On what planet is a Tory boycott of an indyref, guaranteeing a Yes majority, a bad thing?

I was just catching up with the story in The National from a few days ago about the suggestion that the Tories might boycott a consultative referendum held without a Section 30 order, even if it clears every legal hurdle and has the blessing of the UK Supreme Court.  This, of course, should be a cause for celebration, because it would guarantee a Yes victory, and we'd all have a nice relaxing campaign trying to maximise the scale of the win and the overall turnout.  Whatever mandate is achieved would then be used as leverage to bring us closer to actual independence or at least to an agreed referendum - and leverage is, after all, the whole point of holding a consultative referendum.

Curiously, though, the article finishes with a quote from Malcolm Harvey, who back in the day was one of the leading pro-indy bloggers (he was one of the founding triumvirate at Better Nation, and before that had his own blog Malc in the Burgh).

"Turnout would be about 50% and the thing would be even less legitimate than holding an un-sanctioned referendum in the first place. It's a mad idea."

My jaw dropped to the floor when I realised he wasn't describing the boycott as mad, but the idea that we should hold a referendum that might be boycotted.  Is anyone spotting the slight flaw here?  There'd be nothing to stop the Tories boycotting absolutely any referendum, even one brought about by a Section 30.  It's hard to think of a better definition of 'madness' than giving our opponents a veto on every move we make.

You know the bit at the end of Life of Brian when the Crack Suicide Squad turn up, stab themselves, and say with their dying breath "that showed 'em, huh?" If Malcolm and Pete Wishart had been in charge of the Roman troops that day, they'd have reacted to that seemingly futile gesture by saying "well, that's it then, we can't possibly go ahead with these crucifixions now..."

An average of all twenty-three polls conducted this year puts support for independence at more than 53%

By overwhelming popular demand (well, a couple of people asked) here is an update of this blog's Poll of Polls.  Just a reminder that rather than including all of the most recent polls, it includes only the most recent poll from each individual firm, to ensure that no 'house effect' is given too much weight.  There are six polls in the current sample - one from Savanta ComRes, one from Survation, one from Panelbase, one from Ipsos-Mori, one from YouGov and one from JL Partners.  The percentage changes are measured from the last published update on 10th November.

SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 54.8% (-)

No 45.2% (-)

So no change whatsoever!  Of course there's been movement underneath the surface, but it's cancelled itself out.  Panelbase and Savanta ComRes have shown a swing to Yes (a huge swing in the latter case), while YouGov, Survation and Ipsos-Mori have shown a modest swing to No.

It's entirely possible that we've now seen the final Scottish poll of 2020, in which case this is also a good moment to calculate an average of all the year's polls - I can always update it later if another poll unexpectedly turns up.  This isn't as straightforward an exercise as it appears, because there's a debate to be had over what should be considered a 'proper' independence poll.  Twenty-one polls this year have asked the standard independence question, while an additional two have asked about independence using non-standard questions.  There's also been a Scotland in Union propaganda poll asking about "leaving the United Kingdom", which as I always point out can't be considered a question about independence, because it's perfectly possible to leave the UK without becoming independent.  (For example, if Northern Ireland ever leaves the UK, it will almost certainly join another existing state rather than become independent.)  So I've excluded the non-indy propaganda poll, but included the two non-standard indy polls for the sake of completeness - which is hopefully fair enough, because one of the two was commissioned by an anti-indy client (Hanbury) and the other by a pro-indy client (Progress Scotland).

2020 average:

Yes 53.2%

No 46.8%

We've never come close before to a whole calendar year in which there was a majority for Yes, so we've broken that duck in quite some style.  (And in case you're wondering, including the Scotland in Union propaganda poll would have made only a minimal difference - Yes would still have been on 52.8%.)

A few people have also been asking already about future crowdfunded Scot Goes Pop polling.  Obviously I have to be careful not to go to the well too often, because there's always a danger of donation fatigue setting in, but if anyone has any strong feelings about timing, let me know in the comments section below.  The two obvious options are at the start of 2021 when people are coming to terms with the realities of Brexit, and at some point in April/early May, during the Holyrood campaign proper.

