In vain I have struggled. It will not do.

Just a quick note to let you know that I have a new article at the TalkRadio website, which allows me to fulfill a lifetime ambition by mentioning Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett in a piece about a progressive alliance between Labour and the SNP.  (We're Elizabeth, obviously.)  You can read it HERE.

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Fundraiser update : Thank you for your amazing support since I started promoting last year's fundraiser again, which remains open for donations because it's in the 'In Demand' phase.  Around £1600 has been raised since Monday.  I'm relieved to say the problem with Paypal has been resolved much more quickly than I feared, so it's now possible to contribute by either Paypal or credit/debit card.  You can visit the fundraiser page HERE.  To make a donation during 'In Demand', simply click on one of the 'perk' options - if the exact amount you want to donate isn't listed, select the £10 perk and the next page will allow you to customise the donation.

The best time to hold a second independence referendum is while there is still a pro-independence majority at Holyrood to make it possible

Iain Macwhirter had a piece in the Sunday Herald yesterday arguing that Nicola Sturgeon won't and shouldn't hold a second independence referendum for several years (2021 at the absolute earliest), because there needs to be much greater clarity about what Brexit will actually look like before pulling the trigger.  Now, as you know, I'm inclined to favour a much earlier vote (not necessarily next week, but perhaps some time between next year and 2019), and that's mainly because I worry about the momentum we built up in 2014 gradually evaporating.  I certainly don't subscribe to the 'demographic inevitability' theory - if we sit around twiddling our thumbs, waiting for a glacial shift in public opinion towards Yes, I suspect we'll get a nasty shock and see a less-than-glacial shift towards No.  But whenever you think the right time is, it's worth bearing in mind that this is a discussion about fantasy politics unless you can be sure that there will actually be a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament at the relevant moment.  Without that, there will never be a referendum.  The biggest difference between arguing for a referendum in 2019 and arguing for a referendum in 2022 is that we know with reasonable confidence that the parliamentary arithmetic will be there in 2019.  All bets are off as far as 2022 is concerned.

This is a point that worried me even before the EU referendum.  There seems to be a complacent attitude in some quarters that the SNP ascendancy at Holyrood is going to remain in place indefinitely, and that Nicola Sturgeon can just gaze down at the polls from an Olympian height and choose the absolutely ideal moment.  The reality is that the 2021 election could be a very tough one indeed, and by that point we may have much more to worry about than passive-aggressive "tactical voting" campaigns run by a certain RISE-supporting website.  The SNP will have been in power for fourteen years by 2021 - that's one year longer than the Blair/Brown government lasted, and it's only four years short of the record set by the Thatcher/Major government.  No party is immune to the changing of the seasons (as even the ANC are starting to find out).  It's true that the Tories overtaking Labour as the largest opposition party makes a fourth successive SNP victory somewhat more probable, because Scotland scarcely seems likely to elect a Tory-led government any time soon.  But unfortunately there's a very obvious middle possibility - the SNP could be re-elected with a significantly weaker mandate, and without a pro-independence majority even after the Greens are taken into account.  If that happens, the 'patient' plans for a second indyref in the early 2020s will look a bit bloody silly in retrospect.

Both Iain Macwhirter and David "and on the third day He reactivated His Twitter account" Torrance point to supposed polling evidence that there hasn't been much of a boost for Yes in the aftermath of June 23rd.  I strongly suspect that they're both mainly talking about a single YouGov poll showing only a 1% increase for Yes, and assuming that's going to prove typical.  Well, it might do, but there again it might not do.  Drawing too many conclusions from an individual poll is a dangerous game for any commentator, and we'll just have to see whether they've jumped the gun.  It's particularly worth remembering that even before the EU referendum, telephone polls had Yes in the lead.  There has only been one telephone poll since the referendum, and again, it had Yes in the lead.  Anyone who claims to know for certain that there is a currently an anti-independence majority is either being dishonest or doesn't know what they're talking about.

