One-quarter of those planning to vote Labour are independence supporters, says new Survation poll

I wasn't sure if the problem was at my end, but there seemed to be something wrong with the Survation data tables yesterday and I couldn't find most of the results.  It looks like a new version has been uploaded today, and it contains lots of fascinating information.  

Firstly, the question of the hour: how many Yes voters have actually drifted to Labour and just how pro-independence is the current Labour vote?  Of people who would vote Yes in a new referendum (almost half the population, remember) and who are likely to vote in the general election, 70% have stuck with the SNP, 18% would vote Labour, 6% would vote Lib Dem and 3% would vote Conservative.  But Labour's own vote breaks down as 23.3% Yes, 63.4% No, or 26.9% Yes, 73.1% No if only those who know how they would vote in a referendum are taken into account.  That means Labour have a much more complicated coalition of support in constitutional terms than any other major party.  The backbone of their support is unionist, and presumably includes at least some people who have previously voted Tory for unionist reasons and who would not be happy if Labour proved to be anything but a reliably Brit Nat party (they needn't worry!).  But Labour's hopes of seat gains largely depend on retaining a substantial minority of independence supporters, who might yet be susceptible to wooing from the SNP with a genuine offer on independence - an offer that shows no sign of materialising, admittedly.  Tokenistic discussion papers on culture in an independent Scotland aren't going to cut it.

Intriguingly, the SNP may be gaining more traction than we thought by reminding people that they are much better placed than Labour to shut out the Tories.  When asked which party they would vote for if they wanted to wipe out the Tories in Scotland, respondents in the poll were almost evenly split between Labour (36%) and the SNP (34%).  

I couldn't find voting intention figures for Alba yesterday, but they're in the data tables and they're not too bad - Alba are on 2% of the Holyrood constituency vote and 3% of the Holyrood list vote.

Of the leaders' personal ratings, the two I couldn't find yesterday were both Alba politicians - Neale Hanvey and Ash Regan.  It turns out that Neale Hanvey is on -14 and Ash Regan is on -25.  Mr Hanvey's figure is affected by the unusually high percentage (39%) who haven't heard of him, while Ms Regan's surname is misspelled in the data tables as "Reagen", which may imply that the same misspelling occurred in the questionnaire when respondents were interviewed.  Here is how the two slot into the wider league table.  Some of the figures have been very slightly adjusted since yesterday due to rounding issues.

Net ratings of leading politicians:

Anas Sarwar (Labour): -4

Keir Starmer (Labour): -6

Richard Tice (Reform UK): -10

Stephen Flynn (SNP): -11

Alex Cole-Hamilton (Liberal Democrats): -13

Neale Hanvey (Alba): -14

Ed Davey (Liberal Democrats): -17

Patrick Harvie (Greens): -20

Lorna Slater (Greens): -21

Humza Yousaf (SNP): -21

Douglas Ross (Conservatives): -22

Ash Regan (Alba): -25

Rishi Sunak (Conservatives): -45

Alex Salmond (Alba): -47

As I noted yesterday, the public as a whole are opposed to the SNP remaining in coalition with the Greens, by a margin of 41% to 28%.  However, the data tables show that people who voted SNP at the 2019 general election take the opposite view, by a bigger margin of 52% to 22%.  The questions the SNP need to ask themselves, though, are just how scunnered is that 22%, and are those the very voters that need to be won back?

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Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

SNP lead holds steady in new Survation poll - and independence support continues to ride high

There's a new full-scale Scottish poll out from Survation, which contains numbers that would have looked disastrous for the SNP a few months ago.  However, in the context of changing expectations that have moved more and more in Labour's favour, and in particular in the context of the recent Norstat poll giving Labour an outright - albeit slender - lead, it's probably fair to say the SNP will be mightily relieved to find themselves still ahead with Survation.  Indeed, nothing much seems to have changed since the last Survation poll in August, which can be interpreted as a minor win for the SNP given how Labour have piled on massive GB-wide leads since then, and especially since Christmas.

