Listen to the real FM, Kenny

As you may already have seen, Kenny "Devo or Death" Farquharson fell hook, line and sinker for a tweet from a parody Nicola Sturgeon account stating that "Scotland does not recognise the Republic of Catalunya" and that "the Spanish constitution must be respected".  Emboldened by his belief that the real Sturgeon had made such a wildly implausible intervention, he rather amusingly scolded me for not falling into line with my party leader's edict.  "Listen to the FM!" he said, sternly.

(Click screenshots to enlarge.)

As Kenny's appeal to authority has blown something of a puncture, I'll just take this opportunity to amplify my original point.  17,410,742 people voted Leave in the EU referendum last year, out of a total registered electorate of 46,500,001.  That means just 37.4% of the electorate voted Leave - and yet, on the whole, the UK's political and journalistic establishment don't seem to have any problem with the idea that Britain must withdraw from the European Union on the basis of a mandate that would have fallen short of the notorious 40% rule in 1979.

In the Catalan independence referendum, 2,044,038 people voted in favour of independence, out of a total registered electorate of 5,313,564.  That means 38.5% of the electorate voted for independence - a slightly higher percentage than Leave achieved.  It would of course have been even higher if Spanish police hadn't stolen votes, closed polling stations, and used violence to prevent people from voting.

In fairness to Kenny, I saw the fake Sturgeon tweet when I did a Google search last night, and although I was dismayed by it, for just a split-second I thought it might be real.  It was the "to be clear" that did it - that sounds like Sturgeonesque language.  But when I thought about it I quickly became suspicious and decided to check, because I realised that an explicit rejection of the mandate for independence would have directly contradicted what she has been saying for weeks.  It tells us quite a bit about Kenny's fundamental misreading of the SNP that he didn't become suspicious about a tweet like that, even after reflection.  In reality, given the strength of feeling about Catalonia, there were only really two options open to the Scottish Government - either offer a symbolic "recognition" of Catalan independence (even though a non-sovereign country like Scotland has no power to recognise a state), or just opt out of the problem by neither recognising nor disputing the independence declaration.  They've gone for the latter option - I'm not sure that will be enough to satisfy most SNP members, but I can certainly understand why they've done it.

Barcelona, like a jewel in the sun

Depressingly (in one sense), I'm just about old enough to clearly remember Slovenia's unilateral declaration of independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.  I recall the TV reports dripping with scepticism about the prospect of the new "state" receiving recognition from the international community, and positive derision about its ambitions for membership of the European Community (as the EU was then called).  And yet in the blink of an eye, Slovenia had attracted widespread recognition, and within just thirteen years it was a full member of the EU.  None of this is to say that history is bound to repeat itself in Catalonia, but it's a useful reminder that it pays dividends to be sceptical about journalistic scepticism.  These situations often have a momentum all of their own.

I suspect that if the events of the last 24 hours do eventually lead to authentic independence, Catalonia may have a more tortuous journey to follow than Slovenia did.  A hard notion though it is to countenance amid the euphoria of the moment, there may yet have to be a strategic and temporary renunciation of the independence declaration if Spain is prepared to offer a binding independence referendum in return.  Why would the comically intransigent Spanish political establishment offer such a thing in a million years?  Most likely because there is a reasonable chance that Catalonia will prove to be ungovernable under Madrid's puppet regime, if enough public servants switch their allegiance to the new republic and if civil disobedience is widespread.  We don't know yet if that will prove to be the case, but we're about to find out.

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Since my last update, four more Britain-wide voting intention polls have been published, and yet again, the Scottish subsamples from all of them put the SNP in the lead.