As for Torrance's claim that the SNP got carried away with their rhetoric on a second indyref because they bought into their own "hype" about the effect of Brexit on public opinion, that strikes me as being silliness on stilts.  Nicola Sturgeon and the people around her are not idiots - they'll have seen the pre-referendum polls suggesting that Brexit might only increase support for independence by a modest amount, and yet they went ahead with the early statement that an indyref was "highly likely" without waiting to see what the post-referendum polls would show.  They would never have done that unless it was a carefully-thought-through strategy that was not dependent on short-term polling trends.

Sturgeon sensation as swanky SNP surge ahead of lousy Labour in two local by-elections

I was a bit disconcerted last night when I heard that Labour had "gained a seat from the SNP" in a local by-election, but as is so often the case with STV by-elections, things weren't quite as they seemed.  The SNP were "defending" the seat in the spite of having lost the popular vote in the ward last time around, and they actually moved ahead of Labour to win the popular vote yesterday.  They then perversely lost the seat anyway due to Tory voters breaking almost four-to-one in favour of Labour on lower preferences.  So, other than the fact that the "Auld Alliance" from 2014 is alive and well, and the fact that Irvine West will now have to put up with a Labour councillor rather than Nicola Sturgeon's dad, the nominal "Labour gain" is of very little significance - the underlying trend is still the familiar one of Labour support draining away in former heartland areas.

Irvine West by-election result (11th August) :

SNP 37.5% (+0.7)
Labour 33.1% (-7.1)
Conservatives 20.6% (+8.6)
Socialist Labour 4.2% (+2.6)
Greens 3.0% (n/a)
Liberal Democrats 1.5% (-3.2)

Swing from Labour to SNP = 3.9%

Much the same trend was seen in yesterday's other by-election in Renfrew South and Gallowhill - except here, the SNP built up enough of a first preference lead to actually gain the seat from Labour, even allowing for the "Tories for Corbyn" factor.

Renfrew South & Gallowhill by-election result (11th August) :

SNP 47.8% (+6.9)
Labour 36.9% (-8.5)
Conservatives 13.4% (+9.1)
Liberal Democrats 1.9% (+0.1)

Swing from Labour to SNP = 7.7%

So the average pro-SNP swing yesterday was around 5.8%, and of course that's measured from the 2012 result, when the SNP were already slightly ahead of Labour nationally. Certainly there's nothing in these results that would call into question the sense of inevitability about what will happen next May - Labour remain firmly on course to lose their remaining local government strongholds, including most obviously Glasgow, which will be a landmark moment on a par (almost) with the fall of Byzantium.

The future of this blog

As long-term readers will recall, the third and most recent Scot Goes Pop fundraiser was run last autumn, and with your incredibly generous help it raised £5680.  As with the previous two fundraisers, the aim was mainly to help cover my own living expenses - and certainly not "running costs", which is the red herring always brought up by the concern trolls. Blogger is a completely free platform and it doesn't have any running costs at all. Although this blog is now considerably more popular than it was prior to 2014, it's still not a Wings or a Bella - there's probably a natural limit of around £5000 or £6000 that any crowdfunder is going to raise, and even that may sometimes prove to be optimistic.  There simply isn't the scope to muck around with expensive bells and whistles.   Writing Scot Goes Pop has been the equivalent of a very time-consuming part-time job (and at the busiest times a full-time job), and that's what the fundraisers have made possible - just about.

In spite of my frugal lifestyle (ahem), and more to the point a few other sources of income, the money from last autumn has now basically gone.  The EU referendum was something of a crossroads - I knew if the UK voted Remain, Scottish politics would go relatively quiet for a few years, and another fundraiser might not even be feasible.  I imagined in those circumstances I would probably start to wind things down, and continue with the blog on a much more limited basis.  As it turned out, things went the opposite way, and I've been planning to run a fourth fundraiser when the time felt right.  Unfortunately, I incurred a large and unexpected expense a couple of weeks ago, so that brought things to a head, and I was intending to get things underway either yesterday or today.  Just my luck that a small number of readers decided that right now was the time to declare all-out war on the way I run the blog.  This was what my inbox looked like yesterday...

