If Stewart McDonald thinks people will vote for the SNP if they promise to remove Trident within five or ten years, but not if they promise to remove it within two, he's living on a different planet

The former SNP MP Stewart McDonald reckons his party has a problem with credibility and seriousness, but the 'solutions' he puts forward to this supposed problem are nothing short of batty.  Most weirdly of all, he claims to believe that the SNP's future in government depends on them abandoning their policy of removing Trident from Scotland within two years of independence, which he doesn't think is achievable.

Now, I defy the self-styled 'realists' in the SNP's ranks to think this through logically and come to a different conclusion from the one I have reached.  It may well be that emphasising that an independent Scotland will be a member of NATO is reassuring enough for people concerned about national security that it gets the SNP some extra votes.  It may even be that, hypothetically, ditching the SNP's commitment to nuclear disarmament would win even more votes, because some voters wrongly believe that the theory of nuclear deterrence is a sound one.  But if the SNP are going to remain somewhere in the middle and be pro-NATO but anti-Trident, it stretches credibility somewhat to suggest that voters who are broadly satisfied with that compromise position are going to be put off because the proposal is to remove Trident within two years rather than five or ten. How many voters does anyone think even have a view on what constitutes a realistic timetable for Trident removal, or have enough information before them to reach such a view?

No, I would submit to you that McDonald plainly cannot be motivated by the SNP's electability, but he's pretending that he is in order to serve another agenda - and that can only be his own pro-nuclear agenda.  On some level, I suspect he yearns to put himself forward to the voters as First Minister one day on a promise to build "a strong Scotland within a strong United Kingdom with the nuclear deterrent as the cornerstone of our security", and failing that he just wants to get as close as possible.

If anyone doubts that McDonald would be happy enough if the independence issue just vanished, how else can you explain this from him: "I want to see us grow up, I want to see us get serious. I want to see us have a debate where there are no sacred cows, nothing is off the table."  Now, what could he POSSIBLY HAVE IN MIND THERE, given that the SNP are a pro-independence party and saying that there are no sacred cows at all, and that nothing at all is off the table, can only mean that independence should be treated as an expendable policy like any other?  And if he didn't mean to be taken that way, surely he would have said "there are no sacred cows apart from independence itself, and nothing is off the table apart from our unshakeable commitment to independence"?

Another key part of "growing up" on Planet McDonald apparently involves fretting terribly about unionist voters not regarding a de facto referendum as "legitimate" - which basically amounts to a concern that the minority won't like what the majority have voted for and won't think they should get it.  I mean, so what?  Would it have been grown up for Keir Starmer to stop trying to win a majority of seats because many non-Labour voters refused to regard his win as legitimate without proportional representation?  Maybe it would have been, actually, but that's certainly not the way the centrist power politics that McDonald worships at the altar of has ever worked.

I'll tell you what really isn't grown up, serious or credible politics, and that's taking McDonald's advice by presenting yourselves to the public as a pro-independence party which has no intention of actually trying to deliver independence until such time as the UK government randomly decides to voluntarily allow a vote on it, which they will have no conceivable incentive to ever do.  A voter sophisticated enough to think Trident removal is impossible within two years is certainly going to have no difficulty in seeing straight through McDonald's faux independence prospectus.

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Labour's win in Scotland was 'loveless' but it certainly wasn't a 'landslide' - their 5.3% margin of victory over the SNP was the smallest margin for a winning party in Scotland since 1974

I can claim an assist from Jackson Carlaw on this post, because I remember him trying to undermine the SNP's 2017 win by saying their margin of victory was the smallest in Scotland for a long time.  As Labour's margin of victory is even smaller than the SNP's in 2017, it was obviously going to look even less impressive by historical standards.  

To avoid the customary objection from pedants, I'm referring to the pre-1965 Tory party by the official names of "Unionist" and "National Liberal", which were organisationally separate parties but to all and intents and purposes functioned as a single party.  In some ways the relationship was analogous to "Labour/Co-op" in the present day.  Note the anomaly that the Tories won the popular vote in 1959, even though it's generally said they last won in Scotland in 1955 (because that's when they last won a majority of seats).

Results of UK general elections in Scotland since 1945:

1945: Labour won by 6.5% over Unionists & National Liberals

1950: Labour won by 1.4% over Unionists & National Liberals

1951: Unionists & National Liberals won by 0.7% over Labour

1955: Unionists & National Liberals won by 3.4% over Labour

1959: Unionists & National Liberals won by 0.5% over Labour

1964: Labour won by 8.1% over Unionists & National Liberals

1966: Labour won by 12.2% over Conservatives

1970: Labour won by 6.5% over Conservatives

February 1974: Labour won by 3.7% over Conservatives

October 1974: Labour won by 5.9% over SNP

1979: Labour won by 10.1% over Conservatives

1983: Labour won by 6.7% over Conservatives

1987: Labour won by 18.4% over Conservatives

1992: Labour won by 13.3% over Conservatives

1997: Labour won by 23.5% over SNP

2001: Labour won by 23.8% over SNP

2005: Labour won by 16.9% over Liberal Democrats

2010: Labour won by 22.1% over SNP

2015: SNP won by 25.7% over Labour

2017: SNP won by 8.3% over Conservatives

2019: SNP won by 19.9% over Conservatives

2024: Labour won by 5.3% over SNP

So Labour's margin is the smallest since February 1974, with there having been twelve elections in the intervening period.  It's also the sixth smallest since the war, although as you can see most of the previous tight margins are heavily concentrated in the immediate post-war period when Scotland was still highly competitive between Labour and the Tories.

