America's leading Hitler impersonator Donald Trump reckons that Scotland should stop criticising him for Islamophobia, and should instead get on with being grateful to him for all he's done for us. And, you know, he's got a point. Here are the top ten ways in which he improved our country...
1. "Stabilised the doons." (Translation : Destroyed one of Scotland's last great wildernesses - the most extensive and scientifically important area of shifting sands in the UK.)
2. Made the destruction worthwhile by delivering only a tiny fraction of the 6000 jobs he promised.
3. Made the destruction even more worthwhile by delivering, as promised, the "greatest golf course in the world". (Actually, the most authoritative list rates it as only the 65th best golf course in the world, but what's 64 places between friends?)
4. Entertained the nation with repeated spectacular failures to prevent an offshore wind farm "spoiling the view" from the 65th greatest golf course in the world.
5. Gave us such an easy answer whenever anyone says that SNP supporters are just automatons who mindlessly agree with everything the leadership does. "Well, we didn't agree with them letting Trump stabilise the doons."
6. Helped Martin Ford see the light about the Liberal Democrats.
7. Allowed us to spend so much quality time with the delightful George Sorial, and thereby made us realise that Alastair Campbell is not (quite) the most odious spin doctor of all-time.
8. Changed the name of Turnberry golf course, which has hosted four Open championships since 1977, to "Trump Turnberry". Perhaps people will start taking it seriously now.
9. Gave us a timely reminder of our recent political history, ie. that Jack McConnell was First Minister for five-and-a-half years. (How did we forget that?)
10. Transformed Katie Hopkins overnight into a respected columnist.
Saturday, December 12, 2015
Friday, December 11, 2015
Corbyn's top priority for internal reform should be changing the nominations system for Labour leadership elections
Some of Stephen Bush's political predictions this year have proved uncannily accurate (admittedly he didn't call the general election correctly but was much closer than most), so we should probably take heed of his claim that Corbynistas are increasingly confident of being able to remain in control of the Labour party for the next decade, and that anti-Corbynistas are increasingly despondent about their chances of averting that fate. If that's true, the first thought that occurs to me is that it makes an SDP-style split highly likely at some point between now and 2020. The only reason that Blairites are still rubbishing the idea of a breakaway party is that they're still trying desperately to convince themselves that Corbyn is just a passing nightmare. To use a Daisley-esque analogy, it's a bit like the Arab reaction immediately after the Six Day War - it's initially hard to believe that something that happened so quickly can possibly have such lasting consequences. But it only took Mrs Thatcher a couple of weeks to seize control of the Conservative party from Edward Heath, and nothing was ever the same again. The Tory "wets" eventually accepted that harsh reality, and if the Labour right start to do the same now, it's hard to see how they will reach any other logical conclusion than that their future lies in a different party. It might take a few years to emotionally reconcile themselves to that logic, however.
The second thought that occurs to me is that Bush's belief that Corbynism is safe depends entirely on Corbyn himself not voluntarily standing down. He'll be almost 71 by the time of the next general election, so it's hardly inconceivable that a health or stamina issue might crop up. If he does decide to step aside for any reason, it's far from certain that whoever he anoints as his preferred successor will even get onto the ballot paper in the subsequent leadership election, because he or she would require nominations from 15% of Labour MPs, who won't feel under the same obligation to 'play fair' that they might do if it was a question of renominating Corbyn himself. So I would have thought the left's most urgent internal reform priority should be to give themselves an insurance policy by changing the nomination system. Perhaps the most elegant solution would be to allow nominations from constituency parties to be taken into account.
* * *
You might be interested in Alasdair Soussi's article about the Scotland Bill on the Al Jazeera website, which includes quotes from myself, James Mitchell, Paul Cairney, and (brace yourselves) Duncan Hothersall. You can read it HERE.
Thursday, December 10, 2015
SNP secure 8% swing in bilious Blantyre by-election brawl
Just for once, we have an STV by-election in which the party 'defending' the seat actually won the popular vote in the ward last time around. (So no need for any 'confusion' over at Liberal Democrat Voice or Stormfront Lite.) Labour have clung on in Blantyre, but as you'd expect their 23% lead over the SNP from 2012 has been slashed. It's interesting to see that Labour people on Twitter think that this result is "great", "AMAZING", "fantastic", "one hell of a hold", etc, etc - just how low are their expectations these days?
