YouGov average suggests SNP would make big gains - and win 93% of Scottish seats - in a new Westminster election

Click here for the Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser (17% funded as of 2.30pm on Monday) - see bottom of blogpost for more details...

We're getting closer to the publication of the new full-scale Scot Goes Pop poll - I was given advance sight of some preliminary numbers this morning, and it's possible I may be able to release the first set of results tomorrow or Wednesday.  However, I haven't seen the voting intention numbers yet, which will be interesting, because unless another poll appears over the next 24-48 hours, it'll be the first full-scale Scottish voting intention poll for a good few weeks.  To whet your appetite, here is the next best thing - an average of the Scottish subsamples from the last four GB-wide YouGov polls.  YouGov, unlike other firms, appear to structure and weight their Scottish subsamples separately, so an average over time should produce figures at least in the same ball-park as a full-scale Scottish poll.

SNP 47.0%

Conservatives 22.8%

Labour 17.5%

Liberal Democrats 6.3%

Greens 4.3%

Seats projection (based on proposed new boundaries with a reduced number of Scottish seats): SNP 53 (+5), Conservatives 3 (-3), Labour 1 (-), Liberal Democrats 0 (-4)

So this is basically good news - the SNP's lead isn't quite as mind-bogglingly massive as it's been at certain times during the pandemic, but nevertheless there still appears to have been a clear swing from Tory to SNP since the December 2019 general election.  Although the effect on seats seems exaggerated given that the swing is a relatively modest 2%, it's worth noting that the new constituency map is actually working against the SNP on these numbers - based on the current boundaries they'd be grabbing an additional two seats, and would be essentially back to where they were in the 2015 super-landslide.

Labour, meanwhile, are actually slightly down on their historic low under Jeremy Corbyn at the 2019 election.  Luckily for us, they'll remain firmly in denial about their predicament and will continue to tell themselves that it's the voters who need to change, not Labour.

Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser update (as of 2.30pm on Monday): £1086 raised out of £6500 target figure (17% funded).  The Scot Goes Pop poll you'll be seeing over the coming days is a relatively rare example of a credible full-scale opinion poll commissioned by a pro-independence client, with some questions that unionist parties would probably prefer had never been asked.  If you'd like to see me continue to commission these polls now and again, thus ensuring that it's not only anti-independence newspapers and pressure groups who frame the questions in the very influential polls that are published, your continued support will be absolutely vital - because polls are very expensive.  So please forgive me as I continue to heavily promote the current fundraiser, which as you can see has only reached 17% of its target so far.  I know from past experience that crowdfunders can very easily grind to a complete halt if a sense of momentum isn't kept up, and there really is very little point in a half-finished crowdfunder for an opinion poll. So I might publish a dedicated fundraiser blogpost later tonight, before I become too busy with publishing the results of the new poll.  A million thanks to everyone who has donated so far - I really appreciate it.  You can find the fundraiser page HERE, or if you'd rather not donate via GoFundMe, you can find an alternative HERE (scroll down the page after following the link).

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The Scottish Government has a well-earned reputation for interacting like real people with the general public - it shouldn't throw that away now by being aloof and dogmatic on gender issues

People have been telling me for ages to listen to the series of Stephen Nolan podcasts about the highly unusual relationship that various public bodies have with the lobbying group Stonewall.  Ironically I haven't really had the time to do that until now because I've been so tied up over the last month with exploring options for getting the Scot Goes Pop poll on GRA reform off the ground - which, for reasons I'll never be able to publicly explain, has been one of the most stressful things I've done in a long time (although those reasons do relate to some of the issues covered by the podcasts). Anyway, I've finally had a chance to draw breath, and I listened in full to the episode about Stonewall's dealings with the various governments of the UK.  Roughly half of the episode is about the Scottish Government, and in particular its decision -  at Stonewall's urging - to stop using the word "mother" in documents relating to maternity and replace it with "pregnant person". The original replacement term was "pregnant woman", but even that wasn't satisfactory enough for Stonewall, who insisted on a gender-neutral term instead.