Scottish voting intentions for the UK general election (Survation / True North, 23rd-25th January 2024):

SNP 36% (-1)

Labour 34% (-1)

Conservatives 16% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 8% (+2)

Seats projection (with changes from 2019 general election): SNP 23 (-25), Labour 23 (+22), Conservatives 6 (-), Liberal Democrats 5 (+1)

So the SNP remain firmly in the game, and it's still conceivable they could emerge against the odds as the largest party in Scotland in terms of both votes and seats, and if they're really lucky perhaps even cling on to their status as third largest party in the Commons ahead of the Liberal Democrats.  It's equally conceivable, though, that they could drop back a few more points over the course of the campaign, be punished by the magnifying effect of first-past-the-post, and suffer a near-extinction event that could leave them with as few as two seats.  For my money, to be truly competitive they'll need to recover to having some sort of cushion over Labour before Sunak calls the election, because the official campaign period could be very difficult for them due to saturation coverage of the UK-wide Labour v Tory horserace.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 48% (-)

No 52% (-)

This continues the pattern we've seen for almost a full year now, with independence support becoming decoupled from SNP support, and with the Yes vote thus proving largely immune to the SNP's troubles.  Significant numbers of pro-independence voters have drifted to Labour, but in most cases they haven't given up on independence in the process.

There is an impressive number of meaty supplementary questions in this poll, some on matters that are rarely asked about, and some with rather startling results.  Donald Trump would be horrified to discover the remarkable level of support for onshore wind farms among the Scottish public - 60% are in favour and only 15% are opposed.  On the other hand, I'm slightly horrified that there seems to be a narrow plurality in favour of new nuclear power stations, although I'm wondering if that's an artificial result due to the tortuous way the question was posed.  Repondents were asked if they support the Scottish Government's opposition to nuclear new-build, which not only confusingly asks about support for a negative, but also potentially mixes the whole matter up with people's feelings about the Yousaf administration.  But for what it's worth, only 32% 'support the opposition' to new nuclear, while 38% take the opposite view.

The poll once again offers evidence for the partial truth of that famous scene in Yes, Minister, in which Sir Humphrey explains to Bernard that it's possible for pollsters to produce completely opposite results on the same topic by framing the question in different ways.  By a whopping margin of 58% to 21%, respondents agree that the UK government were right to grant new oil and gas licences.  But when the same sample is instead asked about the Scottish Government's strategy presuming against new oil and gas, suddenly there's a split down the middle, with 32% agreeing with the presumption against oil and gas, and 35% disagreeing.

It's often lazily stated that Alex Salmond is the most unpopular political leader in Scotland, even though he's actually very rarely asked about in polls.  This poll is one of those very rare exceptions...

Net ratings of leading politicians:

Anas Sarwar (Labour): -4

Keir Starmer (Labour): -7

Richard Tice (Reform UK): -9

Stephen Flynn (SNP): -12

Alex Cole-Hamilton (Liberal Democrats): -13

Ed Davey (Liberal Democrats): -17

Patrick Harvie (Greens): -20

Lorna Slater (Greens): -21

Humza Yousaf (SNP): -22

Douglas Ross (Conservatives): -23

Rishi Sunak (Conservatives): -45

Alex Salmond (Alba): -46

So it turns out to be true that Mr Salmond is the least popular, but only just, and the gap between him and some of his sternest critics is not as huge as they would like you to believe.  And as I always point out, it doesn't necessarily follow that his unpopularity means Alba would be doing better with a different leader.  For a small party the biggest battle is getting noticed and the biggest danger is being ignored, and having a huge name like Mr Salmond as leader ensures that Alba make headlines in ways they would not otherwise do.

For an established party like the SNP, though, the equation is very different.  The fact that Yousaf is markedly less popular than both Starmer and Sarwar suggests the SNP are unnecessarily putting themselves at a disadvantage against Labour at the general election.  They could potentially reverse the problem by installing Kate Forbes as leader.

Rest assured that Richard Tice's seemingly not-too-bad rating is completely meaningless - it's caused by the fact that a disproportionate number of Scottish voters simply haven't heard of the man.

Incidentally, it looks like Neale Hanvey and Ash Regan were also asked about in the poll, but annoyingly I can't find their ratings in the data tables.  If anyone has more luck than I've had, please let me know.

If Kate Forbes does become First Minister this year, which is certainly a very real possibility after the general election if not before, the first thing she is likely to do is end the coalition with the Greens.  At face value, the poll supports the notion that she would be sensible to do so, with 41% opposing the SNP-Green deal and only 28% supporting it.  However, it's obviously important to see what SNP voters think, and again, I haven't yet been able to find those figures in the data tables.