I had to spend about an hour deleting dozens of comments from an anonymous troll, all containing the words "JAMES KELLY IS AN ARROGANT PR**K" over and over and over again.  I strongly suspect this is the same chap who called me a "twit" on Tuesday for disagreeing with his ideas on how the blog should be run, and who then gradually escalated the personal abuse after I informed him that the discussion was closed and started deleting his comments.  Now someone calling himself "Scottish Labour" (who may or may not be the same person) is declaring his intent to repost a comment no matter how many times I delete it.  In a nutshell, people who refuse to accept the very light moderation rules that I apply are now making the blog unmanageable, and it's getting to the stage where I may have to disable commenting altogether as a temporary measure.

For months upon end now, I have replied to repetitive comments asking me why I refuse to ban the unionist troll "Glasgow Working Class".  There are only so many times that I can explain that it is not possible to ban individuals on the Blogger platform.  For months upon end now, I have replied to repetitive comments asking me why I do not switch to another platform.  There are only so many times that I can explain that I actively prefer sticking with the Blogger platform and that migrating to another platform often causes more problems than it solves.  This is not a decision that can be made by committee, and there comes a point where for everyone's sanity I have to declare the matter closed and refer people to my previous replies.  That point has now arrived.

I'm not sure whether it's possible to run a fundraiser in these circumstances - some people would just take it as free licence to unleash further chaos.  I'm going to ponder on what to do - I may delay my plans, or I may revert to my 'Remain plan' and blog much less frequently without running a fundraiser at all.  But whatever I do, please note that Scot Goes Pop will continue to run on Blogger (unless the platform changes in some way or becomes too bug-ridden), very light-touch moderation will in general remain in place, and I will reserve the right to delete comments that serve no other purpose than to give me hassle.

Democracy 1, Labour Plotters 0

I suggested the other day on Twitter that TV detector vans had better be an urban myth, because it's hard to think of a more self-defeating use of licence fee money.  But I think I've found something even more self-defeating - how about using Labour membership fees to launch a costly legal appeal to attempt to prevent Labour members from exercising their right to vote in a leadership election, which is one of the main reasons many of them joined the party in the first place.  It's really not a great look, is it?

Something I have never understood from the word go is why registered supporters, who paid a one-off fee a few weeks ago for the sole purpose of voting in the leadership election, have supposedly demonstrated a greater commitment to the Labour party than people who paid to become full members several months ago.  And yet that is seemingly the logic of the rules that the Labour plotters are trying to reinstate at enormous expense.  It would be nice if at least one journalist gets around to asking them to explain that to us.

YouGov poll has a painful message for the Labour plotters - they actually need the radical left if they are to ever win power

One of the main justifications for the moral compromises of Blairism was/is that Labour "have to live in the real world", and can't win elections without putting forward policies that appeal to Middle England.  Well, here's a dose of reality that isn't going to be quite so welcome for the anti-Corbyn plotters : a new YouGov poll provides powerful evidence that the Corbyn wing of the party is not, as the plotters like to tell themselves, a trivial and dispensable part of the Labour coalition that currently wields wildly disproportionate influence.  In fact, there doesn't appear to be any path to victory without the radical left.

YouGov asked hypothetical voting intention questions based on the assumption that Labour would split into two parties, with the Corbyn wing remaining at the helm of one.  No matter which way round the split occurs, the left-led party attracts significant support, and the bulk of it comes from the current Labour vote.  If Corbyn and co retain the Labour brand, they hold on to 21% of the vote, but even if it's assumed that they break away and set up an entirely new party with a new name, they still get 14% - almost half of Labour's support.  In both scenarios, the plotter-led "moderate" centre-left party would receive less than 20% of the vote, and would thus be left in territory familiar to the Liberal Democrats prior to their disastrous decision to install David Cameron in Downing Street.