My first reaction was that this is all a bit comical and trivial, because it's merely about words (albeit slightly ludicrous words) rather than about substantive policy changes that affect people's lives.  But as anyone who has read Orwell knows, language shapes our experience of the world around us, particularly the way we categorise people and things.  A useful example that is sometimes cited is how the English and Welsh languages encode different perceptions of where one colour ends and another colour begins - with an equivalent Welsh word for 'green' encompassing what we as native English speakers would regard as shades of grey.  In a sense the word in each language actually creates the colour, at least as a broad category, rather than the other way around.  By the same token, if we become compelled to use the "cis" prefix before "man" or "woman" (another issue touched on by the Nolan episode), reality will become encoded by the words, and what we previously thought of as men and women will come to be understood instead as merely sub-categories of each gender.  That will affect people's real life behaviour and the way we interact with each other - which of course is the whole point of trying to reshape our language in the first place.

On the subject of Orwellian language, it was incredibly dispiriting to hear in the podcast that the Scottish Government had refused to be interviewed or to answer detailed questions, and instead simply sent the producers a very brief written statement full of ultra-politically correct buzz-phrases that bore only a tenuous relation to what was being asked.  This is obviously in keeping with the militant "it's not up for debate" stance on gender issues, but I think the Scottish Government would be well-advised to consider how they're suddenly putting up walls between themselves and the people they serve and represent.  Previously they've always been noted for breaking those barriers down, with Nicola Sturgeon being much-praised for being informal and accessible, and interacting like a real person on social media.  Much of that good work is now being put to the sword in the service of a dogma that most people simply cannot understand.  There was a golden opportunity for Christina McKelvie to go on the podcast as Equalities Minister and to have a real conversation, using plain language, to demystify what the Scottish Government is doing.  Instead, the government did the complete opposite and made itself look remote and aloof.

As for the BBC, which is also one of the public bodies that has a weird relationship with Stonewall, Stephen Nolan has made the point that it funded, supported and published the podcasts.  But this just makes me think about what a deeply peculiar organisation the BBC is.  It's somehow been subject to institutional capture from two groups that have nothing in common with each other - gender identity activists on the one hand, and Brexit hardliners on the other.  The BBC self-censors on gender to please one particular part of the trendy liberal left, but it also self-censors to please populist right-wingers by failing to report on Brexit as the root cause of many of the challenges the UK currently faces.  Shortages of goods and petrol are presented as bafflingly random acts of God, rather than events with a very simple cause-and-effect explanation.

And, yes, the BBC's all-time favourite subject is itself and it does very often engage in self-analysis and self-scrutiny.  But it's nevertheless curious how there is an unspoken understanding of the acceptable boundaries of that self-scrutiny.  It remains utterly unthinkable for there to be a BBC documentary or podcast series exploring the reasons behind the BBC's extraordinary behaviour in the crucial penultimate week of the independence referendum campaign.

Funding for Scot Goes Pop polling: During the summer, I crowdfunded for two polls - one on GRA reform and related gender issues, and one on independence and related issues.  Neither set of funding raised enough for the type of full-scale poll I ideally wanted to commission, although a substantial amount was raised for the GRA poll, and I was initially confident that it would be enough as long as I shopped around and limited the number of questions.  Unfortunately I was wrong, and it proved to be impossible to commission a more limited poll with a questionnaire that resembled the one I had intended.  In order to break the logjam, I've gone ahead and commissioned a comprehensive GRA poll from my first-choice firm (with a few topical political questions added on).  The results are anticipated over the coming week.  This is a much better option, but it's also more expensive, and I'm covering the shortfall from the crowdfunding with my own money.  Obviously I'd prefer to only lose that money temporarily, though, and I also still need to complete the funding for the independence poll, which I hope to run over the coming months.  In an effort to solve both problems, I've set up a new dedicated polling fundraiser which you can find HERE.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far. Running total as of lunchtime on Sunday: £875 raised out of £6500 target figure (13% funded).  You can also find an alternative payment method HERE (scroll down the post).

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An important update on forthcoming Scot Goes Pop polling on GRA reform and independence

With grateful thanks for your patience, I'm pleased to be able to tell you that I've finally commissioned the comprehensive poll on reform of the Gender Recognition Act and related gender issues that I crowdfunded for in the summer.  However, this has been a much more challenging and stressful process than previous Scot Goes Pop polls, so I'll need to briefly explain how we've ended up where we are.

