How would voters react to the Lib Dems in a post-Brexit election?

So there were a few interesting points made in response to the previous post.  Scottish Skier pointed out that the three YouGov subsamples putting the SNP in the 30s had followed on from others that put the SNP at an unusually high level of support, so this could all be normal sampling variation signifying nothing other than that the SNP vote has held steady in the low 40s.  That's possible, although obviously the more consecutive subsamples that put the SNP in the 30s, the more likely it is that something has genuinely changed.  It's also true that the most recent Opinium subsample had the SNP at a very healthy 50%, although unlike YouGov subsamples, that one won't have been correctly structured or weighted.

Someone else suggested the reason for any Lib Dem surge could be their outright "Revoke" stance, which means that if the election doesn't happen until after a No Deal Brexit, support for the Lib Dems could evaporate.  I think that's putting it a bit strongly, although it's true that the Lib Dem offer to the voters would have to be very different in a post-Brexit election, and it remains to be seen how voters would respond to that.  Would they be convinced by a promise to take the UK back into the EU, which might mean years or decades of further turmoil?  Or would they be satisfied by a promise to soften Brexit but not to rejoin the EU?  It's impossible to know at this stage, so yes, the jury is out on how the Lib Dems would fare if the election is delayed beyond Brexit.

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Stuart Campbell has commissioned a poll of 1000 people who plan to vote SNP on the Holyrood constituency ballot.  The early results he's published are of no great interest or significance, but I can't see any reason why he'd have commissioned such a poll unless he's finally decided to test the potential support for a "Wings party" on the regional list ballot.  So I would guess that moment is about to arrive.  Remember to beware of dodgy Archie Stirling/Change UK-type questions that give a wildly distorted impression of how well the party might do.  But with a bit of luck Mr Campbell might have asked a credible question and we'll at last reach the moment of truth.

UPDATE: Unfortunately it looks like Mr Campbell hasn't asked a credible question in his poll - see the comment from Anon at 4:06pm below.  If anything it looks slightly worse than the Archie Stirling and Change UK questions that produced such misleading results.

YouGov subsample update

Well, I'm not going to beat about the bush here: there are some worrying straws in the wind to be found in recent Scottish subsamples from YouGov.  The last three have had the SNP down in the 30s, which is unusual in recent times, and two of the three have put the SNP below the 37% recorded at the last general election, which is highly unusual.  This looks like the manifestation of what I've been worried about since it became obvious that Jo Swinson would become Liberal Democrat leader.  A Britain-wide party led by a Scot has an inbuilt advantage north of the border, because that person is all over the UK news in a way that the SNP leader is not - a problem that will only get worse during the official campaign.

This is the newest subsample...

SNP 35%, Conservatives 21%, Liberal Democrats 20%, Labour 11%, Greens 6%, Brexit Party 5%

It's quite hard to judge what a result like that would translate into in terms of seats.  The SNP would be making heavy gains from Labour, and at least modest gains from the Tories, but it's very unlikely that the Lib Dems would only be winning four or five seats on 20% of the vote.  They'd probably recover a lot of the former heartland seats that they lost in 2015.

Of course the Greens won't stand in every seat, so some (but not all) of that Green vote can be regarded as the SNP's for the taking...but then again the same may be true in respect of the Brexit Party's vote and the Tories.

I suppose the bigger picture is that this still looks like it could be the election in which Scottish Labour cease to be a major player - and that could mean sustained SNP hegemony under first-past-the-post.

Will Jo Swinson's stubbornness on a Corbyn-led government make her the midwife of independence?

What effect would a No Deal Brexit at the end of this month have on the case for independence?  There are two main schools of thought: 1) that people will accept the new status quo as 'the devil they know' and will shy away from any further constitutional upheaval, and 2) that many people who voted No in 2014 and Remain in 2016 will start to look upon independence as a safe harbour in the Brexit storm.  We can only speculate at this stage as to which of those is right, but if by any chance it's the latter, we may end up having Jo Swinson to thank for Scotland becoming an independent country.  Her stubbornness in refusing to compromise on the leadership of a potential interim government doesn't make No Deal a certainty, but it's hard to dispute that it makes No Deal considerably more likely.  As Paul Mason has pointed out, the Lib Dems have perversely become the party of choice for those who think a No Deal Brexit would be preferable to a Corbyn premiership.