Blantyre by-election result (10th December) :
Labour 47.2% (-7.1)
SNP 39.6% (+9.0)
Conservatives 4.5% (+0.6)
SSP 3.9% (n/a)
Liberal Democrats 2.9% (+2.2)
UKIP 1.9% (n/a)
The SNP of course had a 1% nationwide lead in the 2012 local elections, so an 8% swing in a local by-election is considerably better than an 8% swing at the general election in May would have been. This is the rough equivalent of a 19% or 20% swing at the general election - which admittedly is lower than the SNP actually achieved in most former Labour heartlands, but is still extremely impressive.
Even though Labour weren't far short of 50% on first preferences, the full five counts were required for their candidate Mo Razzaq to reach the quota. That means we can see the whole picture of how the smaller parties' votes transferred, and not for the first time Labour have suffered the embarrassment of proving rather popular with Tories. 53 Conservative votes transferred to Labour on the final count, and just 13 to the SNP (107 were non-transferable). Predictably, SSP votes broke more for the SNP, although not as overwhelmingly as you might think - 55 went to the SNP, 32 to Labour, and an eccentric 1 to the Tories! UKIP transfers were fairly evenly spread, which will surely be something of a disappointment for the Tories, who would have hoped to capture the lion's share.
Doubtless the #LibDemFightback fantasists will be beside themselves with excitement at quadrupling their vote share and reaching the dizzying heights of 2.9%, but in all likelihood that can be explained by the lack of competition from independent candidates this time (there were two in 2012). And there's certainly nothing very special about the Tory performance - we normally assume they benefit from differential turnout in local by-elections, so an increase of less than 1% is par for them, at best.
* * *
Alastair Meeks (the artist formerly known as Antifrank) claimed on SL this morning that most of the divergences that the Scottish Government has made from UK government policy over the years have been 'negative' rather than 'positive', and he offered the decision not to introduce tuition fees as an example. That of course isn't correct - the Labour government at Westminster had already introduced tuition fees on a Britain-wide basis by the time devolution started in July 1999. The Lib-Lab Scottish Executive had to make a 'positive' decision to replace them with the graduate endowment (with the Lib Dems insulting the intelligence of a generation by insisting that the endowment wasn't a back-end tuition fee, because it "didn't pay for tuition"). The SNP government later made another 'positive' decision to scrap payments altogether.
Blantyre by-election result (10th December) :
Labour 47.2% (-7.1)
SNP 39.6% (+9.0)
Conservatives 4.5% (+0.6)
SSP 3.9% (n/a)
Liberal Democrats 2.9% (+2.2)
UKIP 1.9% (n/a)
The SNP of course had a 1% nationwide lead in the 2012 local elections, so an 8% swing in a local by-election is considerably better than an 8% swing at the general election in May would have been. This is the rough equivalent of a 19% or 20% swing at the general election - which admittedly is lower than the SNP actually achieved in most former Labour heartlands, but is still extremely impressive.
Even though Labour weren't far short of 50% on first preferences, the full five counts were required for their candidate Mo Razzaq to reach the quota. That means we can see the whole picture of how the smaller parties' votes transferred, and not for the first time Labour have suffered the embarrassment of proving rather popular with Tories. 53 Conservative votes transferred to Labour on the final count, and just 13 to the SNP (107 were non-transferable). Predictably, SSP votes broke more for the SNP, although not as overwhelmingly as you might think - 55 went to the SNP, 32 to Labour, and an eccentric 1 to the Tories! UKIP transfers were fairly evenly spread, which will surely be something of a disappointment for the Tories, who would have hoped to capture the lion's share.
Doubtless the #LibDemFightback fantasists will be beside themselves with excitement at quadrupling their vote share and reaching the dizzying heights of 2.9%, but in all likelihood that can be explained by the lack of competition from independent candidates this time (there were two in 2012). And there's certainly nothing very special about the Tory performance - we normally assume they benefit from differential turnout in local by-elections, so an increase of less than 1% is par for them, at best.
* * *
Alastair Meeks (the artist formerly known as Antifrank) claimed on SL this morning that most of the divergences that the Scottish Government has made from UK government policy over the years have been 'negative' rather than 'positive', and he offered the decision not to introduce tuition fees as an example. That of course isn't correct - the Labour government at Westminster had already introduced tuition fees on a Britain-wide basis by the time devolution started in July 1999. The Lib-Lab Scottish Executive had to make a 'positive' decision to replace them with the graduate endowment (with the Lib Dems insulting the intelligence of a generation by insisting that the endowment wasn't a back-end tuition fee, because it "didn't pay for tuition"). The SNP government later made another 'positive' decision to scrap payments altogether.