First of all, the fundraising process during the summer proved to be extraordinarily messy.  I already had a general fundraiser underway to support the blog itself, and I was reluctant to have two fundraisers running at the same time.  So when the GRA poll idea came up, I tried to use the general fundraiser to crowdfund for the poll - but that was clearly a mistake, because it made it too hard for people to visualise what the target figure was.  What complicated it further was that The National got in touch and kindly reported on my fundraising for further independence polling - but that meant I effectively had to stop crowdfunding for the GRA poll, because obviously independence polling and GRA polling are different things, and not everyone who helps to fund one will be interested in helping to fund the other.

Neither set of fundraising produced enough on its own for the type of full-scale poll I ideally wanted to run - although the two in combination did raise just about enough.  Nevertheless, I've felt honour-bound to keep the two sets of funds separate.  The GRA funding was the more successful of the two, and enough money was raised for me to be reasonably confident I could still commission a GRA poll if I shopped around for the most competitive rates and limited the number of questions.  However, having looked into that possibility and given it my very best shot (I put in an enormous amount of work over the last few weeks and was almost in despair at times), I'm afraid it just wasn't a runner.  There's very little point in spending thousands of pounds on a poll where the questions aren't the ones we actually want to ask, and don't even resemble the ones we want to ask.

So in order to break the logjam, I've gone ahead and commissioned a full-scale GRA poll from my first-choice firm.  That's a much better option anyway, because it's the comprehensive poll we had originally intended, rather than a half-hearted or slimmed-down effort.  However, it's also more expensive, and I'm going to cover the shortfall with my own money - I can't see any other way of getting the poll done in a timely manner, and it's important it's done soon because Holyrood may not be far away from making some fateful decisions.  

Obviously I'd rather only be losing that money temporarily, though, so to solve the problem I've set up a new dedicated polling fundraiser, which you can find HERE and which I will be promoting heavily as the results of the new poll are published.  The funds raised will compensate me for what I'm spending on the current poll, but mostly it will complete the funding for the next Scot Goes Pop independence poll (I'll keep my options open on the timing of that one but I hope it'll be within the next few months).

Just so you're aware, I've also added voting intention questions and a couple of topical political questions to the GRA poll - it would have seemed a wasted opportunity not to do that.

If you prefer Paypal to GoFundMe, my Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

And a reminder that the fundraiser page can be found HERE.

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Some concrete suggestions of how to achieve Yes unity

I gather that Ruth Wishart has issued a call for an end to "internecine warfare" in the Yes movement, although ironically I can't see what she said because she blocked me in the summer after I sent her a couple of polite replies.  Nevertheless, unity is obviously a desirable objective, and here are my own concrete suggestions about how it can be achieved.

1) Set a date for a referendum, and immediately start the process of a) requesting a Section 30 order and b) legislating for the referendum after the Section 30 order is refused.  This would end the deep suspicions on the leadership-sceptic side of the movement that the SNP are stringing us along, and are more interested in reaping the career benefits of what Wings called "the independence industry" than they are in delivering independence itself.  The stock objection of "but we're still in a pandemic" is bogus, because it would be perfectly possible to choose a date some time in 2023, by which time the pandemic will either be over or there'll be sufficient normality to hold a referendum.  As soon as we have a fixed date to build towards, we'll all start moving forward together with a common purpose.

2) Find a genuine compromise on GRA reform.  In saying this, I'll infuriate some of my fellow Alba members just as much as SNP leadership loyalists, because both sides of the debate believe there is no room for compromise due to the fundamental principles at stake.  Nevertheless, the only apparent alternative to compromise at the moment is an imminent total victory for the trans rights lobby, which will poison relationships in the independence movement for years to come.  The likes of John Nicolson and Mhairi Black may not want to hear or admit this, but a very substantial proportion of the movement is made up of what they describe as "transphobes", without whom there's unlikely to be any victory for Yes in a referendum.  The two sides will somehow have to learn to co-exist under the same umbrella.

3) Establish normalised relations with Alba.  Parties in electoral competition with each other don't have to be in a state of all-out war, especially if they agree on the same flagship policy.  The SNP regard the Greens as friendly rivals, not enemies, and there's no reason why the SNP and Alba can't develop a similar relationship.  At the very least, stop treating Alba like a terrorist organisation.