Incidentally, Matthew d'Ancona was barking up the wrong tree with his claim the other day that a vote of no confidence would be a trap allowing Boris Johnson to remain in office until a general election that takes place after the date of Brexit.  We've already seen the speed with which emergency legislation can be passed, so if Johnson tried to squat in Downing Street after losing a vote of no confidence, and if the Queen declined to remove him from office, it would be open to parliament to quickly legislate to change the procedure for appointing the Prime Minister - it could become a position elected by the Commons. 

But all of this is academic for as long as the Lib Dems are determined to remain Boris Johnson's Little Helpers.

An alternative government without Corbyn is a non-starter

So Nicola Sturgeon today repeated her hint of a few weeks ago that the SNP would be prepared to install Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister on a temporary basis to prevent a No Deal Brexit.  Of course SNP, Plaid and Green support wouldn't be quite enough to give Corbyn a majority - he would also need the Lib Dems and at least some of the ex-Labour or ex-Tory independents.  But the intriguing thing from a constitutional point of view is that he wouldn't actually need to win a majority in a parliamentary vote before becoming Prime Minister - the Queen could appoint him and see if it works out, which is essentially what she did with Boris Johnson.  What circumstances she would do that in are unclear, but if Johnson was to lose a vote of no confidence, SNP support could leave Corbyn as the only game in town.

On the other hand, if Jo Swinson does prove able to block a Corbyn premiership, history may not be kind to her, especially if a No Deal Brexit is the outcome.  What I truly don't understand is why her focus is on keeping Corbyn out rather than getting herself back into government in a senior position.  If the SNP decide to support a Corbyn-led government from the outside, Swinson would even have a claim to be Deputy Prime Minister, as long as she could accept Corbyn as PM.  That's how governments of national unity work - not by exclusion, but by inclusion.  Intra-party "dream tickets" work on a similar basis - for example, Kinnock/Hattersley or Blair/Prescott.

Another possibility would be the model briefly tried (not terribly successfully) in Germany in the late 1990s, whereby Corbyn would remain Labour leader and would hold a very senior position in government (such as Chancellor), while someone else becomes figurehead Prime Minister with his blessing.  But really, any temporary government in which Corbyn is not the dominant player is a non-starter, and if the Lib Dems are remotely serious about stopping Brexit, it's about time they woke up to that.

Christ on a bicycle: how to avoid newbie mistakes on the Holyrood voting system

Believe it or not, I'm still receiving a steady stream of messages and comments from people who are convinced they are world-leading experts on the Holyrood voting system, and who want to "explain" to me some mistakes I've supposedly made in my recent posts.  The super-confident cluelessness of some of these people is quite entertaining in a way, but I'm becoming concerned that casual readers of the comments section may be misled by that confidence, so I'm going to set a few of the dafter misconceptions straight.

"Christ on a bicycle, what are you saying here?  How can you dispute that a party with 3% of the list vote would take 4 seats?  AMS is a proportional voting system and 4 seats is 3% of 129.  Stop being an idiot, James."

I can dispute it very easily, because under the Holyrood system seats are not distributed proportionally on a national basis.  Scotland is split into eight regions, each with between fifteen and seventeen seats.  That means, unless something weird happens, that it's very unlikely a party would take a seat in any region with less than 5% of the list vote.  Conceivably a party with 3% of the national vote might nick a seat or two if they do better in certain regions than in others - but the most likely outcome is that they would take zero seats.

"Christ on a bicycle, what are you saying here?  How can you produce a hypothetical example of a Holyrood result where the list vote of the parties only adds up to 96%?  All list votes count under AMS.  Stop being an idiot, James."

