I've been having an exchange on Twitter with Iain Macwhirter over the last 24 hours about the possibility of holding a consultative referendum on independence in the absence of a Section 30 order. I think it might be worth expanding on some of my points here, because 280 characters is a rather limiting format.
* First of all, there seems to be a perception that those of us who advocate a consultative referendum are arguing that it would somehow be superior to a Westminster-approved process. That's not the case at all. Of course a Section 30 order would be preferable, because it would dispense with any uncertainties caused by the possibility of a legal challenge, and would give voters greater confidence (albeit not absolute certainty) that their decision would be enacted. So by all means Nicola Sturgeon should renew her request for a Section 30 order and await Theresa May's answer. But if May once again says "no", a consultative referendum is an answer to the question "what then?" And there does actually have to be an answer to that question - it's not as if we're going to say "thank you so much for considering our request, Prime Minister, and we humbly accept your decision". And nor is it credible for us to keep seeking mandates for referendums at successive Holyrood elections if we know that the answer is still going to be "no" and if we have no intention of taking any further action.
* There also seems to be a perception that proposing a consultative referendum is synonymous with preparing the ground for UDI. That'll be news to Alex Salmond and John Swinney, because under their leadership the SNP went into no fewer than four Holyrood elections (1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011) committed to holding an independence referendum within the Scottish Parliament's existing powers, and without any requirement for a Section 30 order. The purpose of such a vote would not have been to provide a justification for UDI, but rather to secure a mandate for the Scottish government to enter into negotiations with the UK government on an independence settlement, which would then have been legislated for by strictly constitutional means. Of course in the event of a future Yes vote the ball would be in the UK government's court - no-one can force them to respect the Scottish people's decision or to negotiate. But I think Iain and others seriously underestimate just how difficult it would be for Westminster to completely ignore such a vote, as long as the turnout was at least respectable. Psychologically it would be a game-changing moment, and the eventual outcome (albeit perhaps with a good few twists and turns along the way) would most likely be that either the mandate would be respected, or a compromise would be reached involving a further referendum held on an agreed basis.
* When I mentioned the possibility of a consultative referendum functioning as a gateway to a later Westminster-approved referendum, Iain reacted incredulously and suggested this meant I was conceding that a Section 30 order would ultimately be "needed" anyway, and that my argument was therefore a circular one. Not at all: it would be infinitely preferable for the UK government to simply respect the outcome of a democratic vote, and that would very much be Plan A. But if they remain intransigent, we'd then have a political dispute that can only be resolved by negotiation and compromise. In other words, the Yes vote would then become very useful leverage.
* No matter how many times the claim is erroneously made, it is simply untrue to suggest that a consultative referendum would be "illegal", "non-legal" or "extra-legal". This is not Spain - holding a democratic vote is not a criminal act in the UK, as Brian Souter proved by holding a private referendum on Section 28 in the year 2000, and as Strathclyde Regional Council proved by holding a consultative referendum in 1994 on the UK government's proposals to remove control of water from local authorities. In fairness to him, Iain conceded that nobody would end up in jail for organising a referendum without a Section 30 order, but he insisted that "extra-legal" was appropriate language because the vote would not be legally binding. That's a peculiar argument, because of course the 2014 referendum was not legally binding either, even with a Section 30 order. David Cameron's government made a political commitment to respect a Yes vote, but there would have been no way of holding them to that commitment through the courts. And if you think the distinction between a political commitment and a binding decision is a meaningless one, just look at the Supreme Court's refusal to uphold the Sewel Convention only last year. There was actually a lot of concern in 2014 that a Yes vote might not necessarily lead to independence - I didn't share that view at the time, but the current uncertainty over whether Brexit will ever happen does illustrate the point rather nicely. So essentially the only difference between a consultative referendum and the 2014 vote is that this time we probably wouldn't have a political commitment in advance that the result would be respected, but we'd nevertheless still be looking for that commitment once the UK government are confronted with the reality of a Yes vote.
* I'm puzzled by the automatic assumption that a consultative referendum would be boycotted by unionists. The most likely way for a vote to come about would be for the Scottish Parliament to legislate for a Referendum Bill, which would then be probably be challenged in the Supreme Court, where it would either be upheld or struck down. Would unionist parties really boycott a referendum that had been upheld as the law of the land by the United Kingdom's highest court?
