Drama as new Panelbase poll continues to show support for independence at unusually high levels

Like the proverbial London buses, you wait ages for a full-scale Scottish poll, and then three come along all at once.  Hot off the press is Panelbase's latest polling on independence...

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 47% (n/c)

No 53% (n/c)

Now this is a really interesting one, because I know some people will take a casual look at the numbers and argue that the no change position means Panelbase have failed to detect the same surge that YouGov found.  But what we have to remember is that this is no change from an unusually good Panelbase poll for Yes last December.  Panelbase have recently (along with YouGov) been one of the more No-friendly pollsters, and the 47% in December was the highest share they had reported for Yes in more than two years.  In fact, between the spring of 2017 and the autumn of 2018, they had never reported a Yes vote higher than 45%, and the more typical figure was 44%.  

So that would tend to leave the impression that there has indeed been a significant rise in Yes support, although it muddies the waters as to when exactly that increase took place.

There's some confusion on social media about the Westminster numbers in the poll, but they appear to be as follows (I'll correct them if they prove to be inaccurate)...

Scottish voting intentions for Westminster (Panelbase):

SNP 38% (+1)
Conservatives 22% (-5)
Labour 21% (-1)
Liberal Democrats 6% (-1)
Brexit Party 5% (n/a)
Change UK 3% (+1)
Greens 2% (n/c)

It's no great surprise that the SNP's share of the vote is lower than in the Survation and YouGov polls, because Panelbase have consistently painted a less rosy picture for the SNP than other pollsters.  In this case it barely seems to matter, though, because thanks to the two main unionist parties struggling so much, and in particular thanks to the combined Labour/Tory vote being split down the middle, the SNP are on course for massive seat gains even if Panelbase prove to be closest to the truth.  The seats projection based on a uniform swing is: SNP 46 (+11), Conservatives 8 (-5), Liberal Democrats 4 (n/c), Labour 1 (-6).

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Landmark YouGov poll suggests SNP are on course for landslide victories at the next Westminster and Holyrood elections

First things first: I have another new article at The National website (yes, the second today!), this time about the implications of the sensational new YouGov poll.  You can read it HERE.

By now you've probably caught up with the other details from the poll that we didn't know about last night, but here they are for the sake of completeness...

Scottish voting intentions for Westminster:

SNP 43% (+3)
Conservatives 20% (-5)
Labour 17% (-4)
Liberal Democrats 9% (+1)
Brexit Party 4% (n/a)
Greens 3% (n/c)
Change UK 2% (n/a)
UKIP 1% (-1)

Although those numbers differ quite a bit from the Survation poll the other day, the seats projection based on a uniform swing is absolutely identical: SNP 51 (+16), Liberal Democrats 4 (n/c), Conservatives 3 (-10), Labour 1 (-6).

We've focussed a lot on the sudden slump in Scottish Tory support, but these are also truly desperate days for Scottish Labour.  To put it in perspective, the Tories are polling lower with YouGov than they were in the Survation poll that put them in third place, but in this case it's actually enough to hold onto second place quite comfortably because Labour support has collapsed as well.

In principle, do you think there should or should not be a referendum on Scottish independence at some point in the next five years?

Should be a referendum: 42% (+2)
Should not be a referendum: 48% (-4)

An anonymous commenter on the previous thread made a sarcastic comment about Scottish Skier "trying to make 42 sound like a bigger number than 48", but the reality is that YouGov - for reasons I don't fully understand - have consistently reported less enthusiasm for a second indyref than their fellow polling firms.  A 42/48 split is considerably better than it's been in the past.  I wouldn't be surprised if a firm like Panelbase would now be showing a majority in favour of an early referendum.

It's an intriguing development, because it's only a few weeks ago that the media were breathlessly telling us about "private research" that supposedly showed opposition to a referendum "hardening".