It's interesting to ponder whether a radical left party could have attracted 14% or 21% of the vote if Corbyn had never become Labour leader.  But even if that support is largely driven by Corbyn's new-found celebrity and status, it doesn't make any concrete difference - the plotters can't wind the clock back and erase the last year from history.  As bad as poll respondents are at answering hypothetical questions, it seems inconceivable based on these findings that "moderate Labour" would not at least suffer a big electoral hit as a result of any split.  The radical left are clearly now an essential part of any winning coalition of Labour voters, and the plotters are therefore going to have to somehow make peace with Corbyn if they mean what they say about being motivated by a single-minded pursuit of victory.  (They don't, of course.)

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Helen Lewis has been castigated in some quarters for dubious claims about the SNP in her latest New Statesman piece about Corbyn, but for my money the silliest part of the article is when she implies that the Labour leader is guilty of hypocrisy for criticising the plotters over their refusal to serve in the Shadow Cabinet, given that he himself declined to serve in Blair's Cabinet.  I'm sorry, but in what reality did Tony Blair ever offer Corbyn a job on the lowest rung of the ministerial ladder, let alone in the Cabinet?  It may well be that Corbyn would have refused to serve even if he had been asked, but you just don't get to score points about the refusal of a job offer that was never made, and would never have been made in a million years.

Majority for independence in new Scot Goes Pop Poll of Polls

We've now had enough post-EU referendum polls on independence to make it worthwhile reintroducing the Scot Goes Pop Poll of Polls.  I'm going to tweak the rules slightly, though.  As before, the headline figures will be based on an average of the most recent poll from each polling firm, but only firms that have reported since the EU referendum (and thereafter within the last three months) will be included.  If a firm has recently conducted both telephone and online polls, the midway point between those two polls' results will be used (in effect each of the two polls will count as a 'half-poll').

Today's figures are based on an online poll from Panelbase, an online poll from YouGov, and both an online and telephone poll from Survation.  I'm excluding the ScotPulse poll showing an enormous Yes lead because I don't think it was an entirely credible poll (and ScotPulse aren't a BPC firm in any case).

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 50.8%
No 49.2%

Journey into the bizarre as Herald describes an increase in support for independence as "the reversal of a surge"

A new YouGov poll on independence has been released, and in line with the other three credible polls to be published since the EU referendum, it shows an increase in support for Yes...

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 47% (+1)
No 53% (-1)

I regret to say that the Herald's reporting of this poll warrants yet another caution from the psephology police.  They've made a determined attempt to compare apples with oranges by claiming that the surge in support for independence in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote has been "reversed".  To state the bleedin' obvious, the polls that put Yes in the outright lead in late June were Panelbase and Survation polls - and tonight's poll was not conducted by Panelbase or Survation, but by a different firm with its own distinct methods.

It is quite possible that a Panelbase or Survation poll conducted now would show the Yes vote holding steady in the low 50s.  It is also quite possible that a YouGov poll conducted in late June would have produced an identical result to tonight's.  There is absolutely no hard evidence in this poll of a surge being reversed - and that is not an opinion, it is a fact.  The new numbers can only be compared with the last YouGov independence poll from well before the EU referendum - since when there has been a small 1% swing towards Yes. 

UPDATE : The datasets are now out, and the big question that immediately forms in my mind is whether the results have been weighted by EU referendum vote.  At first glance it looks like they have been, because 553 Remain voters in the unweighted sample have been reduced to 500.  But the note at the bottom of the datasets doesn't mention EU referendum vote as one of the factors that have been weighted for. 

The reason this matters is that there have been signs in other polls that some Leave voters falsely say they voted Remain, possibly because of embarrassment - meaning that there will generally appear to be too many Remain voters in unweighted samples.  As there is a strong correlation between voting Remain and supporting independence, any misguided downweighting of Remain voters could potentially lead to support for independence being underestimated.

I would also strongly urge people to pay only limited heed to supplementary questions that appear to show slightly worse results for Yes.  Respondents are already factoring in Brexit when they answer the headline question on independence, so that's the result that matters.  Questions with more exotic wordings will always produce slightly different results.