* The main thrust of Iain's argument is that, as a result of the Edinburgh Agreement, it is now the established "constitutional position" that a referendum can only happen as the result of a Section 30 order. That's self-evidently untrue, because the signing of the Edinburgh Agreement didn't in itself alter the British constitution one jot. It's fair to say it did create a political precedent, but the British constitution is comprised of constitutional law and not of political precedents. In any case, Theresa May has already binned the precedent of the Edinburgh Agreement by refusing to even enter into discussions on a Section 30 order when the elected Scottish Parliament voted to request one. Clearly if one precedent no longer applies, something else has to take its place.
When I challenged Iain on his claim that a Section 30-approved referendum is required by "the constitution", he prayed in aid the fact that the current policy of the SNP leadership is that a Section 30 order must be sought. I must say I'm bemused by the notion that SNP policy carries some kind of weight in British constitutional theory!
* Iain talked in reverential terms about "applying for a Section 30 order" as if that is a recognised constitutional procedure. As far as I can see, what happened in 2017 is that Nicola Sturgeon sent a letter and it was completely ignored, which tells a rather different story. There is pretty obviously no formal "application" process recognised by the UK government.
* As I understand it, Iain's alternative to a consultative referendum is to wait until 2021 and then seek yet another mandate for a referendum at the scheduled Scottish Parliament election. That implicitly suggests he expects the UK government to cave in to democratic pressure - and yet he ridiculed the idea that the democratic pressure of a Yes vote in a consultative referendum could possibly yield any results. That seems somewhat contradictory. Essentially, any non-UDI route to independence depends on the belief that London will not behave like Madrid, and will ultimately respond to the verdict of the voters. So the only question is which "democratic event" would be the most appropriate and effective way of securing the necessary leverage. The case for a consultative referendum is that it avoids a needlessly long delay that clearly would suit the UK government down to the ground, and it also avoids creating a precedent that London can simply say "no" to a mandate for a referendum at its own whim.
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Sunday, April 7, 2019
Is Theresa May unwittingly making independence even more likely by implicating Labour in a hard Brexit?
Brexit seems to be taking us into a game of three-dimensional chess. We have Jacob Rees-Mogg talking about how the UK could take advantage of a long Brexit delay by vetoing the EU budget or deeper integration, but that probably isn't what's in his mind at all - he's more likely hoping that decision-makers on the continent will hear his words and be spooked into thinking that British membership of the EU is more trouble than it's worth, and that they should just veto the extension. It's a long shot, but the ERG have got nothing to lose by trying. Meanwhile, Theresa May has turned her back on No Deal, not because she actually cares about the economic well-being of the country she leads, but apparently because of her obsession with "the precious union" and her belief that No Deal might lead to Scottish independence and/or a united Ireland.
Superficially, you can kind of see her point. I certainly believe that it's naive of some Yes supporters to think that the SNP's two key objectives of revoking Article 50 and securing independence somehow complement each other. In reality, revocation would probably lead to independence going on the backburner for a good few years. Indy is only an immediate issue because of Brexit - so take Brexit away and we'd almost inevitably be looking at a longer timescale. Intuitively you'd think that must also mean a hard Brexit makes independence more likely than a soft Brexit would, with No Deal offering the biggest opportunity of a breakthrough. But I'm not sure that's true anymore. It could be that the one thing worse for the precious union than No Deal is a compromise Brexit jointly authored and jointly delivered by Labour and Tory. It remains to be seen whether Corbyn and May can reach an agreement, and the odds are probably still against it, but if by any chance that happens it could be the death-knell for the union. By that stage, the entire London political establishment (with the unimportant exceptions of the Lib Dems and Change UK) would be equally implicated in a relatively hard Brexit that takes us out of the single market and ends freedom of movement. The SNP and independence would be the only game left in town for passionate Remainers.
In any case, I'm puzzled as to why Labour seem so tempted to close a deal, because it's surely obvious that there will be an incentive for budding Tory leadership contenders to pledge that they will rat on anything that is agreed with Corbyn. Labour support for the Withdrawal Agreement could end up being banked in return for absolutely nothing.