Ms Forbes is by quite some distance the number one choice in this poll to replace Mr Yousaf, although just over half of respondents are unable or unwilling to express a view.

Preferences for next leader of the SNP:

Kate Forbes: 19%

Stephen Flynn: 7%

Angus Robertson: 5%

Mairi McAllan: 4%

Neil Gray: 3%

Keith Brown: 3%

Shona Robison: 2%

What leaps out here is how poorly Angus Robertson is polling in comparison to Kate Forbes, even though the two are probably roughly as well known as each other.  That could be a major problem for Mr Robertson if he does throw his hat in the ring this time.  Mairi McAllan has been punted as the other potential 'continuity candidate', and she's polling even worse than Mr Robertson, although at least she has the alibi of being much less well known at this stage than he is.

There are also Holyrood voting intention numbers in the poll...

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 35% (-4) 

Labour 31% (-3)

Conservatives 16% (-) 

Liberal Democrats 8% (-)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 31% (+1)

Labour 29% (-1)

Conservatives 16% (+1)

Greens 9% (-)

Liberal Democrats 9% (-)

Seats projection: SNP 44 (-20), Labour 41 (+19), Conservatives 22 (-9), Liberal Democrats 12 (+8), Greens 10 (+2)

Although the seats projection looks grim, arguably the popular vote figures are not too bad for the SNP in the context of the current lowered expectations.  They've lost support on the constituency ballot but that's been almost entirely offset by a similar drop for Labour - and surprisingly they've reopened a small lead on the list, having been level with Labour in the last Survation poll.

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Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Could the tide go out for Labour in Scotland?

I've rehearsed this point before, but the tragedy of the current situation is not that Labour have a very real chance of winning a majority in Scotland.  It's that Scotland is selling itself to Labour so cheaply.  There's no equivalent of the "French kiss" offer that finally brought to an end Bloc Québécois dominance.  Labour are not offering any constitutional change or progress for Scotland at all, and yet Scottish voters are seriously considering flocking back to them.

Think back to the commentary that followed the 2015 election when Labour lost Scotland.  They had been taking Scotland for granted for decades, and that complacency had finally caught up with them.  They had thought they could work with the Tories in the Better Together campaign with total impunity, and without any negative consequences to themselves, and they had been proved utterly wrong.  If they wanted to have any chance of recovering their former position, they would actually have to start listening to their ex-voters, particularly those who supported independence - you know, just as they listened to voters in Middle England in the 1990s and adjusted their policies in line with the aspirations of English voters.

And then think back to Labour's reaction to that commentary.  Listening to voters was something Labour does in England, not in Scotland.  It's the voters who are wrong in Scotland, not Labour.  It's Scottish voters who must recognise they need to change, not Labour.  And if the voters don't change, that's regrettable, but Labour losing elections would still be a price worth paying for being right about the Union.  (Can you imagine the same people, such as Ian Murray, saying that losing elections in England under Jeremy Corbyn was a pride worth paying for being right about democratic socialism?!)

The irony is that the voters in Scotland haven't actually changed - polls show that independence support is as high as ever.  Pro-independence voters are returning to Labour even though Labour are offering them nothing of what they want.  How fortunate it must feel to be a Scottish Labour candidate - you don't have to earn votes, you don't have to make painful policy sacrifices to win votes.  Unlike in England, no reflection or listening is required - you just do nothing and the votes still fly at you for no particular reason.

I suppose any country gets the politicians and politics it deserves, and if Scotland votes Labour in these circumstances, the lesson Labour will learn is that they can go back to treating Scotland with just as much contempt as they did prior to 2015, and can expect to keep being rewarded as they were in the old days.

However, there's nothing more important in politics than how reality matches up to expectations.  Objectively, the 2017 election was a superb result for the SNP, it was a landslide win on a par with Mrs Thatcher's in 1987, and yet it felt like a catastrophe because the SNP and others were expecting so much better.  Scottish Labour are now getting into the potentially dangerous position where they and others are starting to expect to win a majority - and if they fall short of that, the psychological impact could be immense.  They may have fallen in love with the idea of a Scottish comeback to a sufficient extent that being deprived of that might shock them enough to start thinking the unthinkable, and wondering if listening to Scottish voters might actually be necessary after all.

