Tonight's votes reveal that the SNP are not uncompromising Remain ultras - they just have red lines, which they've rightly stuck to

So a few quick thoughts on tonight's parliamentary votes.  I was surprised that all four motions were voted down, because with Labour whipping in favour of three of them it seemed likely that at least one would scrape through, or possibly two, or possibly even three.  But those three were all pretty close.

The customs union only proposal was defeated by three votes, with TIG and the DUP voting against, the SNP abstaining, and the Lib Dems splitting three ways.  Given the SNP's red lines, I wouldn't have thought there's any prospect of them switching to outright support for this motion if it comes back (and rightly so), although it could pass if either TIG or the DUP switch to abstaining.  It was so close to being a dead heat tonight that in theory it wouldn't actually need an entire party to switch - even just a couple of individual MPs changing their minds could swing the balance.  On the other hand, there would be nothing to stop the SNP voting against next time to make sure it doesn't pass.

The referendum proposal failed by just 12 votes, with the SNP, TIG and the Lib Dems all voting in favour, as you'd expect, and the DUP voting against.  It's much harder to see where the extra votes are going to come from to get this one over the line, because there is no party that is realistically going to reverse its position.  The closeness of tonight's vote seems a bit artificial in any case, because the Cabinet were instructed to abstain, and presumably they would break (either wholly or mostly) against a referendum if it ever came to a binding vote.

The Common Market 2.0 proposal, which is better described as the softest Brexit on offer tonight, was defeated by 21 votes, and strangely enough the SNP and TIG voted in opposite ways on this one - the SNP actively voted in favour and TIG actively voted against.  So Kenny "Devo or Death" Farquharson will be disappointed at this vivid demonstration that TIG, and not the SNP, are the real Remain ultras.  The SNP are perfectly prepared to compromise on a soft Brexit that is actually consistent with their red lines, which the customs union-only proposal is not.  Theoretically if TIG change sides on Common Market 2.0 it would pass by 1 vote, although a) it's hard to imagine that they will back off from their distinctively hardline stance, and b) there's no guarantee that everyone else will vote in exactly the same way if the motion does come back.  Once again, the Lib Dems were split three ways on this vote, which is a peculiar division on strategy and principle for a traditionally pro-European party.

The requirement-to-revoke proposal was doomed to defeat as soon as Labour declined to whip in favour of it, and sure enough it failed by 101 votes.  Keir Starmer will have lost a lot of friends tonight with his condescending (and frankly baffling) reply to Joanna Cherry when she challenged him on Labour's stance.

Having an interest in political history, I quite enjoyed watching Nick Boles theatrically announce his departure from the Conservative party and then physically walk away from the Tory benches.  I believe he's the first MP to cross the floor in that very literal sense since Christopher Brocklebank-Fowler defected from the Tories to the SDP in 1981.  (I said on Twitter that it was in 1982, but according to Wikipedia it happened a year earlier.)  There may have been a more recent example than that, but I can't think of one off the top of my head.  Although according to Boles' tweet, he's going to continue calling himself an "Independent Progressive Conservative" rather than joining a different party or group, so it remains to be seen whether he'll return to the Tory benches out of habit or sit with the opposition.

Either way, the Commons arithmetic has just got even tighter...

Conservatives 314
Labour 245
SNP 35
Independent Group 11
Liberal Democrats 11
DUP 10
Sinn Féin 7
Plaid Cymru 4
Greens 1
Independents 11

Excluding the abstentionist Sinn Féin, that works out as...

Conservatives + DUP: 324
Combined Opposition: 318

Even on the confidence and supply arrangement which the DUP happily ignore when it suits them, that's an effective government majority of just six.  A Labour win in the Newport West by-election is likely to reduce it to five.  In days of old, anything below ten wasn't really considered a "working majority" at all.  Whatever happens from here, a general election before this calendar year is out is surely going to be extremely hard to avoid.  This parliament is simply not viable.

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UPDATE: Just a passing thought - if Theresa May feels she has no option left but to seek a further Article 50 extension for the specific purpose of calling a general election, I wonder if we might end up going to the polls on 23rd May, ie. the same day on which the European elections would take place if they're held.  Probably the most effective way of minimising the embarrassment of having to hold European elections is to drown out coverage of them with a general election campaign. 

If both elections are on the same day, it would also hugely boost turnout for the Euro-election, which might prevent UKIP and Farage's new Brexit Party from reaping the benefits of a differential turnout.

In a post-ideological world, what brings politicians together in a common endeavour? Apparently, it's the name "Alexander".