* * *
I'm glad to see the Greens keeping the SNP leadership honest on independence by insisting on a pre-2021 referendum in line with the current mandate. And it actually doesn't matter to me whether or not Iain Macwhirter is right that they're only doing so as a clever way of wooing SNP voters, because the fact that it makes such clear tactical sense for them is in itself a triumph for the Yes movement. It wasn't all that long ago that the Greens had an anti-independence co-leader in the shape of Robin Harper, and I used to genuinely worry (I recall writing about it on this blog) that they might abandon their support for independence after a No vote in the indyref. It's even more recently that the Greens were carefully positioning themselves as more moderate than the SNP on the Section 30 issue by stating that it would be irresponsible and unthinkable to hold a referendum without Westminster's agreement. The fact that they've swung the other way now is testament to the power of the "Yes constituency". Left-leaning politicians can no longer afford to ignore us and our aspirations if they want to be electorally successful. (Labour have been ignoring us for years, and look what's happened to them.)
"Boost for May" as Tory vote drops like a stone
Mike Smithson, known and loved by thousands of East Dunbartonshire residents as a keen letter-writing impartial Liberal Democrat election expert, surpassed himself the other day. After a parliamentary by-election in Newport West which saw the Tory vote plummet by 8%, Smithson's verdict in a Stormfront Lite headline was "Boost for May". What he meant was that there had been a technical swing from Labour to Tory because the Labour vote had fallen slightly further, but it seems rather heroic to claim a "boost" just because someone else is doing even worse than you are. Andrew Neil tried exactly the same game during the BBC's coverage of the vote, but for my money Labour's showing wasn't actually as bad as all that, or at least not in any way that could be considered unexpected. It's pretty common for the Labour vote to slump in low turnout by-elections when everyone knows (or think they know) the result in advance. OK, if this had been Tony Blair sweeping all before him in 1995 or 1996, there would have been a big swing to Labour, but we didn't need a by-election to tell us that Corbyn isn't in that sort of position. If there's a general election this year Labour will start with a credible chance, but they're certainly not the pre-anointed winners.
In any case, if it's supposed to be good for the Tories that their vote collapsed in Newport West but not by quite as much as Labour's, it's only reasonable to point out that the Britain-wide opinion polls tell the opposite story - both of the two main London parties are sharply down on where they were at the start of the year, but the Tories have been slipping much faster of late which by default has brought Labour back to more or less level-pegging. The latest YouGov poll is a prime example...
Conservatives 32% (-4)
Labour 31% (-2)
Liberal Democrats 12% (+1)
UKIP 7% (+3)
SNP / Plaid Cymru 6% (+1)
Brexit Party 5% (n/c)
Greens 4% (n/c)
Scottish subsample: SNP 48%, Conservatives 20%, Labour 18%, Liberal Democrats 5%, UKIP 3%, Brexit Party 3%, Greens 1%
The basement battle between the rump UKIP and Farage's new Brexit Party is genuinely fascinating. My guess is that if it was widely known that Farage and his closest colleagues have decamped to a new party, the vast bulk of the UKIP vote would follow them across, but instead we have a situation where a small group of obscure far-right politicians have quietly inherited a well-known political brand and are reaping the benefits of it. If the European elections go ahead (and it's overwhelmingly likely they will), the Brexit vote could well be split right down the middle. I know some people will say that doesn't really matter in a proportional representation election, but it absolutely does. In some electoral regions (including Scotland), it's likely that a split vote will leave both parties below the de facto threshold for representation. Hopefully by now David Coburn will have some alternative employment sorted out.
The usual health warning: no individual Scottish subsample should be taken too seriously. All the same, Scottish Labour must be a touch alarmed by just how frequently they've gone sub-20 recently.
In any case, if it's supposed to be good for the Tories that their vote collapsed in Newport West but not by quite as much as Labour's, it's only reasonable to point out that the Britain-wide opinion polls tell the opposite story - both of the two main London parties are sharply down on where they were at the start of the year, but the Tories have been slipping much faster of late which by default has brought Labour back to more or less level-pegging. The latest YouGov poll is a prime example...
