Those #AbsoluteMenaces have done it again - the Alba Party's vote DOUBLES in latest YouGov poll

When I posted about the new YouGov poll the other night, it was quite late and my eyelids were drooping heavily, so I didn't get round to adding the Holyrood numbers.  Here they are now.

Scottish Parliament constituency voting intentions:

SNP 47% (-1)

Labour 23% (+4)

Conservatives 18% (-3)

Liberal Democrats 7% (-)

Greens 2% (-)

Scottish Parliament regional list voting intentions:

SNP 39% (+1)

Labour 21% (+2)

Conservatives 18% (-1)

Greens 10% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 8% (+1)

Alba 2% (+1)

The percentage changes listed above are from the previous YouGov poll around six months ago, so the swing they show from Tory to Labour is pretty much already factored in - there's nothing really new in it, and it reflects what happened in the local elections earlier this month.  All the other changes are not statistically significant, but that in itself is very important, because it would suggest that the SNP, the Greens and the mainstream media have utterly failed in their attempts to use the local election results to either kill off Alba completely or to persuade the electorate that Alba should be regarded as being "as good as dead".  In fact, Alba's vote has increased from 1% to 2% in the last six months, so if simply surviving as a party after the local elections is the test, it seems Alba has passed with flying colours.  It may even be that the local elections have actually been helpful in boosting the party's profile.

In practice, of course, Alba will need to double its vote to have a good chance of winning a seat or two in the Holyrood elections in 2026, or triple its vote to win a significant haul of seats.  It looks like first preference votes in the local elections are a pretty good guide to the votes Alba would have received if a Holyrood list ballot had been held this month - which makes perfect sense, because the Holyrood list is not a second preference vote, and the SNP will presumably keep pushing the "both votes SNP" message.  So standing still on the roughly 2% vote share Alba achieved in the wards it stood in at the local elections will not cut it, but it's a pretty decent platform for a new party to build on over the coming four years.  

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Over the years, Scot Goes Pop has provided extensive Scottish polling analysis and political commentary, as well as commissioning no fewer than six full-scale opinion polls, and producing numerous podcasts and videos.  If you'd like to help me continue this work, donations are welcome via any of the following methods...

Direct payments via Paypal - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

Scot Goes Pop Polling Fundraiser 

If you prefer a bank transfer, please message me for details using the contact email address which can be found in the sidebar of the blog (desktop version only), or on my Twitter profile.  

Latest poll for #Referendum2023 shows Yes vote at 45%

As polling day approaches in next year's independence referendum, which the SNP-Green majority government have guaranteed us will be held on schedule, there's bound to be an increasing fascination with opinion poll results. It's therefore noteworthy that we now have the first #Referendum2023 poll to be conducted since the local elections.  

Should Scotland be an independent country? (YouGov / The Times)

Yes 45% (-2)
No 55% (+2)

The last batch of polls prior to the local elections were actually pretty encouraging for the pro-independence side, with Yes percentage shares in the high 40s.  So on the face of it these latest numbers look slightly disappointing, but a few important points need to be remembered.  Firstly, YouGov tend to be on the No-friendly end of the spectrum, and it's therefore possible/likely that other firms would show better results for Yes.  Secondly, any individual poll that bucks a clear recent trend needs to be treated with caution until its findings are corroborated by one or two more polls.  It's entirely possible that the slight slippage for Yes is an illusion caused by the poll's standard margin of error, and indeed if you look at the numbers before Don't Knows are stripped out, the Yes drop is a statistically insignificant one percentage point. And lastly, 45% is a superb platform with which to start any referendum campaign, and far better than the starting-point for Yes in the run-up to the 2014 vote.  The poll is therefore total vindication for the Scottish Government's decision to pass the point of no return by committing itself beyond all shadow of doubt to a referendum within the next nineteen months.

It goes without saying that the commentary in The Times claiming that Nicola Sturgeon has failed to increase the Yes vote in her seven years as First Minister is highly misleading, because it takes a single poll out of context.  You really need to look at an average of recent polls, which would suggest that the Yes vote remains significantly higher than the 45% recorded in September 2014.

