Me versus Aye We Can - the (slightly edited) highlights

I sincerely apologise for doing this, but I've decided to enable comment moderation, at least for the time being. It's mainly the issue of swearing I'm concerned about - I certainly have no intention of censoring anyone for their political views. Does anyone know if there's a way to moderate individual words or phrases without deleting the whole comment? I don't think there is. Anyway for anyone unlucky enough (ahem) to miss the exchange between me and Aye We Can on the previous thread, here it is minus the one or two offending bits -

Aye We Can : I don’t think it’s Jeff that is being inconsistent here. He is just saying, having been elected on a Labour ticket, by voters who wanted a "representative" its not down to some provost to in effect turn all these voters into SNP ones because he's got the hump or seen the light.

The right, democratic, thing to do is to test his new found convictions at the polls - see if he still has a mandate, still represents the people that put him there in the first place.

Nothing to do with "systems" but representative principles, honour dare I say?. And applicable under any electoral system First past the post or any variant of PR you care to think of.

There was a councillor in on the SNP group in Glasgow a few months back who lost out in some internal vote (I think it was who was the local housing spokesman) and in a fit of pique defected to the Labour group. Then, I'm sure at Labour prompting, a condition of membership, he put out a lot of guff attacking the case for independence. But anyone with half a brain knew if he'd won the internal vote on his own career, independence would still be the best thing since slicked bread!

It’s stuff like this, McNulty, and dare I say the provost of Dundee that gets politics such a bad name.

These people, politicians in general ain’t anything other than representatives, 99 times out of 100 elected for one reason only - their party ticket. Resign and seek a new mandate on whatever ticket you care to choose. But if you don’t, don’t claim you are representing anyone except your own narrow personal interest, abusing the party system you so recently embraced.

Jeff 10 James 0 on this occasion I believe. you hung yourself by saying had it been an defector from the SNP to Labour you'd be demanding he resign!

Canavan and Margo forever - people with democratic credibility.

Freedom fighters!

Me : Aye We Can, feel free to argue against me, but please stick to arguing against what I actually said rather than what you wish I'd said! Please direct me to the bit where I said I'd be calling for a defector from the SNP to resign? I said the complete opposite of that!

And it's (to put it mildly) somewhat bizarre that you resorted to the examples of Dennis Canavan and Margo MacDonald, as they are in fact the two most 'abominable' examples of what you and Jeff so disapprove of - they both resigned their party whip without standing down to face re-election!

Seems to me in the Aye We Can rule-book, defections are 'courageous' and 'democratically credible' if you happen to like the person, and a outrage to democracy if you don't. Talk about having your cake and eating it!

Aye We Can : James you said in your blog post "and, incidentally, if an SNP councillor had just defected to Labour, yes I'd probably be enthusiastically joining in the invective against him or her, but I wouldn't be calling into question the system that allowed it to happen" - it kind or reads facing both ways to me (because its was Labour to SNP defection you ain’t "joining in the invective"? - I'd read "calling for their resignation" into this, as i think most reasonable people would) What were you saying? And I certainly don’t think SNP Tactical Voting, who you were attacking ever called "into question the system that allowed it to happen" - but you accuse me of misrepresenting?

Re Margo and Canavan. Canavan never ever stood as a Labour candidate for Holyrood but as an independent - from 1999 until his voluntary retiral in 2007. Genuine independent from start to finish.

Margo, I know it got messy in 2002-3, especially when Kenny McAskill and Fiona Hyslop started worrying about their personal career prospects and started playing dirty in an attempt to knock Margo down he SNP Lothians list. Was she expelled or did she resign? - she certainly would have been expelled had she hung on. Why? - for being too good, too popular. We all know what happened and why - even her executioners.

And we all know what happened in 2004 and 2007 - she won by a mile as an independent, making Kenny and Fiona looking pretty stupid. And effectively their personal ambitions cost the SNP a seat and with it one of their best assets. I know who should have been expelled - but they are now both Cabinet Secretaries. Just as well [Fiona] was high up that list - she couldne even win Linlithgow on a good day, when Angela Constance won Livingston and Bruce Crawford even won Stirling.