You might remember that after the launch of the Independent Group a few weeks ago, Chris "in the works" Deerin penned a notorious article that revealed the breakaway Labour MPs understood full well that they would need a "different strategy in Scotland" and that they had even invited Ruth Davidson to be their leader.  Obviously they had made the schoolboy error of believing the journalistic propaganda that Davidson is some kind of "centrist" bridge-builder, rather than the tribalistic zealot we all know and love.  Having got nowhere with an obviously doomed Plan A, we now know what the wacky Plan B for a "different strategy in Scotland" is - and it looks suspiciously like putting four political has-beens in a room together and calling them a political party.

Today's Scotsman reveals that Labour siblings Douglas Alexander and Wendy Alexander (former Shadow Foreign Secretary and Scottish Labour leader respectively), their Lib Dem namesake Danny Alexander (former Chief Secretary to the Treasury), and the former Tory MEP Struan Stevenson, have all left their parties to form a loose new grouping known temporarily as "the Scottish Independents", which will now seek formal registration with the Electoral Commission as a fully-fledged party, with a permanent name to be determined.  The Scotsman piece is predictably breathless in portraying the new outfit as more "heavyweight" than the Independent Group, boasting as it does two former UK Cabinet ministers and a former party leader.  Well...up to a point, Lord Copper.  What matters far more is that none of them are current elected representatives, which makes the whole "breakaway" concept a bit phony and very easy for the general public to ignore.

Douglas Alexander, who appears to be the group's unofficial spokesman/leader, has innocently dismissed any suggestion that they are a Scottish front organisation for the Independent Group, but admits that they were "inspired" by the actions of Chuka and co, and that it would be "prudent" for the Independent Group and the Scottish Independents to avoid standing candidates against each other, and that "it may be appropriate to consider" a CDU-CSU type relationship.  Decoded, that appears to mean that in the unlikely event that the Scottish Independents get candidates elected as MPs, they would sit as part of the Independent Group in parliament, but would be free to pose as a nominally separate party in their occasional forays home and in election campaigns.

As you'd expect, Alexander has also provided some vacuous, waffly quotes about people from different political "traditions" coming together to break free from the shackles of "increasingly outdated ideologies", although it appears the one dated ideology that hasn't yet outlived its usefulness for him is rabid British nationalism.  You do have to wonder: if these self-styled centrists truly believe we're living in a post-ideological world, what is the common denominator that will in future bring politicians together under the same umbrella?  In this case 'having the same surname' seems to be the only obvious commonality - which must leave poor Struan Stevenson feeling like a second class citizen.

My ears pricked up when Alexander mentioned a specially commissioned YouGov poll that supposedly shows considerable public appetite for a new centrist, anti-independence party in Scotland.  I've managed to track the poll down in an obscure corner of the YouGov website, and you won't be surprised to hear that the results are not quite as Alexander portrays them - just 18% of respondents say they would "consider" voting for the Scottish Independents, while 52% would not.  That's strikingly close to the percentage of people who said in a similar poll back in 2007 that they would "consider" voting for Archie Stirling's Scottish Voice party.  If you've never heard of Scottish Voice, there's a good reason for that.

I was particularly tickled by this supplementary question...

There is currently a fashion for the names of new political parties to echo the names of their founders.  For instance, the French governing party En Marche has the same initials as Emmanuel Macron, and the new British party Change UK has the same initials as Chuka Umunna.  Which of the following names for Scotland's new party do you prefer?

DA Party: 4%
Alexandria: 7%
Alexanders the Great: 2%

I do not believe that the name should be a nod to the fact that two of the party's founders have the initials DA, or that three of them share the surname Alexander: 61%

I have to say the Alexanders would be well advised to listen to the public on this one.  If they're crazy enough to call themselves "DA Party", they'll be inevitably dubbed "yer da".  And as for "Alexanders the Great"...well, where do you even start?

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Just a quick note to let you know that you can see a sneak preview of my column for the latest issue of iScot, along with information on how to purchase a digital or print copy, by clicking HERE.

The Clackmannanshire result demonstrates the limits of unionist tactical voting

Local by-elections in Scotland are conducted by Single Transferable Vote (which to all intents and purposes functions like the Alternative Vote if only one councillor is being elected), meaning that the SNP's huge 9% lead over Labour in the first count in Clackmannanshire Central did not guarantee them victory.  Labour and the Tories had almost 52% of the first preference vote between them, which means that Labour would have won with a bit to spare if every Tory voter had ranked Labour higher than the SNP in their lower preferences.  In practice, it would have been obvious as soon as the result of the first count was announced that the SNP were going to hold on for the win.  Really big first preference leads are rarely overturned, due to the fact that a lot of voters don't bother using their lower preferences.  Nevertheless, it's striking just how few Tory voters took the action necessary to prevent an SNP victory.