Holyrood constituency ballot voting intentions:

SNP 46% (+5)
Conservatives 22% (-5)
Labour 16% (-6)
Liberal Democrats 7% (+1)
Brexit Party 4% (n/a)
Greens 3% (+1)
Change UK 1% (n/a)

Holyrood regional list ballot voting intentions:

SNP 37% (+5)
Conservatives 20% (-6)
Labour 15% (-6)
Greens 10% (+1)
Liberal Democrats 7% (n/c)
Brexit Party 5% (n/a)
Change UK 2% (n/a)

The seats projection in the Times has the two pro-independence parties on a combined total of 74 seats, and the unionist parties on 55.  That would represent a sharp increase in the current pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament - quite a contrast from most recent polls which have suggested there would be no such majority at all.

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Westminster shudders as the announcement of Indyref 2 is followed by dramatic YouGov poll putting support for independence at 49%

As I've learned over the years, an email notification of a midnight comment from Marcia can mean one thing, and one thing only.  Forget about Scotland in Union's fantasy polls with daft questions, here's the real deal from YouGov using the standard question on independence, and the result is nothing short of sensational.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 49% (+4)
No 51% (-4)

Due to the standard margin of error, this is a statistical tie, ie. it's impossible to know for sure which side is actually in the lead.  In recent times, YouGov have reverted to their former status as one of the more No-friendly pollsters, with backing for Yes fluctuating in a narrow band between 43% and 45%.  Self-evidently a sudden jump to 49% looks like a major breakthrough, although there's always just a possibility that a single poll showing something new might be misleading due to an extreme case of sampling variation.  But we're not exactly short of potential reasons why support for independence might have increased over recent weeks and months, so YouGov could well be picking up something genuine.  It'll take another poll or two to be sure (this is the first credible poll on independence from any firm since the end of last year).

There are also figures for European election voting intentions, which if anything are even more astonishing - according to the Times front page, the SNP are on 40%, with the Brexit Party on 13% and the Tories on just 10%.  I haven't found the vote shares for other parties yet, but it looks like it could be touch and go as to whether the Scottish Tories would hold their only seat in the European Parliament, while the SNP would be in with a very real chance of doubling their representation from two to four.

We can't say we haven't had fair warning of this - it's very much in line with what the Scottish subsamples from YouGov's GB-wide polls have been showing over the last couple of weeks.  But somehow seeing it in a full-scale poll is still quite a shock.  10% would easily be an all-time low for the Scottish Tories in European elections, but my question is whether they've been as low as that in any type of national election, ever?  We'd probably have to check the records from centuries ago to be sure of the answer to that one.

I must admit I struggled to keep a straight face when I reached the bit of the Times article that suggested the poll results were bearing out Tory fears that a lengthy Brexit extension could scupper Ruth Davidson's chances of becoming First Minister in 2021.  Now, it's quite true that a) the Tories are taking a hammering because of the extension until October, and b) if Brexit still hasn't happened by the time of the general election they could easily end up losing the majority of the seats they gained from the SNP two years ago - even though those seats, with only one or two exceptions, had looked absolutely rock-solid until this month.  But as for Davidson's chances of becoming First Minister...well, they weren't looking too hot even before this happened, were they?  I always wondered how on earth she thought it was even theoretically possible, unless of course the moon turned into green cheese and the Corbynite leadership of Scottish Labour installed her in office.

UPDATE: I've now located the full European voting intention numbers...

SNP 40%
Labour 14%
Brexit Party 13%
Conservatives 10%
Greens 7%
Liberal Democrats 6%
Change UK 6%
UKIP 3%

What stands out there is the stupidity of Change UK in putting up candidates in direct competition with the Liberal Democrats.  With a joint slate the two parties might just about have been in line for a seat - but as it is they appear to be knocking each other out.

*  *  *

REGISTER TO VOTE: This may be a timely moment to urge you, and your nearest and dearest, to register to vote in the European elections (if you're not already registered as a result of the annual household enquiry form, I mean).  The deadline is just over a week away, and you can register online HERE.  Don't miss the chance to send the clearest possible message to Westminster that Scotland is determined to have a choice on its own future.

*  *  *

I have a new article in The National, about why Scotland in Union are almost certainly deluding themselves if they think the Electoral Commission would ever approve a referendum question that asks about "remaining in the UK" or "leaving the UK".  You can read it HERE.