Truly staggering: support for independence reaches all-time high in an online poll of 58%

The Survation poll published a couple of days ago raised the genuine possibility that Yes support might have fallen back slightly, because it was the third poll out of four to show a 2-point drop.  But that theory has been blown out of the water by a sensational new poll from ComRes that by two clear percentage points puts Yes at the highest ever level of support in any poll conducted online by any firm.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Savanta ComRes)

Yes 58% (+5)

No 42% (-5)

Even if this poll proves to be an outlier, it's pretty much impossible to reconcile it with a situation in which Yes is moving backwards.  At worst it means that nothing much has changed since the summer, and at best it means we've taken another big step forward.  It's also, of course, the sixteenth poll in a row to put Yes ahead on the standard indy question, and the seventeenth in a row if you add in a Progress Scotland poll that used a non-standard format.

Today's results are from a new series of monthly polls commissioned by The Scotsman - and whatever you think of that publication, it's a very welcome development.  Scotland, at this stage in its political story, is crying out for regular polling, and yet the monthly Herald/System Three series that ran for decades is now a long-distant memory.  Curiously, The Scotsman have opted to slightly blunt the impact of their first poll by billing the 58% Yes vote as merely the joint highest ever - which is true, but only if you count a poll that used a completely different data collection method (an Ipsos-Mori telephone poll in October).

I'm on record as saying many times that if Nicola Sturgeon intends to wait until Yes hits a sustained 60% in the polls before doing anything, she'll wait forever and Scotland will never become independent.  I was asked this morning if the ComRes numbers have changed my mind about that.  As ever, the answer is no: we still haven't reached 60%, and even if we eventually do in the occasional poll, it's unlikely to be on a sustained basis.  But hopefully now we've actually reached these giddy heights, the penny may have dropped with the leadership that we don't need anything over and above this.  And Keith Brown's repeated use of the words "settled will" would appear to support that interpretation.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot: 

SNP 55% (+5)

Conservatives 20% (-3)

Labour 16% (-2)

Liberal Democrats 6% (-)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot: 

SNP 42% (+1)

Conservatives 20% (-1)

Labour 17% (-1)

Greens 12% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 7% (-)

Again, these numbers contradict most recent polls which have shown modest movement against the SNP.  However, I would still guess the SNP might be underestimated on the list vote (and the Greens overestimated) due to the Survation-like way in which ComRes pose the list question, which may lead to some people replying as if they were being asked for a second preference vote.

In fairness to Douglas Ross, his net favourability rating of -9 isn't quite as poor as in other polls, but it's still miles behind Nicola Sturgeon's, slightly behind Patrick Harvie's, and no better than Willie Rennie's.  This is plainly not what the Tories hoped for or expected when they defenestrated Jackson Carlaw.  They'll be particularly perturbed that just 16% of respondents regard Ross as "charismatic".  Presumably he would never have been hand-picked unless he had been expected to be seen as charismatic, so the experiment really isn't working out.

Analysis of yesterday's Survation poll: the fifteenth or sixteenth in a row to show a pro-independence majority

Apologies for not covering this yesterday, but I'm sure most of you are already up to speed with it.  A new Survation poll is the fifteenth in a row (or arguably sixteenth in a row depending on definition) to show a majority for independence.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 52% (-2)

No 48% (+2)

Three of the last four polling firms to report have now shown a small recent decrease in Yes support - so that might be significant, but it could still be happening by chance.  The exception was of course the Panelbase poll for this blog in November showing Yes climbing to an all-time high of 56%.  

Westminster voting intention:

SNP 51% (-1)

Labour 21% (+1)

Conservatives 20% (+2)

Liberal Democrats 6% (-2)

The changes here don't appear to be of any great significance, as they just revert to the numbers in the last-but-one Survation poll.  Labour's second place seems to be a Survation 'house effect' - it's been seen in all of the last three Survation polls, but not in polls from other firms.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 53% (-1)

Labour 20% (+2)

Conservatives 20% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 6% (-2)

Greens 1% (+1)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 41% (-2)

Labour 20% (+1)

Conservatives 18% (+1)

Greens 10% (n/c)

Liberal Democrats 7% (n/c)

As I always point out, the list numbers from Survation polls need to be taken with a pinch of salt, because respondents seem to be influenced by the way the question is posed.  Some pro-indy voters seem to be left with the impression that they're being asked for a second preference, thus leading to a (possible) understatement of the SNP and overstatement of the Greens.

The omelette of strategic naivety

No-one has been clearer than I have that the SNP must have a Plan B ready to go if the UK government continue to refuse a Section 30 order.  But I don't think it's unreasonable to point out that Plan B has to be something that actually has a chance of working, as opposed to, you know, no chance under any conceivable circumstances whatsoever.  Which brings me onto a familiar drum being banged by Wings - 

"For much of last year, this site advocated a rational but unpopular position – namely that the SNP, which at the time held the balance of power in the UK parliament, should offer to support Theresa May’s soft-Brexit deal in exchange for the transfer of powers to hold a second independence referendum."