When the Tory candidate was excluded, he had 447 votes.  More than two-thirds of those votes (68%) were non-transferable, while 25% went to Labour and 7% to the SNP - which means that more than one-fifth of Tory voters who expressed a preference between the SNP and Labour plumped for the SNP.  Admittedly these numbers are slightly complicated by the fact that the Tory transfers will have included a small handful of voters who backed UKIP, the Greens or the Lib Dems with their first preferences and then transferred to the Tories.  But of the 419 people who gave their first preferences to the Tories, an absolute maximum of 112 ended up in the Labour column on the decisive count.  If it's so hard to get Tory voters to give a lower preference to another unionist party even when it causes no harm to their first choice, you have to wonder how many of them would be prepared to tactically switch their one and only vote from Tory to Labour in a first-past-the-post general election if they live in a battleground SNP-Labour marginal seat.

The substantial minority of Tory voters who prefer SNP to Labour shouldn't be such a surprise.  In the 70s, it was taken as read that most Tory supporters would prefer to have an SNP MP if the only other alternative was a Labour MP, and that any Tory tactical voting would favour the SNP.  Given the leftward drift of Scottish Labour since the 2017 general election, the same logic would apply now if it weren't for the constitutional issue.  OK, the constitutional issue isn't going away any time soon, so Labour will remain the net beneficiaries of Tory tactical voting - but the greater ideological gulf between the two main London parties may mean that the benefit to Labour will be smaller in scale in any election this year than it was in 2017.

By the way, it's just as well that David Coburn has left his old party, because he would have been appalled at what UKIP voters did with their lower preferences yesterday.  Of those that transferred, 41% went to the SNP (answers on a postcard, please?), 41% went to the Tories and 18% went to Labour.

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So a couple of quick thoughts about the government's defeat on the third meaningful vote this afternoon.  There were 34 Tory rebels, but 6 of those were actually hardcore Remainers.  Even if every single Brexiteer Tory rebel had switched sides and backed the deal (in the realms of fantasy given that we're talking about the real die-hards), the government would still have been defeated by 2 votes.  So if Theresa May has any path at all to an improbable majority, it can only run through the Labour benches.  (Unless of course she considers a grand bargain with the SNP and offers Devo Max and/or a Section 30 order, but she's far too stubborn and unimaginative to contemplate that for even a micro-second.  All the same, though, today was the first time a meaningful vote could theoretically have gone the other way if the SNP had voted differently.)

Meanwhile, there are all sorts of contradictory rumours swirling around about what Theresa May's strategy is (the most plausible of which is that she doesn't actually know herself).  A few people have suggested that the government is plotting a run-off vote between the May deal and whatever emerges from the indicative votes process.  If anything does emerge from the indicative votes, it's likely to be a softer Brexit, which would force the Brexiteers to back the May deal in the run-off.  I don't see how that sort of jiggery-pokery would work, though, because it would just strengthen the Brexiteers' resolve to subsequently vote against the legislation required to implement the deal.  So unless Labour change their attitude to the deal, we'd just end up back where we started after a slight detour.

As Ruth Davidson would say, "Well done, Clacks!" - SNP storm past Labour to win bellwether by-election

In the aftermath of the 2017 general election, there was a string of local by-elections in former Labour heartland areas in which the SNP suffered swings to Labour that were significantly in excess of anything the national opinion polls would have led us to expect.  The obvious concern was that there were regional trends going on beneath the radar that could create a nasty shock at the next general election, especially given that there are so many ultra-marginal SNP-Labour marginal seats.  Yesterday's Clackmannanshire Central by-election was exactly the sort of contest where you might have expected to see that trend show up again, because it took place in a part of the central belt where Labour had once been completely dominant.  But this time the opposite happened - there was a hefty swing against Labour, and the SNP came from second place to win the seat.  (Technically it was an SNP hold, but that's just a quirk of the STV voting system - Labour won the popular vote in the ward in 2017.)

Clackmannanshire Central by-election result (28th March 2019):

SNP 40.9% (+2.6)
Labour 31.9% (-8.0)
Conservatives 19.8% (+3.2)
UKIP 3.3% (n/a)
Greens 2.5% (-2.6)
Liberal Democrats 1.7% (n/a)

That's a swing of 5.3% from Labour to SNP, which if extrapolated to the whole country for "just a bit of fun" would see Scottish Labour once again reduced to just one seat at Westminster (Ian Murray in Edinburgh South).  Which adds to the building impression that the storm clouds have now passed for the SNP in the former Labour heartlands - perhaps partly because of the impact of the Independent Group split, but mostly because of the sheer clarity of the SNP's message on Brexit, which a hopelessly divided Labour can't hope to compete with at the moment.

