'd only voted in one of the ballots.  They then weren't able to make any changes and were effectively stuck with an unintended partial abstention.  As one of the unsuccessful candidates (I managed mid-table respectability in sixth place out of eleven on the male ballot, thus missing out on one of the four spots available), I didn't raise any complaint because it seemed highly unlikely to me that the glitches made any difference to the final result - all candidates would have been affected equally.  But from a voter's point of view, that sort of episode just isn't good enough.  If you have to pay extra to be able to vote, you certainly have every right to expect that your vote will be recorded.

So we ended up with an Alba ruling body that quite simply was not elected by the membership.  Half the people on it simply 'emerged', while the other half were only elected by a very small premium-paying selectorate.  That's part of the reason I felt it was important to stand for one of the National Office Bearer positions this year, because if I ensured that there was a minimum of one challenger to the incumbent, members would at least have some kind of choice for one spot on the NEC.  But I also felt it was important to give the whole Alba membership an opportunity to express support for one very simple proposition - that the entire ruling body of the Alba Party should be elected by the whole membership.  There is no justification for members being denied their right to choose the ordinary members of the NEC as well as the National Office Bearers.  Any party that does not allow its members to elect the ruling body is not a truly functioning internal democracy.  Frankly, I think the current system only looks vaguely justifiable to people (or to some people) on the basis that it's "slightly more democratic than the SNP, at least on paper", but that's not really good enough.  There's not much point in starting a new party unless the intention is to lead the way and create something genuinely superior to what has gone before.

I hesitate to use the phrase "de facto referendum" (ahem), but if I am elected Membership Support Convener on the basis I have just set out, I would claim that as strong evidence that the party membership as a whole is not satisfied with the current arrangements for electing the NEC and that there needs to at least be a conversation about moving to full one member, one vote (with the exception of the position of parliamentary group leader, who I would agree needs to be on the NEC as of right).  And hopefully I might help to start that conversation even if I am not elected, but obviously the more votes I receive, the more likely that will be to happen.  My own personal view, actually, is that all of the party's national committees should be elected by the whole membership, but the really important thing is that the ruling body should be democratically elected.

Our occasional commenter Keaton has made the point a number of times that even if the people arguing that Alba needs to totally replace the SNP as the leading party of independence get their way, Alba would then just turn into the SNP Mark II as a result of careerists joining the gravy train, and we'd end up back to square one with independence on the backburner.  What is the only protection against that danger?  The membership having total democratic control over their own party.  A party with constitutional structures that allow it to be "managed" by the leadership of the day will always be vulnerable to a takeover by cliques or vested interests, as we have seen in the SNP in recent years.

More broadly, I think I would bring a distinct perspective to bear as Membership Support Convener, because I am one of the people who due to personal circumstances haven't been able to attend in-person events regularly, so I know what it feels like to be part of an "invisible membership" who are on the outside looking in as an 'in-person core' effectively get on with (to all intents and purposes) being the party.  The other day I saw an NEC candidate being castigated on the basis that "we never see this guy, who the hell does he think he is putting himself forward?"  That attitude is a massive part of the problem.  There are a million and one good reasons why some people simply aren't able to pound the streets at by-elections or attend in-person LACU meetings, and telling those people they have no contribution to make is incredibly alienating, not to mention ableist.  This is 2023, folks, technology has advanced, and there are many ways that people can make a contribution if you would just allow them to do so. As Membership Support Convener, my first priority will be to re-engage that wider "inactive" membership and make them realise they have a genuine stake and a role.  Even if you truly believe that only in-person active members have any value, the goal should surely be to increase that base of active members, and you're not going to do that by saying to people "this is our party, not yours, so butt out".  It's also not the way to stop inactive members from ceasing to be members at all.

I think it's fair to say that internal online communications between the party and the membership have at times left a lot to be desired, and I have heard the word "shambolic" being used.  I'm no more perfect than anyone else, and I'm sure I would make mistakes and sometimes people would still feel dissatisfied, but nevertheless I do feel confident that with fifteen years of experience as one of Scotland's leading pro-independence bloggers, I would be able to find creative ways of engaging the party membership by email communications, and hopefully I could help ease some of these ongoing problems.  

The vote opens on Friday, and there will be a preferential voting system.  Obviously I'd ideally like you to give me your first preference vote, but if you don't want to do that, you also have the exciting opportunity to give me your second or third preference vote, and I'd be equally grateful for that!

More analysis of the Rutherglen & Hamilton West by-election outcome

Just a quick note to let you know I've written an analysis piece for The National about the by-election result and the changes I think the SNP will need to make in response.  You can read it HERE.