The problem is, of course, that the expectations of a Labour win are there for a very good reason - Labour already seem to have a slight lead in a contest which will be a 'home fixture' for themselves and an 'away fixture' for the SNP, and thus you'd think any further swing is more likely to be pro-Labour rather than pro-SNP.  However, there are a couple of caveats on that.  Firstly, pollsters are not unanimous in showing a Labour lead in Scotland - the most recent Ipsos poll showed a decent lead for the SNP, and as the only telephone pollster in Scotland, it's not inconceivable that Ipsos are right and others are wrong.  And secondly, even if Labour do have the small lead reported by Norstat, they've achieved it on the coat-tails of absolutely gargantuan leads over the Tories at GB level.  It's at least possible that if those GB leads slip, Labour could suffer a corresponding slip in Scotland, sufficient to nudge the SNP back into a small lead.  And while it's probably impossible for the Tories to overturn Labour's GB lead, it's certainly within the realms of imagination that the lead could be trimmed from, say, 20-25 points to 10-15.  That kind of partial reversal of the tide might yet be enough to make all the difference in Scotland.  

However, the SNP would be incredibly foolish to bank on that, and they really need to start considering major strategic changes of their own.

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Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Alba committee election results - this time I've been elected!

At this point I can now say a heartfelt thank you for the patience of non-Alba readers of this blog over the last few months while I was writing a disproportionate number of self-promotion posts for the Alba internal elections, which proved to be a longer process than anyone anticipated due to the re-run of the office bearer elections and the consequent postponement of the NEC elections.  I'm delighted and somewhat relieved to be able to report that my persistence did actually pay off in the end - over the weekend I was successfully elected to the Finance & Audit Committee, the Disciplinary Committee, and the Constitution Review Group.  The full list of everyone elected has now been published on the Alba website and can be found HERE (although you'll almost certainly need to be logged in).

I'm also pleased to report that there has been much more transparency than there was after the NEC ballot last month, and this time the full results, including every single stage of the complicated Single Transferable Vote count process, have been sent to the candidates.  It looks like the intention is that the same full information will be made available to all party members too, although at time of writing that hasn't happened yet.

So I'm returning to the Finance & Audit Committee after a gap of just over a year (I was previously on it as an NEC nominee), and I'm joining the Disciplinary Committee for the first time.  On the other hand, I'm no longer a member of the Appeals Committee, which I've been an elected member of since last February, because of course once I was elected to the Disciplinary Committee, I was no longer eligible to be a candidate for the Appeals Committee.  So of the four committees/groups I was a candidate for, the only one I missed out on was the Conference Committee - and in the immortal words that Meatloaf very nearly sang, "three out of four ain't bad".

Looking back over the last few weeks, my result in the Membership Support Convener election was probably better than I expected and I came within a whisker of being elected, my result in the ordinary NEC ballot was probably worse than I expected, and my result in these latest committee elections was probably better than I expected.  So the lesson is perhaps to always set preconceptions to one side, because each election is a fresh event and there's never any way of knowing which way it will go.

Congratulations to all of the other successful candidates, and I look forward to working with them over the coming year.

Westminster in crisis tonight as new Norstat poll shows support for independence has risen to around 50%

One of the minor wins for the unionist camp over the last couple of years is that they've somehow persuaded media organisations and some polling companies to revert to publishing independence poll numbers with Don't Knows left in.  That shouldn't be happening - the practice was completely abandoned in the run-up to the 2014 indyref, and for obvious reasons you would never see voting intention numbers for Holyrood or Westminster that don't exclude undecideds.  The purpose of the wheeze is presumably to give the false impression that support for independence is lower than it is - if you say, for example, that "Yes support is at 47%", most people will assume that means No support is at 53%, whereas 53% is in fact the combined figure for No and Don't Know.

In the case of the latest Norstat poll for the Sunday Times, the figures with Don't Knows stripped out haven't even been mentioned in the write-up at all, so all I can tell you is that a rough recalculation shows that the headline numbers must be either Yes 49%, No 51% or Yes 50%, No 50%, hence my use of the phrase "around 50%" in the title of this post.  It's extremely frustrating not to know for sure, but the fact that we don't can be assumed to be an intentional tactic.  The data tables will resolve the mystery in the fullness of time.