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Shock poll shows the sun setting on the day of Davidson as the Scottish Tories return to third place, and the SNP retain their massive lead

Extremist anti-independence propaganda organisation "Scotland in Union" have released their latest Survation poll, and not for the first time it's backfired on them spectacularly by suggesting that the SNP are set to make sweeping gains from the unionist parties in any snap general election.  What's new, though, is that it also shows the Tories returning to their once-familiar third place - and given the current seepage of Tory votes to the Brexit Party and elsewhere, it would be a brave person who predicts that they won't be staying there.

Scottish voting intentions for Westminster (Survation):

SNP 41% (+1)
Labour 24% (+1)
Conservatives 22% (-2)
Liberal Democrats 8% (n/c)

On a uniform swing, this would see the SNP make a mammoth net gain of 16 seats, taking them to 51 - not all that far away from their 2015 high watermark of 56.  The Tories would be reduced to rubble, losing 10 of their 13 seats.  And Labour would be practically wiped out, with Ian Murray once again the last man standing in Edinburgh South (assuming he's still in the party by the time the election comes around).  The Lib Dems would break even and retain their current 4 seats.

As with any "Scotland in Union" poll, the independence figures can be safely ignored because a non-standard question was used to get the desired result (although of course that won't stop the unionist media breathlessly reporting them as if they actually mean something).  We've known for many years that asking poll respondents whether they want to "remain in the United Kingdom" produces more favourable results for the anti-independence cause than the standard question.  Why that would be the case is anyone's guess - I sometimes wonder if there's a degree of confusion about what the 'United Kingdom' actually is, and if some respondents might wrongly assume they're being asked whether they want to retain the monarchy.  But it's not worth worrying about, because we know from the experience of the 2014 referendum that standard independence polling is more accurate than these 'alternative' polls.  The most recent standard polling continued to show Yes in the mid-40s or higher.

(And as I always point out, any poll that asks about 'leaving the UK' should not technically be considered an independence poll at all, because it's perfectly possible to leave the UK without becoming independent.  We could leave the UK to become a crown dependency, or a freely associated state, or we could become part of another country.)

You can tell that "Scotland in Union" are a bit disappointed with the results of the question on when and if the next independence referendum should be held, because their spin is that not holding a referendum at all emerged as "the most popular option with 34% support".  What that rather conveniently doesn't mention is that all the other options involved holding a referendum at some point, and the combined support for those pro-referendum options was 57% - which, I think you'll agree, is a rather larger number than 34%.

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Nicola Sturgeon's statement of intent on a pre-2021 independence referendum is a positive step forward

Stuart Campbell of Wings Over Scotland reacted impatiently to Nicola Sturgeon's statement this afternoon, pointing out that it failed to explain how the Scottish Government propose to actually overcome London's obstructionism on a Section 30 order.  And I agree that in an ideal world, she would have said "we want a referendum to take place with a Section 30 order, but it will take place anyway" or " if a Section 30 order is not granted, we will use the Holyrood election to seek an outright mandate for independence".  But given how negative some of the mood music has been, I think it's fair to say that Ms Sturgeon went about as far as we could have realistically hoped for today, and if I'm being honest she went a bit further than I expected.  It's worth contrasting what she could have said if the narrative of certain journalists had been proved right, and what she actually did say.

* She could have simply said that because of the Brexit extension, she was waiting until at least October to make any decisions at all.  Instead, she announced some substantive decisions today.

* She could have said that because of the uncertainty over Brexit, and "in the national interest", she was going to let the current mandate for a pre-2021 referendum expire and seek a fresh mandate at the next Holyrood election.  She instead did the polar opposite of that, and declared her intention to hold a referendum before the 2021 election.

* She could have set out an aspiration for a pre-2021 referendum, but let the momentum fizzle out by taking no concrete steps to move us closer to that referendum being held.  Instead, she announced legislation that will prepare the ground for a referendum even before a Section 30 order is sought.

* She could have done what Joyce McMillan suggested a few months ago, and declared that it would be wrong to seek an independence referendum for as long as we know the Tory government will refuse a Section 30 order.  Instead, she left no room for doubt that a Section 30 order will be formally requested well before the 2021 election.