As ever, not too much should be read into the increase in the Tory vote, because the Tories are traditionally better than other parties at getting their supporters to the polls in local by-elections.

By the way, I hope you'll appreciate my restraint, because I very, very nearly titled this blogpost 'SNP crack it in Clacks as Leonard's lousy Labour languish limply'.

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It's often said that a No Deal exit "can't happen" because the House of Commons wouldn't ever allow it to.  I don't agree with that - for as long as No Deal remains the default outcome in both domestic and EU law, it has to be taken seriously as a real possibility.  Nevertheless, the indicative votes on Wednesday night did once again prove that there is a massive natural majority in the Commons against No Deal, which was voted down by 400 votes to 160.  But probably equally important, and certainly far more astonishing, is the fact that Tory MPs voted in favour of the catastrophe of a No Deal exit in just two weeks from now by an overwhelming majority of 157 to 94.  That helpfully illustrates why no Tory government can deliver a soft Brexit regardless of parliament's wishes - it would split the party apart, probably quite literally.  Brexiteer ringleader Steve Baker has already been openly threatening to resign the Tory whip.  And maybe we're also seeing cause for scepticism that the Tories would do as well in a snap general election as the polls currently suggest - they've basically turned into UKIP, and there's a reason why UKIP have never won a general election.

In other circumstances we'd be shocked to learn that one Scottish Tory MP voted for No Deal, and that four others abstained on the subject.  But compared to their colleagues south of the border, that makes them look like a relatively Remainy bunch - perhaps because they simply have to be for reasons of self-preservation in a very Remain country.  And one of the four abstentions wasn't meaningful anyway, because as a Cabinet minister David Mundell was instructed to abstain on every vote.  (20 Cabinet abstentions also put the relative closeness of the vote on a second referendum into perspective.)

Westminster rocked as the SNP at last exercise a decisive role in the hung parliament

When the SNP lost 19 of their 54 seats at the 2017 election, one of the saving graces was that it seemed logical they would exercise far more influence with 35 seats in a hung parliament than they had done with 54 seats in a parliament with a Tory majority.  They were still comfortably the third largest party, and we imagined Theresa May and the Tory media sweating over which way they would vote in each close division.  But it hasn't really worked out that way, partly because the Tory-DUP alliance has often shut them out, and partly because May is so intransigent on the subject of Scotland that there hasn't been any scope for bargaining - not even the whiff of an offer of a Section 30 order in return for SNP support on the meaningful votes, for instance.  So that's left the SNP taking an all-out opposition posture, which means they've been on the losing side most of the time - and even when they've been on the winning side nobody has credited them with swinging the balance, because their votes were just taken as read.

But the indicative votes tonight were a very different story.  The SNP had a genuine dilemma over how to vote on some of the motions (the ones that proposed different types of soft Brexit), and the decision they reached actually did determine the final outcome.  If they had voted for Kenneth Clarke's proposal for a customs union, that would have been the only option that secured a majority.  As it was they abstained, and the customs union idea was defeated along with the other seven motions.  So at last, after two years, here it is: the SNP taking advantage of a hung parliament to influence the destiny of the United Kingdom.

Kenny "Devo or Death" Farquharson is spitting synthetic fury about the way they jumped, but it makes perfect logical sense - if your objective is to remain in the EU, you have to try to prevent any proposition that falls well short of that from emerging as the most likely consensus.  (And as it happens, the Independent Group seem to have reached exactly the same conclusion - they actively voted against the Clarke motion.)  Even if the SNP now downgrade their objective to their previous preferred compromise of single market and customs union membership, it would still be logical not to vote for any option mentioning a customs union only, because doing so would increase the chances of parliament coalescing around a compromise that does not involve single market membership, and that would therefore be wholly inadequate.  And in respect of the ultimate goal of independence, it would from a tactical point of view be nonsensical to champion a compromise that you don't think is remotely good enough, if the first thing that will be said to you after it's delivered is:  "What are you complaining about?  We've given you exactly what you asked for.  You don't need an independence referendum now."

So a job well done - the SNP have demonstrated to the Westminster village that their voting power does pack a punch after all, and they've done so in a way that is consistent with their strategic aims.