One of the most idiotic self-inflicted wounds in UK political history: in a by-election that might never have been held if the SNP hadn't campaigned for it, Yousaf suffers crushing defeat that calls his future as leader into question

Rutherglen & Hamilton West by-election result:

Labour 58.6% (+24.1)

SNP 27.5% (-16.7)

Conservatives 3.9% (-11.1)

Liberal Democrats 2.9% (-2.3)

Greens 2.0% (n/a)

Reform UK 1.3% (n/a)

Scottish Family Party 1.0% (n/a)

Scottish Socialist Party 0.8% (n/a)

Independence for Scotland Party 0.7% (n/a)

Trade Union and Socialist Coalition 0.6% (n/a)

Independent - Daly 0.2% (n/a)

Volt UK 0.2% (n/a)

Independent - Love 0.1% (n/a)

Independent - Cooke 0.0% (n/a)

I'm sometimes accused of being robotically hostile towards Humza Yousaf and never giving him credit where it is due, but I can honestly say that at the start of the night, when the gossip was about a narrowish Labour victory margin of around seven or eight points, my planned title for this blogpost was "Damp squib for Labour: they win Rutherglen but with underwhelming swing".  When it started looking as if the margin might be more like fifteen points, I was going to say it was the nightmare outcome, because the result was bad enough for the SNP to suggest that they were on course for defeat at the general election, but not quite bad enough to shock them into rethinking the leadership question.  But I can only react to the numbers that are actually in front of us, and they are truly shocking for Yousaf.  Very few people saw a 30+ point Labour victory coming.

It should never be forgotten that this was a needless by-election that the SNP played a key role in bringing about.  There was previously a pro-independence MP in place and she would have stayed there until the general election if the recall petition had failed, which came closer to happening than expected.  It's impossible to know whether the SNP swung the balance with their decision to actively campaign alongside Labour to persuade people to sign the petition, but the possibility can't be ruled out.  If so, the SNP leadership were the authors of this calamity in a very literal sense.

I've seen people trying to argue this morning that all that's happened is that Labour have turned out their voters from 2019 whereas three-quarters of SNP voters from 2019 stayed at home.  I mean, come on.  Differential turnout will have been a factor but it simply doesn't occur at that scale.  There will have been plenty of Labour voters who didn't show up for this low-turnout election, meaning there will have been a substantial shift of votes from SNP to Labour, and indeed from Tory to Labour.

It's a sign of just how poor the politicians were at 'reading' this result in advance that the Greens were suggesting it would show them on course for a second list seat in the region.  Instead they ended up with 2%, which wouldn't be winning them anything at all on the list.

If Yousaf survives this setback and remains leader (and it would be far better for the SNP if he doesn't) it's now essential that he brings his rivals Kate Forbes and Ash Regan back into the Scottish Government in senior positions, and introduces a more collective style of leadership.  Factional rule with a B Team government has been tried, and unsurprisingly it has failed.  But above all else Yousaf needs to start convincing voters that a vote for the SNP in the general election will directly lead to Scotland becoming an independent country.  Anecdotally, the reports from Rutherglen suggested that pro-independence voters were drifting to Labour because they felt that independence was no longer really on offer to them.

Possible benchmarks for Rutherglen?

No matter what the result tonight, someone will pop up and say "oooh, you can't read too much into by-elections, voting patterns are different for by-elections".  Which spectacularly misses the point, because by-elections are important not because of what they show about public opinion, but because of the effect that they have on public opinion.  The most celebrated by-election results, like Hamilton 1967 and Govan 1973, produced extraordinary nationwide snowball effects that fed into successive general election results.

However, to produce a snowball effect, a by-election result would need to have the "wow" factor, and because there's such a strong expectation that Labour will win tonight, I'm not sure a narrow Labour victory would be enough to produce a game-changing form of momentum.  To get a sense of where expectations lie going into the by-election, I ran an unscientific Twitter prediction poll the other day, which produced the following results - 

SNP win: 30.2%

Labour win by 0-9 points: 43.0%

Labour win by 10-19 points: 18.6%

Labour win by 20+ points: 8.3%

I suspect the high percentage for an SNP win comes from people who aren't aware of the basic arithmetic of the situation, ie. that Rutherglen is an unusually favourable seat for Labour and that the SNP would generally only win it if they're in landslide territory nationally, which plainly they aren't.  Nevertheless there does seem to be a genuine perception that the SNP have reeled Labour in somewhat and a big Labour margin of victory is no longer on the cards.

That means the expectations game has produced dangers for the leaderships of both parties.  If the SNP win (which I really can't see happening), it could be the beginning of the end for Labour's chances of a comeback in Scotland next year.  But if Labour win by more than 20 points, which I'd suggest is a more plausible surprise than an SNP win, it could now be a sufficient shock to the system to raise big question marks over Humza Yousaf's future as leader.