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
How to tell if you're a Dalek
I'll keep this very brief because I'm in the middle of a technological apocalypse. I suppose I always had a vague instinctive understanding that tomato sauce and computer keyboards don't really mix, but now I have the irrefutable proof.
I just wanted to make a passing comment on the notorious Loki article at Bella -
"Yes, you, the morally certain, reactionary branch of the dead Yes campaign...If Scotland is a cheap haircut you are its puritanical fringe...You intend to vote SNP twice next year because you love democracy. You call the First Minister Nicola. You think Braveheart is a documentary. You have The National delivered directly to your ego and you live in a world where the next referendum is always around the corner – should the right crisis occur."
I'll have to plead guilty to at least two of those charges, although oddly enough calling the First Minister Nicola isn't one of them. I may have done it once or twice, but in general I don't because it just feels wrong somehow. (Although I do sometimes refer to Kezia Dugdale as "Kezia", so I'm not quite sure what the difference is.)
So, yes, I'm one of the people Loki is referring to, and did you notice how blatant his implication is that simply voting SNP on both ballots is enough to make us fanatics? I'm not sure that actually understanding how the electoral system works, and realising that the list ballot is not a second preference vote, is something that should trouble our consciences or cause tortured soul-searching in front of the mirror at the dead of night.
You, of course, may reach a different conclusion, but my own view is that as long as you don't think Braveheart is a documentary, you're probably not a Dalek.
Kevin Williamson launched into a partial defence of Loki by claiming it is "FACT" that Nicola Sturgeon will not be proposing a second referendum in the SNP manifesto. That's a "FACT" of the non-fact variety, because I'm aware of no evidence that there won't - at the very least - be wording in the manifesto that leaves open the possibility of a referendum in the event of Brexit. Indeed, it would be a contradiction of everything that has been said so far if that isn't the case.
(And I know people are always itching at this point to say "Brexit won't happen", but try to restrain yourselves. In a two-horse race it's always a good idea to consider the possibility that either horse may win, unless one of those horses is being ridden by John McTernan.)
Sunday, December 6, 2015
YouGov subsample suggests Scotland is opposed to bombing Syria
When YouGov produced its dramatic poll on the eve of the Commons vote on Syria showing that support for air strikes had slumped, the fieldwork was impressively bang up to date. So it's rather frustrating that the follow-up poll is based on fieldwork that is several days out of date, and that partly preceded both the vote itself and Hilary Benn's "better than sex" intervention. However, for what it's worth, as of Wednesday and Thursday the scepticism about military action had reached record levels.
Approve or disapprove of air strikes? (Britain-wide)
Approve 44% (-4)
Disapprove 36% (+5)
Among the Scottish subsample, there was a similar swing in opinion, but as support for air strikes had been lower in the first place, that proved sufficient to push 'Disapprove' into a clear lead -
Approve or disapprove of air strikes? (Scottish subsample)
Approve 39% (-5)
Disapprove 45% (+4)
We were all slightly dubious about the political composition of the Scottish subsample in the previous poll, because it looked like there were a little too many Tory voters and far too many UKIP voters. That probably would have led to opposition to military action being underestimated. No voting intention question was asked in the new poll, so there's no way of knowing whether that problem has repeated itself.
In the case of the Iraq conflict in 2003, public opinion suddenly swung in favour of war in the immediate run-up to the Commons vote, and that support (temporarily) became overwhelming once British military action was actually underway. The first part of that pattern has been clearly broken by this poll, but we'll need polls with later fieldwork to discover whether the second part of the pattern has been broken as well.
Saturday, December 5, 2015
The STV political correspondent who thinks that "Scottish nationalists need not concern themselves with the troubles of foreigners"
There can be little doubt that STV are delighted to have Stephen Daisley as an online correspondent, and in some ways that's perfectly understandable. Few would deny that he's a finer prose stylist than most journalists twice his age. His opinion pieces are so provocative that they function brilliantly as clickbait, driving lots of juicy traffic to the STV website. No broadcasting regulations on impartiality are being breached, because (to the best of my knowledge) the regulations don't apply to websites.