Is there survey evidence of a surge in Scottish national identity?

Someone emailed the other day to ask if I'd write a blogpost about the New Statesman's report on survey evidence apparently showing a surge in Scottish national identity, and a decline in British national identity in Scotland.  I actually saw the article when it was published and I was going to comment on it, but the trouble was that I couldn't entirely make sense of what I was looking at.  We're very used to seeing the annual figures on national identity from the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, but the numbers in the New Statesman piece were apparently from the British Social Attitudes Survey and were being compared with data from ten years ago, rather than last year.  So I'm not entirely sure how to fit them into the wider jigsaw.  (Although it's rather typical that a London-based publication is only viewing Scotland through the lens of a Britain-wide survey.)

What I can say with confidence, though, is that the commentary in the New Statesman piece was very misleading.  It suggested that the independence referendum produced a flourishing in Scottish national identity at the expense of Britishness, but we already know from the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey results from the time of the long indyref campaign that, if anything, the opposite is true.  There was a sudden change between the 2011 and 2012 surveys, with the percentage of respondents saying they were "equally Scottish and British" jumping from 23% to 30%, and with corresponding reductions in the percentage of respondents saying they were "Scottish not British" or "more Scottish than British".  In fact "equally Scottish and British" became the joint most popular option at that point, after years of "more Scottish than British" being on top.  Nor was this a blip - by referendum year in 2014, "equally Scottish than British" had jumped even further to 32% and had moved into the outright lead.

I think this phenomenon is pretty easy to explain - many people who had previously identified as "more Scottish than British" knew they were going to vote No in the referendum, and began to feel that "equally Scottish and British" was a better way of reconciling their national identity with their indyref allegiance.  A cynic might argue that any recovery in Scottish identity since then could therefore indicate that the prospect of a new referendum feels much more distant to potential No voters, but in fact that's pretty unlikely given the way that unionist parties have obsessively talked up the "threat" of Indyref 2. 

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I ran an informal Twitter poll yesterday, and these are the results after a whopping 1375 people voted...

Do you believe the SNP's promise of a 2023 independence referendum will be kept?

Yes 42.8%

No 57.2%

Of course the sample isn't representative of anything apart from people who follow me on Twitter, or in some cases of people who follow my followers.  So there'll be a disproportionate number of Alba members and supporters in there, but what I find more interesting anyway is the substantial minority of people who voted "yes".  Someone actually left a comment to say in all apparent seriousness that he had "never been as sure of anything in his life" as he is of a 2023 indyref.  I hope the SNP leadership are aware of how sky-high expectations are among their own supporters.  These are not people who "play the game" and pay heed to the nods and winks given to journalists that the 2023 promise isn't really intended to be taken seriously.  They simply expect the promise to be kept, and heaven only knows how they'll react if in a year's time they realise they've been led up the garden path.

The new photos entirely vindicate Douglas Ross's courageous decision to withdraw his call for Boris Johnson to resign. Quite clearly this is the only man capable of standing in the way of Vladimir Putin.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 23, 2022

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Over the years, Scot Goes Pop has provided extensive Scottish polling analysis and political commentary, as well as commissioning no fewer than six full-scale opinion polls, and producing numerous podcasts and videos.  If you'd like to help me continue this work, donations are welcome via any of the following methods...

Direct payments via Paypal - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

Scot Goes Pop Polling Fundraiser 

If you prefer a bank transfer, please message me for details using the contact email address which can be found in the sidebar of the blog (desktop version only), or on my Twitter profile.  

#Referendum2023 : Thoughts on Nicola Sturgeon's essay

So we've now seen Nicola Sturgeon's heavily-trailed essay, which apparently marks "the start of a new independence campaign".  The piece can be summarised as "the government I lead is wonderful - no, seriously, it's truly, truly wonderful, oh and it's time to debate independence".  No date is announced for the independence referendum, and indeed the word "referendum" isn't even used at all as far as I can see, which is a bit worrying given that we're supposed to have been guaranteed that there will be a referendum within the next nineteen months at the absolute most.  However, the referendum promise is at least obliquely acknowledged with references to people "wanting a say" on Scotland's constitutional future, and the SNP being "committed to offering that choice".  To the extent that there's any meat at all, it's the announcement that the Scottish Government "will shortly begin publishing" an updated prospectus for independence.