Conservatives 32% (-4)
Labour 31% (-2)
Liberal Democrats 12% (+1)
UKIP 7% (+3)
SNP / Plaid Cymru 6% (+1)
Brexit Party 5% (n/c)
Greens 4% (n/c)
Scottish subsample: SNP 48%, Conservatives 20%, Labour 18%, Liberal Democrats 5%, UKIP 3%, Brexit Party 3%, Greens 1%
The basement battle between the rump UKIP and Farage's new Brexit Party is genuinely fascinating. My guess is that if it was widely known that Farage and his closest colleagues have decamped to a new party, the vast bulk of the UKIP vote would follow them across, but instead we have a situation where a small group of obscure far-right politicians have quietly inherited a well-known political brand and are reaping the benefits of it. If the European elections go ahead (and it's overwhelmingly likely they will), the Brexit vote could well be split right down the middle. I know some people will say that doesn't really matter in a proportional representation election, but it absolutely does. In some electoral regions (including Scotland), it's likely that a split vote will leave both parties below the de facto threshold for representation. Hopefully by now David Coburn will have some alternative employment sorted out.
The usual health warning: no individual Scottish subsample should be taken too seriously. All the same, Scottish Labour must be a touch alarmed by just how frequently they've gone sub-20 recently.
Saturday, April 6, 2019
Is there any more ridiculous sight than a Tory commentator using a dud poll to weave a world of illusion in which the "precious Union" is safe?
So just a quick postscript to the previous post about the ludicrous misreporting of the independence figures from the Progress Scotland poll. I was taking a peek at Conservative Home yesterday, and I stumbled across an article from the chap who mans their Colonial Desk (ie. he writes an occasional round-up of what might loosely be described as "news" from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland so that no-one else has to acknowledge the existence of a UK beyond England). Towards the bottom of the piece was a mention of a mysterious poll that purportedly shows a "collapse" in support for Scottish independence - and yes, it turns out that I was far too generous to the Sun newspaper the other day, because at the time I was only aware of an article in which they had falsely claimed that the poll shows a "drop" in Yes support. Thanks to ConHome, I now realise there was another one that really did claim the poll shows a "dramatic collapse" for Yes.
The reality, as you'll recall, is that the Progress Scotland poll asked about independence in a completely new way, meaning there are no baseline figures to measure trends from. It's literally impossible to tell from the poll whether support for independence has gone up, down, or stayed static. Claiming a "dramatic collapse" on that basis is rather akin to saying that Neil Armstrong was much fatter than the previous man to have walked on the moon. But our plucky ConHome correspondent wasn't about to let troublesome things like facts get in his way - oh no, he was perfectly content to accept the Sun's outlandish claims as genuine, and gleefully seized upon the poll as proof that the "fragile Union" narrative is actually a "myth". You reach the stage where all you can do is point and laugh at these people. If the only comfort blanket they've got is a tabloid newspaper telling porkies about an opinion poll, they're really not in a good place. It's no more or less risible than Anas Sarwar brandishing his famous "top secret document" prop when all else failed.
Someone called "CMac11" left a comment on the previous blogpost and effortlessly solved the mystery of why the question format used by Progress Scotland appeared to produce lower support for independence than what we're used to from more conventional polling. He/she pointed out that no fewer than 17% of Yes voters in the poll rated themselves as ten on a scale of zero to ten, which supposedly indicated that they "completely support Scotland staying part of the UK". Self-evidently, that is an utterly implausible figure. In the whole five years since the independence referendum, I've met literally one single person who has converted from being a Yes voter in 2014 to being a committed Brit Nat now, and he only made that journey because of an idiosyncratic obsession with the named person scheme. Much more likely is that people who are no longer sure about indy would place themselves somewhere in the middle of the zero-to-ten scale. We can see how improbable a swing from one extreme to the other is from the fact that just 3% of No voters placed themselves at zero on the scale, meaning that they "completely support Scotland becoming independent".
Normally we can only speculate about the causes of seemingly illogical poll results, but this is an exception. It's blindingly obvious what's happened here. A significant minority of Yes voters clearly misread the question and thought they were indicating total support for independence (rather than total opposition) by rating themselves as ten on the scale. Why did only Yes voters make that mistake? Because it's natural to think that the higher end of the scale is intended to represent the maximum support for your own preferred position. No voters who made that assumption were correct, while Yes voters who made the same assumption were wrong. If the figures are adjusted on the reasonable assumption that approximately 14% of Yes voters mistakenly rated themselves as ten on the scale, that in itself would mean the poll underestimated support for independence by around 5% - enough to take us into roughly the same territory as the conventional polls.
So it's not just that it's impossible to compare this poll with previous independence polls and detect a trend. The poll itself is also an outright dud - albeit only in respect of the key question on support for indy, where something appears to have gone very badly wrong by complete accident. The next time you see a journalist or unionist politician point to this dud poll as proof that their "precious Union" is safe, do please try to keep a straight face.