* She could have stated absolutely and unequivocally that Westminster permission is required for an independence referendum.  If you read some journalists' paraphrasing of her statement, you'd be forgiven for thinking that's exactly what she did say.  But she didn't.  She instead used words to the effect that a Section 30 order would be needed to put the legal position beyond doubt, thus leaving the door slightly ajar - on paper at least - for action to be taken in the absence of a Section 30 order.  It's blindingly obvious that she isn't remotely attracted to the idea of a consultative referendum, but at least she didn't needlessly rule it out.

So, all in all, I'm reasonably happy with the statement, and I think it leaves us in a better position today than we were in yesterday.

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No, Mark Ruskell, it's not possible to vote "tactically" in the Euro elections to stop UKIP or the Brexit Party

In my naivety, I had thought that the difference between the Holyrood and European Parliament voting systems would mean that I wouldn't have to spend any time over the next few weeks debunking the familiar claims that everything would be right with the world if only SNP supporters would "vote tactically" for the Greens or other radical left parties.  I assumed that a simple system in which every elector just casts a single vote for a single party, and in which seats are allocated in proportion to the share of the vote each party receives, would encourage the Greens to just concentrate on making the positive case for a Green MEP to be elected.  But nope, it seems they just can't help themselves.  Here is what Green parliamentarian Mark Ruskell had to say on Twitter a few hours ago -

"Having a chat with a couple of SNP voters today, had to remind them of the disastrous ‘get Tasmina as our third MEP’ campaign was at the last Euros, just let UKIP in through the backdoor. Polling shows Greens are front runners to take the seat off UKIP and keep Farage out."

That tweet is so spectacularly dishonest on multiple counts that it's difficult to know where to start.  First of all, it's true that the Greens made an extremely contrived pitch in 2014 that there would be a better chance of preventing UKIP taking a seat if SNP supporters switched tactically to the Greens.  The idea was that the SNP were 'guaranteed' to win two seats, and that thereafter the D'Hondt calculation would divide the SNP vote by three, meaning that excess votes would be wasted on the SNP, leaving the Greens as the only progressive party that could stop UKIP grabbing the final seat.  But the snag for Mr Ruskell is that this claim was not, as he implies, borne out by the eventual result.  Quite the reverse, in fact.  The D'Hondt calculation for the final seat was as follows...

UKIP 140,534
SNP 129,834
Labour 116,073
Conservatives 115,665
Greens 108,305
Liberal Democrats 95,319

Now, of course, the Greens would argue that the fact they were in fifth place for the final seat is somewhat misleading, because the numbers for the parties above them were (with the exception of UKIP) affected by D'Hondt, and that what you therefore need to do is look at the absolute number of extra votes each party would have needed to pip UKIP for the last seat.  But even if you look at it that way, the SNP would have needed 32,100 extra votes, and the Greens would have needed 32,230.  So the SNP were undoubtedly closer on any measure, and if we were being cheeky we could even claim that this proves Green supporters were to blame for letting in David Coburn because they failed to tactically vote SNP.  In reality, that would be very silly, because under this voting system it's almost impossible to know which way to vote if you want to cast a tactical, negative vote against a particular party.  The only way in which it might be possible would be if you knew in advance, and in precise detail, how everyone else is going to vote - and you can't know that, because opinion polls simply don't offer that extreme level of accuracy.  (Some would argue that they don't even offer a basic level of accuracy.)

There's also a rather amusing contradiction between the logic of the Greens' pitch for tactical votes in the European election, and the logic of their pitch for tactical votes in Holyrood elections.  As you might recall, I've always conceded the point that the Greens are technically correct that it would be possible to reliably "hack" the Holyrood system and get extra pro-independence MSPs, but only if the tactical voting on the list is extraordinarily widespread.  Much more likely is that it would be small in scale, and at that sort of level it would be much more likely to backfire, and could even up reducing the number of pro-indy MSPs.  The response I usually hear to that reality-check is: "You're thinking too small, James!  With the power of the Yes movement ANYTHING is possible!"  And yet implicit in the call for tactical votes in the Euro elections is that you don't actually need to worry about anything more than a very small number of your fellow SNP supporters doing it.  If you did need to worry about that, you wouldn't be remotely tempted, because you'd know that if the tactical voting drive was too 'successful' and if every SNP supporter 'lent' their 'excess' vote to the Greens, there wouldn't be two guaranteed seats for the SNP.  There would in fact be zero seats for the SNP.  In Euro elections, you can't use one vote for your favourite party and then use another vote tactically.  We all just have one vote, and if the SNP don't get enough of those, they won't win any seats at all.  Simple as that.