I suppose if you were opting for the maximally charitable interpretation, you would say that perhaps the SNP are paying attention to the optics of doing everything in the correct sequence.  So first we'll see the prospectus for indy, then perhaps there'll be a renewed request for a Section 30 order, then there'll be legislation for a referendum in the absence of a Section 30, followed presumably by a high-profile Supreme Court verdict on whether the legislation is within Holyrood's competence.  But that would be a very, very optimistic expectation given the long history since 2017 of the SNP starting these much-hyped pushes towards independence, only to allow them to quietly fizzle out within a few weeks.

On that very point, I've received some interesting feedback relating to the Scot Goes Pop #Referendum2023 Countdown Clock. The person said that they understood what I was trying to achieve - it's like an each-way bet that attempts to help shame the SNP into keeping their promise this time, but also with the aim of forcing SNP leadership loyalists to notice if that promise isn't kept, in the hope that they might then take some action (either by pressing for internal change within the SNP or by moving across to a different pro-indy party).  But, the person added, he wasn't sure that would work, because this particular scenario is different to the earlier promises that a referendum would be held in 2018, or in 2019, or in 2020, or in 2021. This time there really is a justified expectation that some sort of action will be taken.  It's not that the referendum will actually be held - it probably won't be.  But the SNP at least seem minded to legislate for a referendum, safe in the belief that the Supreme Court is likely to strike it down, and only then will they refuse to take any further concrete action for the foreseeable future.  And because of the theatrics of a televised Supreme Court case, most SNP members and supporters will be satisfied with that - they'll think "we wanted something to be done, and it has been".  If I then persevere with the Countdown Clock, people will just say "what are you talking about, they did their level best to hold the referendum in 2023".

That may well be a perfectly plausible scenario, but actually if we ever get to that point, I'd be almost inclined to say "mission accomplished" as far as the Countdown Clock is concerned, because I'm far from convinced that the SNP will even hold their nerve sufficiently to push matters as far as legislation or a Supreme Court showdown.  Based on past precedent, there's a very real chance that they'll gratefully grab hold of any convenient excuse that comes along for delaying the whole process yet again, and that'll be when we very much need to confront SNP leadership loyalists with the uncomfortable truth that yet another promise has been broken.  

At least if we get to the point where the Supreme Court have said Holyrood can't hold a referendum, we'll be a bit further forward, because it will kill the whole bogus narrative about how we have to keep delaying a referendum until we're "certain to win" (impossible) because we "only get one more shot".  After a Supreme Court defeat, the only game in town will be a plebiscitary election, and elections come up once every five years, not "once in a generation". The likes of Pete Wishart will no longer get away with pretending that the independence cause is a piece of china he's balancing on his head, heroically trying to prevent it from being destroyed forever.

#Referendum2023: We have LIFT-OFF! The unstoppable momentum towards Scotland's guaranteed independence referendum next year moves into a dramatic new phase with the appearance of an ESSAY

Thanks to the majority SNP-Green government's #2023ReferendumGuarantee, it is the unshakeable destiny of this country to hold a second independence referendum within the next nineteen months at the absolute most.   And it's great to see yet more evidence that some of the really concrete practical steps needed to honour that solemn vow are being taken.  Just a few days ago, Nicola Sturgeon used her official visit to the US to tell a journalist that the referendum would definitely take place in 2023, and tonight brings exciting news that she's written an essay to launch what is billed as "the new independence campaign".  This will almost certainly be the last time that a new independence campaign is announced, because there simply won't be time for more than one campaign in the maximum of a year and a half that remains before referendum day.

We've yet to see the contents of the essay, but we can be sure that they'll be perfectly pitched to prepare Scots for their visit to the polling station next year. This calls for another update of the Scot Goes Pop #Referendum2023 Countdown Clock...