Survation: SNP 37%, Labour 28%, Conservatives 16%, Liberal Democrats 13%, UKIP 3%, Greens 2%

YouGov (a): SNP 42%, Labour 24%, Conservatives 22%, UKIP 6%, Liberal Democrats 5%

ICM: SNP 39%, Conservatives 27%, Labour 24%, Greens 6%, Liberal Democrats 4%

YouGov (b): SNP 36%, Labour 30%, Conservatives 25%, Liberal Democrats 5%, Greens 2%, BNP 1%

That means an extraordinary seventeen subsamples in a row have now put the SNP in first place - quite a contrast with the pattern seen between election day and the end of August, when a substantial minority of subsamples were putting Labour ahead.  It does look very much like the SNP's lead dropped significantly during the summer before recovering.  That trend will never be part of the 'official record', though, because the first full-scale Scottish poll after the election wasn't conducted until early September, which if the subsamples are to be believed is roughly the point at which the political weather changed back in the SNP's favour.

Now is a very odd time to be claiming that the division of powers between the UK and Scotland is "clear-cut"

There's an article on the BBC website that attempts to explain the system of autonomy in Catalonia - ie. the one that Madrid is today trying to sweep away and replace with a puppet regime.  Unfortunately, however, the article makes a comparison with devolution in Scotland that is astonishingly misconceived in the light of recent events...

"The division of powers between the central government in Madrid and the regional government in Barcelona is not as clear cut as it is in some other countries with devolved authorities such as Germany or the UK.  In the UK, for example, the government in Westminster cannot interfere in Scottish education policy because education is fully devolved."

Oh really?  Agriculture and fisheries are "fully devolved" in Scotland, and yet the UK government are doing a remarkably convincing impersonation of a group of people who think and know that they have the legal right to interfere with Scottish agriculture and fisheries to their heart's content under the cover of a post-Brexit power grab.  The reason?  First of all, the Scotland Act stresses that none of its provisions prevent the UK parliament from "legislating for Scotland".  The only constraint on Westminster legislating on devolved matters is the informal Sewel Convention, which was supposed to have been put on a statutory basis as part of the implementation of "The Vow".  However, earlier this year the UK government successfully argued at the Supreme Court that the whole thing was a con-trick and that Sewel remains legally unenforceable.

Secondly, the Scotland Act specifies that 'the constitution' is reserved to Westminster - an extremely broad category that naturally includes the Scotland Act itself.  So Westminster can simply rip up or modify the devolved settlement at its whim - which is exactly what it is currently attempting to do by means of the Great Repeal Bill.  The only conceivable constraint on that process is Sewel, which is legally worthless (see above).

As I've conceded before, the UK does have a good story to tell in the sense that it's extremely unlikely that a violent Spanish-style crackdown would ever be launched against an exercise in Scottish self-determination.  But the idea that Scotland has some sort of clear-cut legal protection that Catalonia lacks is an absolute fairy-tale.

Why Ruth Davidson will almost certainly NOT be the next Prime Minister

You may have seen over the weekend that John Rentoul manned up and made a stout-hearted attempt to resuscitate the decomposing corpse of the 'Ruth Davidson for PM' campaign, with an article entitled 'I'm convinced Ruth Davidson could be the next Prime Minister'.  Now, obviously most people reading this blog will share my view that Ruth is All Tank And No Ammunition, and will be aware that under her leadership the Scottish Tories have slipped back to a dismal third place in the majority of recent polls.  However, let's humour Rentoul just for a moment and pretend that the idea of Ruth as a world leader isn't quite as batty as it actually is.  What's missing from the article is an explanation of how it's even practically feasible for her to stand in a Conservative leadership election.

To stand as a leadership candidate, you need to be a Westminster MP.  Ruth is not a Westminster MP.  It is of course theoretically possible to become an MP without a general election taking place by engineering a by-election, but that takes time.  Vacancies for the Tory leadership generally occur rather suddenly (I can't think of even a single exception to that rule in my lifetime), so we're effectively being asked to believe that other potential candidates and the entire Hard Brexit wing of the Tory parliamentary party would be absolutely fine with the start of the contest being delayed for several weeks just so that the darling of Remainers can attempt to stand.  The only alternative would be for her to preempt the issue by persuading a Westminster chum to stand down before a leadership vacancy arises, but that would be seen as an obvious attempt to prepare the ground for a leadership challenge, and thus as a gross act of disloyalty - not just against Theresa May, but against the whole Tory party.  Any needless by-election can backfire, and the Tories know they can't risk losing even a single seat given the current state of the parliamentary arithmetic.