4) And Alba should do its bit in return.  As I've said before, it's important that Alba's electoral strategy is soberly calculated to maximise the chances of independence, rather than to maximise the chances of revenge against the Sturgeon leadership of the SNP.  We must be incredibly cautious about the risk of splitting the pro-indy vote by putting up candidates in first-past-the-post elections, and we should show generosity of spirit in the local elections next year by urging Alba voters to give their lower preferences to the SNP, the Greens, and any other pro-indy parties or candidates.

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Big drop in Labour vote as SNP win Falkirk by-election

As you may have seen, the SNP won a local council by-election in Falkirk overnight.  It's being reported as an 'SNP gain from Labour', although as is often the case with STV by-elections, things are not quite as they seem - the SNP won the popular vote in the ward last time around, and the real battle was with the Tories, who came very close to topping the first preference vote.  Nevertheless, there has been a very real and substantial swing from Labour to SNP.

Falkirk South by-election result (first preference votes):

SNP 39.2% (+3.5) 

Conservatives 38.9% (+6.8) 

Labour 15.7% (-11.4) 

Greens 6.2% (+1.1)

Our regular commenter 'Independence for Scotland' made an intelligent point about the reaction of SNP leadership loyalists to this result - they've said Alba have demonstrated themselves to be an irrelevance because they didn't stand a candidate.  But the same people would undoubtedly have slammed Alba for splitting the vote if they had stood a candidate, which suggests that somewhere along the line the criticisms are intellectually dishonest.

The reality is, of course, that local elections (including by-elections) are conducted by a preferential voting system, which means Alba can stand without doing any harm whatsoever to other pro-independence parties, as long as they urge their voters to give lower preferences to the SNP and the Greens.  The much trickier issue is first-past-the-post contests - ie. Westminster general elections, Westminster by-elections and Holyrood by-elections.  In those cases, the vote can genuinely be split and in the worst-case scenario a unionist might end up winning unnecessarily.  My own personal view is that Alba should sit out first-past-the-post elections unless there's an exceptionally good reason - with an example of an exceptionally good reason being that there are sitting Alba MPs in two Westminster constituencies.  If there's a snap general election at any point, I think it would make strategic sense for Alba to pour all its resources into defending East Lothian and Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath, and not actually stand anywhere else (unless there are other defectors, of course).

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The curious Britishness of the pro-independence Scottish Government

Reading through the account in the Guardian of the report into the UK's catastrophic failings in the early weeks of the pandemic, I initially got the impression that the ludicrous fiction that there was never any herd immunity policy was being maintained.  But thankfully no.  The distinction being drawn is simply that the authorities didn't necessarily believe that mass infection was desirable, but thought that any other outcome was impossible and so 'fatalistically' decided to give up on trying to stop the virus and instead merely managed the supposedly 'inevitable' herd immunity process.  The report makes clear that all the governments of the four nations of the UK wholeheartedly adopted this approach in the early stages, leading to a large number of wholly avoidable deaths.  This won't be news to those of us who followed the antics of the Scottish Government's National Clinical Director Jason Leitch during his Grand Complacency Tour of the TV and radio studios in February and March 2020.  Instead of offering much-needed information about how the public could play their part in stopping the virus in its tracks, he was propagandising for total and abject surrender.  All that was left for us, he explained, was to form an orderly queue and wait patiently for our turn to catch the virus, so that mass infection happened slowly enough to ensure the NHS wasn't overwhelmed - a contradiction in terms, as it turned out.

The fact that the Scottish Government got it so badly wrong during those crucial weeks is an uncomfortable truth for the independence movement, which explains why many Yes supporters are still in denial about it.  Some still defend the indefensible by suggesting that Leitch and co were simply following the science as it was then, and that the science subsequently changed.  Frankly, that is complete rubbish.  Leitch was explicitly rejecting the clear advice of the world-leading WHO experts, which was to test every suspected case, to trace the contacts of anyone who tested positive and to isolate them.  Crucially, the WHO had established that coronavirus did not behave like flu - the speed of transmission was not rapid enough to make suppression through contact tracing impossible, as the experience in both China and South Korea was demonstrating before our eyes.  The British scientific advisers, though, were in love with their own sense of resignation, and simply refused to believe this growing body of evidence.  Newspapers were briefed with gibberish about how the virus was supposedly just 'hiding away' in South Korea, implying that the country's apparent success in suppressing the virus was illusory.