What's wrong with that sentence?  Well, where to begin.  First of all, the SNP didn't hold the balance of power in the UK parliament - if that had been the case, Jeremy Corbyn would have been Prime Minister, not Theresa May.  Secondly, the position Wings advocated was not "rational but unpopular" - it was in fact popular (with Wings readers) but irrational.  Yes, the SNP could have made Theresa May an offer, but it would have achieved absolutely nothing.  Her reply would have been - 

"Our Precious United Kingdom is not for sale.  We do not do deals with separatists."

You might argue that would have made her crazy when somebody was trying to save her bacon, but nevertheless it's indisputably what she would have said.  And actually from her own point of view it would have made perfect sense, because the SNP weren't in a position to deliver the deal anyway.  They didn't have enough votes to put the matter beyond dispute, and more to the point some of the Tory MPs who voted for the deal would have immediately swung the other way if they knew that "the precious" was at stake.

So by all means criticise the SNP for not doing the things they could have done to bring about independence or a choice on independence.  But don't criticise them for not attempting something that was never in their power, and that would have simply have left them looking a bit foolish, a bit cynical, and above all else strategically naive.

YouGov indy polling gossip

First of all, if you'd like to read more analysis of yesterday's Ipsos-Mori poll putting support for independence at 56%, I have an article in today's edition of The National HERE.  

I've also just received an email from a reader to let me know that another YouGov poll on independence is underway - which might be a cause for dismay, because I suspect that YouGov may be the firm most likely to break the long sequence of Yes majorities (they had Yes ahead by 'only' 51-49 in their last poll).  However, it remains to be seen whether the new poll is even intended for publication, because some of the supplementary questions are a bit odd and have the look of a private poll.  There's a question about how the army should be branded in Scotland, and also one about whether the unionist parties should form an electoral pact on the constituency vote in May.  (Seems a bit of a pointless query, because it's surely unthinkable that Labour in particular would be willing to go down that road.)

Make that fourteen/fifteen in a row: Ipsos-Mori shows yet another huge majority for Scottish independence

I wasn't sure if we'd see any more independence polls before the end of this calendar year, but today brings word of something really important - it's only the second telephone poll conducted in 2020, and it's another cracker.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Ipsos-Mori/STV)

Yes 56% (-2)

No 44% (+2)

This is the fourteenth poll in a row which has produced a Yes majority on the standard independence question - although many people will say it's the fifteenth by adding in one poll with a non-standard question.

Unionists will of course point to the apparent small swing back to No, but the fact is that this is the second-highest ever Yes vote recorded in a telephone poll, and indeed the joint second-highest ever Yes vote recorded in any sort of poll.  What's more, the previous Ipsos-Mori poll in October contained significantly too many respondents who recalled voting Yes in 2014, and the new poll doesn't, so there's a genuine case to be made that the 56% in this poll is as good as, or better than, the 58% in the last one.  

The latter point makes it hard to read the general trend, because the last two polls from other firms gave a contradictory indication - YouGov suggested a small drop for Yes, while Panelbase reported a small increase, taking Yes to a new high watermark.  It still looks entirely possible that nothing much has changed since independence support reached its peak in the summer, but we'll have to await further polls to be sure.

Scottish Parliament constituency voting intentions:

SNP 55% (-3)

Conservatives 22% (+3)

Labour 14% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 6% (-2)

Greens 1% (n/c)

Scottish Parliament regional list voting intentions:

SNP 47% (-1)

Conservatives 22% (+4)

Labour 16% (+2)

Greens 7% (-2)

Liberal Democrats 6% (-2)

Seats projection (with changes from 2016): SNP 73 (+10), Conservatives 27 (-4), Labour 19 (-5), Greens 5 (-1), Liberal Democrats 5 (n/c)

So a small apparent recovery for the two largest unionist parties since the last Ipsos-Mori poll, but again that can perhaps be partly explained by the fact that there were too many 2014 Yes voters in the sample for the previous poll.  Either way, the SNP remain on course for a comfortable overall single-party majority of 17 seats, with pro-independence parties in combination taking more than 60% of the seats.