It just ain't going to happen.  She may well want it to happen, but by now she'll have worked out the permutations in her head and realised a plausible route to Downing Street just isn't there in anything like the foreseeable future.

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What do you call a man who has already completely and utterly lost the plot and then doubles down?  If I didn't know the guy so well, I'd be rubbing my eyes in disbelief right now.  Round 3 in less than a week from Stormfront Lite's Mike Smithson -

"Remember the ONLY way an election can be triggered before 2022 is by going through the processes set down in the Fixed-Term Parliament Act. This requires two thirds of all 650 MPs to back one, as last April, or else the government losing two votes of no confidence within a specific time table.  In the current context the latter requires both the DUP and the SNP to join with LAB, PC and the LD MPs. The DUP has been bought off for its 10 votes and LAB should be under no illusions about the SNP’s 35 MPs. Nicola’s party got smashed on June 8th and isn’t going to put its remaining 35 MPs at risk by doing anything that would facilitate an early election."

I've already explained five hundred and eighty-three billion times why Smithson's repeated claim that the SNP would prevent an early election taking place is the polar opposite of the truth, so let's just take a moment to marvel at his startling new assertion that the SNP "got smashed on June 8th".  This, ladies and gentlemen, is the election result he is referring to...

SNP: 35 seats
Conservatives: 13 seats
Labour: 7 seats
Liberal Democrats: 4 seats

SNP: 35 seats
All other parties combined: 24 seats

SNP: 59.3% of seats
All other parties combined: 40.7% of seats

That's what the SNP "getting smashed" looks like, apparently.  I hope for the sake of the unionist parties that the SNP never actually win an election.

By the way, on a point of pedantry it's not even true that "the ONLY way" an early election can be triggered is via the processes of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act.  The other way of doing it is to repeal that Act.

It's getting close to unspoofable now

Another day, another ill-judged analysis of Scottish politics from Stormfront Lite's Bedfordshire-based editor Mike Smithson, known fondly to thousands of East Dunbartonshire residents as an 'impartial' letter-writing 'election expert' (in spite of being a long-standing Liberal Democrat member, a former Liberal Democrat county councillor, and a former Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate).  When he mysteriously claimed yesterday that the SNP's electoral position was 'precarious', I wondered aloud if he was even aware of the three full-scale polls of Scottish voting intentions for Westminster that have been conducted since the election in June, and which all show that the SNP's support has gone back up.  He's unwittingly answered my question today -

"One of the problems we have with ongoing analysis of this is that there is very little regular Scotland only polling. Trying to assess what’s happening north of the border from the Scottish sub-set in national polls is fraught with danger."

Ooooh yes, subsamples are just riddled with peril for the unsuspecting impartial Liberal Democrat expert.  Just as well, then, that we've had three full-scale Scottish polls in the last few weeks, including one very recently.  Quite plainly he's oblivious to that fact.

A word of advice, Mike.  You don't even need to read Scot Goes Pop - there's a regularly updated list of Scottish polls on Wikipedia.  Might be an idea to take five seconds to check it before you next pontificate about the SNP's 'precarious' electoral position.

Europe is being slow to realise that it needs Spain to lose

Just a quick note to let you know that I have a new article at the TalkRadio website, about what Nicola Sturgeon is likely to say and do in response to the Spanish crackdown on democracy.  You can read it HERE.

For the seventy-ninth time, yes, the SNP can be counted on to bring about an early general election

Oh for the love of God.  The latest from Stormfront Lite -

"Remember that the SNP, which opposed the 2017 election cannot be counted on to support any move which could prematurely cut its already reduced Westminster base. On June 8th it saw its 56 Scottish seats reduced to 35 and in none of them was its vote share above 46%. Its precarious position is one of the key facts of current politics which is rarely discussed."