There are just 229 days until the earliest possible date for #Referendum2023 (5th January)

There are just 579 days until the last possible date for #Referendum2023 (21st December)

(Note: the Countdown Clock calculations assume that tradition will be maintained by holding #Referendum2023 on a Thursday, and that it will be before Christmas.)

Of course there have been many previous occasions when new independence campaigns have been heralded that were supposed to lead to a referendum, and nothing really happened.  So perhaps there'll be a touch of cynicism in certain quarters about this latest development.  But this time is obviously totally different due to the clock ticking down on that ultra-specific 2023 guarantee. And because of that, we can confidently join Donna Summer in shouting it out with a megaphone: "This time we know it's for real..."

The SNP leadership's doublethink on nuclear weapons is unsustainable - polling evidence shows the Scottish people want to join the treaty banning nukes completely

Perhaps the most insufferable aspect of the ongoing debate about reform of the GRA is the claim of those on one side of the debate that they are on "the right side of history" and that their opponents are on "the wrong side of history".  They sound exactly like Marxists when they say that, because Marxism is one of the few ideologies that insists the course of history is predetermined (and arguably it's already been proved wrong about that).  For non-Marxists, considerably more humility is required, because it's very difficult to tell whether you're on the right side of history when you're living bang in the middle of it. In 1940, for example, it seemed obvious to many people that fascists were on the right side of history, at least within the confines of continental Europe, because the fall of France and the Low Countries seemed to leave no route back.  Philippe Pétain's guiding principle in reconstituting the French state after the Nazi invasion was that the 1789 revolution's goals of 'liberty, equality and fraternity' had been defeated forever.  But then Hitler overreached himself by invading the Soviet Union and declaring war on the US. From that point on it seemed equally obvious that the course of history favoured the Allies, and that the future of Europe belonged to liberal democracy and Soviet-style communism.

Sometimes, what appear to be the prevailing trends of history can even contradict each other in the here-and-now.  Due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the momentous decisions that have subsequently been made by Finland and Sweden, it seems obvious that Europe's destiny is to unite under the NATO banner against a common enemy to the east.  But it's equally obvious that there's a trend in recent years towards challenging the assumption that nuclear weapons can never be eliminated, with dozens of countries signing up to a new and legally-binding treaty that bans nukes completely.  Those two historical trends are more or less in direct conflict with each other because NATO is a nuclear weapons alliance.  And yet somehow the SNP leadership have got themselves wrapped up in both.

How did that happen?  Support for the nuclear weapons ban treaty can be explained by the legacy of the SNP's long-standing status as a unilateralist party, which the membership will accept no overt backtracking from.  The support for NATO membership stems from the desire of self-styled 'modernisers' at the top of the SNP to make the party look more 'normal', with 'normality' being defined as centre-right militarism.  (During the SNP conference session a few years ago at which opposition to NATO membership was finally overturned, Alyn Smith infamously said that he was upset that the party's principled stance on peace was making it look 'odd'.)  There's been an uneasy narrative that NATO membership is not strictly incompatible with the removal of nuclear weapons from Scottish soil, but that attempt to square the circle may have been pushed beyond breaking point by the emergence of an actual nuclear ban treaty with very strict provisions. 

The SNP's militarist wing has now been emboldened by the war in Ukraine to such an extent that the defence spokesperson Stewart McDonald felt able to openly express his willingness to allow NATO nuclear weapons to be temporarily welcomed in an independent Scotland - totally at odds with his party's supposed belief that all such weapons should be wiped from the face of the planet.  That triggered a timely intervention from CND Scotland, who pointed out that McDonald's words are not even compatible with the text of the treaty that the SNP apparently want an independent Scotland to sign and be legally bound by.

Is there any way at all that NATO membership can be squared with joining a legally-binding nuclear ban treaty?  It doesn't look easy to me.  Only three EU countries have ratified the treaty so far - Ireland, Malta and Austria.  Those are all neutral countries where there isn't even any serious debate about the possibility of joining NATO.  Sweden initially voted in favour of the treaty but later decided against joining, and that was presumably partly because NATO membership has never been a non-issue in Sweden (and in neighbouring Finland) due to geographical proximity with Russia.  Now that Sweden has actually applied to join NATO, it's surely unthinkable that it will join the nuclear ban treaty in anything remotely close to the foreseeable future.