Should Scotland be an independent country?  (Norstat/Sunday Times, before exclusion of Don't Knows)

Yes 47% (+2)

No 48% (-1)

This is the first poll since Norstat took over Panelbase, so the percentage changes are measured from the last Panelbase poll.  If anything, Panelbase have tended to be one of the more No-friendly firms in recent years, which makes Yes practically drawing level all the more striking as a development.  From a personal point of view, given my history of commissioning polls from Panelbase for Scot Goes Pop, I'm sad to see that the Panelbase branding seems to have been dropped for this poll, and I'll be interested to discover whether the change is purely presentational or goes deeper than that.

While this is an unalloyed good news poll for the Yes movement, pretty much the opposite must be said for the SNP, who in Westminster terms have suffered their worst showing in a Panelbase/Norstat poll for many years.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election:

Labour 36%

SNP 33%

Conservatives 16%

Liberal Democrats 7%

Seats projection (with changes from 2019 general election): Labour 28 (+27), SNP 18 (-30), Conservatives 6 (-), Liberal Democrats 5 (+1)

Paradoxically, there's some comfort to be drawn from the fact that Humza Yousaf's net trust rating in the poll is -25, and Nicola Sturgeon's is almost as bad at -19, which would have been unthinkable until very recently.  That suggests there is a personal element to the SNP's current unpopularity, which at least in theory could be reversed with a change of leader.  Whereas Tory rebels look a bit odd plotting to bring down Rishi Sunak when there is no obvious election-winning replacement waiting in the wings, the SNP are fortunate enough to have a 'queen over the water' figure in the shape of Kate Forbes, who we know is more highly regarded with the public than Yousaf.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 36% (+1)

Labour 31% (-)

Conservatives 16% (-)

Liberal Democrats 7% (-)

Greens 5% (-2)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 30% (+1)

Labour 29% (-1)

Conservatives 19% (+1)

Greens 9% (-3)

Liberal Democrats 7% (-1)

Seats projection (with changes from 2021 election): SNP 47 (-17), Labour 40 (+18), Conservatives 24 (-7), Greens 10 (+2), Liberal Democrats 8 (+4)

The Sunday Times piece claims this projection would almost certainly result in a Labour-led government with Anas Sarwar as First Minister, even though the SNP would remain the largest party.  Although that's certainly possible, I'm not so sure.  It's one thing Labour governing from second place in local councils thanks to informal deals with the Tories, but at Holyrood level there would be a much stronger spotlight on what they were doing.  The deal with the Tories wouldn't be deniable because the public would require a comprehensible explanation for why the SNP, who "won" the election, were being frozen out of power, while Labour, who "lost" the election, were lording it as if they had won.  And a deal with the Tories which is not deniable is a massive problem for Labour, particularly with a view to future Westminster elections.  They may decide it's simply more trouble than it's worth.

Scot Goes Pop can only continue with your help: In order to commission future Scot Goes Pop polls, but also just to keep the blog going, I am reliant on generous donations from readers.  The simplest and quickest way to make a donation is via direct Paypal payment. Depending on the option you select from the menu, this can eliminate all fees, and the payment usually comes through instantly. My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you wish, you can add a note saying "for poll fundraiser" or "for general fundraiser".

Or if you prefer to make a donation by credit or debit card, this can be done via the GoFundMe fundraiser pages.  The poll fundraiser page can be found HERE.

Sensation as new Find Out Now poll shows clear majority of Scottish public want independence

Thank you to a commenter on the previous thread for alerting me to the fact that The National are reporting a new Find Out Now poll, commissioned by the Alba Party, which shows a Yes lead of four points. 

Should Scotland be an independent country?  (Find Out Now / Alba Party, 11th-24th January 2024)

Yes 52%

No 48%

In spite of the cynicism that greets any Find Out Now poll commissioned by a pro-independence client, the reality is that the results have to be regarded as credible - Find Out Now are affiliated to the British Polling Council and I know from direct personal experience that they take the BPC's rules and guidelines extremely seriously.  They have previously been commissioned to conduct an independence poll by a unionist newspaper, namely the Daily Express, and as with the subsequent polls for pro-independence clients, that one showed a Yes lead.  So perhaps the cynicism should really be directed at the fact that the Express didn't use them again after getting the "wrong" results (although no less a unionist figure than Blair McDougall did give them the seal of approval by commissioning a poll from them last year).

