The early history of the pandemic mustn't be conveniently rewritten to suit government officials who played fast and loose with people's lives

It's been a long, long time since I've written a Jason Leitch-bashing blogpost, mainly because it's seemed a bit unnecessary - Leitch has been signed up to the Scottish Government's sensible strategy for over a year now, which means his salesman's patter has been put to far better use than it was in the earliest stages of the pandemic.  But that doesn't mean it's OK to rewrite the history of what happened in February and March 2020 or his own disgraceful role in that.  

I was a bit stunned to see on Twitter this afternoon that people were saying they had no recollection of Leitch ever advocating herd immunity - the implication being that it couldn't possibly have happened.  In reality, of course, Leitch embarked on a Grand Complacency Tour of the TV and radio studios in the weeks leading up to lockdown and was considerably more explicit about his support for mass infection than most UK government officials.  He wasn't, in fairness, the main instigator of the herd immunity strategy - but when you're faced with a calamitous error in government policy which is likely to cause tens of thousands of needless deaths, and you have a choice between pushing back against that, or embracing it and selling it wholeheartedly to the public, I think it's appropriate that you take your share of responsibility if you follow the latter course.  At the moment, Leitch's antics at the start of last year are like the embarrassing family secret that he and others think will just go away if it's never spoken of.

I've been accused in the last few months of being "on the wrong side of history" because of my support for Alba and my dislike of the SNP's turn towards identity politics.  The jury is still out on those points, but one thing I'm entitled to say that I was undoubtedly on the right side of history about was my vocal opposition to herd immunity in those crucial weeks in early-to-mid-March 2020.  Unthinking SNP loyalists were trying to shout me down, telling people to ignore "irresponsible bloggers" like me and to listen to "experts" like Leitch instead.  I'm quite proud of the fact that I was one of the people pointing out that the emperor had no clothes when it was not at all comfortable to do so. 

Remember the plaudits Leitch received for smugly telling Piers Morgan that it was absolutely right to go to a crowded concert just before lockdown when the virus was spreading like wildfire, and indeed that he would have done so himself?  In retrospect it's difficult to know whether to laugh or cry.  At a time when we now know Boris Johnson wanted Chris Whitty to inject him with coronavirus on live TV to demonstrate how 'mild' the illness he later almost died of was, the Scottish Government was still in complete lockstep with London.  That was a catastrophic error that can't just be swept under the carpet, no matter how well Nicola Sturgeon has done since she belatedly broke with the UK-wide approach last spring.

The folly of delaying progress on an independence referendum any further

A few days ago, I tweeted this -

"The Yes movement is now made up of three camps: 

1) Those who 'know' an indyref will not be held.

2) Those who 'know' an indyref will be held and are already trying to 'win' it. 

3) Those who want to make sure the mandate for an indyref is actually used.

I'm in group 3."

But judging from the replies it seems that I was being rather naive and that there's a fourth group of independence supporters who don't want a referendum to take place at all, because they're worried about losing it.  The snag, of course, is that without a referendum or equivalent democratic event, Scotland will never become independent, and it can therefore be argued that people who oppose a referendum are only 'independence supporters' in a very nominal sense.  

I honestly thought we'd moved beyond this.  A couple of weeks ago the SNP and Greens won a mandate to hold a referendum in this parliamentary term, and that mandate was not conditional on Yes reaching a certain level of support in the opinion polls.  I assumed the only remaining questions were whether the SNP could be persuaded to keep their word, and whether they would just take "no" for an answer if the obstructionism from London continues.  But it appears that there are still people who think the SNP's number one objective should be - and is - to avoid losing a referendum by not even attempting to hold one unless the polls show a fantastical level of Yes support that no-one sensible actually believes is attainable.  We could reach the 2040s without having held a referendum, and the Pete Wisharts of this world will be patting themselves on the back saying "we dodged a bullet there", all the while missing the actual point of salience that Scotland is still part of the United Kingdom - in other words, exactly the same outcome that holding and losing a referendum would have produced.