To turn to Mr Ruskell's claim that "polling shows Greens are front runners to take the seat off UKIP and keep Farage out", there is no truth in that whatsoever.  Thus far there haven't even been any full-scale Scottish polls for the Euro elections.  All we have are a few Scottish subsamples from GB polls, and they simply don't offer any comfort to the notion that the Greens will be involved in a direct fight with either UKIP or the Brexit Party for the final seat.  For example, of the three YouGov subsamples to date, one has suggested that both the Greens and the anti-Europe parties will miss out on a Scottish seat, one has suggested that both the Greens and the Brexit Party will take a seat, and only one has suggested that the Greens will take a seat and the anti-Europe parties will fall short.  Even in the latter example, the Greens were not projected to be the ones responsible for Farage's failure - in fact, the final seat was effectively a scrap between the SNP and the Tories, with the SNP marginally coming out on top.  So maybe the clarion call should be "Green supporters must vote tactically for the SNP to stop the Tories!"

A broader point is that there may be circumstances in which it's not arithmetically possible for any party to stop Farage.  In a proportional representation system, if the Brexit Party get a big enough share of the vote, they'll be awarded a seat, no matter how the votes are shared out between the other parties.  That being the case, it's much wiser to focus on which party you want to win a seat, and not which party you want to fail.

So the answer to the question "which party should independence supporters vote for in the European election?" is SNP if you prefer the SNP, and Green if you prefer the Greens.  If you're not that bothered between the two parties, my own personal opinion is that you'd make a bigger statement about independence by voting SNP.  Votes for the Greens will probably be interpreted in London media and political circles as environmentalist and left-wing votes, and not primarily as votes for independence.

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Is Davidson PLUNGING towards CALAMITY? Second YouGov poll in as many days shows Ruth's Tories facing MELTDOWN

How the mighty have fallen.  Just two years after her 'spectacular triumph' in the general election (ie. 'only' losing to the SNP by 8%), it genuinely does now look possible that Ruth Davidson is about to lead the Scottish Tories to an all-time electoral low.  A second YouGov subsample in as many days has the Tories on just 10% of the Scottish vote for the European Parliament, which even with the help of proportional representation wouldn't be quite enough to retain the one seat they currently hold.

Britain-wide voting intentions for the European elections (YouGov):

Brexit Party 23% (-4)
Labour 22% (n/c)
Conservatives 17% (+2)
Greens 10% (n/c)
Liberal Democrats 9% (n/c)
Change UK 8% (+2)
UKIP 6% (-1)
SNP / Plaid Cymru 5% (+1)

Scottish subsample: SNP 42%, Greens 13%, Labour 11%, Conservatives 10%, Brexit Party 9%, Liberal Democrats 7%, UKIP 6%, Change UK 4%

Now remember these are just subsamples, and can't be regarded as reliable estimates of Scottish public opinion.  But the pattern of low numbers for the Tories has been so consistent that it's hard to believe it doesn't reflect something real - and in any case YouGov appear to structure their Scottish subsamples more carefully than other firms do.

You know the drill by now - just regard this as "a bit of fun", but here is what the seat allocation would look like if the subsample happened to be exactly accurate...

SNP 4, Greens 1, Labour 1

The Tories would miss out altogether after being pipped for the final seat by the SNP.  For what it's worth I think it's pretty unlikely that the SNP will take four seats in the real world.  In past European elections they've tended to underperform what the opinion polls suggested, so it's easy enough to imagine them ending up in the low 30s, which hopefully would still be enough to take three of the six seats - the most they've ever had.