Nevertheless, the information about the new poll is limited at this stage - there's nothing yet on Find Out Now's website or Twitter account or even on Alba's own news page.  So I'll just be a tad cautious until I'm able to doublecheck that the standard independence question was asked (I expect it was, though) and also that the numbers in the data tables tally up with what we're seeing today.  There was a strange discrepancy between the data tables in the last Find Out Now poll and what had been published several days earlier by the client (Independent Voices) - there may well have been an innocent explanation for that, but hopefully this time the Yes lead will prove to be beyond dispute.

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I am standing tomorrow (Saturday) as a candidate for the Alba Party's Finance & Audit Committee, Disciplinary Committee, Appeals Committee, Conferences Committee and Constitutional Review Group.  If you're a National Council delegate I'd be grateful if you'd consider me (James Kelly) for a vote.  You can read more details HERE.

A reminder that you can vote James Kelly #1 for Alba's committees and Constitutional Review Group on Saturday at the party's National Council

So it's creeping up now - on Saturday, the Alba Party's next National Council will be taking place in Edinburgh, and among other things it will be electing members of four committees (Finance, Disciplinary, Appeals and Conferences) plus one special Constitutional Review Group.  I've put myself forward as a candidate for all five bodies, and yesterday I completed all the formalities, so I'll definitely be on the ballot form.  If you're a National Council delegate, I'd be grateful if you'd consider me for your votes - and remember it's a preferential voting system, so if you decide to give someone else your first preference vote, there's still the option of giving me your second, third or other lower preference vote, and I'd be equally grateful for that. And although only delegates can vote, there's nothing to stop rank-and-file members contacting their own LACU's delegates and expressing their views - the party belongs to the members, after all.

And that latter point is one of the reasons I'm so keen to be on the Constitutional Review Group.  The existence of that group will open up the possibility of future NEC elections being conducted by one member, one vote - something I will strongly support.  But I think that's the minimum that should happen - I also think the other committees up for election on Saturday should in future be elected by the whole party membership.  All members are subject to the party's disciplinary and appeals procedures, so there's an obvious stake for all members in being able to decide the composition of the Appeals and Disciplinary Committees.  National conference is the supreme decision-making body of the party and is open to all members (albeit on a first come, first served basis), so again, a Conferences Committee determining how conference is run is one that should be accountable to, and thus elected by, all members.

It's important not to fall into the trap of thinking that Alba is already very slightly more democratic than the SNP and is therefore democratic enough.  A new party should be aiming for something considerably more than a slight improvement on an older party with fossilised practices.  Remember it's less than a quarter of a century since the SNP last held a leadership election in which only delegates could vote, which seems incredible in retrospect.  Other internal election rules which survive in the SNP to the present day will seem outdated in due course, and actually Alba can help speed that process up by setting an example with an immaculate internal democracy.

There's also a practical reason why we need to outshine the SNP, though.  Imagine you're an independence supporter thinking of joining a political party, and you have to choose between a large party that runs the Scottish Government, that has third party status at Westminster and is at 35% in the opinion polls, and a small opposition party that only has a handful of elected representatives and is at 2% in the polls.  Why would you consider joining the smaller party?  One reason you might be tempted is if you can see the smaller party is the far more democratic of the two and you can be confident your voice will count for something.

Although I've focussed on the constitutional reform issues in the above paragraphs, I'm standing across the board for the various committees and I'm very keen to serve in any capacity.  I've been an elected member of the Appeals Committee for the last year, and before that I was on the Finance & Audit Committee in 2021-22 as an NEC nominee.  If I'm elected to any of the committees you can be sure of my integrity, my unshakeable commitment to independence, my belief in fairness and transparency, and my impatience with any form of cliquishness.

A reminder also that after National Council is over on Saturday, the same venue will host a conference on the way forward for Yes, and that event will be open to both rank-and-file Alba members and the wider public.

New Britain-wide YouGov poll offers some respite for the SNP

In the absence of more frequent Scottish polls (which I'm doing my level best to put right - fundraiser HERE!), the best available straw in the wind about what is going on with public opinion in election year comes from the Scottish subsamples in GB-wide YouGov polls - unlike most other firms, YouGov seem to structure and weight their subsamples correctly, although the margin of error is still huge due to the low sample size.  In spite of continuing to show a massive Britain-wide lead for Labour, the new poll - perhaps surprisingly - suggests the SNP may have made a small recovery.