Me : Do you know what, life would be a lot simpler if, instead of 'reading things into' what I say, you just read what's actually there. That's what most 'reasonable' people do, and that's why they'd realise I was saying precisely what I appeared to be saying - that a system which allows elected politicians to switch allegiance is perfectly justifiable (and in fact desirable). That principle applies regardless of the party someone is defecting from or defecting to. When I said I'd be joining in the invective against an SNP defector, again I can only gently point out that was intended to mean exactly what it said. You'll have to direct me to the dictionary that defines 'joining in the invective' as 'demanding a resignation'.

You're completely splitting hairs over whether Margo MacDonald resigned the whip or was expelled. By declaring her intention to stand against the SNP she was by definition excluding herself from the parliamentary party - at which point she singularly failed to do what you claim all politicians should do if they have an ounce of integrity. She failed to stand down and seek immediate re-election. What a democratic outrage, eh?

And you've completely - and I suspect willfully - missed the point about Dennis Canavan. The issue is not his status at Holyrood but his status at Westminster. He left the Labour whip months before the Holyood election of 1999, but insisted on holding onto his Westminster seat as an independent all the way until the autumn of 2000. What a betrayal of his electorate who had voted for a Labour MP, eh?

As you seem to have a problem detecting my sarcasm - yes, the above was meant to be sarcastic. What Dennis and Margo did was in fact perfectly legitimate in a representative democratic system. The trouble for you is that, as soon as you accept that principle for those two ‘freedom fighters’, it’s rather difficult for you to say the same principle magically does not apply to other people you might happen to be less keen on.

Finally, on the subject of me misrepresenting Jeff – don’t be daft. After all, I went out of my way to note I had a high regard for him. He most certainly did call into question the system – he said politicians who switch sides must resign. That is contrary to the system we currently have, therefore Jeff was calling that system into question. To me that seems a fairly uncontroversial observation to make!

Representative democracy in action

I have the greatest respect for Jeff at SNP Tactical Voting - he's just about the only blogger I can think of who pulls off the trick of being openly partisan about his allegiance while being non-partisan in his analysis. But his tirade against the provost of Dundee city council for resigning the Labour whip and pledging to support an incoming SNP administration is somewhat baffling. Jeff deems it a "smack in the jaw for democracy" and declares that having being elected on a Labour ticket Councillor Letford has a "duty" to maintain that allegiance.

What Jeff appears to be arguing here is that a democratic system is one in which a candidate is elected not as an individual but as a party representative (or lobby fodder, to put it more brutally). But isn't that exactly the objection to the d'Hondt system that Jeff so detests? That candidates 'rejected' by the voters can still be elected as part of a party bloc? If individual accountability to the voters is to have any meaning, we have to accept that defections (and this isn't even a full defection) are an acceptable part of the political process. And, incidentally, if an SNP councillor had just defected to Labour, yes I'd probably be enthusiastically joining in the invective against him or her, but I wouldn't be calling into question the system that allowed it to happen. This is representative democracy doing precisely what it says on the tin.

Another poll puts Labour ahead for European election

It seems a highly improbable thing to do, but three months out from the event, STV have commissioned a poll asking solely about European Parliament voting intention. The results provide a degree of corroboration for the recent YouGov poll showing a Labour lead of seven points.

Labour 41%
SNP 30%
Conservatives 13%
Liberal Democrats 10%
Others 6%

There are of course a number of 'buts' here - some objective, some intuitive. The most obvious objection is that STV (perhaps for reasons of cost?) chose to commission Progressive Scottish Opinion, a firm that is not a member of the British Polling Council and that has a track record of inconsistency and unreliability. In the run-up to the 2007 Holyrood election, if memory serves me right PSO polls had the SNP 12% up one week, 3% behind the next, and 6% ahead the week after. A possible explanation for this is that PSO do not weight by past vote recall, as Mike Smithson points out tonight.

The intuitive objections are that the Conservatives are simply too low and Labour are too high for this poll to be believable. Labour received just 26% of the vote at the last European elections - OK, they were relatively unpopular during the immediate aftermath of the Iraq war, but does anyone seriously believe they're 15% more popular now? And whatever the Tories' ongoing difficulties in making a meaningful breakthrough in Scotland, I think we can safely assume that their share of the vote will be going up in June, not down.