A quiet revolution inside the SNP

Just before Tony Blair invaded Iraq, something which he had plainly already made up his mind to do, he sent out junior ministers to claim they were making a "last push for peace".  It was the ultimate Orwellian linguistic trick - framing the warmongering government as peace-lovers, and the anti-war resistance to the government as the obstacle to peace.  I was reminded of that episode the other day when Alyn Smith started his rather brazen crusade against "factionalism" within the SNP - which was really a pitch for people to vote for his own diehard faction in the name of anti-factionalism.  And yet we know that one or two souls were naive enough to be impressed by his words and to take them at face value.  So the question was whether enough people would be hoodwinked to change the trajectory of the SNP's internal elections over the weekend.  Judging by Mr Smith's own result, his gambit failed.

Policy Development Convener Election (first preferences):

Chris Hanlon 43.3%

Alyn Smith 37.5%

Graeme McCormick 19.3%

Final count:

Chris Hanlon 54.8%

Alyn Smith 45.2%

That really is an astounding result when you consider that Mr Smith is far, far better known than Mr Hanlon.  OK, conference delegates are perhaps a little less likely to be 'starstruck' than the rank-and-file membership, but even so.

I've lost count of the number of times over the years that it's been suggested that SNP members might use an internal election to push the party in a more radical direction.  Usually nothing materialises, which makes this batch of results all the more remarkable.  Perhaps delegates could sense that independence was on the ballot this time, and that it was now or never if we were to get back on track in terms of strategy.  Take a look, for example at the contest for President - everyone knew that Mike Russell would win, but what we were waiting to see was whether Craig Murray would secure a big enough minority of the vote to send a message about members' unease in regard to the lack of urgency on an independence referendum. I think it's fair to say that he exceeded expectations.

SNP President election:

Mike Russell 61.7%

Craig Murray 24.5%

Corri Wilson 13.9%

The headline result is Joanna Cherry's triumphant return to the NEC - a body that has lost its way to such an extent that, under the control of Alyn Smith's anti-faction faction, it made a botched attempt to bar Ms Cherry from standing in last year's general election.  Her unofficial running-mate Neale Hanvey was well off the pace on the NEC vote, but managed to win a place on the Conduct Committee - quite an achievement for someone who was himself suspended from the party until only a few months ago.

Arguably the most important results symbolically are the oustings of Rhiannon Spear and Fiona Robertson as Women's Convener and Equalities Convener respectively.  Both had narrowly won their positions last year in the face of a fierce challenge, and I had thought they might hold on with a bit more to spare this time due to Colette Walker and others decamping to a new fringe party.  Their unexpected defeats will surely make it a lot harder for the leadership to press ahead with plans for self-ID.

But in a sense this outcome poses a dilemma for one or two of the rebels too - having won the party back to some extent, won't it be harder to justify sabotaging the party next May by splitting the vote on the list?

It's hard to defend the BBC on a day like today

The BBC always innocently claim to be scrupulously impartial on the Scottish political debate and independence in particular, but they really do make it hard for themselves to hold that line when they attempt stunts like the one we've seen today.  An article on the BBC news website is titled "Sturgeon defends handling of the pandemic", framing her from the start as being on the back foot and having something to defend.  The opening paragraph states that Scotland's death rate is higher than England's - but then we discover that what is being referred to is not the overall duration of the pandemic (which has of course seen a much worse outcome in England than in Scotland), but "the week to 15 November", in which the per capita death toll was slightly higher in Scotland.  Such figures are scarcely surprising, given that England went into a nationwide lockdown when Scotland did not - which was made possible by the fact that Scotland has had the virus under better control in preceding months.  And we know from past experience that the BBC would have been the first to hammer Nicola Sturgeon if she had imposed extra restrictions any earlier than she did.

The rather pathetic impression is given of a state broadcaster just eagerly waiting for months until the first opportunity came along to claim on a thin technical basis that Scotland is performing worse than England, and then pouncing in a less than subtle manner.

Pretty shocking, but sadly predictable, headline from a colonial broadcaster intent on politicising a pandemic. It is of course based on a quite appalling interview by Andrew Marr who treated pandemic deaths as a colonial league contest with England the winners. Disgusting. pic.twitter.com/9QPyQ3YzJ7

— MSM_Monitor (@msm_monitor) November 29, 2020

The Tories' priority in the middle of a pandemic? Dragging us out of the single market and customs union, against our clearly expressed democratic will, in just ONE MONTH from now. Why don't the mainstream media hammer Ross on this brazen hypocrisy?https://t.co/tEdJBNTY23

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 29, 2020

Voting for @theSNP #NEC continues today. Please vote for me #1 as Elected Member to improve party governance & policy making. I will put preparations for #Independence front & centre. I’m speaking in the #indy debate at #SNPConference2020 later this morning pic.twitter.com/Syycp87P18

— Joanna Cherry QC (@joannaccherry) November 29, 2020

POLL: Should all SNP members have the right to vote in internal elections (such as NEC elections), or should the franchise continue to be restricted to conference delegates?