That'll be 'rarely discussed' apart from the fact that Mr Smithson has been banging on about the same point ad nauseam for months, and has ignored the contrary argument no matter how many times it has been set out.  Here it is yet again -

1) Regardless of how 'precarious' the SNP's electoral position is or is not, everyone in the party knows it would be electoral suicide in the long-term as well as the short-term to stand in the way of a general election that might bring down the Tory government.  There is no point in delaying a hypothetical short-term electoral hit if the consequence is being tarred for decades as the Tories' "little helpers".

2) Mr Smithson's claim that the SNP "opposed the 2017 election" is quite simply false.  All 54 SNP MPs abstained in the parliamentary vote on whether there should be an election, and that was only an option because it could be quite reasonably argued at the time that an early election was likely to vastly increase the Tories' majority.  That is self-evidently no longer the case.

3) It's highly debatable how 'precarious' the SNP's position is anyway.  There have been three full-scale Scottish polls of Westminster voting intentions since the general election, and all three have recorded an increase in the SNP's vote.  The Panelbase and Survation polls would see the SNP making gains from both Labour and the Conservatives, while the YouGov poll would see them making gains from the Tories only (and not suffering any losses to Labour).  I do wonder if Mr Smithson is even aware of the existence of those polls.  It's true that electoral behaviour has become very volatile in recent years and there is no guarantee that favourable opinion polls now would translate into a good result in an early general election.  But at the very least it's fair to say that the SNP would be just as likely to make gains as suffer losses.

It's also worth gently pointing out that Mr Smithson spent two years between the spring of 2015 and the spring of 2017 telling anyone who would listen that the Fixed Term Parliaments Act essentially made an early election impossible, because it required the opposition's cooperation and they would never play ball.  That theory survived all of ten minutes once Theresa May pulled the trigger.

SNP vote increases by 6% in Inverurie by-election

Just for once we have an STV by-election result where the classification of "hold" is not misleading - the Tories were defending the Inverurie seat, and also comfortably won the popular vote in the ward in May.

Inverurie & District by-election result (12th October):

Conservatives 48.5% (+12.6)
SNP 33.3% (+5.7)
Liberal Democrats 8.6% (-3.2)
Labour 8.0% (+3.7)
Greens 1.6% (n/a)

What does make interpretation of the result difficult is that the independent candidate Judy Whyte received more than 20% of the votes in May, which were all up for grabs this time.  If those voters were predominantly unionist or small 'c' conservative in character, it may not be any great surprise that the Tories have grabbed the lion's share of them.  Certainly there was nothing inevitable about the substantial increase in the SNP's own vote (Labour's vote didn't go up by as much and the Lib Dems actually contrived to go backwards), so we're entitled to take heart from that.  And, as always, we have to remember that Tory supporters are traditionally more likely to make it to the polls in a low turnout local by-election than supporters of other parties.

Incidentally, since my last update there have been three new Scottish subsamples from GB-wide polls, and all of them have shown an SNP lead (albeit a wafer-thin one in the case of today's YouGov poll).  The SNP were also ahead in a BMG subsample from September which was published belatedly.  That means there have now been thirteen subsamples in a row putting the SNP in front, underscoring the apparent change in the political weather since the summer.

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Have you joined Scot Goes Pop's new Facebook discussion group yet?  It's called Scottish Independence Required By Next Tuesday, and it's already attracted several hundred members in its first week.  You can join HERE.

Unethical constitutions deserve no respect

A guest post by Al Skinner

Spain’s vicious authoritarian response to the referendum in Catalonia got me thinking about constitutions. The constant refrain from Madrid is that the plebiscite was in violation of the Spanish constitution, with former vice-president of the Spanish government Alfonso Guerra going so far as to declare that there can be no negotiating with the Catalan golpistas (“coupists”).