Perhaps the time has come to stop asking these people what their mythical "perfect moment" to hold an indyref would actually look like.  The more important question is: how long do we wait for the "perfect moment" to arrive before we say "that's long enough" and act anyway? There surely has to be some cut-off point if the referendum policy isn't a fiction.  I would suggest that moment will come, at the absolute latest, when any further inaction would make it difficult or impossible to hold a referendum well before 2026 - and given the potential obstacles that may need to be cleared, that leaves little room for delay before at least setting the ball rolling.  Any notion of quietly letting the mandate expire must, this time, be regarded as an absolute non-starter.

And let's not forget what the rationale of that mandate is.  What pro-independence parties have said to voters, quite rightly, is that Brexit drove a coach and horses through the basis upon which people voted against independence in 2014, and that Scotland now has a right to revisit its decision.  Regardless of whether people vote Yes or No, their right to choose is what matters.  If what the SNP leadership were really thinking was that Brexit would only be useful if it produced a decisive Yes surge, and that people's right to choose wasn't so important if that didn't happen, then voters have been misled quite seriously.  Remember that some EU citizens made decisions to stay in this country specifically because Nicola Sturgeon had reassured them that a referendum was coming, and that it would provide an opportunity for an independent Scotland to remain in the EU.  That pledge has already been semi-dishonoured because full-fat Brexit has been allowed to occur without an indyref.  If we let another few years go past, the notion that a referendum is in any sense a response to Brexit will look obviously bogus.

Another point that a number of people have made is that the implied logic for saying that a referendum has to wait until after Scotland has recovered from the Covid crisis is that we are better placed to recover within the UK - essentially a unionist argument.  If we're saying we don't need independence to recover, how on earth are we going to convince people that we need independence after we've recovered?

Petition (updated): Scotland must have its own Eurovision representation and escape the annual fiasco of the UK entry

Update: Thanks to your help, we've cleared the first hurdle - enough signatures have been received for the petition to be checked to see if it qualifies for publication.  It looks like no more signatures can be accepted until that happens, so I've removed the links to the petition for now, and I'll keep you updated.

In view of the embarrassment of Scotland being associated with the latest "United Kingdom" nul points fiasco at the Eurovision Song Contest last night (in reality there's been no Scottish involvement in the UK entry since 1988), and bearing in mind that the Panelbase / Scot Goes Pop poll in April found 60% support for Scotland having its own entry at the Eurovision, I thought the time might be ripe to start a petition on the UK Parliament website.  

In theory, if the petition goes live and attracts a very large number of signatures, it would trigger a debate in the House of Commons.  That's an enormous 'if', though, and the first hurdle to jump is to get five signatures to qualify for possible publication of the petition.  

Petition title: Legislate to give Scotland its own entry in the Eurovision Song Contest. 

What is being requested: Powers over Scottish broadcasting are reserved to Westminster. As the BBC have ignored representations to respect Scottish public opinion and give Scotland its own representation in cultural events including the Eurovision Song Contest, the UK Parliament should legislate to require this to happen. 

More details: There is overwhelming evidence that the people of Scotland wish to be represented by Scottish entries, not UK entries, at cultural events such as the Eurovision. A reputable poll conducted in April found 60% support for Scottish representation, with only 40% preferring a UK entry. The BBC's ignoring of licence payers' wishes has become particularly intolerable in view of the annual embarrassment of the UK's Eurovision performance. For national dignity, Scotland demands its Eurovision freedom.

Eurovision special of the Scot Goes Popcast - with a reminder that 60% of the public DEMAND a Scottish entry in the contest

As promised, here is the Eurovision special of the Popcast, which is a general preview of the contest, but also contains a reminder of the key finding from the pre-election Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll...

At the forthcoming Eurovision Song Contest, there will be a United Kingdom entry.  However, in 2019, Scotland and Wales both competed in the Eurovision Choir event as countries in their own right.  In future years, how would you prefer Scotland to be represented in the Eurovision Song Contest?  