I can do that because I'm taking into account the obvious fact that there will be a number of minor parties and independents on the list ballot, which in combination will take a non-trivial share of the vote.  Indeed, any hypothetical example that doesn't take account of that point is flawed, although exactly what share of the vote minor parties will take can only be speculative.  Incidentally, it's doubtful whether it can truly be said that "all list votes count under AMS" - to all intents and purposes votes for very small parties don't really count towards the seat allocation, and that means larger parties can sometimes win slightly more seats than they otherwise would on any given share of the vote.

"Christ on a bicycle, what are you saying here?  How can you claim that the SNP can win significantly more seats than their share of the list ballot?  AMS is a proportional system.  Stop being an idiot, James."

I can say that because of a little something called constituency seats.  If the largest party takes all or nearly all of the constituency seats in a region, there won't be enough list seats to fully compensate the other parties and make the overall result proportional.  There are multiple examples of that scenario occurring in past Holyrood elections.

"Christ on a bicycle, what are you saying here?  How can you produce a hypothetical example where the SNP take an average of 6.5 seats per region on 29% of the list vote?  That list vote only entitles the SNP to two seats per region, which requires there to be 4.5 SNP constituency seats per region, and if they win that many they'd be over their 'quota' and wouldn't take any list seats anyway.  Stop being an idiot, James."

A lot of that one is utter gibberish, but instead of trying to disentangle it, I'll just make this really simple.  There is no 'cap' of 4.5 constituency seats per region - that would be an arithmetically impossible cap to enforce anyway.  A party can win as many as 73 constituency seats nationwide, regardless of how high or low their share of the list vote is - and that's an average of 9.1 seats per region, not 6.5.

Who needs a criminal underworld when we have Jacob Rees-Mogg and the Privy Council?

So just a few quick thoughts on today's extraordinary events.  I said after the initial Court of Session verdict that in the event that it was upheld by the Supreme Court, we didn't need to worry about Scotland suddenly being seen as an "influential partner in the United Kingdom", and so it has proved.  This is being reported as a Supreme Court decision and not a Court of Session decision, which in one sense is fair enough because the same effect could have been achieved even without the Scottish case - the Supreme Court could simply have upheld Gina Miller's appeal from the English court ruling.  It may be that the Scottish ruling emboldened the Supreme Court justices, but that can only be speculation.  I also said that if prorogation was lifted, it wouldn't remove the casus belli for an indyref by making Brexit, or a No Deal Brexit, any less likely, and that also seems to be correct.  For all the talk this afternoon of a vote of no confidence, few seem to expect it to go anywhere just yet.  An election is undoubtedly coming, but not until after the Halloween deadline.  Parliament played its strongest card in preventing a No Deal exit before prorogation even occurred, so it could be that the extra Commons sittings will be a lot of talk and no further action.  Perhaps the biggest significance of the ruling is that it will prevent a further suspension in the crucial closing weeks of October.

All the same, though, these judges are so irresponsible - how oh how are the government supposed to set out their much-needed domestic agenda without shutting down parliament for five weeks?  It's simply impossible.

And have the police sealed off the crime scene in Balmoral library yet?  We hardly need a criminal underworld when we have Jacob Rees-Mogg and the Privy Council.

It's showtime!

My phone battery is dying, but someone suggested the title to complete a trilogy, and I couldn't resist.  Regard this as an open thread on Boris Johnson, forever to be known as the Unlawful Proroguer.  Britain hasn't seen a political scandal quite like this since #pounds4mcdougallgate...

It's answer time!

One thing that baffled me about the reaction of Wings supporters to my rebuttal of Gavin Barrie's article the other day is that they seemed offended and outraged that I had dared to reply to a piece that ended by directly challenging me and others (ie. those that had taken issue with Mr Barrie's argument) to "make their case".  The whole thing has just got even more peculiar - because Mr Barrie posted on this blog tonight to tell me to "just stop", by which he appeared to mean that I should stop making the case he had challenged me to make.  Then, in another dramatic plot twist, he immediately deleted that comment and instead posted another one asking me even more questions about the subject he had just told me to shut up about.  He finished by demanding that I answer his questions, and addressed me as "matey boy", which admittedly is an exciting promotion from "dishonest c**t".