Nevertheless, as has been pointed out in the comments section below, it's striking that a significantly bigger minority of SNP voters seem to oppose independence when the question is posed as a straight choice between the UK and the EU.  That illustrates the potential danger of making retention of EU membership the lead campaign pitch in Indyref 2 - because it may alienate Yes voters from 2014 who have since voted Leave.  My own view is that we have to draw a distinction here - the issue of being dragged out of the EU against our will matters enormously, because it's the casus belli for calling a second referendum.  But once that referendum is actually underway, we'll need a more inclusive campaign that appeals to both Remain and Leave voters.

UPDATE II : I'll just quickly run through some of the other concerns that have been raised about the poll in the comments section.  Yes, absolutely, it's extremely reprehensible that YouGov haven't interviewed 16 and 17 year olds, given that it seems almost inevitable that the voting age for Indyref 2 will be 16 rather than 18.  The Yes lead among 18-24 year olds is a whopping 26%, so if you assume that 16 and 17 year olds would break in a similar way, it's perfectly possible that the headline result of this poll should really be Yes 48%, No 52%.  That's just speculation, obviously, but it's scarcely unwarranted.

In theory, there's no reason why the poll should be missing a pro-Yes surge among citizens of other EU countries.  YouGov weight by country of birth, and the 'born outside the UK' group is weighted to make up roughly 9% of the sample.  However, there's no way of knowing whether that group contains the correct proportion of EU and non-EU citizens.

It's true that the recalled EU referendum vote is slightly skewed in favour of Leave in the weighted sample - it's Remain 59%, Leave 41%, whereas it should be Remain 62%, Leave 38%.  For the reasons given above, I'm not sure that weighting by EU referendum vote is a good idea - but all the same, you'd expect to see too many Remain voters in the sample (because of the problem of false recall), not too few.  So there may be a small issue there - and if so, the poll may be slightly underestimating the Yes vote.

Three simple reasons why the Labour plotters will be more responsible than Corbyn for a heavy general election defeat

1) Even in southern England, there is one factor that is a far bigger voter-repellent than a radical left party leader - and that's disunity.  According to YouGov, Labour went from enjoying a 3% lead in late April to being 11% behind by mid-July.  Corbyn was leader in both the 'before' and 'after' photos, so self-evidently he's unlikely to be responsible for the slump.  The only things that have changed since April are that Theresa May is enjoying a honeymoon period, and the right-wing of the Labour party have needlessly started a civil war.

2) Some of the plotters claim that they have no problem with Corbyn's policies, but only with the man himself.  If that's genuinely the case, an obvious deal was available that probably would have been acceptable to all sides - a change in the leadership nomination rules to allow Corbyn to step down (perhaps in a year or two) safe in the knowledge that a more charismatic alternative left candidate like John McDonnell or Clive Lewis would have no difficulty getting on the ballot paper, and would probably become leader.  The fact that none of the plotters seem to have even seriously contemplated that possibility tells you all you need to know - this isn't about electability, it's a destructive ideological crusade against the radical left.

3) For all the mythology surrounding the 1983 election, the Labour right actually have a much longer and more ignominious track record of losing elections than the radical left.  It was the right, not the left, that lost the 2010 and 2015 elections.  The right were also responsible for the landmark defeats in 1979 and 1992, and arguably also in 1987 (Neil Kinnock was midway on his journey from the soft left to the right by then, although admittedly he was still nominally in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament).  And the right can't entirely escape responsibility for the 1983 calamity either - it seems undeniable that the Tory majority would have been much more modest had the SDP split not taken place.

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It takes a strong Westminster Bubble angle before Mike "can't be arsed" Smithson will pay the slightest attention to a Scottish poll, and sure enough he's beside himself with excitement about a new full-scale Scottish poll from YouGov showing that Jeremy Corbyn has worse personal ratings among people who voted Labour in 2015 than among the electorate at large.  But for my money, this poll tells us far more about the character of Labour's rump support in Scotland than it does about Jeremy Corbyn's prospects.  Corbyn actually has comparatively good ratings among people who voted SNP in 2015, which is perfectly logical, because that group contains many traditional Labour voters who had switched to the SNP for the first time ever.  It's clear that Corbyn's leadership hasn't been sufficient to bring them back into the fold, but the idea that they're more likely to be won over by a New Labour-type leader is fanciful in the extreme.