By a Scottish entry: 60%

By a United Kingdom entry: 40%

(Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, 21st-26th April 2021, a representative sample of 1075 adults in Scotland was polled.)

You can listen to the podcast either via the embedded player below, or via the direct link HERE. 

James Kelly · Scot Goes Popcast Episode 9: Eurovision 2021

I've attempted to predict the winner of the contest every year since this blog started in 2008 (with the exception of last year, for obvious reasons).  My prediction for this year is in the podcast, but for what it's worth, it's France - possibly with Italy as the runners-up.  I also mentioned Greece (among others) as a possible dark horse.

You can also catch up with previous episodes of the Popcast -

Episode 1: Yvonne Ridley

Episode 2: Tim Rideout

Episode 3: Denise Findlay

Episode 4: Ellen Höfer

Episode 5: Len Pennie (Miss PunnyPennie)

Episode 6: Alex Salmond

Episode 7: Chris McEleny

Episode 8: Election Results

Are you a newspaper columnist and want to say Scottish democracy should be dismantled without anyone noticing? Try smuggling it into an article about the Eurovision Song Contest...

Via Professor John Robertson's blog, I caught up with professional troll Mark Smith's latest column in the Herald. If you doubt my characterisation of him as a professional troll, bear in mind that his last-but-one column was titled "What can reasonable people do about the SNP?", which I believe is technically known as a QTWTAIVFTOTCBBVAOTL (Question To Which The Answer Is "Vote For Them On The Constituency Ballot But Vote Alba On The List"). 

His new piece invokes one of my own favourite subjects, the Eurovision Song Contest, and innocently inquires what Scotland can learn from it. The punchline comes at the end, when he mentions that the Eurovision voting system does not automatically give the majority what they want, but instead gives weight to expert opinion, because experts sometimes know best. "Interesting" says Mark. So this appears to be a call for democracy in Scotland to be semi-dismantled and replaced with an electoral college system in which only 50% of the vote goes to the public, and the other 50% goes to unionist "experts". And that is, to be fair, pretty much the only "voting system" I can think of that might have any chance at all of electing Douglas Ross as First Minister. 

But well disguised, Mark, I'm sure no-one even noticed how barking mad your worldview must be. 

* * * 

While I'm on the subject of Eurovision, this is the final call for any genuine Eurovision fan who has heard this year's songs and fancies giving opinions on them in a special edition of the Scot Goes Popcast, ideally to be recorded at some point tomorrow. If no-one volunteers, you'll be getting a monologue, I give you fair warning of this. My contact details can be found in the sidebar on the desktop version of the site, or on my Twitter profile.

"Hi guys! Exciting news - we've turned this into a toytown democracy..."

This really is toytown democracy. No ballots have been "rerun" - the original results have simply been adjusted to suit the side that lost. The NEC is beginning to look unreformable. Tear it down and start with something new? pic.twitter.com/l6Qm5TDaPW

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 19, 2021

If list MSP steps down on the list the next person gets seat why would it be any diff. They were always going to do it that way because the NEC had an easy opportunity to get them back. The only thing is how is Fiona going to manage to sit in two seats? Two webcams?

— Ross Quinn (@rwq1987) May 20, 2021

I think language matters. If they had said "the runner-up has been co-opted because it's not practicable to rerun the ballot" that would have been less outrageous than "We've rerun the ballot, and guess what, I'm the winner, isn't it exciting!!!! Such a whirlwind!!!!"