So in the real world, the SNP leadership may have to make a straight choice between whether NATO or the nuclear ban treaty represent "the right side of history", rather than pretending that both do simultaneously.  At the very least, they need to be honest with themselves and with others that what they claim to want to do - join both NATO and the treaty - is not only unusual ("odd" as Alyn Smith might put it), it's totally and utterly unique.  An avowedly non-nuclear independent Scotland would of necessity be a very different sort of NATO member, not a full-blooded 'mainstream' member like Belgium or Denmark, and there needs to be an acknowledgement of that.  

And if a straight choice has to be made, let's remember where Scottish public opinion stands on the issue of the nuclear ban treaty.  A poll commissioned by this very blog one year ago asked about the subject, with dramatic results...

Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, 21st-26th April 2021:

Nuclear weapons were banned by an international treaty that came into force in January this year.  However, the nine countries that are currently believed to possess nuclear weapons, including the UK, have so far refused to sign the treaty. Do you think the UK should join the treaty and dismantle its nuclear weapons?  

Yes: 47%

No: 33%

With Don't Knows removed -

Yes 59%

No 41%

The other point I'd make is that if the SNP leadership think Alba's disappointing results at the local elections means they've crowded out any alternatives within the indy movement to Smith/McDonald-style militarism, they'd better think again.  We in Alba are determined to forge on - to survive as a party and then to thrive.  But regardless of whether we succeed or fail in that endeavour, the fact that the SNP have voluntarily gone into coalition with an anti-NATO party means that the alternative position is alive and well and living inside the Scottish Government itself.

Excitement about #Referendum2023 builds to new crescendo as Nicola Sturgeon uses US trip to repeat her guarantee that Scotland will have an independence referendum in 2023

Have you noticed the step-change in independence campaigning from the SNP?  The public meetings, the street stalls, the constant buzz about imminent referendum legislation?  Nope, me neither, but we know it must be going on because a referendum is DEFINITELY HAPPENING NEXT YEAR.

Associated Press interview with Nicola Sturgeon, 17th May 2022:

AP interviewer: "Is the plan for Scotland to still hold a referendum on independence next year?"

Nicola Sturgeon: "Yes.  I was re-elected as First Minister round about this time last year, and was re-elected on a very firm mandate to offer people in Scotland that choice."

As every good Catholic knows, it's important to renew your Vows periodically, so it's great to hear such an unambiguous and emphatic reaffirmation of the SNP-Green government's #2023ReferendumGuarantee.  It's ON, folks.  This calls for an update of the Scot Goes Pop #Referendum2023 Countdown Clock...

There are just 232 days until the earliest possible date for #Referendum2023 (5th January)

There are just 582 days until the last possible date for #Referendum2023 (21st December)

(Note: the Countdown Clock calculations assume that tradition will be maintained by holding #Referendum2023 on a Thursday, and that it will be before Christmas.)

 

#Referendum2023 : Time to unveil the Scot Goes Pop Poll of Polls as our guaranteed referendum fast approaches

"The key thing is that we will take these steps in a timescale that facilitate that referendum before the end of 2023, which is the commitment I made at the election and was elected on overwhelmingly at the election." - Nicola Sturgeon, SNP leader and First Minister of Scotland, January 2022 

"The Scottish Government fully intends to fulfill its manifesto commitment to the people of Scotland...Speaking on Wednesday the First Minister said that the Russian invasion of Ukraine had not changed her view that a second independence referendum should go ahead in 2023...Of course some people are never going to be satisfied because they have convinced themselves that the SNP 'doesn’t really' want a referendum, and nothing that Nicola Sturgeon says or does is going to shift them from that view, however for the rest of us the First Minister’s statement is a welcome confirmation that an independence referendum will indeed go ahead in the latter half of 2023." - Paul Kavanagh, SNP-supporting blogger, March 2022