GB-wide voting intentions (YouGov, 23rd-24th January 2024):

Labour 47% (-)

Conservatives 20% (-)

Reform UK 13% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 8% (-)

Greens 6% (-1)

SNP 4% (+1)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

Scottish subsample: SNP 37%, Labour 29%, Conservatives 16%, Liberal Democrats 6%, Reform UK 6%, Greens 3%

The reality of normal sampling variation means that Labour being a few points ahead in one subsample and the SNP being a few points ahead in the next subsample is perfectly consistent with a no change position, and the two parties remaining very closely matched.  But even that would be encouraging in one sense, because it would suggest Labour are not pulling away relentlessly.

Seat projections based on an individual subsample are a bit of a dubious exercise, but for what it's worth, it works out as SNP 36 (-12), Labour 13 (+12), Conservatives 5 (-1), Liberal Democrats 3 (-1).  That's pretty much the exact reverse of the projection from the previous subsample, illustrating how relatively small changes in the popular vote can be magnified by first-past-the-post and produce dramatic consequences in terms of seats.

The other big story of this poll is the astoundingly low seven-point gap (at GB level) between the Tories in second place and Reform UK in third.  That raises the intriguing question of whether Nigel Farage returning as Reform UK leader would be enough to see the Tories plummet to third in the polls.  

Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Could the SNP get some mileage out of the Flynn Factor?

As regular readers know, I think the SNP are approaching the coming general election in a completely hopeless way, with a pitch that amounts to a very unspecific "make Scotland's voice heard" which can't really hope to compete - either in terms of clarity or inspiration - with Labour's "vote for us on Thursday, get the Tories out by Friday". Really the SNP's best chance is to have a radical rethink of strategy and to galvanise pro-independence voters by actually giving them independence to vote for. Nevertheless, as you'll have seen I've still been trying to be constructive by suggesting ways the SNP could sharpen up their messaging if they insist on sticking with the much harder course.

Labour and the Tories are of course doing what they always do by feigning offence at the idea that people need to vote SNP for there to be a strong Scottish voice at Westminster - they say that Labour and Tory MPs would also be Scottish voices and would also be heard loudly.  One potentially effective way the SNP could challenge that notion is by pointing to Stephen Flynn's role at Prime Minister's Questions.  It's easy to be cynical and think that nobody watches PMQs, and it's true that the weekly event has a very small live audience, but it has a much wider reach through clips shown on news programmes and so on.  Most voters will thus be aware that the SNP in the shape of Flynn gets a regular opportunity to challenge and question Rishi Sunak.  They may also be rather impressed by the way Flynn conducts himself - not least yesterday, when he demanded that Sunak state clearly that what was seen in the ITV News footage of a Gazan civilian being murdered by the IDF constituted a war crime.  (A well-known interviewer, I think it might have been David Frost, once said that you can't force someone to answer a question they don't want to answer, but what you can do is use your follow-up to make sure viewers notice the question hasn't been answered and then make them wonder why, and Flynn very much followed that advice yesterday.)

Whether Labour and the Tories like it or not, Flynn's role does allow a Scottish voice to be heard at Westminster, and that role will only continue if the SNP do well enough at the general election - specifically if they hold onto third place by winning more seats than the Liberal Democrats do across the UK, which at the very least is likely to require that they remain the majority party in Scotland.  If Labour take over that majority status, there will be no equivalent role for a Scottish Labour MP at PMQs, and it's important that voters understand that.  Questions like the one yesterday about Gaza will simply go unasked in future.  The reality is that the Scottish Labour establishment wouldn't want Keir Starmer as PM being bothered with awkward questions about Israeli war crimes, so even if they had that opportunity they wouldn't take it.

So there we have a fairly clear-cut example of a Scottish voice being heard at Westminster, on subjects the Scottish people want raised, and in a way that does depend on SNP votes and seats.  The SNP possibly could get some mileage out of a sort of showreel of Flynn's "greatest hits", asking voters "do you really want to lose this?"

On a more negative note about Flynn, it's well known that he was one of the voices foolishly calling for independence to be sidelined in the SNP's election plans, so they could concentrate their campaigning on bread and butter issues.  In his latest interview for Representing Border he specified five issues that he thinks the general election will be fought on - 

* The cost of living crisis

* The economy

* Energy policy

* The constitution

* Migration

With the exception of "the constitution", which he probably just threw in tokenistically, how does he think any of those will work in the SNP's favour? Labour's mantra will be that if you want to do something about the economy or the cost of living crisis or whatever, you need a new government, which the SNP can't offer. 