And yet, and yet. There comes a point where some of the things said by Daisley are so totally bloody outrageous that they must start to affect his employer's reputation for balance and fairness, particularly given that his political commentary is not clearly separated out from the "news" section of the STV website, and is labelled as "analysis" rather than "opinion". ("Analysis" is the word the BBC website uses for commentary by the likes of Laura Kuenssberg, so the reader's expectation is that insight will be offered in a politically neutral way.) Visitors to the STV website could be forgiven for thinking that this is a broadcaster with an official editorial view that the man elected as Labour leader only three months ago should be deposed as soon as possible by an elitist coup, that extra-judicial killings are commendable and should be carried out more often, that torture is a good thing as long as it's branded as enhanced interrogation, that Israel has the right to claim sovereignty over land seized by brute force, that Scottish nationalists don't care about foreigners, and that the way "internationalist socialists" should show they care about foreigners is by dropping bombs on them. Even a small-print disclaimer at the bottom of each article that "this is a personal view and does not necessarily reflect the views of Scottish Television" would, I suspect, be a great comfort to concerned and often offended STV viewers who simply don't share Mr Daisley's simplistic "centre-right, Zionist" worldview (that's his own description), with its good guys who you must only ever speak of with "songful joy" in your heart (Blair), and bad guys who you must torture and kill (or at the very least expel from the Labour party). In fact, the most accurate disclaimer would be "please note that this article forms part of an extended audition for Fox News".
The 2% of the Scottish population who are card-carrying members of the SNP, and indeed the 50% of the Scottish electorate that voted SNP in May, have a particular right to feel deeply hurt at Daisley's suggestion in his latest article (his maddest to date) that "Scottish Nationalists need not concern themselves with the troubles of foreigners". In true Hothersallite fashion, he contrasts our insularity with the much-vaunted "internationalism" of Labour. But just hang on a minute here. Which party was it that put its total faith in the international system and the United Nations to certify Iraq as free of weapons of mass destruction in 2003? And which party was it that turned its back on both the international system and international law to invade that long-suffering country in pursuit of weapons that didn't even exist?
It shouldn't be any surprise to anyone that the SNP have proved time and again to be the true internationalists. They were co-founded by R. B. Cunninghame Graham, Britain's first socialist member of parliament, and a man who shrewdly noted that nationalism (by which he meant civic nationalism) was a necessary prerequisite for internationalism. To be fair, there are plenty of people within Labour who share the SNP's vision of genuine internationalism rooted in democracy and the rule of law, but they're not to be found in what you might call the "Ernest Bevin tendency", which Daisley zealously professes to be the one true faith. Bevin's idea of internationalism was nuclear blackmail by the strong against the weak, the neo-colonial system of veto-wielding powers on the Security Council, and industrial-scale violation of the sovereignty of others when it suited our own selfish interests.
By the way, the funniest line in Daisley's new article is this -
"When I talk to sensible Labour people, they despair but assure me things will be better when Corbyn is replaced by Dan Jarvis or Yvette Cooper or Chuka Umunna. I don’t have the heart to tell them they’re wrong."
I'm sure Labour right-wingers are suitably grateful for the kindness of an omniscient 29-year-old journalist who has elected to spare them the burden of too much knowledge.
Friday, December 4, 2015
The RISE case for "tactical voting" becomes ever clearer...
Jim Sillars has today backed the claims of RISE that it is somehow possible to vote "tactically" on the Scottish Parliament list ballot, which I think should comprehensively settle the matter for all of us, given that he was the man who thought thwarting devolution in 1997 was the best tactic for achieving independence. In the wake of this intervention, I've had a long and illuminating exchange on Twitter with Craig Paterson of RISE, who has been one of the primary proponents of the "tactical voting" wheeze. This is what I've learned about the RISE position -
1) We can say with confidence that the SNP will win almost every single constituency seat (and therefore won't need any list votes), because there are only five months to go, and nothing much can possibly change in such a short period.
2) It is absolutely LUDICROUS to point to opinion polls showing RISE with zero support, and suggest that this means they are unlikely to win any seats. Don't you know there are still five months to go? Anything could happen! Anything!
3) Voting RISE on the list cannot possibly put the SNP's overall majority at risk. It's a completely risk-free thing to do.
4) The only reason SNP supporters don't like RISE's "tactical votes" pitch is because it might put the SNP's overall majority at risk. It's narrow-minded to care about that.
5) People who prefer the SNP should vote for the SNP. RISE have made absolutely clear - and always will make absolutely clear - that they are not seeking "tactical" votes from SNP supporters, but only from independence supporters.
6) Don't bother asking for any evidence that they've ever made that clear, because they haven't, and it's a totally natural thing that they haven't, because it's not their responsibility to make that clear and nobody in their right mind would expect them to.