At Britain-wide level, the four-point drop in Brexit Party support in the space of one day looks a bit odd.  It could just be random sampling variation, but I wonder if it was caused by respondents for today's poll only being asked the Euro-election question after being asked for their Westminster preferences.  That might have put them into more of a 'Westminster mindset', which would be less favourable for Farage's mob.  If the datasets are to be believed, yesterday's poll didn't appear to ask for Westminster voting intentions.

Strangely, there's also a ComRes poll out today that has the Brexit Party lagging in third place for the Euro elections.  When I first saw it I wondered if it was a phone poll, because that would have been the most obvious explanation for such a wide disparity between two firms.  But no, it's an online poll just like YouGov's, so the true position is anyone's guess.

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DEVASTATION for Davidson as BOMBSHELL YouGov poll suggests the Scottish Tories could be WIPED OUT in the European elections

As they say on reality TV shows, I've "been on a journey" over the last few days.  At the start of the weekend I was stating quite confidently - and I think with a fair bit of justification - that the Tories were likely to take two of the six Scottish seats in the European elections.  Now it appears the limit of their realistic ambitions is to hold the one seat they currently have, and it's far from clear they will even manage that.  The reason?  Simply that voters who would probably be solidly Tory in Westminster, Holyrood or local elections appear to be deserting the party in droves for the Euro-vote, to send a message about Brexit.

Britain-wide voting intentions for the European elections (YouGov):

Brexit Party 27% (+12)
Labour 22% (-2)
Conservatives 15% (-1)
Greens 10% (+2)
Liberal Democrats 9% (+1)
UKIP 7% (-7)
Change UK 6% (-1)
SNP / Plaid Cymru 4% (-2)

Scottish subsample: SNP 35%, Labour 16%, Greens 13%, Brexit Party 13%, Conservatives 10%, Liberal Democrats 5%, UKIP 4%, Change UK 3%

Now, of course no individual Scottish subsample can be regarded as reliable, but this is the latest of several in a row to put Ruth Davidson's party at an abysmally low level for the European elections, and well below what they routinely score in Westminster subsamples.  That's unlikely to be a coincidence, so it seems that Tory support - even in Remain-dominated Scotland - is heavily dependent on a hard Brexit vote that is now ready to punish the party for a perceived betrayal.  It's rather satisfying to see Davidson finally get some long-overdue comeuppance for her near-comical flip-flops over the Brexit issue, although in all honesty this would probably still be happening no matter what she had done.

Just for "a bit of fun", here is what the Scottish seats allocation would look like if the YouGov subsample happened to be bang-on accurate.

SNP 3, Labour 1, Greens 1, Brexit Party 1

Yup, that's right.  Zero for the Tories.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  Whisper it gently, but there's a chance that, just this once, Ruth Davidson won't be winning the Scottish Politician of the Year award.  Indeed it's very hard to imagine how her adoring fans in the media would cope with the discovery that it's actually possible for the Tories to go backwards on Ruth's watch.  For example, this would be a significantly worse performance than Annabel Goldie managed in 2009, when the Scottish Tories took 17% of the vote and one seat.  In terms of the popular vote, it would be the worst Scottish Tory performance in any Euro-election ever - not even John Major and Ian Lang managed to fall this low.

Although the Brexit Party surge has largely come at the expense of the Tories, it's also a cause of concern for the SNP in an indirect way, because it's possible that the SNP will be in a dogfight with an anti-Europe party for the final seat (as happened last time around).  It would have been far more helpful if the Brexit vote had remained split down the middle, but it looks like the BBC's lavish coverage for Farage last week has done the trick, and from now on the previous UKIP vote will move across wholesale to the Brexit Party.

There's good news and bad news for the Scottish Greens: this subsample shows them winning a seat, but as it shows the Brexit Party winning a seat as well, it directly contradicts the careful messaging that there's some sort of straight choice between a Green MEP and a far-right MEP (with the implication presumably being that supporters of other parties should 'lend' their vote to the Greens to stop Farage).  Ironically, the last YouGov subsample showed neither the Greens nor the anti-Europe parties winning a seat.  The reality is that, because of the way the voting system works, it's very difficult to tell for sure which party is best-placed to prevent the Brexit Party taking a Scottish seat - assuming it's even possible to do that at all.