In a nutshell, then, there was world science and there was British science, and the Scottish Government plumped for British science without a moment's hesitation.  That perhaps isn't a surprise as far as the civil service aspect is concerned, because ultimately people who work for the Scottish Government are part of the UK civil service and have to serve two masters.  But as for ministers themselves? Why would the leading members of the Scottish National Party "think British, not global" at the most critical moment of government decision-making since the Second World War? Ultimately, that is why this episode is even more uncomfortable for unionism than it is for the independence movement, because the only possible lesson to draw is that the Scottish Government did make a terrible error, and that error was to be too slavishly loyal to the British state, to the British system, and to the myth of British exceptionalism.  As soon as we departed from UK government policy, the situation improved markedly.

Curiously, though, I'm not sure even the SNP leadership themselves have fully learned that lesson.  They still seem to instinctively prefer a Westminster-led 'Four Nations' approach wherever possible, including on oil, of all things.  There are also some symbolic giveaways of the underlying attitudes behind all this, for example the comments from Nicola Sturgeon about how it was so exciting to have Emma Raducanu to support in the way that we've always supported Andy Murray.  Now, I totally understand being excited by Emma Raducanu as an individual player - she's a sensation who may well go on to dominate women's tennis for the next decade.  But if you bracket her with Andy Murray, and say those are the two players who excite you, and imply that it's because of something they have in common, then that something can only really be that they're both...British.  Which implies that you regard yourself as British and feel a strong loyalty to Britain as a country.  Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm not sure what that could be.

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Independence will not be won by drifting through time and waiting for Alister Jack's dismal vision of restoring "a YouGov democracy by 2039"

With the normal caveat that I'm not a legal expert, it seems to me to be utter nonsense to claim that the Supreme Court ruling a few days ago scuppers hopes that a legal referendum can be held without a Section 30 order.  The issues involved are very different.  The crux of the ruling was that the Scottish Parliament cannot constrain the UK Parliament's unlimited powers to legislate for Scotland, even on devolved matters.  But as far as a referendum is concerned, the argument of the legal experts who believe Holyrood already has the powers to hold a vote is that the UK Parliament's right to legislate would not be constrained in any way, because they would not be bound by the outcome of a purely consultative referendum.  (Of course they'd be bound in a moral rather than a legal sense, which is why they're so terrified of a consultative referendum).

A slightly more convincing argument is that, although the ruling is not directly relevant to the legality of a referendum, it nevertheless reveals the Supreme Court to be a deeply conservative and instinctively British Nationalist body which is highly likely to dream up a legal argument for striking down a referendum, even if we have no idea yet what that argument will be.  Well, that may or may not be the case, but it strikes me that the amateur psychoanalysing of judges is not the most sensible or reliable way of forecasting the outcome of complex legal cases.  We need to concentrate on the things we can control, and stop worrying about the things we can't.  What we can control (and by "we" I mean the pro-independence side under the leadership of the Scottish Government) is legislating for a referendum - something that frankly we should already be doing or already have done.  What we cannot control is whether that legislation is then challenged by the UK Government or by a private citizen used by the UK Government as a proxy, or whether any such challenge is successful.  In a sense that doesn't really matter, because this is a process that has to be gone through.  If a legal challenge fails, the problem is solved - we won't need a Section 30 order and a referendum will go ahead.  But if the challenge is upheld, we'll still be further forward because we'll have demonstrated to the Scottish people that the referendum route is totally closed off and that the UK Government's pigheaded intransigence has left us with only one reasonable option for pursuing a democratic mandate for independence - namely via a parliamentary election.  That will be a moment of liberation, because it will break us out of the "No to Indyref2", "now is not the time", "once in a generation" paradigm.  Parliamentary elections take place at least once every five years, and there's not much the UK Government can do about that, short of a Nazi-style Enabling Act.