It's a commitment.  It's confirmed.  It's a certainty.  It's simply a fact, and there's no going back.  Thanks to the majority SNP-Green government's #2023ReferendumGuarantee, up to four million Scots will be visiting their local polling stations (or casting a postal ballot) at some point during 2023 to decide whether or not their country should become independent, or should continue to be governed by Tories in London.  The referendum is of course coming three or four years too late to prevent Scotland being dragged out of the EU against its will, as the SNP originally promised us they would do - but hey, better late than never, and thankfully because of the SNP's current promises, there is no danger whatsoever of any further delay beyond December 2023.  The absolute last date on which #Referendum2023 can be held is 21st December 2023, which thrillingly means it's now a MAXIMUM of just 584 days away!

As we're on the last lap before we enter full-blown campaigning for a 2023 referendum that is DEFINITELY taking place, it's long past time that I resurrected the Scot Goes Pop independence Poll of Polls, so we can see how public opinion evolves as referendum day approaches next year.  As in the run-up to the first referendum eight years ago, I'll be using an average of the most recent poll from each of the polling firms that have been active within the last few months.

SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS FOR #Referendum2023

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 44.3%

No 46.1%

With Don't Knows excluded:

Yes 49.0%

No 51.0%

(Note: the above averages are based on seven polls - one from Savanta ComRes, one from Survation, one from YouGov, one from Panelbase, one from Opinium, one from BMG and one from Ipsos-Mori.)

So it's not at all hard to see why the majority SNP-Green government decided to guarantee that a referendum will take place before the end of 2023 - Yes practically have the support of half the population once undecideds are stripped out, which is a truly fabulous platform on which to start any campaign.  (Remember that there were polls in the early stages of the first indyref campaign that showed No ahead by a 2-1 margin.)

Introducing the #Referendum2023 Countdown Clock

It just suddenly struck me this morning how astonishingly close we are to Scotland's 2023 independence referendum. I know I speak on behalf of all readers of Scot Goes Pop when I say that I don't have the slightest doubt it's going to happen - the majority SNP-Green government have, to their immense credit, allowed us all to relax thanks to their #2023ReferendumGuarantee.  As they've said repeatedly: no ifs, no buts, no maybes, it's a nailed-on certainty, come hell or high water, Scotland will be going to the polls next year to decide whether or not to become an independent country.  Don't worry about questions like "how?" - our leaders are the foremost experts on process and strategy, and the secret route-map to Referendum 2023 has been meticulously planned for years.  All we have to do is just sit back and let it happen.  That's what the #2023ReferendumGuarantee is all about.  And 2023 is only SEVEN AND A HALF MONTHS away.  Time to get excited, people!

To celebrate this momentous landmark, I'm now going to unveil the Scot Goes Pop #Referendum2023 Countdown Clock, which will be periodically updated...

There are just 235 days until the earliest possible date for #Referendum2023 (5th January)

There are just 585 days until the latest possible date for #Referendum2023 (21st December)

(Note: the Countdown Clock calculations assume that tradition will be maintained by holding #Referendum2023 on a Thursday, and that it will be before Christmas.)

Which leaves only one question to be answered: what colour tie will Huw Edwards wear?  #ReferendumNight2023 is going to be MEGA!

Thoughts on Eurovision 2022 (with a prediction)

Scot Goes Pop more or less started life as a Eurovision blog, so I try to keep that tradition going to a small extent every year with a little bit of Eurovision coverage.  Last year that came in the form of a podcast, and I was planning to do the same thing this year, but alas, the clock has beaten me.  There was an Alba NEC meeting this morning (which was a very upbeat affair, by the way), so I didn't dare burn the midnight oil too much with all the finickity edits that would have been required to get a podcast ready in time.  But instead, here's a blogpost with a few thoughts about what to expect from the grand final tonight.