7) There is no such thing as an SNP supporter. There are only independence supporters. People who prefer the SNP because they support independence should vote for RISE instead. This does not mean RISE are seeking the votes of people who prefer the SNP, because no such people exist.
Well, I don't know about you, but I'm starting to think they've got a point. I just don't know what it is.
Corbyn's success in Oldham confounds the media narrative
All the early indications are that Labour are set for a much easier victory in the Oldham West and Royton by-election than anyone thought possible. This might be a useful moment to flag up an obvious but under-appreciated fact from the recent GB-wide YouGov voting intention poll - namely that Labour under Corbyn have exactly the same share of the vote (30%) that they actually achieved under Ed Miliband at the general election. There's no particular reason to think that YouGov are still overestimating the party's support, because quite radical methodological changes have been made to address the previous errors. So in spite of Corbyn's truly horrific personal ratings, Labour have stood completely still. How can that be?
The answer is that they haven't stood still. They've lost significant support to the Conservatives and other parties, but have completely offset it with support gained from elsewhere. The best clue as to how they've managed to achieve that comes in two of the poll's supplementary questions. Among people who actually voted Labour in May, Corbyn has a negative rating of -6, but among people who are currently planning to vote Labour, he has a positive rating of +31. Labour voters from May were only opposed to bombing Syria by a margin of 42% to 35%, but current Labour voters were opposed by a whopping 57% to 23%. In essence, Corbyn has replaced the previous Labour coalition of support with a different coalition more in his image, and the new one is just as big. That's not quite the narrative we've been fed, although admittedly if Labour support is draining to the Tories (to some extent) and is being replaced mainly by support from the Greens, Lib Dems, UKIP and previous non-voters, that does still result in an increased Tory lead, which is a huge problem under first-past-the-post. Even so, Oldham may be the first concrete electoral indication that the state of play is much more nuanced and interesting than we've been led to believe.
I have a helpful suggestion for anyone in the mainstream media who may be struggling with a headline for tomorrow -
"Hilary Benn's wonder speech saves Labour's bacon in Oldham"
Go on, I dare you to be that brazen!
UPDATE : It appears John "the Gardener" McTernan has already attempted that line. He's literally beyond satire now.
UPDATE II : Here is the full result...
Oldham West and Royton parliamentary by-election result (3rd December) :
Labour 62.1% (+7.3)
UKIP 23.4% (+2.8)
Conservatives 9.4% (-9.6)
Liberal Democrats 3.7% (n/c)
Greens 0.9% (-1.0)
Official Monster Raving Loonies 0.5% (n/a)
Obviously a 1% drop in the Green vote can't fully explain a 7.3% increase in the Labour vote, but nevertheless it's consistent with the notion that Corbyn is putting together a slightly different coalition of support. What's even more interesting is where the lost Tory votes have gone. I can't think of any reason to suppose the Tory abstention rate would be significantly higher than that of other parties, and it seems unlikely that many Tory voters would be interested in lending a tactical vote to a Corbyn-led party to keep UKIP out. So the most plausible explanation is that the unfaithful Tory voters went to UKIP, but they were mostly offset by working-class UKIP voters from the general election returning to the Labour fold.
The Oldham campaign hasn't been as dramatic as Darlington in 1983, but at this very early stage the outcome does appear to have a Darlington-esque feel about it, because it's radically changing perceptions about Corbyn's "life expectancy" as leader. It's now significantly more likely that he'll still be around at the time of the Scottish Parliament election in May, and I stand by what I said a few days ago - that's a good thing for the SNP, because it means that the chaos within Labour will carry on unabated. Tony Blair gave the game away during the leadership election - ultimately, the problem he and his supporters have with Corbyn is not electoral, but ideological. Even if Labour continues to hold its own in elections, the Blairites and others on the right still won't be able to live with Corbyn as leader, so we can look forward to the sniping and poison continuing.
I suppose the only downside of tonight's result is that we've been robbed of the chance of finding out what would have happened if the Blairites had been emboldened to make an early move to depose Corbyn, but failed. Would they have talked themselves into a position where they couldn't remain in a party with a radical left leader? Most of the MPs who defected to the SDP in 1981 couldn't have envisaged such an eventuality just a few months earlier. A split of that sort really would have been a dream outcome for the SNP, but I'm sure we can make do with the Labour shambles we've actually got.