Probably the media line on any Scottish Tory collapse will be that this is a freakish one-off caused by unusual circumstances, and voters will come home to the Tories for the general election.  That's true, but perhaps only up to a point - we know from past experience that Farage is capable of carrying over at least a portion of his European Parliament successes into a general election.  That may not win him any Westminster seats under a first-past-the-post system, but it's certainly possible that it could cost the Tories a lot of seats, including in Scotland.  Things might suddenly be looking up for the SNP in their former heartland of the north-east.

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Equating a Westminster veto with "legality" is a dangerous game

Like most of us, I hold Michael Russell in the highest regard, but I'm rather troubled by his article over the weekend calling for "patience".  Apart from anything else, it seems to rewrite history by suggesting that the only reason the 2014 independence referendum was ever held was because David Cameron agreed to it.  What actually happened was that the Scottish government spent the initial period after the 2011 election planning for a referendum that it believed it could hold within Holyrood's existing powers, but eventually entered into negotiations with London to put the legal position beyond dispute and to ensure a direct question could be put on the ballot paper.  The Edinburgh Agreement did not constitute some sort of acknowledgement from the Scottish side that London had been right all along and that there had never been any power to hold a referendum without permission.  Given that we were never forced to concede that point at the time, it seems more than a touch odd that we'd be needlessly and voluntarily conceding it now.

Now OK, we get it, the current SNP leadership is not attracted to the idea of a consultative referendum held without a Section 30.  That much has been plain for some time.  But unless you can be absolutely sure that neither you, nor any leadership that succeeds you, will ever need to keep that option in reserve, why would you adopt unionist language by essentially saying that a referendum can only be "constitutionally" or "legally" held if it is approved by Westminster?  I suspect the leadership are so preoccupied with curbing the enthusiasm of their own side that they're forgetting that others are hearing their words and are preparing to quote them back in future, in much the same way that happened with "once in a generation opportunity".  The most important reason of all for not recklessly stating or implying that a consultative referendum would be illegal is the simple fact that it wouldn't be.  The UK is not Spain, and people do not go to jail in this country for organising democratic consultations.

Russell's argument also drives a coach and horses through the principle of self-determination.  It's rather reminiscent of the people who used to say that everyone in Britain should have a vote in the independence referendum because it was a matter for the whole UK, or the people who used to say that of course Catalonia could become independent just as soon as the whole of Spain voted in favour of it.  The ultimate counsel of despair is to say that Scotland will be independent when the SNP gains control of Westminster.

Melissa Iacone pointed out on Twitter that there's a contradiction between Russell's stated belief that Theresa May is only refusing a referendum because she thinks Yes would win, and the apparent insistence of SNP strategists that an indyref cannot be held too soon because Yes would lose.  Is Theresa May wrong to think there's a majority for independence?  If she isn't wrong, why don't we get on with holding a referendum?  And if a referendum can apparently only be brought about if there's a majority for Yes but without anyone in Westminster actually noticing, how is Russell proposing to thread that needle?  If he wants us to be patient, I'd suggest he needs to offer us a means of achieving independence that has somewhat better odds than a lottery ticket.

I really fail to understand what would be so wrong with the clarity of the message that an exercise in self-determination is going to happen, we'd much rather it happened with London's agreement, but sooner or later it's going to happen anyway.

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Are the European elections about to hand Ruth Davidson a major setback?

First things first - I've got an article in the Sunday National today about the voting system for the European elections.  You can read it HERE.  As you can see, one point I made at the end, which at the time of writing I thought was fairly uncontroversial, was that the Tories were likely to win two of the six Scottish seats, and that the SNP were likely to win either two or three.  I'm already going to have to downgrade my level of certainty on that prediction, because two fairly remarkable opinion polls appeared over the course of yesterday which suggest that all bets could be off.  This, for example, is YouGov's estimate of Britain-wide voting intentions for the Euro-elections...