Not in this day and age, unless someone drags us back

I've belatedly caught up with the blogpost Jason McCann wrote a couple of days ago in response to the eye-opening exchange I had with him and a couple of his friends from Ireland, which revealed the path of 'revolution' that they would like the Scottish pro-independence movement to go down.  Having had a quick skim through Jason's post, I wasn't going to bother responding, because it mostly covers ground that I've already dealt with in my own blogpost about the exchange.  However, I should have realised that Jason wouldn't have been able to resist saying something outrageous and deeply offensive about me personally, and sure enough, on closer inspection there it was.

"One pro-independence blogger even went as far as saying that the suggestion that this might actually happen was 'incitement' on the part of those suggesting it. Entrenching himself in this assertion, he went on to imply that the Irish background and the religious beliefs of those suggesting it need further interrogation – because, you know, Irish Catholics are inherently violent."

That's only a very marginally more polite version of the allegation he repeatedly made on Saturday morning that I am an "anti-Irish, anti-Catholic bigot".  I may as well just call a spade a spade here: of all the wild attacks that have been made on me over the years that I've been blogging, this is without doubt the most mind-bogglingly stupid one of all, because you only need to look at my name to guess with confidence that I am, just like Jason, a Roman Catholic of Irish decent.  If you go back far enough, I don't have any Scottish ancestry at all as far as I'm aware - it seems to be three-quarters Irish and one-quarter French-Canadian, and even the French-Canadian bit is firmly Catholic.  I still have relatives in Donegal, right on the edge of the Gaeltacht, that my family are vaguely in contact with - I visited them when I was nineteen, and they told me to my surprise that my dad used to spend his summers there.

Essentially Jason is accusing me of an extreme form of self-loathing.  If he wants to make such an improbable charge stick, he'll have to flesh out what he thinks my motivations could possibly be.

Needless to say, Jason's claim that I "implied" that Irish people from my own religious denomination are "inherently violent" is a downright and intentional lie.  All I did was state that Ireland has a recent history of political and communal violence and Scotland does not.  That was simply a statement of plain, irrefutable truth, and it was not said to make anyone feel uncomfortable - although the fact that it seems to have had that effect on Jason may well be because of the sensitivities he feels over his current membership of a political party that supported violence during the Troubles.  I don't criticise him for his affiliation - indeed, if I lived in Northern Ireland, it's not impossible that I'd vote for Sinn Féin myself (it would be a difficult choice between them and the SDLP).  But if I did so, it would be in spite of their pre-1994 history, not because of it.  I wonder if Jason can say the same?  That's merely a question, but it's not an unreasonable one given the stridency of his views about Irish history and the cue that he believes Scotland should take from it.

The other obvious point here is that my reference to the fact of communal violence in recent Irish history cannot possibly be taken to imply a specific criticism of Catholics, because that violence was - as everyone knows - committed by both Catholics and Protestants.

The rest of Jason's post is basically a warning to us all not to be naive about the possibility of British state violence, and a reminder of the occasions when people in various countries have incorrectly thought "it couldn't happen again, it can't happen here".  All I would say is that history is littered with people learning the wrong lessons from history.  If you take Jason's strictures to their logical conclusion, you'd think that Germany is likely in the near future to elect a fascist government and invade Poland, just because it's happened once before.

Contrary to what Jason believes, I didn't actually 100% discount the possibility of future political violence in Scotland, but he might not like my verdict on how it would be most likely to happen.  I think we'd only get into dangerous territory if we listen to the siren voices of those on the fringes who whip up paranoid hysteria about the supposedly murderous intentions of the British state, and who try to get us to respond to that "threat" by developing a "revolutionary consciousness".

There is a conventional political path available to us that can take us to our desired destination.  Let's do ourselves a big favour by sticking to it.

The SNP will be eyeing up Stirling to ensure a net gain from the Tories at the next election

Media coverage of support for independence in opinion polls often seems to be a case of 'heads I win, tails you lose', and you'd have to say that Jeremy Corbyn suffers the same problem at the hands of a hostile press at UK-wide level.  When the Tories have a big lead it's portrayed as a catastrophe for Corbyn, but when the race is closer to being even-stevens he doesn't get any credit for it - the story swiftly changes to "the opposition party should have a big lead at a time when the Tories are in such disarray".  Well, for what's it's worth, we're hearing the latter narrative at the moment, because after the Tories opened up what looked like a potentially decisive lead in the aftermath of the Independence Group breakaway, they've now been pegged back.  Take, for example, the latest Opinium poll...