It is, in fact, essentially undeniable that the referendum was “illegal” and in violation of the Spanish constitution.

But here’s the rub: the constitution of Spain is itself illegitimate. But allow me to back up for a moment.

In light of Germany’s central role in the EU, I kept wondering how German politicians and media would respond to the situation in Catalonia. Surely, I thought, they would condemn Spain’s brutal actions even if there was no chance of the German government doing anything substantial. At least, I naively assumed, both state and press would rhetorically uphold certain core values. How wrong I was. Instead they’ve largely been supportive of Madrid, construing recent events as an internal Spanish matter.

The title of a recent article in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper absurdly declares that "Self-Determination is an Invitation to Dictatorship", another in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung explains "Why Spain is Doing the Right Thing", while yet another in the former publication baldly states that “There is No Unlimited Right to Secession".

The last article is an interview with one Christoph Vedder, who is described as an expert in international law. He explains that while the right to self-determination is enshrined in the UN Charter, this does not mean Catalonia has the right to an independence referendum. As I read the article my curiosity grew. How on earth was he going to square that particular circle?

Then came the sleight of hand. Vedder invents a qualification to the right to self-determination. It applies, he explains, only in cases of severe repression. So Kosovo’s independence from Serbia was OK. But Catalonia, being part of a democratic state under the rule of law, does not enjoy that right. For this expert, the Catalans’ right to self-determination is “exhausted” within the Spanish state. If this ideological contortion seems warped and ridiculous to you, then good – it is.

But why are these highly educated and no doubt in many ways liberal-minded Germans twisting common sense into such grotesque shapes?

I don’t think we have to look too far for an answer. This is essentially about power and authority. Existing states are averse to, if not terrified of, the implications of the right to self-determination. They don’t want to lose territory, population and resources. They don’t want a "diminished status in the world". And this brings us to the nub of the matter – the sheer infantilism of most contemporary governments. They care only about perpetuating their own states. The idea that this is about solemn commitment to constitutions is laughable. This is about the state and its ego. This infantilism, of course, leads to terrible ethics. Which is just what we're seeing in Madrid at the moment.

Vedder mentions in the interview that Germany too recognizes no right of its constituent parts to become independent states. But this is like saying, look, women are oppressed everywhere, so what are you complaining about? The fact that the German constitution, like its Spanish counterpart, flagrantly violates the right to self-determination is nothing to be proud of. It should be a source of deep shame. The German commentators alluded to here are being good little servants of the constitution, in a twisted, deeply conservative sort of way.

How different it could and should all be. Imagine a world that truly honoured the right to self-determination. Now, I’m the first to agree that not every bit of the planet should enjoy that right. I recognize no right of Renfrewshire or Hampshire to self-determination. This is the self-determination of peoples we’re talking about. But to deny that right to Catalonia is to strip it of all meaning. Of course the Catalans (by which I mean the citizens of Catalonia) are a people. Of course they must enjoy that fundamental right. There’s no ultimate reason why existing states could not approach the possibility of some of their territory morphing into separate states with calmness and great ethics. There’s no ultimate reason why they couldn’t facilitate the emergence of new independent states. So does the UK government’s approach to the Scottish independence referendum serve as a template here?

Only very partially. Ultimately, the right to self-determination cannot be constrained by the decision of central governments. So the need for a Section 30 order is itself an infringement of this right. Furthermore, the shocking tsunami of propaganda unleashed by the UK government and its unionist coreligionists in the press destroyed any prospect of a sound decision in 2014. I belong to the school of thought that believes there would have been a Yes vote in the absence of this ideological warfare. A handsome victory, I suspect.

As we watch Madrid’s sickening descent into authoritarianism, we should remember that constitutions are not sacred texts. It is vital to challenge the dreadful ethics they often embody. The Spanish constitution is in violation of international law. This is one of the key prisms through which I think we should view current events in Catalonia.