It's also telling that Ruth Davidson has much, much better personal ratings among 2015 Labour voters than Nicola Sturgeon does, in spite of Sturgeon's impeccable social democratic credentials, and the fact that she's more popular than Davidson among the general population.  That makes no sense at all unless the legacy of "Jackanory" Jim Murphy's leadership has been to transform Labour's support into a narrowly-based, centre-right, hard-line unionist sect.  (I hesitate to use the word 'cult', but...)

Theresa May's showing in this poll is being portrayed as reasonably good, but you have to be very cautious about polls conducted during a political honeymoon.  For example, an early Scottish poll after John Major replaced Margaret Thatcher showed Tory support back above 30% for the first time in many years, leading Bernard Ingham to obnoxiously claim that everything was back to normal and that the only reason for the Scottish Tories' travails had been the sexism of voters north of the border (including female voters, presumably).

You don't have to look far to spot the warning signs for May - even at the height of her honeymoon, more Scottish voters say she is dislikeable than say she is likeable.  Perhaps the most significant finding is that 54% of respondents say she will either be a worse Prime Minister than Cameron, or no better.  When you bear in mind how awful Cameron's personal ratings in Scotland have been, that may be a clue as to where she is headed in the not-too-distant future.

How "Devo or Death" became "Brexit or Bust"

Heads up pol peeps : those of you of a nostalgic bent really should be keeping an eye on the Twitter account of Kenny "Devo or Death" Farquharson, who is currently doing an extended one-man indyref tribute act.  As you'll recall, he spent an inordinate amount of time in 2014 trying to convince both himself and the rest of us that a No vote was somehow a vote for Devo Max.  Whenever the implausibility of that claim was pointed out, he would gaze mysteriously into the distance, and whisper "no, I can see it, it's out there, it's shining, just waiting for us, it's...the most beautiful, perfectly-formed Devo Super Max, and all we have to do is vote No.  Oh thank you, David Cameron!  May the heavens bless you, George Galloway!"  The much more logical conclusion that the only way to get a powerhouse parliament was to vote Yes had to be denied, because independence was not Devo, and independence was therefore Death.

That logic has got Kenny into even more of a bind over the last few weeks, because the rest of the UK has only gone and voted for something that makes independence pretty likely.  He knows that the Leave vote can't simply be ignored, so instead he's become an overnight enthusiast for the endless wonders of Brexit-Lite, and is currently tying himself up in knots trying to convince himself that there is a magic formula out there that will somehow get Nicola Sturgeon on board and avert Death/Independence.

"OK, OK, but if we stay in the single market and introduce an Australian-style points system that's particularly favourable to Scotland's needs, what does Sturgeon do then?"

You can't stay in the single market and introduce an Australian-style points system, Kenny.  Oh, and freedom of movement is one of the Scottish Government's red lines anyway.

"Yeah, yeah, but if we stay in the single market, introduce an Australian-style points system AND throw in a free chocolate hobnob, Sturgeon has got nowhere left to go, yeah?"

It's all rather sweet.  He shall henceforth be known as Kenny "Brexit or Bust" Farquharson.

Mind you, he maybe did have cause for some minor excitement yesterday, because it was reported that the EU may be considering allowing the UK an "emergency brake" on free movement of as long as seven or ten years, while remaining in the single market.  That's the first indication that the EU is perhaps having second thoughts about making an example of the UK as a deterrent to others.  The snag, though, is that Theresa May has a parliamentary majority of just 12 seats, and it's very hard to see how she's going to keep her government intact if she agrees to merely a temporary suspension of free movement, followed by a resumption of normal service thereafter.  I doubt if that's a runner, unless May is the sort who would sacrifice her premiership in the national interest - and that's certainly not how she comes across.