Britain-wide voting intentions (Opinium):

Conservatives 36% (-2)
Labour 35% (+1)
UKIP 9% (+1)
Liberal Democrats 7% (-1)
SNP 5% (n/c)
Greens 4% (+1)
Plaid Cymru 1% (n/c)

Scottish subsample: SNP 46%, Conservatives 26%, Labour 17%, UKIP 6%, Liberal Democrats 4%, Greens 1%

It's not that Labour have really recovered from their post-breakaway slump, it's more that disgusted Brexiteer voters have turned away from the Tories (at least for the time being) and towards UKIP.  I suppose some would argue that once an election campaign is underway, the Tories would be able to squeeze the UKIP vote, but that's not necessarily a silver bullet, because there's a significant Green vote there for Labour to squeeze as well.

I said recently that the fallout from the Independent Group breakaway had left the SNP almost assured of victory in Scotland at the next Westminster election.  That's probably still correct, because Scottish Labour have too much of a deficit to realistically make up.  Nevertheless, if Labour start the election campaign within striking distance of the Tories at UK level, there would be more cause for concern for the SNP, because any momentum for Corbyn in England could bring Labour back into the game in Scotland.  We all remember what happened in 2017 - the swing from SNP to Tory was not a massive surprise and was factored into our expectations, but the real problem was the late swing from SNP to Labour, which nobody had really seen coming and was purely caused by momentum generated south of the border.

One thing that became clear in 2017 is that the post-election media narrative is driven mainly by the expectations game and by direction of travel.  You had otherwise sensible commentators portraying a landslide SNP victory as a "disaster for Sturgeon" simply because the SNP had lost seats and underperformed expectations.  That provides an opportunity this time around, though, because 39 or 40 seats would have to be reported as a good result, even though exactly the same outcome would have been considered a setback two years ago.  I think it's particularly important that the direction of travel is not just seen to be towards the SNP but also against the Scottish Tories, ie. the SNP need at least a small net gain of seats from the Tories and not just from Labour.  At a minimum that would mean regaining Stirling and holding onto Perth & North Perthshire.

I don't think these are questions for the distant future either - I'm coming round to the idea that there is a greater than even chance of an election this year.  Stephen Bush said yesterday that the Prime Minister's implied threat of an election to avoid a soft Brexit doesn't make sense because there isn't enough time to hold an election before the 12th April cliff-edge.  But what we know about Theresa May is that she wants her legacy to be the delivery of Brexit, and she won't regard continued customs union and/or single market membership as being a 'real' Brexit.  If an impractical option like an immediate general election is the only way of salvaging that legacy, I could imagine her doing it.  Another possibility is that the deal will pass, and that whoever is Prime Minister for the next phase of negotiations will feel that an election is unavoidable if we don't want deadlock further down the road.

Chuka Umunna's group face wipeout in any snap general election

I know it's a bit cheeky of me to say this, given that it's only a week since I wrote an entire blogpost about a subsample, but don't pay too much attention to the excitement over the Ipsos-Mori subsample putting the SNP on 55%, Labour on 15% and the Tories on 12%.  Once undecideds and unlikely-to-votes were removed, the sample size was a tiny 60, and the results won't have been properly weighted anyway.  Of course if there had been a sustained pattern of subsamples putting the SNP well over 50%, then it might be significant, but that simply isn't the case.  High 30s and low 40s has been much more common.

What is more meaningful and interesting about the poll is the Britain-wide result, and in particular Ipsos-Mori's decision to follow the practice of Opinium and ComRes by including the Independent Group as an option on a standard voting intention question.  As has been the case in the Opinium and ComRes polls, the Independent Group performed significantly worse than in polls from other firms asking hypothetical questions that make a song and dance of reminding respondents that there is a new kid on the block.  But at least Opinium and ComRes have put the Independent Group somewhere between 4% and 8%.  Ipsos-Mori, by contrast, have them barely troubling the scorer.

Britain-wide voting intentions (Ipsos-Mori):

Conservatives 38%
Labour 34%
Liberal Democrats 8%
UKIP 7%
SNP 5%
Greens 4%
Independent Group 2%
Plaid Cymru 1%
Brexit Party 1%

We don't have to look far for an explanation for the divergence - Ipsos-Mori polled by telephone, whereas Opinium and ComRes used an online panel.  It's an open question as to whether telephone or online data collection produces more accurate results at present (online polls surprised everyone during the EU referendum by being closer to the final result), but it seems intuitively likely that telephone would at least be superior when it comes to testing support for the Independent Group.  Online panels are likely to have a disproportionate number of politically-engaged respondents who are more aware of the new proto-party's existence than the average person on the street.