There had been some suggestions that a UKIP breakthrough in Oldham might have indirectly been a good thing for the independence movement, because it would have increased the chances of Brexit. I'm not so sure about that. We've seen in recent years that the fortunes of "Leave" in the opinion polls have had an inverse correlation with the fortunes of UKIP, probably because moderate Eurosceptics are appalled by Farage and co. It may well be a good thing for the Out campaign if the Oldham result increases the sense that UKIP are becoming an irrelevance, thus allowing Eurosceptic Tory and Labour MPs to take the lead in future. It's also arguably a good thing for them that Jeremy Corbyn's position has been stabilsed, because although he'll probably be campaigning to remain in the EU, he won't be doing it with quite the full-blooded enthusiasm that a more centrist successor might have done.
The answer is that they haven't stood still. They've lost significant support to the Conservatives and other parties, but have completely offset it with support gained from elsewhere. The best clue as to how they've managed to achieve that comes in two of the poll's supplementary questions. Among people who actually voted Labour in May, Corbyn has a negative rating of -6, but among people who are currently planning to vote Labour, he has a positive rating of +31. Labour voters from May were only opposed to bombing Syria by a margin of 42% to 35%, but current Labour voters were opposed by a whopping 57% to 23%. In essence, Corbyn has replaced the previous Labour coalition of support with a different coalition more in his image, and the new one is just as big. That's not quite the narrative we've been fed, although admittedly if Labour support is draining to the Tories (to some extent) and is being replaced mainly by support from the Greens, Lib Dems, UKIP and previous non-voters, that does still result in an increased Tory lead, which is a huge problem under first-past-the-post. Even so, Oldham may be the first concrete electoral indication that the state of play is much more nuanced and interesting than we've been led to believe.
I have a helpful suggestion for anyone in the mainstream media who may be struggling with a headline for tomorrow -
"Hilary Benn's wonder speech saves Labour's bacon in Oldham"
Go on, I dare you to be that brazen!
UPDATE : It appears John "the Gardener" McTernan has already attempted that line. He's literally beyond satire now.
UPDATE II : Here is the full result...
Oldham West and Royton parliamentary by-election result (3rd December) :
Labour 62.1% (+7.3)
UKIP 23.4% (+2.8)
Conservatives 9.4% (-9.6)
Liberal Democrats 3.7% (n/c)
Greens 0.9% (-1.0)
Official Monster Raving Loonies 0.5% (n/a)
Obviously a 1% drop in the Green vote can't fully explain a 7.3% increase in the Labour vote, but nevertheless it's consistent with the notion that Corbyn is putting together a slightly different coalition of support. What's even more interesting is where the lost Tory votes have gone. I can't think of any reason to suppose the Tory abstention rate would be significantly higher than that of other parties, and it seems unlikely that many Tory voters would be interested in lending a tactical vote to a Corbyn-led party to keep UKIP out. So the most plausible explanation is that the unfaithful Tory voters went to UKIP, but they were mostly offset by working-class UKIP voters from the general election returning to the Labour fold.
The Oldham campaign hasn't been as dramatic as Darlington in 1983, but at this very early stage the outcome does appear to have a Darlington-esque feel about it, because it's radically changing perceptions about Corbyn's "life expectancy" as leader. It's now significantly more likely that he'll still be around at the time of the Scottish Parliament election in May, and I stand by what I said a few days ago - that's a good thing for the SNP, because it means that the chaos within Labour will carry on unabated. Tony Blair gave the game away during the leadership election - ultimately, the problem he and his supporters have with Corbyn is not electoral, but ideological. Even if Labour continues to hold its own in elections, the Blairites and others on the right still won't be able to live with Corbyn as leader, so we can look forward to the sniping and poison continuing.
I suppose the only downside of tonight's result is that we've been robbed of the chance of finding out what would have happened if the Blairites had been emboldened to make an early move to depose Corbyn, but failed. Would they have talked themselves into a position where they couldn't remain in a party with a radical left leader? Most of the MPs who defected to the SDP in 1981 couldn't have envisaged such an eventuality just a few months earlier. A split of that sort really would have been a dream outcome for the SNP, but I'm sure we can make do with the Labour shambles we've actually got.
There had been some suggestions that a UKIP breakthrough in Oldham might have indirectly been a good thing for the independence movement, because it would have increased the chances of Brexit. I'm not so sure about that. We've seen in recent years that the fortunes of "Leave" in the opinion polls have had an inverse correlation with the fortunes of UKIP, probably because moderate Eurosceptics are appalled by Farage and co. It may well be a good thing for the Out campaign if the Oldham result increases the sense that UKIP are becoming an irrelevance, thus allowing Eurosceptic Tory and Labour MPs to take the lead in future. It's also arguably a good thing for them that Jeremy Corbyn's position has been stabilsed, because although he'll probably be campaigning to remain in the EU, he won't be doing it with quite the full-blooded enthusiasm that a more centrist successor might have done.