New Scottish poll is "unmitigated disaster" for Ruth Davidson as Tories slip seventeen points behind SNP on WESTMINSTER voting intentions

It's a hat-trick, folks - and in more ways than one.  YouGov's new poll is the third full-scale Scottish poll since the general election, and all three have shown that the SNP's support in Westminster voting intentions has gone back up - a genuinely astonishing consensus that defies all of the expectations during the summer, and indeed the propaganda that was being pumped out by commentators as recently as yesterday.

Scottish voting intentions for next Westminster general election (YouGov) :

SNP 40% (+3)
Labour 30% (+3)
Conservatives 23% (-6)
Liberal Democrats 5% (-2)

(This is YouGov's first Scottish voting intention poll since the general election, so percentage changes are measured from the actual election result.)

The equally remarkable thing that the three polls have in common with each other is that the anti-independence media outlet that commissioned them buried all mention of the Westminster results - presumably because they'd rather people didn't know the SNP are doing so well.  The Daily Mail didn't report Survation's Westminster numbers at all, the Sunday Times held back Panelbase's Westminster results for a week and then made only passing reference to them, and although I don't pay the Murdoch Levy, I get the distinct impression from those who do that the Times didn't say anything about YouGov's Westminster results in their coverage of the new poll on Saturday.  If there was any mention at all, it can't have been very prominent, because the numbers didn't make their way onto social media.  I eventually found them in the datasets published on YouGov's own website today.

On all three occasions, the unionist newspaper in question has preferred to focus all of our attention on the Scottish Parliament voting intention figures instead - which are spinnable as being a mild setback for Nicola Sturgeon, because although the SNP have an enormous lead on that measure as well, it's down a little from the extraordinary high recorded at the Holyrood election in May 2016.

For the avoidance of doubt, there is no innocent explanation for this selective reporting of the polls.  We've only just been through a Westminster general election, and there is a non-trivial chance of another one being held next year.  By contrast, the next Scottish Parliament election is almost four years away.  Of course Westminster voting intentions are the more interesting of the two sets of numbers at present - so why on earth are London-based newspapers behaving as if Holyrood is the only game in town, and as if Westminster is just some trivial detail?  It makes no sense unless they're in the propaganda business, and are determined that a decrease in the SNP's Holyrood lead should be widely known about, but that a deeply inconvenient increase in the SNP's Westminster lead should be kept a total secret.  It's a cynical game, but to some extent it's working - you may have seen Rachael Swindon (a well-known Corbynite on Twitter) express genuine shock and bewilderment yesterday upon being told that all of the Westminster polls since the election have shown the SNP's vote increasing.  She was utterly convinced that all of the polls she had seen had shown the polar opposite.

If I could blow my own trumpet for just a moment, the YouGov poll bears out what I've been saying for months about the likelihood that an aggregate of subsamples will at least be vaguely in line with the results of full-scale Scottish polls.  Unlike other firms, YouGov's subsamples have been consistently showing the Scottish Tories in third place, so it makes perfect sense that YouGov's full-scale poll has parted company with both Panelbase and Survation by showing Labour in a clear second place and the Tories in a dismal third.  Ruth Davidson must be absolutely horrified by these numbers (and on this occasion that's not hyperbole).  It's even more startling when you bear in mind that Labour and the Tories are essentially tied in the same poll's Holyrood figures.

The SNP would plainly be well-placed to make several gains from the Tories in any early general election if YouGov are correct.  The poll implies a 4.5% swing from Tory to SNP, which in respect of the 'box office' contests means that Alex Salmond would comfortably take back Gordon if he chooses to stand again, and that Angus Robertson would have a 50/50 chance of taking back Moray.

There's another interesting nugget from the YouGov datasets on the Holyrood numbers - the SSP are on 3% of the list vote.  That's not enough to win them any seats, but it does mean that support for pro-independence parties on the list is significantly higher than we first thought.