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 29, 2020

SNP vote surges in two Perth by-elections

So just a brief round-up of a couple of local by-election results I overlooked the other day... 

Perth City South: 

SNP 32.9% (+5.2) 

Liberal Democrats 31.6% (-3.1) 

Conservatives 29.4% (+4.2) 

Labour 3.5% (-2.9) 

Greens 2.3% (-0.8) 

UKIP 0.3% (n/a) 

This is one of those bonkers results that can only occur due to the STV system, and which we know from past experience that poor old Mike "impartial Lib Dem election expert" Smithson struggles to get his head around. The Lib Dems topped the poll in the ward in 2017, and the SNP have overtaken them this time. The SNP vote has gone up, and the Lib Dem vote has gone down. The net swing from Lib Dem to SNP is a very healthy 4%. And yet technically the result of the by-election is a Lib Dem gain from the SNP. How is that even possible? Well, it's because STV is a proportional system with multi-councillor wards, and the by-election was caused by the death of an SNP councillor who was elected in 2017 after finishing in third place in the ward on the first preference vote. However, as soon as a vacancy occurs, STV suddenly stops being a proportional system, and all the voters of the ward get to choose a replacement, which naturally gives an in-built advantage to whichever party topped the popular vote in the ward last time around.

But hang on, didn't the SNP top the popular vote in the by-election? So how come it's a Lib Dem gain? That's because STV is also a preferential system, and the lower preferences of Tory voters will have broken heavily for the Lib Dems. A tight head-to-head between the SNP and the Lib Dems on first preferences when there are lots of Tory transfers sloshing around is essentially an unwinnable scenario for the SNP. 

Perth City North: 

 

SNP 61.0% (+12.5) 

Conservatives 22.9% (-2.7) 

Labour 9.5% (-6.3) 

Liberal Democrats 3.9% (+0.4) 

Greens 2.6% (n/a) 

Not much need to worry about transfers when you have 61% on first preferences! The SNP's average increase across the two by-elections is more than 8%, which tends to suggest the mildly underwhelming recent result in Clackmannanshire was - as we suspected at the time - an aberration caused by local factors.

At some point the usual suspects are going to have make their peace with the idea of sharing the SNP with self-ID sceptics. You can't purge or silence people like Joanna Cherry and Joan McAlpine, and trying to paint them as allies of the 'far right' just looks downright daft.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 28, 2020

Earlier today members of @theSNP joined with members of other parties to publicise a letter containing a defamatory statement about me. I would like to know who organised the letter so I can seek redress. Now this new account https://t.co/UrKipWDXA3

— Joanna Cherry QC (@joannaccherry) November 28, 2020

Is retweeting the defamatory material. I would like to know the identity of the organisers of this account & the letter are so I can contact them for redress. Please let me know if you can help. Thank you

— Joanna Cherry QC (@joannaccherry) November 28, 2020

I note you’ve removed the defamatory reference of me in the letter. It’s a sad state of affairs that many prominent political party members such as @agcolehamilton signed upto such defamatory comment. I am still waiting on an apology and a donation to a charity of my choice. https://t.co/MG8B3bWFx0

— Christopher McEleny (@ChrisMcEleny) November 28, 2020

What a shame ⁦Alyn⁩ didn’t read my speech before commenting. I supplied a copy to the party in advance. It would be a little surprising if a senior lawyer was advocating an “illegal” referendum. Time to get our ducks in a row. https://t.co/Sl6bkUA4lM

— Joanna Cherry QC (@joannaccherry) November 29, 2020

📣 Today, @theSNP members have an opportunity to elect an NEC that will unite the party behind an independence campaign led by the grassroots. The power to #MakeChangeHappen is in your hands. Here's the team we're backing: https://t.co/LPZeeDcqDt

— SNP Common Weal Group (@SNP_CWG) November 28, 2020

If I was an SNP member this is the slate I’d back. As a Yes supporter the direction & vitality of the SNP matters too. Fringe events - even online - cost around £6k, pricing out grassroots voices. Cmon SNP members - have courage to democratise your party. https://t.co/e1PeML4XwW

— Lesley Riddoch (@LesleyRiddoch) November 28, 2020