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
What we've learned tonight
1) The idea that has been doing the rounds in the London media that Hilary Benn is a credible caretaker "unity" Labour leader is now dead in the water. Becoming so visibly the darling of the Tory benches has completely put paid to any hopes he may have harboured in that direction.
2) Sustained clapping in the House of Commons is, it turns out, perfectly OK and will not be ruled out of order by the Speaker, just so long as it's not the Jocks doing it and as long as it's expressing support for the dropping of British bombs on a faraway country. (We already know from a previous episode that clapping is to be positively encouraged as long as it follows a speech in favour of John Bercow remaining as Speaker.)
3) The Westminster elite are quite capable of getting over the solemnity of having just voted to end people's lives. It only takes a matter of seconds for them to start chortling at the ludicrous thought of being expected to hang around for a late night debate about child abuse.
4) Labour's Stella Creasy was either pro-fascism or fascism-neutral until roughly 9.30 this evening. Or at least she was if we believe her fatuous statement that "Hilary Benn's speech persuaded me that fascism must be defeated".
2) Sustained clapping in the House of Commons is, it turns out, perfectly OK and will not be ruled out of order by the Speaker, just so long as it's not the Jocks doing it and as long as it's expressing support for the dropping of British bombs on a faraway country. (We already know from a previous episode that clapping is to be positively encouraged as long as it follows a speech in favour of John Bercow remaining as Speaker.)
3) The Westminster elite are quite capable of getting over the solemnity of having just voted to end people's lives. It only takes a matter of seconds for them to start chortling at the ludicrous thought of being expected to hang around for a late night debate about child abuse.
4) Labour's Stella Creasy was either pro-fascism or fascism-neutral until roughly 9.30 this evening. Or at least she was if we believe her fatuous statement that "Hilary Benn's speech persuaded me that fascism must be defeated".
YouGov subsample suggests Scotland is evenly split on air strikes
A new YouGov poll conducted over the last 48 hours suggests support across Britain for air strikes on Syria has dropped sharply in the last week, albeit with a plurality remaining in favour -
Would you approve or disapprove of the RAF taking part in air strike operations against Islamic State/ISIS in Syria?
(Respondents across Britain) :
Approve 48% (-11)
Disapprove 31% (+11)
There has been a lazy assumption among the right-wing commentariat in Scotland that public opinion north of the border is not especially divergent on this topic, and that the SNP are therefore essentially going against the grain of their own constituents' wishes by voting against air strikes. With the usual caveats about the statistical unreliability of subsamples, this poll suggests that may not be the case, and that Scotland is basically evenly split -
Would you approve or disapprove of the RAF taking part in air strike operations against Islamic State/ISIS in Syria?
(Respondents in Scotland) :
Approve 44% (-7)
Disapprove 41% (+12)
Very unusually, YouGov have also asked a voting intention question. I can't remember exactly how many times they've done that since the polling disaster in May, but the number can certainly be counted on the fingers of one hand. The SNP lead in the Scottish subsample is unusually "low" : SNP 41%, Labour 24%, Conservatives 20%, UKIP 8%, Liberal Democrats 4%, Greens 2%. Although on the face of it that's bad news, it leaves open the possibility that there are too few SNP voters in the subsample as a result of normal sampling variation, in which case it's perfectly conceivable that Scottish opposition to air strikes is being underestimated by the above figures. The fact that a wildly implausible combined total of 28% of the subsample are Tory or UKIP voters would tend to support that theory.
Labour right-wingers have been given something of a headache in advance of tomorrow night's parliamentary vote, because until now they've been able to draw a distinction between anti-war party members, and Labour voters who are supposedly in favour of air strikes. YouGov are suggesting that people who voted Labour across Britain in May are in fact opposed to military action by 42% to 35%.
The paradox of this poll is that it shows opinion moving in the direction of Jeremy Corbyn's stance on Syria, but also suggests public confidence in Corbyn himself is collapsing. In the space of just a fortnight, his net personal rating has slumped from -22 to -41. Intriguingly, he seems to be doing just as badly in Scotland, where he stands at -38, although that figure should be treated with caution given the over-representation of Tory and UKIP supporters in the sample. Doubtless Corbyn's critics within Labour will leap on these figures, but the reality is that this is their own handiwork - if you systematically brief against your leader, it harms both him and the party's standing. Labour's deficit in this poll has increased from six points to eleven.