So if the Independent Group really are on 2%, it's not hard to see how a snap general election would pose an existential threat for them - and that could be exactly where we're headed.  The theory seems to be that if parliament coalesces around a softer Brexit as a solution to the current crisis, the anti-Europeans on the Tory benches will sabotage it by bringing about an election - either by the direct means of voting against the government on a no confidence motion, or more likely by a show of strength that demonstrates the government will no longer be able to govern without their help.  Which could leave Chuka and co making panic-stricken do-or-die overtures to potential defectors - but how many Labour or Tory MPs are really going to throw their careers away a few weeks before an election that could secure their positions for another five years if they just sit tight?

This may prove to have been one of the most ill-timed breakaways in political history.

The boundary between constitutional nationalism and revolutionary nationalism

A few weeks ago, I defended Jason McCann on this blog, and I entirely stand by that, because there was no doubt at all that his views had been misrepresented by the Daily Mail, and that senior people in the SNP had treated him unjustly by taking the Mail's version as read.  Nevertheless, there is a significant philosophical divergence between myself and Jason, and I've been confronted with that over the last 48 hours or so.  A couple of his friends from Ireland intervened in an exchange I had with him, and made fairly unsubtle attempts to whip up paranoia in Scotland about the extreme lengths the British state will supposedly go to in order to prevent this country becoming independent.  There were suggestions that Irish history could repeat itself here with a Bloody Sunday-style massacre of innocent civilians on the streets, or the internment of independence supporters.  Jason didn't make those comments himself, but he made no secret that he approved of them.

Now, I'm not going to tell people that they shouldn't be saying these things, because I know we're all sick to the back teeth of the holier-than-thou (and doomed) attempts from certain quarters to lecture a diverse movement on the one and only correct way to "do Yes".  But all the same, my own personal opinion is that hysterical predictions about British state violence will always be counterproductive, because I truly believe that the majority of Scottish people are not idiots, and that they know perfectly well that the British army is not going to start murdering or interning Yessers, and that they will basically just stop listening when they hear that kind of thing.

Why is internment or a military massacre unthinkable in Scotland?  Partly because it isn't 1972 anymore, and even the British state has learned a few lessons over the last half-century about its past mistakes.  But the main reason is that there is no significant history of political or communal violence in Scotland within living memory, and that is something that very obviously sets us apart from Northern Ireland.  The army wouldn't even be present at a pro-independence march - it would be a police matter, not a military one.  And even if the army were present for some inexplicable reason, there would be no pretext for them to fire on civilians, because there is no threat of violence from a pro-indy paramilitary group to use as an excuse.  By the same token, there could be no conceivable pretext for internment.

(When I pointed out these key differences between Scotland and Northern Ireland, one of Jason's Irish friends suggested that I complacently believed Scotland was immune to the state violence meted out in Ireland in the 1970s, because I think the Irish are "savages" and we are not.  Needless to say I had not said or implied anything of the sort.  To put it mildly, it was disappointing to see Jason enthusiastically applaud such cynical debating tactics, and indeed chip in with very similar remarks of his own.)

Admittedly, it's an open question as to whether Scotland would remain free of political and communal violence if we were foolish enough to heed the counsel of Jason's friends, because they clearly disapprove of the basic nature of our independence movement, which is apparently "feart" and "compliant" and full of "bottlers".  Their advice was for us to educate ourselves on "revolutionary thought" and then "mobilise" and "resist" in some non-specified way.  To me, that sounded for all the world like incitement to violence - a suspicion that was angrily denied, although they were curiously reluctant to set my mind at rest by clarifying exactly what "mobilisation" and "resistance" actually did mean.  Eventually I managed to coax one of them into offering a manifesto of sorts...

"Step 1: Extract thumb from arse
Step 2: Take to the streets
Step 3: Occupy government buildings ...we find Post Offices a good option
Step 4: Publicise your *peaceful* occupation via independent print online and social media"

I don't know whether these people have been paying attention, because if the massive pro-indy marches and rallies of recent times don't qualify as "taking to the streets", I'm not quite sure what would.  (In fairness, Irish TV coverage of our marches probably isn't that extensive.)  As for the occupation of government buildings, it may or may not be possible to do that sort of thing peacefully, but it sure as hell isn't possible to do it legally, or without needless confrontation with the authorities, or without a backlash from the vast majority of the population who would think we had completely taken leave of our senses.  Independence has made itself credible in Scotland precisely because its proponents do not strut around like Lenin plotting to overthrow the Tsar of Russia.