In the podcast last year, I was looking ahead to a truly fascinating showdown between two entries - France and Italy - which were practically level in the betting, but which couldn't conceivably have been more different from each other.  That made the outcome very unpredictable, because it was hard to judge which way the juries would jump, or which way the public would jump, or indeed what the synthesis of those two results would look like.  This year it's a very different story, because we have an overwhelming odds-on favourite - on the betting markets Ukraine are estimated as a roughly 70% chance to win outright, which is pretty incredible in a field of 25 songs.  But there's still a really interesting story beneath the surface, because it's by no means clear that Ukraine is actually the best song.  I'd probably have it in my own top six or seven, but I'm not convinced that it's objectively better than the UK, or Italy, or the Netherlands, or even Estonia, which is absolutely nowhere in the betting but leaped out at me in the semi-final as a possible dark horse.

The reason Ukraine are strong favourites is, of course, that they have a decent song at a time of massive public sympathy across Europe for the country's plight.  So it's assumed they'll win the public vote comfortably, and I'm inclined to agree with that assumption.  But the public vote only accounts for 50% of the points, so it's still conceivable Ukraine could fail to win if the juries go heavily against them.  OK, even the juries are composed of human beings who may be influenced either consciously or subconsciously by outrage at the brutal, unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country.  But I recall back in 1993-4 that there was speculation that Bosnia-Herzegovina (then in the grip of a horrendous civil war) might win the contest on a sympathy vote, and that didn't even come close to materialising.  In those days, points were 100% determined by national juries.

Basically if Ukraine finish in the top three in the jury points, they should have enough public votes to power to victory.  But if they slip below the top three, it might be more of a challenge for them.  For what it's worth, the current betting for the jury vote alone has the UK ahead and Ukraine in second place.  That could conceivably be based on a leak of the actual results, because the jury vote took place last night on the basis of the performances during what is known as either a "rehearsal" or the "jury final".  So if it is a leak, we're perhaps looking at an overall Ukraine win - but I've lost count of the number of times people have assumed that movements in the betting markets were caused by leaks, and then been proved wrong.

The other big story here is that the UK, perennial also-rans in the contest in recent years, look like one of the two or three most probable beneficiaries if Ukraine stumble.  I'm not quite sure how to feel about that - I always used to wholeheartedly support the UK entry until about a decade ago, and then my attitude changed completely.  As we know, anything that creates a feel-good buzz about the UK "brand" can be potentially non-optimal for the Scottish independence movement.  Not that a UK Eurovision win would be a killer blow or anything remotely like that, but it would certainly be on the front pages of all the papers, and then there'd probably be a campaign to bring the 2023 contest to the Hydro in Glasgow (a campaign that would likely fail, so it would be a double-edged sword for the Better Together brigade).  However, although the UK are now clearly in the top three in the betting, they're still only rated as less than a 10% chance to win, so we probably shouldn't be panicking just yet.  

We may need to brace ourselves for the UK being in first or second place for long stretches of the scoring, though, because the public votes are only added into the mix right at the end. 

For what it's worth, here's my prediction, which is not a particularly radical one - 

Winners: Ukraine (Stefania - Kalush Orchestra) 

2nd place: Italy (Brividi - Mahmood and Blanco)

3rd place: UK (Space Man - Sam Ryder)

I'll actually be pretty happy if Ukraine win, because it would be the second year in a row that an entry sung entirely in a language other than English has come out on top - I think that would be a very good thing for the contest.  But a big talking-point after any Ukrainian victory will be whether it's feasible to actually host the 2023 contest in Ukraine - because for forward planning to take place, there would need to be stability.  There's a non-trivial chance that next year could be the first time since 1980 that the previous year's winners haven't hosted the contest.  (Israel won on home soil in 1979 but the Netherlands hosted in 1980, with Israel not even taking part.)

As I said earlier, Estonia and the Netherlands look like possible dark horses to me for tonight.  Estonia is the sort of song that would have easily stormed to victory twenty or thirty years ago - it's strongly anthemic, with a country tinge, a charismatic singer and a gimmick (he lugs a guitar around on his back).  It might be a value bet for a decent placing, at the very least.  And the Czech Republic entry is lifted by very eye-catching staging, which is probably why they've been given the opening slot in the running-order.