The reality, as you'll recall, is that the Progress Scotland poll asked about independence in a completely new way, meaning there are no baseline figures to measure trends from. It's literally impossible to tell from the poll whether support for independence has gone up, down, or stayed static. Claiming a "dramatic collapse" on that basis is rather akin to saying that Neil Armstrong was much fatter than the previous man to have walked on the moon. But our plucky ConHome correspondent wasn't about to let troublesome things like facts get in his way - oh no, he was perfectly content to accept the Sun's outlandish claims as genuine, and gleefully seized upon the poll as proof that the "fragile Union" narrative is actually a "myth". You reach the stage where all you can do is point and laugh at these people. If the only comfort blanket they've got is a tabloid newspaper telling porkies about an opinion poll, they're really not in a good place. It's no more or less risible than Anas Sarwar brandishing his famous "top secret document" prop when all else failed.
Someone called "CMac11" left a comment on the previous blogpost and effortlessly solved the mystery of why the question format used by Progress Scotland appeared to produce lower support for independence than what we're used to from more conventional polling. He/she pointed out that no fewer than 17% of Yes voters in the poll rated themselves as ten on a scale of zero to ten, which supposedly indicated that they "completely support Scotland staying part of the UK". Self-evidently, that is an utterly implausible figure. In the whole five years since the independence referendum, I've met literally one single person who has converted from being a Yes voter in 2014 to being a committed Brit Nat now, and he only made that journey because of an idiosyncratic obsession with the named person scheme. Much more likely is that people who are no longer sure about indy would place themselves somewhere in the middle of the zero-to-ten scale. We can see how improbable a swing from one extreme to the other is from the fact that just 3% of No voters placed themselves at zero on the scale, meaning that they "completely support Scotland becoming independent".
Normally we can only speculate about the causes of seemingly illogical poll results, but this is an exception. It's blindingly obvious what's happened here. A significant minority of Yes voters clearly misread the question and thought they were indicating total support for independence (rather than total opposition) by rating themselves as ten on the scale. Why did only Yes voters make that mistake? Because it's natural to think that the higher end of the scale is intended to represent the maximum support for your own preferred position. No voters who made that assumption were correct, while Yes voters who made the same assumption were wrong. If the figures are adjusted on the reasonable assumption that approximately 14% of Yes voters mistakenly rated themselves as ten on the scale, that in itself would mean the poll underestimated support for independence by around 5% - enough to take us into roughly the same territory as the conventional polls.
So it's not just that it's impossible to compare this poll with previous independence polls and detect a trend. The poll itself is also an outright dud - albeit only in respect of the key question on support for indy, where something appears to have gone very badly wrong by complete accident. The next time you see a journalist or unionist politician point to this dud poll as proof that their "precious Union" is safe, do please try to keep a straight face.
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Clueless Sun newspaper left red-faced after being caught wrongly telling readers that support for independence has "dropped"
A couple of nights ago, someone left a comment on this blog asking me to write about the numbers from the new Progress Scotland poll on support for independence. I wasn't sure what he/she meant, because none of the reporting I'd seen on that poll mentioned any direct question about independence. I checked the Progress Scotland website and there was no clue there (and frustratingly there was no link to any datasets). The mystery deepened when The Sun started reporting that the poll supposedly showed Yes support had "dropped below 40%". At that point my propaganda detector started buzzing very loudly and I was fairly convinced that things were not quite as they seemed, but obviously it was hard to comment until I actually saw the relevant part of the poll. I was finally pointed in the right direction by Denise last night - the datasets had been on the Survation website all along. (In fairness to myself I had already looked there, but the archive section is a bit confusing.)