That, in a nutshell, is the difference between the civic/constitutional nationalism of the SNP, and the revolutionary nationalism that is part of the DNA of Sinn Féin.  (I doubt if it's any coincidence that Jason is a member of Sinn Féin but not of the SNP.)   I've always thought the best crystallisation of the SNP's approach was the answer Roseanna Cunningham gave during the 1995 Perth and Kinross by-election campaign, when she was asked by the Lib Dem candidate how she could possibly swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen when she was passionately opposed to the institution of monarchy.  She simply pointed out that the Queen is the head of state of the United Kingdom.  That may seem a nonsensical reply for someone who doesn't want there to be a Queen or a United Kingdom, but in fact it's precisely what you would expect a constitutional nationalist to say.  By swearing allegiance to the legal head of state, you are symbolically committing yourself to work within the existing constitutional arrangements to bring about the radical change you seek. Sinn Féin, of course, take the polar opposite approach - they refuse to swear allegiance to the Queen and do not take up their seats in the House of Commons, a stance which symbolises their refusal to accept the legitimacy of the existing constitutional arrangements, and their belief that the north of Ireland is occupied territory.

So which approach is better - the SNP's or Sinn Féin's? You pays your money and you takes your choice, and Jason has made the point that Sinn Féin is the only party on these islands to have ever achieved independence from England. (That's historically dubious, because the present-day Sinn Féin is not a direct legal continuation of the original party, but nevertheless it's true that the original was very much a revolutionary organisation.)  But my view is that we squander the immaculately peaceable heritage of Scotland's national movement at our peril.  It's taken us a long, long way - not quite to our desired destination just yet, but a hell of a lot further than any of us would have thought possible even ten years ago.  And most importantly of all, it's done that without the trauma of 25 years of low-grade civil war.

As we've discussed before, there may eventually be a limit to the utility of constitutional nationalism if the UK government are foolish enough to close off each and every option to achieve independence by democratic means. At that point you'd have little option but to go over the head of domestic law and look to international law instead.  But the SNP wouldn't be the SNP if they didn't exhaust every realistic option within the UK constitutional framework first.  They have not yet done so.  And even if that moment arrives, I'm struggling to see how occupying government buildings is going to be of much help.

Would Theresa May even respect an indicative vote in favour of a softer Brexit?

So there are basically five possible outcomes to the current crisis -

1) May's deal passes
2) No Deal
3) Softer Brexit
4) People's Vote
5) Revocation of Article 50 without a referendum

We can more or less rule out option 5 completely, because the Tory and Labour leaderships are both opposed to revocation.  (Admittedly a Labour spokesperson was very careful the other day not to explicitly exclude the possibility, but that was probably just to avoid a backlash from passionate Remainers in the PLP and the party's rank-and-file.)  Option 4 isn't totally impossible but looks extremely improbable in the wake of a recent vote in the Commons in which an absolute majority of MPs actively voted against a second referendum.  It appears that there are more than enough committed Labour opponents of a referendum to offset any Tory supporters.

So that leaves the first three options as the only credible ones.  It's still possible that May's deal will pass next week thanks to a sort of pincer movement of cliff-edges - Remainers might be spooked by the very real possibility of No Deal, while Brexiteer Tories might be spooked by the very real possibility of a softer Brexit.  But if the deal doesn't pass at the third and final attempt, which still seems to be the expectation, it's murderously hard to see whether option 2 or option 3 becomes the more likely outcome.    Presumably MPs will at last seize control of the parliamentary timetable from the government and will hold a series of indicative votes, in which they might vote for a softer Brexit along the lines proposed by Jeremy Corbyn.  But Stephen Bush of the New Statesman, who history has shown has uncanny seer-like powers on matters such as this, seems to think there would only be a 50/50 chance of a Corbyn-type plan passing (in fact reading between the lines I get the impression that he thinks the chances may be a little less than 50/50).

And even if MPs express a preference for a softer Brexit, such a vote would not in the first instance be legally binding, and Theresa May would surely regard it as inconsistent with her government's red lines.  She has proved herself to be perfectly capable of completely ignoring the wishes of parliament when they are not binding, and as incumbent Prime Minister there would be various options open to her for frustrating the watering down of Brexit.  Which I suppose leads me to conclude that the risk of No Deal should be taken very seriously indeed, even if it's hard to quantify in percentage terms.

*  *  *

Just a passing thought: hasn't the time come for the SNP and the wider Yes movement to start pointing out to the public that rather a long time has passed since the first independence referendum?  Up to now, we've tended to stress the point that a lot of water has passed under the bridge since September 2014, that there has been a material change in circumstances and so on.  But we've reached the stage where it's also fair to say that five years is in itself a long period of time, even regardless of the huge change in circumstances.  Nobody is pretending that five years constitutes the fabled "generation", but it is the maximum amount of time allowed from one general election to another, it's longer than the entire duration of the First World War, and it's almost as long as the entire duration of the Second World War.  If you listened to the unionist parties, you'd think we had a referendum last week.