European Parliament voting intentions (Britain-wide, YouGov):

Labour 24%
Conservatives 16%
Brexit Party 15%
UKIP 14%
Greens 8%
Liberal Democrats 8%
Change UK 7%
SNP / Plaid Cymru 6%

Scottish subsample: SNP 49%, Conservatives 12%, Labour 11%, Brexit Party 8%, Liberal Democrats 7%, UKIP 5%, Greens 3%, Change UK 3%

If that subsample were to be taken seriously, it would mean the SNP are on course to win an incredible four of the six seats, and Labour and the Tories are set to take one apiece.  Now, of course, it's only a subsample, and no individual subsample should be assumed to be reliable.  I'm particularly sceptical about the SNP's very high vote, especially bearing in mind that they've tended to underperform expectations in European elections over the last twenty years.  But what I think we do need to take seriously is the possibility that the Scottish Tories could fall well short of their performances in the local and Westminster elections of 2017, simply due to massive numbers of their pro-Brexit supporters switching to either UKIP or Nigel Farage's new party for one day only, just to send a message.  As the same trend can be seen in the Britain-wide numbers, there's no particular reason to think that the Scottish subsample is leading us astray about it.  I had assumed that the Scottish Tories might be more resistant to the Faragist menace than their colleagues south of the border, because that was the case five years ago, but it appears that things have changed.

The SNP, meanwhile, don't show any sign of leaking pro-Brexit votes, so this could be a perfect storm for Ruth Davidson - if the Tory vote share actually goes sharply down while the SNP gain in terms of both votes and seats, it would be a stunning reversal of the narrative of the last couple of years that the media have fallen head over heels in love with.  It could be the beginning of the end for the myth of Ruth and her magic powers.

It's hard to work out whether Farage's intervention in this race is counterproductive from his own point of view - the poll figures seem to suggest that all he's succeeded in doing is splitting the hardline Brexit vote, and preventing UKIP from emerging once again as the largest single party, thus squandering the chance of saying that the establishment have been punished for their "Brexit betrayal".  But it's possible that the lavish coverage he's been given by the broadcasters in recent days is just the start of a bandwagon effect that will help squeeze the UKIP vote and propel the Brexit Party into first place.

*  *  *

UPDATE: Someone in the comments section queried the seats projection from the YouGov subsample and suggested that the SNP would need to be at nearly 65% to win a fourth seat.  That's categorically untrue.  As explained in the Sunday National piece, the D'Hondt formula is effectively slanted in favour of larger parties, which means the SNP would have a chance of winning four seats even on 40% of the vote.  At 65% they'd be more likely to win five seats, although that would depend on how the remainder of the vote is split between the other parties.

To demonstrate the point, here is how the D'Hondt calculation would play out for each individual seat if the YouGov subsample is right. 

First count: SNP 49, Conservatives 12, Labour 11, Brexit Party 8, Liberal Democrats 7, UKIP 5, Greens 3, Change UK 3

SNP win first seat

Second count: SNP 24.5 (49 ÷ 2), Conservatives 12, Labour 11, Brexit Party 8, Liberal Democrats 7, UKIP 5, Greens 3, Change UK 3

SNP win second seat

Third count: SNP 16.3 (49 ÷ 3), Conservatives 12, Labour 11, Brexit Party 8, Liberal Democrats 7, UKIP 5, Greens 3, Change UK 3

SNP win third seat

Fourth count: SNP 12.3 (49 ÷ 4), Conservatives 12, Labour 11, Brexit Party 8, Liberal Democrats 7, UKIP 5, Greens 3, Change UK 3

SNP win fourth seat

Fifth count: Conservatives 12, Labour 11, SNP 9.8 (49 ÷ 5), Brexit Party 8, Liberal Democrats 7, UKIP 5, Greens 3, Change UK 3

Conservatives win fifth seat

Sixth count: Labour 11, SNP 9.8 (49 ÷ 5), Brexit Party 8, Liberal Democrats 7, Conservatives 6 (12 ÷  2), UKIP 5, Greens 3, Change UK 3

Labour win sixth seat

Final tally: SNP 4 seats, Conservatives 1 seat, Labour 1 seat

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