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 20, 2021

"we ran those who got more votes than us out of town, and... hey, look, I'm top of the list now! 🤷‍♂️"

— Jo Wilson (@Buhjuhwuh) May 20, 2021

This is the point. Some people are talking as if appointing the runner-up is entirely natural and democratic, but if Keir Starmer resigned, he wouldn't be replaced by Rebecca Long-Bailey.https://t.co/g3pevDcJ53

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 20, 2021

Ah, so if Joe Biden resigns, the winner of the election was Donald Trump. To be clear, that's what you're saying, yes? C'mon, Claire, you don't need time to think.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 20, 2021

As voters, we've given the SNP all the mandates they could ever want or need - it's now time for them to deliver on independence

I think the main reason the last six months or so have been so uncomfortable for me is that I've found myself midway between two warring camps - and instead of pleasing everyone, that's ended up offending almost everyone.  To give an example, I was - on balance - happy about the election result, because the number one objective had to be to retain the pro-independence majority, and the number two objective was to increase pro-indy representation.  Both of those were achieved.  The number three objective from my point of view was a presence for Alba, and we didn't get that, but two out of three isn't bad.  That perspective is totally alien to the hardliners who inhabit the comments sections of certain blogs, and who have somehow convinced themselves that the result was a dreadful (and perhaps fatal) blow to the independence cause.

But on the other extreme are the "just trust Nicola" true believers, who presumably think that if we just sit back and relax, an independence referendum will be along in a jiffy.  Well, maybe not quite in a jiffy, but "in due course, in the fullness of time, at the appropriate juncture". I can only suggest those people haven't been paying attention for the last four years.  I was thinking back last night to an episode in early 2017, when Bella Caledonia summoned a number of bloggers and pro-indy new media people to a sort of summit in Edinburgh to "resolve our differences" in preparation for the independence referendum that Nicola Sturgeon had just called.  It didn't really work out that way, because I ended up having a sit down argument with Angela Haggerty (she also clashed with another well-known blogger, who unlike me had the admirable knack of staying calm and retaining a beaming smile throughout!). But what's funny in retrospect is that, whatever our differences, the one thing that united us is that we were all taking it as read that an independence referendum was actually going to happen.  It hadn't really occurred to anyone that Nicola Sturgeon's "announcement" would prove to be utterly worthless.  Is there anything more tragic than devoting one's energies to "winning" an election or referendum campaign that you think is taking place but isn't?

In 2016, the SNP asked us for a mandate to hold an independence referendum in the event of Scotland being dragged out of the EU.  We gave them that mandate.  They didn't use it.  OK, the pandemic would have made it difficult or impossible to hold a referendum between March 2020 and now, but that doesn't explain or excuse the inertia in the preceding four years.  The most logical time to hold a referendum would actually have been before Brexit occurred in January 2020.  And if anyone seriously believes a referendum would have been held last autumn if coronavirus hadn't intervened, they're deluding themselves.

The SNP also asked for a "triple lock mandate" for a referendum in the 2017 UK general election.  They explicitly said that would be attained if they won a majority of the 59 Scottish seats.  That's exactly what happened, but that mandate was dishonoured too - and what was particularly cynical was that the "triple lock" rhetoric was practically disavowed in the middle of the election results programme.

This month, the SNP asked us for yet another mandate for a referendum to replace the ones they've wasted.  We gave them it (and I'm fully entitled to say "we" because I voted SNP on the constituency ballot and urged others to do the same), but I think even some loyalists now recognise that this is the end of the road in terms of asking for more and more mandates for exactly the same thing.  As voters we've gone the extra mile for the SNP - we owe them nothing more, and it's now time for them to deliver on a referendum and to deliver on independence.  If they come back to us in 2026 with more of the "make London listen" stuff, we can safely assume we've been taken for a ride.

The task at present for those of us who aren't in positions of power is not to re-win a mandate we already have, and it's not to win a referendum that is not taking place.  You can persuade all the soft No's you like, but if those people never actually get the opportunity to vote Yes, the whole exercise is a monumental waste of time.  No, the focus of our efforts must be to ensure that a referendum or equivalent democratic event actually occurs before the mandate expires in 2026.  And that, frankly, means applying pressure on the SNP leadership to keep their word in this parliament in a way they didn't in the last.  

That can be done externally by building up Alba, or it can be done internally via the SNP's own democratic structures.  But one way or another, it has to be done.

Inside the painful world of Scottish Tory logic

I was just having a look at the Scottish Tories' Twitter account, and they're making a series of rather 'interesting' claims.