As ever, though, the real problem is that the ruling may encourage the Scottish Government's ongoing passivity.  Let's be honest, pretty much everything encourages the Scottish Government's ongoing passivity.  "We might fail so it's really important we don't even try" has been the guiding principle since the catastrophic loss of nerve in 2017, and that shows no sign of changing.  Anyone who seriously wants independence should be terrified by Nicola Sturgeon's admission that she doesn't know how the impasse will be broken, but that she thinks it somehow will be, one way or another, because "time is on her side". Decoded, that means the SNP leadership's solution is to do absolutely nothing with even more studied determination and wait for something to turn up.  Spoiler alert: nothing will turn up, even if we wait decades, because the British constitution does not change and the British state's vested interest in keeping Scotland prisoner does not change.  If we want the weather to change, we have to change it ourselves.

And there's another way in which a truly radical and daring pro-independence government might have reacted to the Supreme Court ruling.  Aileen McHarg pointed out that there's now a clear incentive for the Scottish Parliament to refuse to agree to Sewel motions giving the UK Parliament consent to legislate on a specified devolved matter, because the court has created a novel distinction between laws on devolved matters passed by each parliament - Holyrood can only control/influence the interpretation and implementation of legislation it has passed itself.  But that also, I would suggest, means there's an incentive for Holyrood to "re-legislate" on swathes of laws passed after previous Sewel motions, so that the new Holyrood laws replace the Westminster laws, thus rendering the ruling largely redundant.  That would be roughly analogous to what the Parti Québécois administration used to do when it invoked the "notwithstanding clause" (allowing Canadian provincial legislatures to override court rulings of unconstitutionality) on every single piece of legislation it introduced, even when there was no particular reason to think that was actually necessary.

In other news over the past week, Alister Jack has revealed that Scotland will only be held as a prisoner against its will for another eighteen years. In the year 2039, dictatorship will be replaced by a "YouGov democracy", ie. we can have the things we want as long as YouGov say we want them (supermajority requirements apply, naturally).  So that's exciting.   Only six thousand, five hundred and seventy-four more sleeps to go.

*  *  * 

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Supreme Court ruling (and it's interesting that many eminent experts believe the judges erred in law), it's worth remembering that the Scottish people were firmly opposed to the UK Government taking the matter to court in the first place.  Here is the result of a Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll conducted in April - 

The Scottish Parliament recently passed legislation that incorporates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots Law. The law seeks to protect children's rights by forbidding public authorities from acting in a way that is incompatible with the UN Convention. However, the UK Government are challenging the law in the Supreme Court on the basis that it would interfere with the UK Parliament's right to make laws for Scotland. Although the UK Government are allowed to challenge laws that they think may exceed the Scottish Parliament's powers, they are under no obligation to do so.  Do you think the UK Government are right or wrong to challenge the new Scottish law on children's rights? 

Right: 33% 

Wrong: 42% 

With Don't Knows excluded - 

Right: 44% 

Wrong: 56% 

*  *  * 

Courtesy of the fatalistic rabbit in Watership Down, here is the Scottish Government's current strategy for securing independence -

Where are you going, wind? 

Far, far away 

Over the hills, over the edge of the world. 

Take me with you, wind, high over the sky. 

I will go with you, I will be rabbit-of-the-wind.

Where are you going, stream? 

Far, far away 

Beyond the heather, sliding away all night. 

Take me with you, stream, away in the starlight. 

I will go with you, I will be rabbit-of-the-stream. 

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Questions for Kirsty Blackman

Did Kirsty Blackman genuinely retweet a call for Joanna Cherry to be expelled? Any chance a screenshot was doctored or something like that? It's extraordinary (and appalling) if she did.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) October 4, 2021

The fiction that Joanna Cherry was sacked because she's "not a team player" is wearing a bit thin. There's clearly been a very nasty, bitter vendetta against her from some of her colleagues.https://t.co/ubB6Q0mbxw

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) October 4, 2021

No matter who you are or what you do no one is immune from the curse of workplace bullying. It can be a dark & lonely experience so if you know someone in that position offer them support. Trust me it makes the world of difference

— Joanna Cherry QC (@joannaccherry) October 4, 2021

Have deleted an earlier RT. I am clear though, @theSNP needs to do more to tackle internal transphobia, including sanctioning or expelling those in the party who are transphobic.