And the verdict? You probably won't faint with amazement upon learning that The Sun have been telling you porkies. The lie is not the suggestion that the poll shows support for independence at below 40% - that can just about be justified at a stretch, albeit it's somewhat misleading. No, the lie is the claim that Yes support has "dropped" in the poll, and that there are serious implications for Nicola Sturgeon, indyref2, etc, etc. This implies that there are comparable polls from the recent past which showed much higher support for independence - in fact, there haven't been any such polls. The Progress Scotland poll asked respondents about their views on independence in a novel way, and also asked them to give their answers in a novel way by rating their support or opposition to independence on a scale of 0 to 10. There is nothing to compare the results to - which means that support for independence may have risen, or it may have fallen, or it may have stayed exactly the same. The poll gives us absolutely no clues to trends whatsoever. But what we do know is that a Survation poll a few weeks ago, which asked the independence question in the conventional Yes/No manner, showed Yes support holding steady in the mid-40s. It's therefore not unreasonable to work from the assumption that nothing much has changed, at least until we see the slightest scrap of evidence to the contrary. The likelihood is that a conventional independence poll conducted now would show a no change position, and that a poll with a 0-10 format conducted a few weeks or months ago would have produced much the same results as the Progress Scotland poll.
Now, let's be fair - it's theoretically possible that there has been a sudden and inexplicable drop in the Yes vote in the few weeks since the Survation poll. But there are two possible explanations for the Progress Scotland numbers being so different from the norm - a) a real drop, and b) the use of a radically different question and answer format. As b) is so obviously the simplest and most natural explanation, the onus must surely be on The Sun to substantiate their outlandish claims. My own question would be whether they were deliberately pulling the wool over their readers' eyes, or whether they really were totally oblivious to the fact that they were comparing apples with oranges. I've learned from experience never to exclude the possibility of utter journalistic cluelessness.
So why might the different poll format have such a dramatic effect on people's answers? It may be the reference to "staying part of the UK" - there are plenty of precedents for polls that use that sort of language producing much more No-friendly results. Or it could be that soft voters in the middle, or undecided voters, react differently when they're not presented with a binary choice. Either way, we shouldn't jump to the conclusion that the poll is picking up underlying resistance to independence in a way that conventional polls have not. If the Yes/No polls had been that far out in 2014, the eventual Yes vote would have been nowhere near as high as 45%. It's true that the polls did overestimate Yes, but not by much, and it's possible that some or all of that discrepancy can be very simply explained by differential turnout.
Oh, and as for Pamela Nash and Scotland in Union taunting Progress Scotland for selectively withholding the least favourable results from the poll, the words pot, kettle and black spring to mind.
* * *
I was contacted on Twitter last night for my views on whether SNP voters in the forthcoming Leith Walk by-election should use their lower preferences. Answer: yes! Your lower preferences will not be taken into account unless the SNP candidate is eliminated before the final two, but in the unlikely event that it pans out that way, I'm sure most of us would have a view on whether we'd rather have a Green councillor or a unionist councillor. (The Greens are strong in the ward.) The rule of thumb is always the same with the STV voting system - use as many preferences as you feel able to, because you'll never be doing any harm, and you'll sometimes be doing a lot of good.
And the verdict? You probably won't faint with amazement upon learning that The Sun have been telling you porkies. The lie is not the suggestion that the poll shows support for independence at below 40% - that can just about be justified at a stretch, albeit it's somewhat misleading. No, the lie is the claim that Yes support has "dropped" in the poll, and that there are serious implications for Nicola Sturgeon, indyref2, etc, etc. This implies that there are comparable polls from the recent past which showed much higher support for independence - in fact, there haven't been any such polls. The Progress Scotland poll asked respondents about their views on independence in a novel way, and also asked them to give their answers in a novel way by rating their support or opposition to independence on a scale of 0 to 10. There is nothing to compare the results to - which means that support for independence may have risen, or it may have fallen, or it may have stayed exactly the same. The poll gives us absolutely no clues to trends whatsoever. But what we do know is that a Survation poll a few weeks ago, which asked the independence question in the conventional Yes/No manner, showed Yes support holding steady in the mid-40s. It's therefore not unreasonable to work from the assumption that nothing much has changed, at least until we see the slightest scrap of evidence to the contrary. The likelihood is that a conventional independence poll conducted now would show a no change position, and that a poll with a 0-10 format conducted a few weeks or months ago would have produced much the same results as the Progress Scotland poll.
Now, let's be fair - it's theoretically possible that there has been a sudden and inexplicable drop in the Yes vote in the few weeks since the Survation poll. But there are two possible explanations for the Progress Scotland numbers being so different from the norm - a) a real drop, and b) the use of a radically different question and answer format. As b) is so obviously the simplest and most natural explanation, the onus must surely be on The Sun to substantiate their outlandish claims. My own question would be whether they were deliberately pulling the wool over their readers' eyes, or whether they really were totally oblivious to the fact that they were comparing apples with oranges. I've learned from experience never to exclude the possibility of utter journalistic cluelessness.