What the SNP could be offering, though, is the radical change of independence, and that's what they'll need to do to get a hearing from voters.  But will that penny drop in time?  Ah hae ma doots.

Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Yousaf is odds-on to be gone within a year - but who might replace him?

I saw a screenshot of a newspaper article the other day - I can't find it now, but I think it might have been in the Press & Journal or something like that, and it suggested that Humza Yousaf is odds-on with a bookies' firm to be replaced as First Minister before the end of this calendar year, presumably on the assumption that the SNP will suffer losses at the general election and Yousaf will have to pay the penalty.  This prompted me to look up the odds for who might succeed him, but to my surprise I couldn't find any on the leading betting sites I initially checked.  That in itself should perhaps worry the SNP, because it might suggest that political observers south of the border are already semi-consciously "moving on" from the era of the SNP as the third party at Westminster.  If so, that could have more important consequences such as a downgrade in the status given to the SNP in the TV leaders' debates and so on.  They've got to somehow keep themselves looking as relevant as possible - frankly, junking the de facto referendum plan was one of the stupidest decisions they've ever made and the best thing they could do would be to simply reverse it.

Anyway, I eventually managed to find some SNP leadership odds on the website of McBookie, the Scottish firm which had been quoted by the newspaper article...

Kate Forbes 5/2

Mairi McAllan 5/1

Mhairi Black 5/1

Angus Robertson 6/1

Neil Gray 10/1

Ben Macpherson 12/1

Shona Robison 16/1

Jenny Gilruth 25/1

Joanna Cherry 25/1

Alex Salmond 50/1

Alyn Smith 50/1

Ian Blackford 50/1

Stephen Flynn 100/1

Michael Stewart 500/1

The renowned letter-writing impartial Liberal Democrat election expert Mike Smithson of Stormfront Lite fame always used to say that the reason political betting can be more profitable than sports betting is that bookies feel obliged to offer markets on politics, but often quote somewhat naive odds due to their own lack of knowledge on the subject, which can mean opportunities for genuine value bets if you look carefully for the mistakes.  I'd suggest that may be the case here, although I don't want to be too confident in saying that in case I end up costing anyone money.  

But on the face of it, Kate Forbes looks like the obvious value bet.  She's rightly favourite but the odds are still quite generous - you'd win two-and-a-half times whatever you stake.  I'm not suggesting she should be odds-on, because you have to factor in the chance that she might not stand at all for family reasons, and also that the continuity faction will be determined to stop her.  However, she's positioned herself perfectly as the change option, which is likely to capture the zeitgeist if the leadership election occurs after a general election humbling for the SNP.  I also can't see the kind of monstering she suffered last spring having the same kind of effect a second time - everyone knows all about her religious and social views now, so that's all factored in.  I reckon her true odds should be somewhere between evens and 2/1, so 5/2 looks a little tempting.

Mhairi Black, on the other hand, should be nowhere near 5/1, so I wouldn't touch that with a bargepole.  If McBookie are assuming a greater than 50% chance of a vacancy immediately after the general election, how can Black even stand?  She won't have a seat in any parliament at that point.  Mairi McAllan's position as joint second favourite will also raise a few eyebrows - I would guess the idea is that the Sturgeonites will unite behind a single champion as they did with Yousaf and that McAllan currently looks like the most telegenic option on offer.  But she's still awfully young and inexperienced.  Would she even want that weight upon her shoulders at such an early stage in her career?  Would potential backers not look to a more seasoned figure instead, when it really came down to it?

Alex Salmond is at 50/1, and you might wonder if it's unprecedented for a member of one party to be listed as a leadership contender for another party.  But in fact on the Betfair exchange Nigel Farage is currently listed at similar odds to be the next leader of the Conservative party.

Before we finish, a reminder that the Scot Goes Pop opinion poll fundraiser urgently needs a boost - let's not leave it in limbo for months.  It's important that not all Scottish opinion polling is commissioned by anti-independence clients - we need to make sure that occasionally questions are asked that Yes supporters want asked.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE.

However if you have a Paypal account the best way to donate is via direct Paypal payment, because that can totally eliminate fees depending on which option you select, and payment usually comes through instantly.  My Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk