The frustration continues: for some reason, we still haven't had a full-scale poll of Scottish voting intentions for Westminster (or indeed for Holyrood) since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister. The change at the top has altered the trajectory of GB-wide polling, so it seems likely that the same will prove true in Scotland, but to what extent?
It's high time that we had a look at the next best thing to a full-scale poll. YouGov announced a few years ago that they were starting to correctly structure and weight their Scottish subsamples for GB-wide polls, and it looks pretty likely from the relative stability of their figures that they've continued to do that ever since. That doesn't mean that an individual Scottish subsample from YouGov can be treated as the equivalent of a full-scale poll - the margin of error on a correctly structured subsample of 150 or 200 is still much higher than the margin of error on a full sample of 1000 or 2000. But averaging the figures over time can give you more meaningful results, and we're now in a position to do that, because there have been eight published YouGov subsamples with fieldwork that took place entirely after Mr Johnson entered Number 10.
YouGov Scottish subsample average since 24th July:
SNP 44.4%
Conservatives 19.3%
Liberal Democrats 12.8%
Labour 11.4%
Brexit Party 7.0%
Greens 4.0%
Westminster seat projection:
SNP 52 (+17)
Liberal Democrats 4 (n/c)
Conservatives 2 (-11)
Labour 1 (-6)
We shouldn't forget that, although the Tories have opened up a GB-wide lead, they haven't recovered to anything like the kind of levels of support that they had even a few months ago - they're still languishing in the low 30s, which normally wouldn't be enough to top the popular vote in a general election. They're leading by default because their main opponents are polling at an unusually low level too. In Scotland, it looks like they're not being so fortunate - yes, they've recovered a bit due to the Boris effect, but that's not doing them much good because their main opponent actually appears to be polling higher than in 2017.
The SNP are so far standing firm in the face of both the 'Boris bounce' and the 'Swinson surge' (the latter being a largely mythical thing anyway - the Lib Dem recovery preceded the change of leader). I thought the result of the East Kilbride by-election last night was really interesting - Labour's vote slumped by eleven points, and it looked possible that a lot of those votes might have gone direct to the Lib Dems, who enjoyed a ten point boost. The SNP seemed unaffected by the Lib Dem surge, and saw their own vote increase by four points.
OK, that's only one by-election and there may well have been local factors. But if the Lib Dems start taking significant numbers of unionist/Remain votes away from Labour in seats that the Lib Dems can't possibly win in a million years, and if there is no substantial movement of votes from the SNP to the Lib Dems, the stars might just be aligning for a dramatic SNP landslide in terms of seats.
And who knows what effect Ruth Davidson's resignation will have on the above figures - if there are any moderate Scottish Tory voters left, they might start drifting off to the Lib Dems or somewhere else.
Friday, August 30, 2019
Two by-elections, two big swings to the SNP
As expected, the Shetland by-election proved to be just too big a mountain for the SNP to climb, but by any normal standards the swing in their favour was enormous.
Shetland parliamentary by-election result (29th August 2019):
Liberal Democrats 47.9% (-19.5)
SNP 32.3% (+9.3)
Independent - Thomson 10.9% (n/a)
Conservatives 3.7% (-0.1)
Greens 1.6% (n/a)
Labour 1.3% (-4.6)
Independent - Stout 1.1% (n/a)
Independent - Scott 0.6% (n/a)
UKIP 0.5% (n/a)
Independent - Tait 0.3% (n/a)
That's a swing of more than 14% from the Liberal Democrats to the SNP. If that had been the result of a by-election on the mainland, it would look like an unmitigated disaster for the Lib Dems and their new leader Jo Swinson, because if national polls are to be believed they should be closing the gap in seats they don't hold, and sailing out of sight in seats they do hold. They certainly shouldn't be seeing their vote slump in a previously rock-solid heartland. However, we've known since the European election in May that the Northern Isles were bucking the national trend for whatever reason, and we've always known that localised trends in island constituencies don't usually have any wider significance, so the Lib Dems will probably just feel relieved to get out of this with a win of some description. The SNP will also be pleased, though, at this demonstration that there aren't any no go areas for them in Scotland.
There have been some suggestions that the SNP's biggest failing in this campaign was in the realm of expectation management, ie. that they allowed the impression to take root that they might actually win Shetland outright, which now leaves the big swing in their favour looking like a disappointing result. But I think sometimes you have to build a sense of excitement about a campaign if you want a decent outcome. There's not going to be much of a bandwagon effect if people think your aim is a distant second place.
Oh, and it shouldn't go unmentioned that the Tories specifically said in their election leaflets that if voters wanted Brexit, their only option was to vote Tory. So presumably this result means that 96.3% of Shetlanders don't want Brexit?
* * *
There was also a substantial swing to the SNP in a local council by-election in East Kilbride...
East Kilbride Central North by-election result (29th August 2019):
SNP 46.5% (+4.2)
Labour 20.3% (-11.3)
Conservatives 14.6% (-4.1)
Liberal Democrats 12.4% (+9.9)
Greens 4.5% (+0.6)
UKIP 1.4% (n/a)
Scottish Libertarians 0.4% (n/a)
It's worth bearing in mind that the above percentage changes are from the baseline of the 2017 local elections, when the SNP's national vote stood at 32%. So the SNP are not necessarily setting the heather alight with a 4% increase. But what really matters here is the catastrophic drop in the Labour vote - if that trend continues, the SNP will sweep the board wherever Labour are their main opponents in any snap Westminster election. There still appears to be every chance that Scottish Labour will once again by reduced to just one seat (Edinburgh South).
* * *
How can you tell the difference between a Westminster by-election and a local council by-election? The declaration of a Westminster by-election result is pretty much always broadcast live by the BBC, either on their news channel, or on BBC1, or on a simulcast between the two channels. By contrast, local council by-elections are for obvious reasons never covered live, and indeed are hardly ever mentioned on air after the event. Judging from the complete lack of live coverage of the Shetland result on BBC1, BBC2, the BBC news channel, the BBC Scotland channel and Radio Scotland, it appears that the BBC think that a Holyrood by-election is closer in nature to a council by-election than to a Westminster contest. It's not all that surprising to see London news editors stuck in the dark ages, taking the view that Holyrood is - in the immortal words of Tony Blair - comparable to an English parish council. But BBC Scotland have no excuse after twenty years of devolution, and it's a real dereliction of duty that they didn't broadcast some sort of live by-election special. On past form, it's highly likely they would have done if this had been a Westminster by-election in Scotland.
Shetland parliamentary by-election result (29th August 2019):
Liberal Democrats 47.9% (-19.5)
SNP 32.3% (+9.3)
Independent - Thomson 10.9% (n/a)
Conservatives 3.7% (-0.1)
Greens 1.6% (n/a)
Labour 1.3% (-4.6)
Independent - Stout 1.1% (n/a)
Independent - Scott 0.6% (n/a)
UKIP 0.5% (n/a)
Independent - Tait 0.3% (n/a)
That's a swing of more than 14% from the Liberal Democrats to the SNP. If that had been the result of a by-election on the mainland, it would look like an unmitigated disaster for the Lib Dems and their new leader Jo Swinson, because if national polls are to be believed they should be closing the gap in seats they don't hold, and sailing out of sight in seats they do hold. They certainly shouldn't be seeing their vote slump in a previously rock-solid heartland. However, we've known since the European election in May that the Northern Isles were bucking the national trend for whatever reason, and we've always known that localised trends in island constituencies don't usually have any wider significance, so the Lib Dems will probably just feel relieved to get out of this with a win of some description. The SNP will also be pleased, though, at this demonstration that there aren't any no go areas for them in Scotland.
There have been some suggestions that the SNP's biggest failing in this campaign was in the realm of expectation management, ie. that they allowed the impression to take root that they might actually win Shetland outright, which now leaves the big swing in their favour looking like a disappointing result. But I think sometimes you have to build a sense of excitement about a campaign if you want a decent outcome. There's not going to be much of a bandwagon effect if people think your aim is a distant second place.
Oh, and it shouldn't go unmentioned that the Tories specifically said in their election leaflets that if voters wanted Brexit, their only option was to vote Tory. So presumably this result means that 96.3% of Shetlanders don't want Brexit?
* * *
There was also a substantial swing to the SNP in a local council by-election in East Kilbride...
East Kilbride Central North by-election result (29th August 2019):
SNP 46.5% (+4.2)
Labour 20.3% (-11.3)
Conservatives 14.6% (-4.1)
Liberal Democrats 12.4% (+9.9)
Greens 4.5% (+0.6)
UKIP 1.4% (n/a)
Scottish Libertarians 0.4% (n/a)
It's worth bearing in mind that the above percentage changes are from the baseline of the 2017 local elections, when the SNP's national vote stood at 32%. So the SNP are not necessarily setting the heather alight with a 4% increase. But what really matters here is the catastrophic drop in the Labour vote - if that trend continues, the SNP will sweep the board wherever Labour are their main opponents in any snap Westminster election. There still appears to be every chance that Scottish Labour will once again by reduced to just one seat (Edinburgh South).
* * *
How can you tell the difference between a Westminster by-election and a local council by-election? The declaration of a Westminster by-election result is pretty much always broadcast live by the BBC, either on their news channel, or on BBC1, or on a simulcast between the two channels. By contrast, local council by-elections are for obvious reasons never covered live, and indeed are hardly ever mentioned on air after the event. Judging from the complete lack of live coverage of the Shetland result on BBC1, BBC2, the BBC news channel, the BBC Scotland channel and Radio Scotland, it appears that the BBC think that a Holyrood by-election is closer in nature to a council by-election than to a Westminster contest. It's not all that surprising to see London news editors stuck in the dark ages, taking the view that Holyrood is - in the immortal words of Tony Blair - comparable to an English parish council. But BBC Scotland have no excuse after twenty years of devolution, and it's a real dereliction of duty that they didn't broadcast some sort of live by-election special. On past form, it's highly likely they would have done if this had been a Westminster by-election in Scotland.
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Scottish Tories locate their Ruth-less streak
So there have been two big developments in Scottish politics today (so far - the day is young!). One is unalloyed good news for the SNP, the Yes movement, and humanity at large. The other is not-so-good news, but nuanced.
Let's start with the good news - the departure of Colonel Ruth. It's very hard to see how this is going to be anything but electorally harmful for the Tories, and therefore electorally beneficial for the SNP. Her popularity was always wildly exaggerated by her adoring fans in the media, but nevertheless she did have personal ratings that were much healthier than you'd expect for the branch office leader of the most toxic London party. As baffling as it may be to us, there's no doubt that she was a net asset for her party, and even if she's replaced by someone reasonably telegenic and likeable, it'll take a long while to build up that person's profile.
The alternative to her being replaced by someone telegenic and likeable is of course for her to be replaced by Adam Tomkins, and his decision about whether to stand will tell us a lot about the man. He comes across as a fanatical British nationalist, so the million dollar question is: does he care more about that nationalist ideology than about his personal ambitions? If so, you'd expect him not to stand, because he'd be clear-sighted enough to recognise that he'd be a voter-repellent and that he'd make "the partition of Britain" more likely to happen. But if he does stand, we'll know he's in this game for personal advancement.
The not-so-good news today is the Labour leadership in London changing their position on a Section 30 order for the 749th time. This was probably inevitable, because the Scottish and London leaderships of the party were always going to have to come up with some kind of agreed position they could just about unite behind in a coming general election. The silver lining is that it's a genuine compromise, and the Scottish leadership have had to cede some ground as well - Richard Leonard is now accepting the possibility, however reluctantly, of a Section 30 order after a "fresh mandate". (What's supposed to be wrong with the current mandate remains a mystery.)
The new position contains an obvious contradiction - we're told that a Section 30 order will be denied in the "formative years" of a Labour government but would be granted if there was a fresh mandate, which doesn't explain what will happen if the fresh mandate occurs during or before those formative years. Remember that the next Holyrood election is still theoretically scheduled to take place before the next Westminster election, and could easily be brought forward even further if Nicola Sturgeon decides to call Corbyn's bluff and get a new mandate quickly. If she does go down that road, I'd suggest it's imperative that the SNP and Greens get together in a sort of pre-election 'summit' and agree a shared wording about independence and a referendum to put in both parties' manifestos, so that this time there can be no pedantic or semantic quibbles about the quality of a shared mandate. In an ideal world, smaller pro-indy parties would also use the same manifesto wording, because although the SNP and Greens are the only pro-indy parties likely to win Holyrood seats, smaller parties may contribute to a popular vote mandate.
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Yes, what happened today is a suspension of democracy, and the Queen may not be able to wash her hands of it for much longer
There was some discussion on the previous thread about whether today's announcement that parliament will soon be prorogued can appropriately be described as a "suspension of democracy", given that brief prorogations in preparation for a Queen's Speech are a normal part of the Westminster system. But there is something (beyond the obvious cynicism of the timing) that makes this prorogation unusual. James Cleverly noted today that it's absolutely routine for a "new government" to present a Queen's Speech - but if this is a new government (and it obviously is, given that its policy platform is a radical departure from what went before), who elected it? No-one, unless you count the tiny percentage of the population who are card-carrying members of the Conservative party. It hasn't received a direct mandate at a general election, and crucially it hasn't even received an indirect mandate from the elected parliament - it has yet to be tested in a confidence vote. Incredible though it may seem, after a month it still hasn't been established that there is any democratic basis whatsoever for Boris Johnson to be our Prime Minister. He owes his position simply to appointment by the unelected monarch on the advice of his predecessor.
The legitimacy of those who govern us during brief spells of prorogation derives from them enjoying the confidence of parliament - and in this case that legitimacy will be lacking, unless Jeremy Corbyn tables a vote of no confidence next week and loses it. So, yes, I think it's entirely appropriate to characterise today's decision as a suspension of democracy.
Before the news officially came through that the Queen has approved Boris Johnson's prorogation request, this was my reaction on Twitter -
"Rather appropriate that the Queen is in Scotland as she receives the phone call asking her to suspend democracy. I wonder if she'll 'purr' down the line. I certainly hope she 'thinks very carefully' about her decision..."
Of course I was being slightly mischievous there, because I'm sure the Queen's advisers will have told her that she didn't really have a decision to make. Convention dictates that she must accept a request for prorogation prior to a Queen's Speech. However, there are other circumstances in which convention does still allow her some discretion, and we may be hurtling towards those circumstances. ITV's political editor Robert Peston reported earlier that a government source had told him: "If MPs pass a no confidence vote next week, then we'll stay in No10, we won't recommend any alternative government we'll dissolve Parliament and have an election between 1-5 November -- and that means no time for legislation."
If the government goes down that route of temporary, outright dictatorship, then the Queen can stop them. She has the power to sack Boris Johnson as Prime Minister with immediate effect if she concludes that he no longer has the confidence of the House - and if he's just lost a vote of no confidence, such a conclusion would be a no-brainer. Convention does not prevent her from taking action, and the modern precedents are clear. In 1975, the Governor-General of Australia sacked the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and replaced him with the opposition leader. The Governor-General exercises exactly the same powers on behalf of the Queen that she exercises on her own behalf in the United Kingdom. And within her own reign, there's an example of her using her discretion on the selection of a Prime Minister - in 1963, she went ahead and appointed the Earl of Home as PM, ignoring advice from Harold Macmillan to wait until further soundings had been taken among Tory MPs.
My guess is that the Queen is so allergic to being seen to intervene in the political process (except to stop Scotland governing itself, obviously) that there isn't a cat in hell's chance of her using her power to eject an illegitimate Prime Minister. But the problem for her is that the government will have put her in a position where she has no option but to make a political decision, one way or the other. Doing nothing will in itself be a decision, and it'll make her the midwife of a No Deal Brexit. That could be a catastrophic error that would destroy the monarchy's reputation among a whole generation of pro-EU citizens.
The legitimacy of those who govern us during brief spells of prorogation derives from them enjoying the confidence of parliament - and in this case that legitimacy will be lacking, unless Jeremy Corbyn tables a vote of no confidence next week and loses it. So, yes, I think it's entirely appropriate to characterise today's decision as a suspension of democracy.
Before the news officially came through that the Queen has approved Boris Johnson's prorogation request, this was my reaction on Twitter -
"Rather appropriate that the Queen is in Scotland as she receives the phone call asking her to suspend democracy. I wonder if she'll 'purr' down the line. I certainly hope she 'thinks very carefully' about her decision..."
Of course I was being slightly mischievous there, because I'm sure the Queen's advisers will have told her that she didn't really have a decision to make. Convention dictates that she must accept a request for prorogation prior to a Queen's Speech. However, there are other circumstances in which convention does still allow her some discretion, and we may be hurtling towards those circumstances. ITV's political editor Robert Peston reported earlier that a government source had told him: "If MPs pass a no confidence vote next week, then we'll stay in No10, we won't recommend any alternative government we'll dissolve Parliament and have an election between 1-5 November -- and that means no time for legislation."
If the government goes down that route of temporary, outright dictatorship, then the Queen can stop them. She has the power to sack Boris Johnson as Prime Minister with immediate effect if she concludes that he no longer has the confidence of the House - and if he's just lost a vote of no confidence, such a conclusion would be a no-brainer. Convention does not prevent her from taking action, and the modern precedents are clear. In 1975, the Governor-General of Australia sacked the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and replaced him with the opposition leader. The Governor-General exercises exactly the same powers on behalf of the Queen that she exercises on her own behalf in the United Kingdom. And within her own reign, there's an example of her using her discretion on the selection of a Prime Minister - in 1963, she went ahead and appointed the Earl of Home as PM, ignoring advice from Harold Macmillan to wait until further soundings had been taken among Tory MPs.
My guess is that the Queen is so allergic to being seen to intervene in the political process (except to stop Scotland governing itself, obviously) that there isn't a cat in hell's chance of her using her power to eject an illegitimate Prime Minister. But the problem for her is that the government will have put her in a position where she has no option but to make a political decision, one way or the other. Doing nothing will in itself be a decision, and it'll make her the midwife of a No Deal Brexit. That could be a catastrophic error that would destroy the monarchy's reputation among a whole generation of pro-EU citizens.
Saturday, August 24, 2019
SNP remain firmly in the driving seat in latest YouGov subsample
Strictly speaking we've had one full-scale Scottish poll since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister - the now-legendary Ashcroft poll that gave Yes a narrow lead on the independence question, and that also showed that Nicola Sturgeon was the most popular of the leading Scottish and UK politicians. But oddly there were no Westminster or Holyrood voting intention numbers in the poll, and that's what we could really do with now. We're in the highly unusual situation where it seems to me that some London commentators are possibly being a tad optimistic about the SNP's prospects in any autumn snap election - and that's specifically because they're assuming that nothing has changed since the pre-Boris polls that suggested the SNP were riding high and that the Scottish Tories were taking an absolute hammering. Logically it seems possible that the Boris effect may have seen the Scottish Tories recover somewhat at the expense of the Brexit Party, which would mean that even if the SNP are still in a commanding position, they may find it harder to make heavy gains from the Tories. Straws in the wind from Scottish subsamples of GB-wide polls have sent conflicting messages about the extent of any Tory recovery. But, as it happens, the latest subsample from YouGov (which unlike subsamples from other firms is likely to be correctly structured and weighted) is very much on the troubling side for the Tories...
SNP 46%, Liberal Democrats 16%, Conservatives 15%, Labour 9%, Greens 6%, Brexit Party 4%, UKIP 1%
I don't think the SNP will be too concerned about the Lib Dems' recovery as long as it remains at that kind of level - all it means is that the Lib Dems will hold their four current seats and perhaps take North East Fife. But the slight worry would be a Swinson bandwagon effect during the election campaign itself, similar to the Corbyn effect in 2017. We should never underestimate the potential for Scottish voters to get swept along with Britain-wide trends during the heat of a Westminster campaign. The SNP could counteract that problem by firing up their own potential support base with a strong campaign message on independence, but I have my doubts as to whether they'll be bold enough to do that.
* * *
It's disappointing but not surprising that the SNP leadership are not going to allow the McEleny/MacNeil "Plan B" amendment to be debated at the party conference. As you know, I'm worried that the Wings party, if it goes ahead, could be damaging for the independence cause at the next Holyrood election - but the obvious way for the SNP leadership to ward off that threat is to make potential Wings party supporters feel that their voice is being heard inside the SNP. I'm struggling to understand what the leadership are so scared of - the chances are that they would have won any vote with a "we've heard you, but please trust us" message. The Blair-style control-freakery of trying to shut down all debate is wholly unnecessary and counterproductive, and will just further arouse suspicions (which may or may not be unfounded) that the leadership are not serious about ensuring that a vote on independence takes place in the relatively near future.
I'm also a tad concerned about possible fallout from the showdown on the gender self-ID issue that will take place at conference, with the elections of Women's Officer and possibly Equalities Officer functioning as proxy votes on the issue. If there are clear losers, I hope they don't feel that they no longer have a home within the SNP. The potential for a problem is probably much greater if the anti-self-ID side loses. If it goes the other way, at least the trans lobby would still know that the leadership is highly sympathetic towards them.
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
Thoughts on the upcoming Shetland by-election
So I've been asked by a few people to write a post about next week's parliamentary by-election in Shetland - a contest which has rather comically led the unionist parties to start talking as if Shetland is a foreign country. (Nicola Sturgeon went campaigning there, and Labour propagandist Aidan Kerr's response was basically "how dare she leave the country on the day the GERS report is published!") I'm not sure there's a huge amount I can usefully say, because the only people who have much chance of knowing the state of play are those with access to canvass data - but even they might not have the true picture, because there have been any number of by-elections in the past where canvass returns have proved to be misleading. There was a "poll" of sorts in the Shetland Times at the start of this month which showed the SNP with a shock lead over the Liberal Democrats, but it had a tiny sample size of just 114, which means that even if it was conducted scientifically (and it sounds like it probably wasn't), it would have a very large margin of error.
I'd just make a couple of observations, though -
1) Nobody has ever made any money betting against the Liberal Democrats in the Northern Isles. Pembrokeshire is known as "Little England beyond Wales", and perhaps we should call Orkney and Shetland "Westmorland and Lonsdale beyond Scotland". Danus Skene did of course come astonishingly close to winning the Westminster seat for the SNP in the 2015 general election, but perhaps more to the point is that it was one of only three constituencies in the whole of Scotland that the SNP didn't actually win in that election.
2) There's no particular reason to expect trends in Northern Isles elections to bear much resemblance to Scotland-wide or UK-wide trends. Two recent examples spring to mind. In 2016, the year after Danus Skene's near miss, it was reasonable to expect that the SNP would be highly competitive in the Orkney and Shetland constituency seats for Holyrood, because their national vote had not fallen back much at all. But Liam McArthur and Tavish "Two Hoots" Scott surprised everyone by holding the seats for the Lib Dems by landslide margins. It was as if 2015 had never happened. But then in the European elections in May of this year, at a time when the Lib Dems were riding high across the UK and you'd have expected them to be out of sight in their traditional heartlands, the SNP amazingly came within just 250 votes of outpolling them in Shetland. So there's no real rhyme or reason to it, and that might be a point of encouragement for the SNP. The people of Shetland might not be all that bothered one way or another about the media's fawning over the Lib Dems' shiny new Scottish school prefect.
If I was going to give you my gut sense of what to expect, it would be that the Lib Dems will hold the seat on a substantially reduced majority - it has that sort of feel about it. But we won't really have a clue until the votes are counted. If by any chance the Shetland Times poll is correct and the SNP gain the seat, it would be one of the most sensational by-election results in Scottish history, it would further boost the mandate for a pre-2021 indyref by increasing the pro-indy majority from 69-60 to 70-59, and it would reduce the Lib Dems to a humiliating all-time low of just four Holyrood seats at a time when they're supposed to be sweeping all before them.
I'd just make a couple of observations, though -
1) Nobody has ever made any money betting against the Liberal Democrats in the Northern Isles. Pembrokeshire is known as "Little England beyond Wales", and perhaps we should call Orkney and Shetland "Westmorland and Lonsdale beyond Scotland". Danus Skene did of course come astonishingly close to winning the Westminster seat for the SNP in the 2015 general election, but perhaps more to the point is that it was one of only three constituencies in the whole of Scotland that the SNP didn't actually win in that election.
2) There's no particular reason to expect trends in Northern Isles elections to bear much resemblance to Scotland-wide or UK-wide trends. Two recent examples spring to mind. In 2016, the year after Danus Skene's near miss, it was reasonable to expect that the SNP would be highly competitive in the Orkney and Shetland constituency seats for Holyrood, because their national vote had not fallen back much at all. But Liam McArthur and Tavish "Two Hoots" Scott surprised everyone by holding the seats for the Lib Dems by landslide margins. It was as if 2015 had never happened. But then in the European elections in May of this year, at a time when the Lib Dems were riding high across the UK and you'd have expected them to be out of sight in their traditional heartlands, the SNP amazingly came within just 250 votes of outpolling them in Shetland. So there's no real rhyme or reason to it, and that might be a point of encouragement for the SNP. The people of Shetland might not be all that bothered one way or another about the media's fawning over the Lib Dems' shiny new Scottish school prefect.
If I was going to give you my gut sense of what to expect, it would be that the Lib Dems will hold the seat on a substantially reduced majority - it has that sort of feel about it. But we won't really have a clue until the votes are counted. If by any chance the Shetland Times poll is correct and the SNP gain the seat, it would be one of the most sensational by-election results in Scottish history, it would further boost the mandate for a pre-2021 indyref by increasing the pro-indy majority from 69-60 to 70-59, and it would reduce the Lib Dems to a humiliating all-time low of just four Holyrood seats at a time when they're supposed to be sweeping all before them.
Is the Holyrood voting system a unionist conspiracy?
One thing that has become clear in the discussions/arguments of recent days is that there is a real degree of paranoia among some independence supporters about how we ended up with the voting system for the Scottish Parliament, ie. "it was designed to shaft us, so we should use it to shaft them". This is quite odd on the face of it, because by any objective measure the Additional Member System has so far worked out beautifully for both the SNP and the combined pro-indy forces. There have been five elections since devolution in 1999, and three of them have produced SNP governments. Two of them produced outright pro-indy majorities. And in the two elections in which the SNP didn't come out on top, the list element of the system gave us far more pro-indy MSPs than we would have had under first-past-the-post. For example, either 27.9% or 28.7% of the MSPs elected in 1999 were in favour of independence (depending on how you classify Robin Harper), but it would have been just 9.6% without list MSPs.
As far as I can see, a lot of the paranoia seems to derive from a single-word answer that a young Jack McConnell once gave at a press conference when a journalist asked him whether proportional representation was introduced specifically to stop the SNP ever getting a majority. He said "correct". But we wouldn't regard Jack McConnell as a reliable witness about anything else, so why we treat that particular answer as gospel is rather unclear. What we do know for sure is that at the outset of discussions in the Scottish Constitutional Convention in 1989, the Liberal Democrats (then known as "the Democrats") were insisting upon some form of proportional representation for the Scottish Parliament, and in complete contrast to their attitude in coalition negotiations with the Tories twenty-one years later, they were actually treating electoral reform as a genuine deal-breaker. The chances of a cross-party agreement appeared remote, because it was so obviously in the narrow interests of the Labour party to hold the line on first-past-the-post - if they did, they looked set for indefinite majority rule in Edinburgh.
But, of course, Labour eventually made the seemingly irrational decision to give way. Why? I can think of three plausible explanations, and it may well have been a combination of all three. Firstly, Labour did have some enthusiasts for electoral reform in their own ranks, so those people may have made their presence felt. Secondly, given that the Thatcher/Major government seemed firmly entrenched in power at Westminster, Labour may have felt that a common front with the Lib Dems was essential to build the moral pressure for devolution. And thirdly, it may have occurred to the likes of Donald Dewar that however dominant Labour appeared to be in Scotland, the SNP would only need a relatively short burst of popularity at some point in the future to win an outright majority under first-past-the-post - and just one SNP majority might be enough to make Scotland an independent country. So proportional representation may have been partly an insurance policy against that distant eventuality.
But even if that was the reasoning, we have to bear in mind that once Labour had conceded the principle of proportional representation, they then hedged their bets by trying to limit how proportional the system would be in practice. They brought in a regional list system rather than a national list, which effectively gives a dominant party a "winner's bonus" in its strongest regions. They refused the possibility of German-style levelling seats which could have more or less guaranteed full proportionality. And they insisted on there being fewer list seats than constituency seats, which makes proportionality even less likely to be properly achieved. In fact, at one stage Labour were openly pushing for a ratio of just 40 list seats to the 73 constituency seats, which would have made single-party majority government very easily attainable, as has proved to be the case under a similar ratio in Wales.
All of these things were done to put Labour in command of the Scottish Parliament, but Dewar and co must have known that a somewhat less proportional system was bound to start working in favour of independence if the SNP ever became the most popular party. And so it has proved. Labour's greed for short-term power led them to effectively downgrade their own insurance policy, and in the long run they paid the price for it.
It's also worth making the point that the insurance policy was proportional representation as a general concept - the selection of an exact type of proportional representation wasn't so important. There's nothing about a mixed system of constituency and list MSPs that in itself constitutes a conspiracy against independence. In 1999, exactly half of the list seats were won by the SNP, and those SNP list members then proceeded to set up "shadow constituency surgeries" in Labour-held constituency seats across the central belt. Unsurprisingly, that infuriated Labour activists, who demanded that the 'unelected' list MSPs should know their place. SNP supporters were entirely guilt-free about the whole thing: the list seats had merely given their party something closer to its fair share of representation, and it was about time that Labour got used to not having a completely free run on a minority vote.
The only thing that's changed since then is that the boot is on the other foot because the SNP have replaced Labour as the dominant party in the constituencies. There's nothing unfair or crooked about the fact that the list seats are now mostly held by unionists - that's the case simply because the list seats are there to make the overall composition of parliament roughly proportional to how people cast their votes. If one side of the constitutional debate is under-represented in the constituencies, they'll be automatically compensated for that on the list. The pro-independence side has benefited from that process in the past, and may well benefit from it again in future.
We would be foolish to casually throw away a system that is infinitely fairer to all sides than first-past-the-post. However, it could certainly be improved - scrapping the regional lists in favour of a national list would increase proportionality at a stroke, and having a single vote to elect both constituency and list members would put an end to all the interminable nonsense about "tactical voting on the list", which - for the reasons that have been rehearsed on this blog a million times - is practically a contradiction in terms.
As far as I can see, a lot of the paranoia seems to derive from a single-word answer that a young Jack McConnell once gave at a press conference when a journalist asked him whether proportional representation was introduced specifically to stop the SNP ever getting a majority. He said "correct". But we wouldn't regard Jack McConnell as a reliable witness about anything else, so why we treat that particular answer as gospel is rather unclear. What we do know for sure is that at the outset of discussions in the Scottish Constitutional Convention in 1989, the Liberal Democrats (then known as "the Democrats") were insisting upon some form of proportional representation for the Scottish Parliament, and in complete contrast to their attitude in coalition negotiations with the Tories twenty-one years later, they were actually treating electoral reform as a genuine deal-breaker. The chances of a cross-party agreement appeared remote, because it was so obviously in the narrow interests of the Labour party to hold the line on first-past-the-post - if they did, they looked set for indefinite majority rule in Edinburgh.
But, of course, Labour eventually made the seemingly irrational decision to give way. Why? I can think of three plausible explanations, and it may well have been a combination of all three. Firstly, Labour did have some enthusiasts for electoral reform in their own ranks, so those people may have made their presence felt. Secondly, given that the Thatcher/Major government seemed firmly entrenched in power at Westminster, Labour may have felt that a common front with the Lib Dems was essential to build the moral pressure for devolution. And thirdly, it may have occurred to the likes of Donald Dewar that however dominant Labour appeared to be in Scotland, the SNP would only need a relatively short burst of popularity at some point in the future to win an outright majority under first-past-the-post - and just one SNP majority might be enough to make Scotland an independent country. So proportional representation may have been partly an insurance policy against that distant eventuality.
But even if that was the reasoning, we have to bear in mind that once Labour had conceded the principle of proportional representation, they then hedged their bets by trying to limit how proportional the system would be in practice. They brought in a regional list system rather than a national list, which effectively gives a dominant party a "winner's bonus" in its strongest regions. They refused the possibility of German-style levelling seats which could have more or less guaranteed full proportionality. And they insisted on there being fewer list seats than constituency seats, which makes proportionality even less likely to be properly achieved. In fact, at one stage Labour were openly pushing for a ratio of just 40 list seats to the 73 constituency seats, which would have made single-party majority government very easily attainable, as has proved to be the case under a similar ratio in Wales.
All of these things were done to put Labour in command of the Scottish Parliament, but Dewar and co must have known that a somewhat less proportional system was bound to start working in favour of independence if the SNP ever became the most popular party. And so it has proved. Labour's greed for short-term power led them to effectively downgrade their own insurance policy, and in the long run they paid the price for it.
It's also worth making the point that the insurance policy was proportional representation as a general concept - the selection of an exact type of proportional representation wasn't so important. There's nothing about a mixed system of constituency and list MSPs that in itself constitutes a conspiracy against independence. In 1999, exactly half of the list seats were won by the SNP, and those SNP list members then proceeded to set up "shadow constituency surgeries" in Labour-held constituency seats across the central belt. Unsurprisingly, that infuriated Labour activists, who demanded that the 'unelected' list MSPs should know their place. SNP supporters were entirely guilt-free about the whole thing: the list seats had merely given their party something closer to its fair share of representation, and it was about time that Labour got used to not having a completely free run on a minority vote.
The only thing that's changed since then is that the boot is on the other foot because the SNP have replaced Labour as the dominant party in the constituencies. There's nothing unfair or crooked about the fact that the list seats are now mostly held by unionists - that's the case simply because the list seats are there to make the overall composition of parliament roughly proportional to how people cast their votes. If one side of the constitutional debate is under-represented in the constituencies, they'll be automatically compensated for that on the list. The pro-independence side has benefited from that process in the past, and may well benefit from it again in future.
We would be foolish to casually throw away a system that is infinitely fairer to all sides than first-past-the-post. However, it could certainly be improved - scrapping the regional lists in favour of a national list would increase proportionality at a stroke, and having a single vote to elect both constituency and list members would put an end to all the interminable nonsense about "tactical voting on the list", which - for the reasons that have been rehearsed on this blog a million times - is practically a contradiction in terms.
Saturday, August 17, 2019
The Wings party, and the cautionary tale of Mr Archie Stirling
Remarkably, the debate over the wisdom of the proposed Wings party is still raging after the best part of a week, and it's started to take on a noticeably 'harder' tone. Many of Wings' keenest supporters already seem to be identifying as partisans of an electoral force that doesn't, we should recall, actually exist yet. That means they're instantly taking offence at any hint of scepticism towards the proposed party, and in some cases at anything that falls short of total enthusiasm. Every time I log onto Twitter now, there are dozens of new notifications that tend to fall into three broad categories: people are either irate that I don't accept that a Wings party can successfully game the Holyrood electoral system, or they're professing incredulity that I could possibly think that way, or they're trolling me about it.
This was one of the comments I found particularly exasperating -
"Why don’t you try & find a way that will work. That would be of help, rather than it will nae work"
To remove any doubt that she was trolling, she added a 'crying with laughter' emoticon to the end of her tweet. But actually it's me who doesn't know whether to laugh or cry at comments of that sort (and there have been a good few of them). They imply that it's somehow imperative that the Wings proposal be made to work, because it's the solution to a problem that has to be addressed, and that it must be possible to make it work with sophisticated number-crunching and strategising.
Both of those assumptions are misplaced. In fact, the Wings party is a solution in search of a problem that as of yet doesn't exist. We have a pro-independence majority at the moment, we've had it for eight years, and current polling suggests that we're on course to hold onto it. Of course the polling situation can change between now and May 2021 (and it can change for either the worse or the better), but the time for highly risky, panicky measures is when we actually have something to panic about.
And there's no Baldrick-style cunning plan that can be devised to make the plan work, because the problem I and others have identified is a very basic one - that the Wings party is unlikely to have enough popular support to win list seats in any region. That being the case, any list votes it takes will simply make it harder for other pro-indy parties to win list seats (and by extension easier for unionist parties to win list seats). There's nothing I can do about a basic shortfall in the required number of votes - other than winning the lottery and helping to pay for Wings billboard ads. Remember that the broadcasters will feel able to largely ignore the Wings party because there's no evidence of significant support in previous elections. There'll almost certainly be no invitation to leaders' debates. The newspapers may give the party an occasional mention, but only in an attempt to whip up mischief. Social media will therefore have to carry the weight of any campaigning, which is a tough ask when the party won't have an especially distinctive policy platform (except on gender self-ID).
Stuart Campbell has pointed out that we don't yet know exactly what the potential level of support for the party is, and that he'll be conducting more opinion polling before making a decision about whether to stand candidates on the list. That's fair enough, but when this polling appears, I would urge people to look closely at the format of the question before getting carried away with the results. Questions along the lines of "how likely would you be to vote for Party X?" are notorious for producing wildly misleading results.
The classic example was in the run-up to the 2007 Holyrood election, when Archie Stirling used his wealth to set up a new centre-right party called Scottish Voice. (I know very little about Archie Stirling other than that he's the father of actress Rachael Stirling, who dutifully came out in support of the doomed party.) He commissioned a YouGov poll that supposedly showed that 21% of the electorate would consider voting for the party, and on that basis managed to convince the newspapers to breathlessly report that Scottish Voice was on course for 20+ list seats and maybe even the balance of power. In the event, of course, Archie didn't even trouble the scorer - he took just 0.1% of the constituency vote and 0.3% of the list vote, and didn't come within light-years of taking any seats.
How could a poll be so misleading? Basically if you ask about a party in isolation, people will think "well, I'm a reasonable person, this party sounds fine, of course I would consider voting for it". But when they see the name of that party in a menu of options, it gets lost in the crowd and they instead focus on the party they prefer the most. We saw the same problem earlier this year with polls offering wildly inflated suggestions about the electoral potential of Change UK. Other polls that asked "if the Independent Group stood in the next election, who would you vote for?" produced somewhat more realistic results, but I think they were still problematical because they artificially drew people's attention to the new party in the question's preamble.
For my money, to get a meaningful sense of how well a Wings party might do, a poll would need to ask...
If the following parties stood on the regional list ballot, who would you vote for?
Scottish National Party (SNP)
Labour
Conservatives
Liberal Democrats
Greens
Brexit Party
Wings Over Scotland
Change UK
UKIP
If 5% or more of voters selected Wings unprompted on a robust question of that sort, then we might not necessarily be looking at a suicide mission. And if 15% said they would vote Wings, then Stuart might be on to something. I don't think that would be the result of such a poll, but realistically that's the test.
* * *
Stuart has been protesting over the last couple of days that he isn't trying to "game" the Holyrood voting system, and that standing candidates in a democratic election isn't "gaming" the system. The latter point is strictly speaking true - standing candidates on the list isn't in itself an act of trying to game the system, but it becomes one if 90% of your pitch to the voters is about gaming the system! I defy anyone to read Stuart's posts on the subject and conclude that isn't what he's trying to do. For the most part he hasn't been talking about policy but about tactical voting - about how the number of pro-indy MSPs can supposedly be increased by voting SNP on the constituency ballot but switching to Wings on the list.
To me, this is an academic point, because I would have no moral objection to gaming the system if I thought for one moment it was actually going to work. But words do have meanings, and yes, the Wings party would be a clear attempt to game the system and win a bigger number of pro-indy seats than the size of the pro-indy vote would normally warrant.
Thursday, August 15, 2019
No, Jeremy Corbyn didn't make a strategic mistake with his offer to stop No Deal
I was surprised to see an article on Stormfront Lite by Alastair Meeks today suggesting that Jeremy Corbyn has made a strategic mistake by offering to head a caretaker government to stop No Deal. To me, it seems pretty obvious that an alternative government of any complexion isn't viable this side of an election - because the likes of Change UK won't back one led by Corbyn, and the vast bulk of Labour MPs will not feel able to back one led by anybody else. That's exactly why Corbyn's move makes strategic sense. He has the SNP and Caroline Lucas on side to demonstrate that if anyone is best-placed to form a government, he is, and that the only roadblock to a solution is a small number of dogmatic holdouts like Jo Swinson and Anna Soubry who themselves can't offer a remotely credible alternative. The fourteen Lib Dem MPs plus Change UK plus Ken Clarke plus Harriet Harman does not exactly equal a majority.
It may be that Corbyn made very sure he had the SNP on side with carefully-choreographed comments from himself and John McDonnell about not blocking a second indyref. We might have to wait for the memoirs to discover whether there was some sort of informal understanding between the Labour leadership and the SNP that brought us to this point.
So if a pre-election change of government isn't a runner, how can No Deal on 31st October be averted? If MPs can't seize control of the process directly, I think what we might end up with is a successful vote of no confidence, followed up immediately by legislation to amend the Fixed Term Parliaments Act and prevent Boris Johnson delaying the general election until November. It would be an awful lot easier for a majority of MPs to reach an agreement on that sort of legislation than on the identity of an alternative Prime Minister.
It may be that Corbyn made very sure he had the SNP on side with carefully-choreographed comments from himself and John McDonnell about not blocking a second indyref. We might have to wait for the memoirs to discover whether there was some sort of informal understanding between the Labour leadership and the SNP that brought us to this point.
So if a pre-election change of government isn't a runner, how can No Deal on 31st October be averted? If MPs can't seize control of the process directly, I think what we might end up with is a successful vote of no confidence, followed up immediately by legislation to amend the Fixed Term Parliaments Act and prevent Boris Johnson delaying the general election until November. It would be an awful lot easier for a majority of MPs to reach an agreement on that sort of legislation than on the identity of an alternative Prime Minister.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Why a Wings party is probably a bad idea: Part Two
A kind of fever has swept through parts of the Yes movement over the last 48 hours. A number of people who were clear-sighted about the risks of "tactical voting on the list" (sic) in 2011 and 2016 have been enthusiastically embracing the proposal for a Wings party, which looks set to make exactly the same "tactical voting" pitch that RISE did last time around. I've even had one or two people huffily announce that they are unfollowing me on Twitter for simply pointing out that "tactical voting on the list" doesn't magically become any more viable just because we're talking about a blog-based party rather than a radical left party.
Stuart Campbell himself, of course, warned of the dangers of misguided "tactical voting" in the run-up to the 2016 election. As I understand it, his explanation for changing his view comes in two parts. Firstly, he thinks that the result of the 2016 election changes the equation, because it demonstrates more clearly than before that list votes for the SNP are largely "wasted". And secondly, he believes the Wings party would be more mainstream and have much wider popular appeal than RISE or the Greens, and therefore sheer weight of numbers would ensure that vote-splitting isn't a problem, because the party would easily clear the de facto threshold of 5% or 6% for representation in each of the electoral regions it stands in.
The first point makes no sense at all, and the second point probably doesn't make much sense either. I say "probably", because I do have a couple of caveats to place on my doubts. There's a story in The National today based on a claim from an SNP "insider" that Alex Salmond is behind the plans for a Wings party. (The fact that something as paranoid-sounding as that is being said in private raises troubling questions about the extent to which the current SNP leadership have cast their popular former leader - who remains entirely innocent in the eyes of the law - out into the cold.) Stuart Campbell has strenuously denied the claim. However, it wouldn't be the first time in history that a denied story has turned out to have a grain of truth in it, so let's suppose for the sake of argument that Alex Salmond either led the Wings party or was one of its leading candidates. Would that make a difference? Of course it would. Alex Salmond is a hero for a huge number of independence supporters (myself included) and it's not at all difficult to imagine a new party in which he takes an active role securing a very healthy haul of list seats. But my question is this: in the unlikely event that Alex Salmond was looking outside the SNP for a route back into politics, does it seem plausible that he would choose the Wings party as his vehicle? I think he'd be more likely (and it would make more electoral sense) to build a new party around his own personal 'brand'. Theoretically, it's possible that he might be allowing someone else to make the running until legal proceedings against him are resolved one way or another. But my guess is that the SNP "insider" is probably just letting their imagination run away with them.
My second caveat is that there is at least one well-known international precedent for what Wings may be attempting to do. The Five Star Movement, which is currently the senior partner in the Italian coalition government, essentially started life as a blog. But there are a couple of key differences between Wings Over Scotland and the Beppe Grillo blog. The latter is written by a hugely familiar TV celebrity, and put forward a policy prospectus that was radically different from anything the existing parties had to offer. What is the gap in the market that a Wings party would be filling? As far as I can see it would basically be the SNP without gender self-ID and with more urgency on the independence issue. I'm not convinced those points of distinctiveness are sufficient to capture the public's imagination and to sweep the board on the list vote - or at least not without the backing of a public figure of Alex Salmond's stature (and to be honest that means Alex Salmond himself, because off the top of my head I can't think of any other public figure who would have the same effect).
Which takes me back to where I came in - the likelihood is that a Wings party would secure less than 5% of the vote in each electoral region, which means that any votes it does manage to take away from the SNP and the Greens would simply reduce the overall number of pro-indy seats in the Scottish Parliament. People struggle with this idea, but it's entirely conceivable that moderate success for the Wings party (by which I mean something like 3% of the list vote) could reduce the chances of retaining the pro-independence majority in Holyrood that we've had since 2011.
When I put that point to Stuart Campbell directly, he said that the SNP couldn't be harmed because they hardly had any list seats to lose (they have four at the moment). That's a sort of "truthy" observation that is going to sound like a killer point to people who don't really understand the voting system - and it therefore worries me greatly. I've been trying to think of a helpful analogy, and the best one I can come up with is this: saying that the SNP only have four list seats to lose is a bit like saying that Bill Gates only has $4.50 to lose because that's what he currently has in his pocket. List seats are distributed in a compensatory way to bring a party's overall representation in parliament up to roughly the level of its regional list vote. If the SNP had won fewer constituency seats in 2016, they would have won more list seats to compensate for that. So in fact the SNP could potentially lose up to dozens of their current seats on the list ballot next time around, because if the first-past-the-post element doesn't go their way to the same extent as in 2016, they would be relying on list votes to hold on to a healthy level of representation in parliament.
To see the truth of what I'm saying, you only need to look at the result of the 2011 election - which was, after all, the only occasion to date that the SNP have won an overall majority, and one of only two occasions to date that a pro-independence majority has been secured. How many list seats did the SNP win? Sixteen. I'll say that again: sixteen. If they hadn't won at least twelve of those, there wouldn't have been an SNP majority. And if the SNP, Greens and Margo MacDonald between them hadn't won at least eleven list seats, there wouldn't have been a pro-independence majority at all. Remember that, and in particular remember it the next time someone tells you the SNP don't need any list votes.
It's perfectly possible that 2021 could produce another 2011-style result, with the SNP taking fewer constituencies than in 2016 despite its popular vote holding up, which would make the result on the list absolutely critical. Some of the seats that the Tories took at Westminster in 2017 are still held by the SNP in Holyrood, so it's not hard to see where the constituency losses might occur if the Tories are riding high in eighteen months' time - and it's anyone's guess whether they will be, because much depends on whether Boris Johnson delivers Brexit on time and thus wins back the Tory votes lost to the Brexit Party in May's Euro election.
And it's also important not to lose sight of the worst-case scenario. What if the wheels come off and there is no chance at all of a pro-indy majority? What if there's a 2007-style result with a clear unionist majority in parliament, but there's still a chance of maintaining a minority SNP government? Would we really want to play silly buggers on the list, and make it easier for some sort of unionist coalition government to be cobbled together? Stuart's response to that scenario is "if that happens we're all screwed anyway", but I just don't take that 'win or bust' approach to life or to politics. A setback is a point on a spectrum, and it's important to keep the indy flame burning as brightly as possible.
Some have suggested that the threat of a Wings party might be a good thing if it helps the SNP leadership find a greater sense of urgency on independence, and actually I entirely accept that. But if the threat is actually carried through, then I fear that for some of the reasons George Kerevan outlined yesterday, it's bound to be a lose/lose for all concerned.
Stuart Campbell himself, of course, warned of the dangers of misguided "tactical voting" in the run-up to the 2016 election. As I understand it, his explanation for changing his view comes in two parts. Firstly, he thinks that the result of the 2016 election changes the equation, because it demonstrates more clearly than before that list votes for the SNP are largely "wasted". And secondly, he believes the Wings party would be more mainstream and have much wider popular appeal than RISE or the Greens, and therefore sheer weight of numbers would ensure that vote-splitting isn't a problem, because the party would easily clear the de facto threshold of 5% or 6% for representation in each of the electoral regions it stands in.
The first point makes no sense at all, and the second point probably doesn't make much sense either. I say "probably", because I do have a couple of caveats to place on my doubts. There's a story in The National today based on a claim from an SNP "insider" that Alex Salmond is behind the plans for a Wings party. (The fact that something as paranoid-sounding as that is being said in private raises troubling questions about the extent to which the current SNP leadership have cast their popular former leader - who remains entirely innocent in the eyes of the law - out into the cold.) Stuart Campbell has strenuously denied the claim. However, it wouldn't be the first time in history that a denied story has turned out to have a grain of truth in it, so let's suppose for the sake of argument that Alex Salmond either led the Wings party or was one of its leading candidates. Would that make a difference? Of course it would. Alex Salmond is a hero for a huge number of independence supporters (myself included) and it's not at all difficult to imagine a new party in which he takes an active role securing a very healthy haul of list seats. But my question is this: in the unlikely event that Alex Salmond was looking outside the SNP for a route back into politics, does it seem plausible that he would choose the Wings party as his vehicle? I think he'd be more likely (and it would make more electoral sense) to build a new party around his own personal 'brand'. Theoretically, it's possible that he might be allowing someone else to make the running until legal proceedings against him are resolved one way or another. But my guess is that the SNP "insider" is probably just letting their imagination run away with them.
My second caveat is that there is at least one well-known international precedent for what Wings may be attempting to do. The Five Star Movement, which is currently the senior partner in the Italian coalition government, essentially started life as a blog. But there are a couple of key differences between Wings Over Scotland and the Beppe Grillo blog. The latter is written by a hugely familiar TV celebrity, and put forward a policy prospectus that was radically different from anything the existing parties had to offer. What is the gap in the market that a Wings party would be filling? As far as I can see it would basically be the SNP without gender self-ID and with more urgency on the independence issue. I'm not convinced those points of distinctiveness are sufficient to capture the public's imagination and to sweep the board on the list vote - or at least not without the backing of a public figure of Alex Salmond's stature (and to be honest that means Alex Salmond himself, because off the top of my head I can't think of any other public figure who would have the same effect).
Which takes me back to where I came in - the likelihood is that a Wings party would secure less than 5% of the vote in each electoral region, which means that any votes it does manage to take away from the SNP and the Greens would simply reduce the overall number of pro-indy seats in the Scottish Parliament. People struggle with this idea, but it's entirely conceivable that moderate success for the Wings party (by which I mean something like 3% of the list vote) could reduce the chances of retaining the pro-independence majority in Holyrood that we've had since 2011.
When I put that point to Stuart Campbell directly, he said that the SNP couldn't be harmed because they hardly had any list seats to lose (they have four at the moment). That's a sort of "truthy" observation that is going to sound like a killer point to people who don't really understand the voting system - and it therefore worries me greatly. I've been trying to think of a helpful analogy, and the best one I can come up with is this: saying that the SNP only have four list seats to lose is a bit like saying that Bill Gates only has $4.50 to lose because that's what he currently has in his pocket. List seats are distributed in a compensatory way to bring a party's overall representation in parliament up to roughly the level of its regional list vote. If the SNP had won fewer constituency seats in 2016, they would have won more list seats to compensate for that. So in fact the SNP could potentially lose up to dozens of their current seats on the list ballot next time around, because if the first-past-the-post element doesn't go their way to the same extent as in 2016, they would be relying on list votes to hold on to a healthy level of representation in parliament.
To see the truth of what I'm saying, you only need to look at the result of the 2011 election - which was, after all, the only occasion to date that the SNP have won an overall majority, and one of only two occasions to date that a pro-independence majority has been secured. How many list seats did the SNP win? Sixteen. I'll say that again: sixteen. If they hadn't won at least twelve of those, there wouldn't have been an SNP majority. And if the SNP, Greens and Margo MacDonald between them hadn't won at least eleven list seats, there wouldn't have been a pro-independence majority at all. Remember that, and in particular remember it the next time someone tells you the SNP don't need any list votes.
It's perfectly possible that 2021 could produce another 2011-style result, with the SNP taking fewer constituencies than in 2016 despite its popular vote holding up, which would make the result on the list absolutely critical. Some of the seats that the Tories took at Westminster in 2017 are still held by the SNP in Holyrood, so it's not hard to see where the constituency losses might occur if the Tories are riding high in eighteen months' time - and it's anyone's guess whether they will be, because much depends on whether Boris Johnson delivers Brexit on time and thus wins back the Tory votes lost to the Brexit Party in May's Euro election.
And it's also important not to lose sight of the worst-case scenario. What if the wheels come off and there is no chance at all of a pro-indy majority? What if there's a 2007-style result with a clear unionist majority in parliament, but there's still a chance of maintaining a minority SNP government? Would we really want to play silly buggers on the list, and make it easier for some sort of unionist coalition government to be cobbled together? Stuart's response to that scenario is "if that happens we're all screwed anyway", but I just don't take that 'win or bust' approach to life or to politics. A setback is a point on a spectrum, and it's important to keep the indy flame burning as brightly as possible.
Some have suggested that the threat of a Wings party might be a good thing if it helps the SNP leadership find a greater sense of urgency on independence, and actually I entirely accept that. But if the threat is actually carried through, then I fear that for some of the reasons George Kerevan outlined yesterday, it's bound to be a lose/lose for all concerned.
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