Claim: "We stopped the SNP."  

Reality: Nicola Sturgeon will be re-elected as First Minister later today, and an SNP government will remain in office until May 2026 - unless of course an early election is engineered to secure an outright independence mandate.

Claim: "We stopped Indyref2."

Reality: It remains to be seen whether Indyref2 will happen, but if it doesn't, that will have nothing to do with the election result, which produced a large majority for parties with a manifesto commitment to a referendum.  The implication seems to be that the SNP falling one seat short of a single-party majority is somehow significant, but that makes no sense because the UK government said they wouldn't grant a Section 30 order no matter what the election result.  The Tories argued during the election that if the SNP had a majority they would hold a "wildcat" referendum - but what's to stop them doing that with a very comfortable SNP-Green majority?

Claim: "We had a record result, we increased our vote share."

Reality: The Conservative vote share dropped slightly on the constituency ballot.  Now, it's true that it increased slightly on the list ballot, and you can if you wish say that the list ballot is more important - but that would mean acknowledging that pro-independence parties won a clear majority of the popular vote on the list ballot.  Instead, the Tories are claiming the constituency ballot is more important when they want to dispute the mandate for an independence referendum, and that the list ballot is more important when they want to claim the Tory vote increased.  IT JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.

A liberal helping of failure

Alba finished in sixth place in seven of the eight electoral regions - the exception being South Scotland, where they finished seventh behind George Galloway's All for Unity.  However, there were two regions, Central Scotland and Glasgow, where they were within a tiny fraction of outpolling the Liberal Democrats and finishing fifth - a reminder that other parties also have their own difficult questions to ponder as they look to the future.  Andrew Page of A Scottish Liberal has offered a characteristically no-holds-barred analysis of the Lib Dems' shortcomings in this election, concluding that they've alienated potential pro-independence supporters by being too tribally unionist, and that they've put too much emphasis on a small number of constituency seats and not enough on the regional list.

If I was reading that from the perspective of a Lib Dem loyalist, I'm pretty sure I'd say that the elephant in the room is Westminster elections.  If the Lib Dems take a more ecumenical approach on the constitution in order to broaden their support, they'll lose tactical unionist votes in Edinburgh West, North-East Fife, and Caithness, Sutherland & Easter Ross, and those seats could essentially become unwinnable - with no regional list to compensate them in Westminster votes.  But if that is the main reason for the current strategy, it shows that they've become imprisoned by fear in the same way that the SNP were in the aftermath of the 2017 election - they're losing sight of the fact that the prize they could gain by being more radical is more important than what they stand to lose along the way.  In the long run, what do the Lib Dems achieve by perpetuating their own ghettoisation in a handful of locations?  Jo Grimond famously said in the 1950s that the Liberals needed to "get on or get out" - at the moment they seem resolutely determined to do neither.

*  *  *

I finished my column for next month's iScot magazine earlier today, so now may be a good moment to gently point you in the direction of various subscription options.  Remember that it's available both online and in print.  A yearly digital subscription costs less than £30, although I know many people really look forward to receiving a print edition in the post every month.

Let's put this nonsense to rest once and for all: no, Alba did not cost the SNP a list seat in the north-east

Several weeks after I first said I was backing Alba on the list ballot, I'm still having to pre-moderate comments on this blog, because the level of trolling is absolutely intolerable. Some of it is out-and-out abuse, but a lot of it is playground insults. To give an example, I deleted a comment on my YouTube channel the other day from Angela Leitch calling me a "halfwit". That's literally all the comment said - "he's a halfwit". That probably wouldn't fall foul of any hate crime legislation, but when I'm getting that sort of thing twenty or thirty times a week, it becomes more than a little wearing. Luckily with pre-moderation on, the trolls are screaming into the ether, and their comments are going unread and unreplied to. 

Nevertheless, I'm going to make a rare exception and reply to one attempted comment from earlier today, because apart from the standard insult, it also contained an erroneous claim of fact that the troll in question presumably believed to be true - specifically that Alba cost the SNP a list seat in the north-east. This is a very silly myth that simply refuses to die, so I'm going to walk you through the arithmetic in excruciating detail to demonstrate that Alba made no difference to the north-east result whatsoever. 

The actual number of list votes for the main parties in the north-east was as follows... 

SNP 147,910 

Conservatives 110,555 

Labour 41,062 

Greens 22,735 

Liberal Democrats 18,051 

Alba 8,269 

So as a hypothetical exercise let's assume that Alba had never existed and all of their 8,269 votes had gone to the SNP instead. That would have made the result -

SNP 156,179

Conservatives 110,555 

Labour 41,062 

Greens 22,735 

Liberal Democrats 18,051 

And the seat allocation would have worked out as follows...

First list seat:

The d'Hondt calculation divides the SNP's vote by ten (because they won nine constituency seats) and the Conservatives' vote by two (because they won one constituency seat).

Conservatives 55,278

Labour 41,062 

Greens 22,735 

Liberal Democrats 18,051

SNP 15,618

Conservatives win first list seat

Second list seat:

The d'Hondt calculation divides the SNP's vote by ten (because they've already won nine seats) and the Conservatives' vote by three (because they've already won two seats).

Labour 41,062 

Conservatives 36,852

Greens 22,735 

Liberal Democrats 18,051

SNP 15,618

Labour win second list seat

Third list seat:

The d'Hondt calculation divides the SNP's vote by ten (because they've already won nine seats), the Conservatives' vote by three (because they've already won two seats) and Labour's vote by two (because they've already won one seat).

Conservatives 36,852

Greens 22,735 

Labour 20,531

Liberal Democrats 18,051

SNP 15,618

Conservatives win third list seat

Fourth list seat:

The d'Hondt calculation divides the SNP's vote by ten (because they've already won nine seats), the Conservatives' vote by four (because they've already won three seats) and Labour's vote by two (because they've already won one seat).

Conservatives 27,639

Greens 22,735 

Labour 20,531

Liberal Democrats 18,051

SNP 15,618

Conservatives win fourth list seat

Fifth list seat:

The d'Hondt calculation divides the SNP's vote by ten (because they've already won nine seats), the Conservatives' vote by five (because they've already won four seats) and Labour's vote by two (because they've already won one seat).

Greens 22,735 

Conservatives 22,111

Labour 20,531

Liberal Democrats 18,051

SNP 15,618

Greens win fifth list seat

Sixth list seat:

The d'Hondt calculation divides the SNP's vote by ten (because they've already won nine seats), the Conservatives' vote by five (because they've already won four seats), Labour's vote by two (because they've already won one seat) and the Greens' vote by two (because they've already won one seat).

Conservatives 22,111

Labour 20,531

Liberal Democrats 18,051

SNP 15,618

Greens 11,368 

Conservatives win sixth list seat

Seventh list seat:

The d'Hondt calculation divides the SNP's vote by ten (because they've already won nine seats), the Conservatives' vote by six (because they've already won five seats), Labour's vote by two (because they've already won one seat) and the Greens' vote by two (because they've already won one seat).

Labour 20,531

Conservatives 18,426

Liberal Democrats 18,051

SNP 15,618

Greens 11,368 

Labour win seventh list seat

So in total the Tories win four list seats, Labour two and the Greens one - exactly the same as the real result.  The SNP aren't even vaguely close to getting a look-in, even with the help of the extra Alba votes.

Why on earth, then, are some people so utterly convinced that Alba cost the SNP a seat in the north-east?  It's actually an embarrassingly elementary "two plus two equals twenty-two" type error.  What they're doing is looking at the d'Hondt calculation for the final seat, spotting that the SNP were "only" a few thousand votes adrift, and thinking to themselves "aha, if Alba's 8000 votes had come across, we'd have taken that seat".  But what they're forgetting is that d'Hondt would have divided those extra votes by ten, just like all the other votes for the SNP.