I'm coming even more firmly to the conclusion that a Labour win in the Oldham West and Royton by-election on Thursday would be in the SNP's strategic interests. Although it's still unlikely that a UKIP gain would in itself be sufficient to topple Corbyn, that no longer looks totally inconceivable. It would be best for us if Corbyn's position is stabilised by a narrow electoral success, thus allowing the chaos within Labour to continue for the next five months. The last thing we need is for the run-up to the Scottish Parliament election to be dominated by a second Labour leadership contest. OK, that could exacerbate the divisions even further, but it might just prove a unifying experience for them if they happen to stumble across a credible candidate from the soft left.
* * *
It looks like internal trouble is brewing for the Liberal Democrats as well. Of the comments left so far by grassroots members and activists on Liberal Democrat Voice, only 13 are in favour of Tim Farron's decision to support the Tories and air strikes, and 23 are opposed. It may be even worse than it appears, because some of the supportive comments are in the mould of "the leader is right because it's hard to be the leader and make hard decisions and we must support the leader because he is our leader and he has made a hard decision".
Would you approve or disapprove of the RAF taking part in air strike operations against Islamic State/ISIS in Syria?
(Respondents across Britain) :
Approve 48% (-11)
Disapprove 31% (+11)
There has been a lazy assumption among the right-wing commentariat in Scotland that public opinion north of the border is not especially divergent on this topic, and that the SNP are therefore essentially going against the grain of their own constituents' wishes by voting against air strikes. With the usual caveats about the statistical unreliability of subsamples, this poll suggests that may not be the case, and that Scotland is basically evenly split -
Would you approve or disapprove of the RAF taking part in air strike operations against Islamic State/ISIS in Syria?
(Respondents in Scotland) :
Approve 44% (-7)
Disapprove 41% (+12)
Very unusually, YouGov have also asked a voting intention question. I can't remember exactly how many times they've done that since the polling disaster in May, but the number can certainly be counted on the fingers of one hand. The SNP lead in the Scottish subsample is unusually "low" : SNP 41%, Labour 24%, Conservatives 20%, UKIP 8%, Liberal Democrats 4%, Greens 2%. Although on the face of it that's bad news, it leaves open the possibility that there are too few SNP voters in the subsample as a result of normal sampling variation, in which case it's perfectly conceivable that Scottish opposition to air strikes is being underestimated by the above figures. The fact that a wildly implausible combined total of 28% of the subsample are Tory or UKIP voters would tend to support that theory.
Labour right-wingers have been given something of a headache in advance of tomorrow night's parliamentary vote, because until now they've been able to draw a distinction between anti-war party members, and Labour voters who are supposedly in favour of air strikes. YouGov are suggesting that people who voted Labour across Britain in May are in fact opposed to military action by 42% to 35%.
The paradox of this poll is that it shows opinion moving in the direction of Jeremy Corbyn's stance on Syria, but also suggests public confidence in Corbyn himself is collapsing. In the space of just a fortnight, his net personal rating has slumped from -22 to -41. Intriguingly, he seems to be doing just as badly in Scotland, where he stands at -38, although that figure should be treated with caution given the over-representation of Tory and UKIP supporters in the sample. Doubtless Corbyn's critics within Labour will leap on these figures, but the reality is that this is their own handiwork - if you systematically brief against your leader, it harms both him and the party's standing. Labour's deficit in this poll has increased from six points to eleven.
I'm coming even more firmly to the conclusion that a Labour win in the Oldham West and Royton by-election on Thursday would be in the SNP's strategic interests. Although it's still unlikely that a UKIP gain would in itself be sufficient to topple Corbyn, that no longer looks totally inconceivable. It would be best for us if Corbyn's position is stabilised by a narrow electoral success, thus allowing the chaos within Labour to continue for the next five months. The last thing we need is for the run-up to the Scottish Parliament election to be dominated by a second Labour leadership contest. OK, that could exacerbate the divisions even further, but it might just prove a unifying experience for them if they happen to stumble across a credible candidate from the soft left.
* * *
It looks like internal trouble is brewing for the Liberal Democrats as well. Of the comments left so far by grassroots members and activists on Liberal Democrat Voice, only 13 are in favour of Tim Farron's decision to support the Tories and air strikes, and 23 are opposed. It may be even worse than it appears, because some of the supportive comments are in the mould of "the leader is right because it's hard to be the leader and make hard decisions and we must support the leader because he is our leader and he has made a hard decision".
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