So why might the different poll format have such a dramatic effect on people's answers? It may be the reference to "staying part of the UK" - there are plenty of precedents for polls that use that sort of language producing much more No-friendly results. Or it could be that soft voters in the middle, or undecided voters, react differently when they're not presented with a binary choice. Either way, we shouldn't jump to the conclusion that the poll is picking up underlying resistance to independence in a way that conventional polls have not. If the Yes/No polls had been that far out in 2014, the eventual Yes vote would have been nowhere near as high as 45%. It's true that the polls did overestimate Yes, but not by much, and it's possible that some or all of that discrepancy can be very simply explained by differential turnout.
Oh, and as for Pamela Nash and Scotland in Union taunting Progress Scotland for selectively withholding the least favourable results from the poll, the words pot, kettle and black spring to mind.
* * *
I was contacted on Twitter last night for my views on whether SNP voters in the forthcoming Leith Walk by-election should use their lower preferences. Answer: yes! Your lower preferences will not be taken into account unless the SNP candidate is eliminated before the final two, but in the unlikely event that it pans out that way, I'm sure most of us would have a view on whether we'd rather have a Green councillor or a unionist councillor. (The Greens are strong in the ward.) The rule of thumb is always the same with the STV voting system - use as many preferences as you feel able to, because you'll never be doing any harm, and you'll sometimes be doing a lot of good.
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
The reason why nobody can agree on what Theresa May just said is that she said everything and nothing simultaneously
I now understand why Tory MPs come out of meetings with Theresa May and can't agree on what she said, because her statement tonight was full of ambiguities and half-contradictions, and everyone is remembering only the bits they want to remember. For instance...
* She said that a further Article 50 extension would have to be very short, and any solution agreed would have to be legislated for by 22nd May to avoid holding European elections. But she also said the extension should last until a deal has been passed. So will the request be for an open-ended extension, or another very short cliff-edge extension? If the EU rejects the 22nd May deadline, is she saying she would accept a longer extension? And if the answer to the latter question is "no" or "don't know", how can anyone say that No Deal has been ruled out?
* She said that if she and Corbyn can't agree on a specific blueprint, they'll instead try to agree on a range of options to be put before parliament. She also said that she would abide by any decision parliament makes. But is she only committing to accepting parliament's wishes if they're expressed during the government's own proposed process, or does the promise also apply to go-it-alone initiatives by the Commons, such as Letwin's indicative votes?
My speculation last night about a general election on 23rd May didn't survive long, because there won't be enough time for that after May has tried this latest approach. But one thing that was clear from her statement is that any agreement with Corbyn would have to be a bolt-on to the existing withdrawal agreement. And the DUP have already stated that if the withdrawal agreement is passed with the backstop intact, they will withdraw support for the government. So whichever way Brexit is heading, it's hard to see how an election can be long delayed.
* She said that a further Article 50 extension would have to be very short, and any solution agreed would have to be legislated for by 22nd May to avoid holding European elections. But she also said the extension should last until a deal has been passed. So will the request be for an open-ended extension, or another very short cliff-edge extension? If the EU rejects the 22nd May deadline, is she saying she would accept a longer extension? And if the answer to the latter question is "no" or "don't know", how can anyone say that No Deal has been ruled out?
* She said that if she and Corbyn can't agree on a specific blueprint, they'll instead try to agree on a range of options to be put before parliament. She also said that she would abide by any decision parliament makes. But is she only committing to accepting parliament's wishes if they're expressed during the government's own proposed process, or does the promise also apply to go-it-alone initiatives by the Commons, such as Letwin's indicative votes?
My speculation last night about a general election on 23rd May didn't survive long, because there won't be enough time for that after May has tried this latest approach. But one thing that was clear from her statement is that any agreement with Corbyn would have to be a bolt-on to the existing withdrawal agreement. And the DUP have already stated that if the withdrawal agreement is passed with the backstop intact, they will withdraw support for the government. So whichever way Brexit is heading, it's hard to see how an election can be long delayed.
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.
* * *
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.
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.
* * *
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.
Monday, April 1, 2019
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?
* * *
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.
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?
* * *
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.
Friday, March 29, 2019
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.
* * *
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.
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.
* * *
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'.
* * *
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.)
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'.
* * *
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.)
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