— Kirsty Blackman (@KirstySNP) October 4, 2021

As you can see, Kirsty Blackman's eventual attempt to draw a line under this episode did not involve an apology - it was simply an announcement of a deletion without any explanation of either the original retweet or of the deletion itself.  That being the case, I don't think it's unreasonable that she should be invited to answer the following questions to clear the matter up rather more satisfactorily...

* Did you not read the tweet properly before retweeting it?  All of us have been guilty of that sort of carelessness at some point in time, but is that what you're claiming happened in this case?

* If you did read the tweet properly, why did you knowingly retweet a call for one of your MP colleagues to be expelled from the SNP?

* Do you, in fact, believe Joanna Cherry should be expelled?

* If you do believe Joanna Cherry should be expelled, why did you delete the retweet?

* Does your clarification imply that you want transphobes to be expelled, but that you accept that this principle does not apply to Joanna Cherry because she is plainly not transphobic?  If so, have you apologised to her for the confusion?

* Do you accept that calling for a colleague to be expelled, when that colleague is in fact in good standing, should in itself be a disciplinary offence?  If not, why not?

When Ms Cherry was sacked from the frontbench, I said that one of my big concerns was that it might prove to be merely a staging post, and that the next step would be to make it a little less unthinkable for spurious disciplinary action to be taken against her, with a view to eventually having her suspended or expelled.  That may have seemed a tad outlandish when I said it.  It looks a hell of a lot less outlandish now, and we're only a few short months further on.  The many decent people who decided to stay in the SNP after Alba broke away in the spring now need to stand up and be counted.  They don't need to lose their party - there's nothing inevitable about it.  But time may be running short.

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"Name one country that allows FOREIGNERS to vote in constitutional referendums. Go on, James, name just ONE!"

Naming no names, but someone has been challenging me today to...well, to do what you can see above in the title of this blogpost.  Where on earth is this nonsense coming from all of a sudden? Brexit has given EU citizens an enormous incentive to vote Yes in any future independence referendum, and anecdotally that does seem to be exactly what the majority of them plan to do.  This is absolutely the last moment to be retreating into 'blood and soil' nationalism and trying to strip 'non-natives' of their right to vote - it makes no strategic sense, even leaving aside the profoundly anti-democratic nature of the proposal.

I am, however, going to answer the challenge directly.  Before I do, though, I'll explain why the question would still be a monumental red herring even if it could not be answered.  It wouldn't actually matter if there was no country in the world that allowed foreign nationals to vote on constitutional matters, because excluding foreign nationals is not actually what is being proposed here, or at the very least it's not the main thrust of the proposal.  The suggestion is that some English people who hold both residency and citizenship in Scotland, in other words people who are not foreign nationals, should be stripped of their right to vote.  You only have to think of it in those terms to realise what a total non-starter this proposal is - even if it was remotely desirable, which it is not.

But my answer to the challenge is very simple, and it's the United Kingdom, which allowed non-British Commonwealth citizens to vote in the referendums on European membership if they were resident in the UK.  That includes, for example, citizens of India, a country that contains eighteen per cent of the entire population of the world.  As I was only asked to provide one country that allows foreign nationals to vote in constitutional referendums, I don't need to go any further than that, but there will almost certainly be other examples if anyone wants to trawl through the electoral rules of other countries.  One possibility is New Zealand, which allows all resident non-citizens to vote.  If there's any exception to that general rule for constitutional referendums, I haven't been able to find any sign of it yet.

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Sunday Miscellany

So a few miscellaneous things while I'm thinking of them.  First of all, I meant to mention last week that I was quoted in Alasdair Soussi's latest piece for the Al Jazeera website, about the UK Government's attempts to turn COP26 in Glasgow into a Union Jack fest.  You can read it HERE.

Secondly, I promised our regular commenter 'Independence for Scotland' that I'd let him know if I heard anything about how to buy Alba Party merchandise in a way that ensures the funds go to the right place.  The latest email update from the party reveals an online Alba shop is on its way, and that in the meantime merchandise can be bought by emailing:  merchandise@albaparty.org

And lastly, there's an uncharacteristically helpful headline in the Herald on Sunday suggesting that a Tory-funded poll has backfired by showing a majority of the Scottish public think "the Union is bad for the environment".  Skimming through the article, though, I get the impression this may just be a Scottish subsample from a GB-wide Opinium poll (albeit one with an unusually large sample size).

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