My final observations are ones I've made before. Any poll for the European elections - even one conducted by a more credible company - should be taken with a heavy dose of salt at this stage. That's partly because turnout is likely to be almost absurdly low, which always increases the level of unpredictability. And secondly, history shows the PR list system results in the larger parties doing significantly less well than predicted, while fringe parties benefit from a rare moment on a more level playing-field.

My own guess - if Labour are ahead in June, their share of the vote will be in the low thirties at the absolute most.

SNP retain lead with ComRes

The main story from the latest UK-wide ComRes survey is further signs of Labour starting to nibble into the previously commanding Tory lead, but in the Scottish sub-sample there is also cheer for the SNP. The party has actually gained four points, although their overall lead is down to two due to a six-point rise for Labour. Here are the full figures -

SNP 33% (+4)
Labour 31% (+6)
Conservatives 19% (-3)
Liberal Democrats 12% (-4)
Others 5% (-4)

Just for a moment I was tempted to conclude this post with the words 'game over', but that would have been very very silly.

Wales warms to self-government

I (slightly wearily) had a look at the ICM website tonight on the off-chance that the detailed breakdown of their latest poll might have been made available a bit earlier than usual. No luck, needless to say. But I'm glad I looked, because what I did find instead was the details of a survey that was carried out a couple of weeks ago for BBC Wales on the subject of the future of the devolution settlement. Remarkably - and it has to be said, somewhat misguidedly - there are twice as many people in Wales who feel that the Welsh Assembly has the most influence over their country as those who (more realistically) think that Westminster still calls the most important shots. But perhaps more to the point, when asked which tier of government should hold the most influence, 64% said the Assembly and only 19% opted for Westminster. So much for the Welsh being more reluctant devolutionists than the Scots.

And when questioned about specifically how much power the Assembly should hold, 58% wanted more powers than there are at present - including no fewer than 15% who favoured outright independence.

Identifiably encouraging

David Maddox had a blog post on the Steamie earlier about party identification in Scotland, suggesting it was good news for Labour that they still led the SNP by 32% to 'just' 25% on this measure. His argument is based on the fact that this a healthier position than Labour currently enjoys on Holyrood voting intention. Although Maddox has a reputation for being an occasionally over-zealous Nat-basher, I don't think he was necessarily in propaganda mode here. However, given that the party identification figures don't change according to which tier of government people happen to be voting for at any given moment, it's hard to understand why he only applies this logic to Holyrood elections. With the SNP starting from a 21-point deficit at the last Westminster election, the fact that they are now only 7% behind Labour on party identification is hugely encouraging for the general election next year. And to be fair, Maddox helps prove this point in a later post linking to a chart that demonstrates the changing face of party identification in Scotland over the last few years - and confirms a significant closing of the gap between Labour and the SNP since June 2005.

SNP up eight points in Ipsos-Mori 'northern region' sub-sample

It seems slightly beside the point to return to discussing sub-samples of UK polls when we've just had a rare full-scale Scottish survey, but for the sake of completeness, here are the latest numbers from Ipsos-Mori. As it happens, they're unusually favourable for the SNP. The figures are based on all those certain to vote (I've excluded undecideds which for some reason isn't done in the published table) and is for the 'northern region', covering the whole of Scotland and northern England.

Conservatives 35% (-3)
Labour 35% (-2)
Liberal Democrats 13% (-4)
SNP 13% (+8)
Others 4% (-1)

Intriguingly the UK-wide figures show Labour narrowing the gap on the Tories markedly. That could perhaps offer a partial explanation of Labour's unexpected upswing in the YouGov Scottish poll at the weekend. Brown Bounce III?

The dream has died. Time to face facts - the SNP must now disband.

Until quite recently there was a feeling among many nationalists that this really was their moment. The Scottish government appeared to be very popular, Alex Salmond in particular being massively preferred as First Minister to all the varied potential alternatives. And, while it was far from clear whether an independence referendum bill could pass through parliament in this session, the SNP's seemingly commanding position made a second term in office all but inevitable, offering them another bite at the referendum cherry. By which time, the conventional wisdom went, the SNP would have built up their credibility still further, thus increasing the likelihood of a 'Yes' vote.

A cruel illusion.