I'm more than happy to answer Mr Barrie's questions.

Question 1.  "So James, what does your own modelling of the Holyrood voting system indicate?"

Answer: My "modelling" strongly indicates (ie. this is accepted fact) that any small party that fails to gain around 5% of the vote in any electoral region is highly unlikely to take a seat in that region.  Any votes that such a party takes away from larger pro-indy parties will make it harder for those parties to win list seats, and could therefore reduce the overall level of pro-indy representation in the Scottish Parliament.  I would be very surprised if anyone else's "modelling" shows anything different, given that it's an inescapable statement of the obvious.

Question 2.  "Have you worked out the optimum number of constituency seats that would return the maximum regional seats and hence maximum SNP control of Holyrood?
Because, that might just mean, perhaps, we could do all of this without standing another party, but it would require a feasibility analysis and you know, a detailed voting model, from someone who understands the Holyrood voting mechanism, the likely voting patterns across regions based on historical analysis and a knowledge of demographic groups that live there...
I've done it. In your own time, matey boy."

Answer: No, I have not worked out the "optimum number of constituency seats" because a) it's incalculable without making some thoroughly dodgy assumptions (perish the thought that Mr Barrie would make any of those), b) it weirdly implies that winning more than the 'optimum' would somehow reduce the overall level of SNP representation, which is arithmetically impossible, and c) it's not actually an interesting or helpful question anyway, except to someone who believes that it's possible to achieve a set number of constituency seats by sheer force of will.  This is the whole problem with the Wings party wheeze - it's no more possible to click your fingers and get 57 or 63 or 69 SNP constituency seats than it is to click your fingers and get the fantastical percentage of the list vote for the Wings party that Mr Barrie was breezily taking as read in his article.

I'm also puzzled by Mr Barrie's comment that "perhaps, we could do all of this without standing another party".  What is "all of this"?  If he means winning a pro-independence majority at Holyrood, we already know we can "do all of this" without the help of a Wings party, because we've done it with a bit to spare in both of the last two elections, and as it happens opinion polls currently suggest we're on course to do it again next time.  If he means something over and above a majority, why would we need to do that, and more to the point, why would we take stupid risks in pursuit of something we don't actually need to do?

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Polite notice: Any comments posted on this thread by Wings supporters saying "boooring", "yawn", "give it a rest", "get to f***, d***wad", etc, etc, etc, will be deleted.  Mr Barrie asked questions, demanded that I answer them, and I have done as he demanded.  Neither he nor anyone else can have any complaints about this post.

It's quiz time!

Somebody took me to task about an hour ago in the comments section, sternly telling me "James, you don't understand the electoral system".  He then proceeded to 'explain' the electoral system to me - but there was just one snag.  His description bore absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the Additional Member System, or indeed to any other voting system that is used in this country!  I think possibly he'd "reverse-engineered" some of the modelling he'd seen on Wings and assumed there must be a fiendishly complicated formula involved.

It does seem to me that there's still an awful lot of confusion out there about how AMS works, so to put that theory to the test, here's a little quiz.  There are only three questions, and the answers are at the bottom of the post.  (No peeking in advance.)  If you get all three right you are officially an AMS Grand Master.

Question 1....

"There is a cap on the total number of list seats any large party can win, regardless of how many list votes they take."  Is this statement TRUE or FALSE?

Question 2....

"Small parties with enough votes are awarded a proportion of seats that is much larger than their proportion of the vote."  Is this statement TRUE or FALSE?

Question 3....

If it was possible to successfully game the system by voting tactically for a small pro-indy party on the list, would that party be more likely to take a LARGER or SMALLER percentage of seats than its list vote would normally justify?

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ANSWERS:

Question 1.  The statement is FALSE.  If any party was to theoretically take 100% of the list vote, they would take every single list seat, and if they had swept the board in the constituencies as well, they would take 100% of the seats in the entire parliament.  As with any proportional representation system, it's much harder to win a large number of seats - you're not going to win a landslide majority of seats on 35% of the vote, which is something that can easily happen under first-past-the-post.  But there's no cap to directly prevent big landslides from occurring - you can win any number of seats providing you have enough list votes.

Question 2.  The statement is FALSE.  It's possible for a small party to get a slightly bigger proportion of seats than its proportion of votes, but the emphasis is on the word 'slightly', and there's certainly no in-built advantage for small parties.  Quite the contrary, in fact - it's the largest single party that is most likely to be significantly over-represented, due to winning an excess number of constituency seats.

Question 3.  The answer is SMALLER.  This may seem counter-intuitive, but it's actually quite logical when you think about it.  The whole game-the-system theory (which as you know I don't think is workable in practice) depends on the largest pro-indy party doing exceptionally well on constituency seats, but not being competitive at all on the list ballot.  If that happens, there probably wouldn't be enough list seats available to bring any of the other parties up to quite the level of overall representation that their share of the list vote would warrant - and that applies just as much to the smaller pro-indy party that is the recipient of tactical votes as it does to all the other parties.  So although the pro-indy parties in combination might end up being over-represented, the party that receives tactical votes might paradoxically end up being under-represented.

The Queen forgot the first rule of rule-breaking: don't get caught

I don't usually think of myself as naive, but when the Queen made her notorious "people should think about it very carefully" comment during the indyref campaign, my first reaction was that it must have been an innocent, spur-of-the-moment reply to a member of the public that had been randomly picked up by the microphones.  I actually believed the establishment fiction that we live in a constitutional monarchy where the monarch would never dream of interfering in the political process. I thought that unionist sympathisers in the mainstream media were just mischief-making by trying to convince the public with a nudge and a wink that the Queen's remark had been intended to indicate support for Better Together.

When it later emerged that the Queen had indeed been following a script and had fully intended the microphones to catch what she said, a lot of things suddenly fell into place.  This was a clear breach of her proper constitutional role, and it required active collusion between the Westminster government, Buckingham Palace and journalists.  The crucial role of journalists, and broadcast journalists in particular, shouldn't be underestimated, because very few viewers would have read any significance into the Queen's remark unless reporters had helpfully interpreted it for them - in other words the whole exercise would have been pointless.  And yet those same reporters misled viewers by neglecting to mention that they had been briefed by sources that the comment was planned and had a specific meaning.  If it had been revealed that such briefings had taken place, the Palace would either have had to lie through their teeth and deny it, or the Queen would have been caught bang to rights doing something she knew was constitutionally inappropriate.  Everything hinged upon a ludicrous media pretence that the Queen had been randomly overheard and that journalists had independently discerned her private feelings from those few words.

As it is, she's been caught out five years later anyway, and ironically the weak link in the triangle of collusion turned out to be David Cameron rather than the media.  But there's no point in her blaming Cameron - the breach of constitutional propriety in this case was her own decision to interfere in the political process, not the failure of a politician to cover her tracks.

Incidentally, at least one broadcast journalist appears even now to be colluding with the great pretence.  I gather that the BBC's Royal Correspondent Nicholas Witchell informed viewers today that the Queen had indicated support for Better Together on her own initiative rather than at David Cameron's request, and that it had nothing to do with "politics".  We've heard this kind of nonsense from him before - that her active attempts to "maintain the Union" are somehow a natural part of her role and are entirely non-political.  Back in the real world, during a binary-choice referendum campaign on Scottish independence, the monarch can either behave appropriately by staying out of politics, or she can actively seek to "maintain the Union".  But she can't do both.

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I was interviewed on Radio Sputnik yesterday about the fifth anniversary of the independence referendum.  I reminisced a bit about the day itself, and spoke about the Scotland in Union propaganda poll and the need for a Plan B if a Section 30 order is refused.  You can listen to the interview HERE (and also read a transcript in which I'm referred to by my cunning pseudonym John Kelly).