On Sunday 15th March, a YouGov poll in the Sunday Times put an end to these childish fantasies forever. The numbers for the SNP were utterly devastating, leaving no realistic chance whatsoever of recovery even in the distant future. The collapse had occurred in every single aspect of voting preference - for the Scottish Parliament constituency ballot, support for the party had slumped from 33% at the 2007 Holyrood election to a dismal 35% today. On the list vote, support had similarly fallen from 31% to 32%. On the Westminster vote, support for the SNP had nosedived from 18% at the last election to a pathetic 27%. While for the European Parliament vote, support had plummeted from 20% in the last election to a frankly laughable 29% now.

Of course, there seems to be something in the nationalist mindset that leads us to clutch at straws, even in the face of such overwhelming evidence that the party is facing certain meltdown. A few misguided people pointed to the irrelevant detail that the SNP are still ahead on the constituency ballot, and only two points behind on the list. Some weirdly tried to suggest that the above figures showed an increase rather than a decrease in the SNP's support (shows you the desperate state of education in an SNP-run Scotland). Some resorted to the tired old argument that you can't draw too many conclusions from a single poll, especially not one that is - due to the standard margin of error of 3% - what the Americans would call a statistical tie on both ballots.

But thankfully we have Scotland's second most virile Alpha Male (affectionately known throughout the land as AM2 to distinguish him from the nation's undisputed leading Alpha Male Frank McAvennie) to force us to confront the cold, hard truth. This opinion poll is quite simply game over. In our heart of hearts, we all know it. Alex Salmond might as well just enjoy the dregs of his fleeting spell in office, for the return to power of the dream team of Iain Gray and Tavish Scott on a wave of public euphoria is now, quite simply, a scientifically proven certainty.

Facing such a hopeless future, Alex Salmond would be well-advised to take a leaf out of David Owen's book - and in so doing show some maturity by finally acknowledging the glorious unionist future Scotland is about to embark on - by simply proposing the party's immediate dissolution. What is there to gain by fighting on?

Just when I wasn't looking...

Oh dear. There was me busily speculating last night about what a full-scale Scottish poll might show, and I had rather spectacularly failed to notice that one had just been published under my nose! I suppose in one sense my instinct was right, as Labour remains ahead in Westminster voting intention (the gap is a little larger than I might have thought but not enormous) while the SNP retains a lead in the Holyrood constituency vote (albeit a narrow one). The surprise - and what the Sunday Times are delightedly, not to say utterly hysterically, crowing about - is Labour's lead in the list vote, which rather unusually places Labour ahead in the (always utterly meaningless) seat 'projection'.

There really is nothing for the SNP to panic about here - the party's raw percentages remain very high. As Alex Salmond pointed out this morning, on this poll their support has increased since the 2007 Holyrood election, and indeed they've led many recent opinion polls on lower percentages than this. So what we're left with is the mystery of an apparent massive Labour surge in Scotland at the expense of the Tories, at a time when the precise reverse is happening everywhere else in the UK. I'm not going to fall into the AM2 trap of saying that because the numbers seem implausible to me they must be wrong, but it will be intriguing to see if the next poll (if we're lucky enough to get one inside the next few months) corroborates these rather startling findings. Or to put it another way - I'm not convinced, but I stand ready to be proved wrong.

On one point I'm more confident, though - the European election figures from the poll (suggesting a Labour lead of seven points) can be discounted as fairly meaningless at this stage. The turnout for the European poll is typically so low that almost anything could happen - and that could be to the benefit of Labour (as in 2004) or to the SNP (as in 1999 and 1994).

YouGov sub-sample : Labour regains lead

In the Scottish sub-sample of the latest YouGov poll for the Sunday Times, Labour have returned to a seven-point lead over the SNP. However the SNP themselves have slipped only one point, with much of Labour's advance coming at the expense of the Conservatives, who are down six points to 15%. Here are the full figures -

Labour 39% (+7)
SNP 32% (-1)
Conservatives 15% (-6)
Liberal Democrats 9% (+1)
Others 5% (-1)

The general conclusion I draw from the recent sub-samples (with their inherent huge margin of error) is that a full-scale Scottish poll would probably show quite a close race between Labour and the SNP, hence the continual swapping between the two for first place. My hunch is that Labour would still have the slight edge - but remember we're talking solely about Westminster voting intentions here. On past form, it seems highly likely that the SNP retain a comfortable lead in the Holyrood voting intention.