I find Brexit more embarrassing, Tom, but each to their own. https://t.co/ScOdY4XsII

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) July 12, 2024

Scotland is like a pet dog to the likes of Dunt - praiseworthy but only when obedient. This is not an obedient front page, it seems. https://t.co/VwJQEveg8g

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) July 12, 2024

"Bigoted"? The English media establishment seem to be having a collective nervous breakdown this evening. It's highly revealing, I don't remember this kind of speed or scale of reaction to any anti-immigrant front page of the Mail, for example. https://t.co/G5uQnpa2wA

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) July 12, 2024

You know those racist anti-Scottish cartoons that the London papers churn out and that we're supposed to regard as brilliant political satire and a sacred expression of free speech? Possibly just *slight* evidence of double standards from the English media establishment tonight?

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) July 12, 2024

The crucifixion of 3 SNP leaders belng noted in particular as vile.

— Dr Mairianna Clyde🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇳🇴🇺🇦 (@MairiannaClyde) July 12, 2024

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The average support for independence in recent polls is 47.5%

I repeatedly warned that if independence supporters were foolish enough to vote Labour last Thursday (which undoubtedly happened in large numbers, although in the vast majority of cases for "Daily Record" rather than "Stuart Campbell" type reasons), the media and the establishment would leap on the outcome and try to turn it into a generational 1979-style setback that would draw a line under independence for the foreseeable future.  We're seeing those attempts before our eyes right now, for example with Andrew Marr claiming that the 'risk' of the UK breaking up has "vanished" - an objectively ludicrous claim given that Scotland still has a pro-independence government and there is a clear pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament.  Nevertheless, independence supporters are only human and it's possible they may be psyched out by this shock-and-awe Hollywood production telling them that independence is dead and that they have to "move on".  It's therefore conceivable that the next few polls will show some movement towards No.

However that certainly didn't happen before the election, and we mustn't allow unionists to rewrite history about that.  A frequent claim on social media in recent days is that it was never true to say that support for independence was "roughly 50%" and that it was actually averaging at 43%.  The technical term for that claim is "complete and utter tripe".  There have been twelve independence polls since John Swinney became First Minister, and here is the average result - 

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 47.5%

No 52.5%

I don't think it's outlandish to suggest 47.5% is "roughly 50%" and it's certainly significantly closer to 50% than to 43%.  In fact only one of the twelve polls had Yes as low as 43%, and there was one that had Yes as high as 51%.

Of course the con trick from unionists here is to leave Don't Knows and Won't Votes in the figures and not mention they're doing that, but that's not the normal way of reporting voting intention polls - if it was, Labour across the UK would be below 20% rather than in the low 30s.  It would also bring the average No vote down below 50%.  In fact, if the calculation is done that way, there hasn't been a single poll showing No on 50% or above since early April.

Blimey, is that it? Only two ministers outside the Scotland Office and both of non-Cabinet rank? Would it be unkind of me to point out that the outgoing Tory government had similar levels of Scottish representation in spite of only having 6 or 7 Scottish seats?How has 37 helped? https://t.co/oYJonhljpO

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) July 10, 2024

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On balance I think John Swinney should step down - but if they replace him with anyone but Kate Forbes, they'll end up wishing they'd stuck with him

So it's beginning - people of note are starting to call for John Swinney's resignation as SNP leader.  I really am conflicted about this.  After Humza Yousaf resigned, I made no secret of the fact that I thought the SNP were making a mistake in installing John Swinney, especially without a contest - and in fact I felt so strongly about it that I publicised Graeme McCormick's push to get nominations in the hope that a contest would take place.  I suppose in a way I should say I feel vindicated by the outcome of the general election, but the reality is that Swinney's personal ratings have been surprisingly OK since he became leader.  They haven't been stellar, but there were polls during the campaign showing him with better net ratings than Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar. He certainly wasn't getting results like that when he was first leader between 2000 and 2004.

So we have to consider the very real danger that the SNP will make a change and end up worse off. We know there are many leading figures in the SNP for whom the interests of the faction matter more than the interests of the party or the country, and they remain so hellbent on stopping Kate Forbes that they're perfectly capable of trying to install someone totally unsuitable as they did with Yousaf.  If you think things can't get any worse than they currently are, just take one second to imagine Jenny Gilruth as First Minister. OK, more likely, perhaps, would be someone like Neil Gray or Màiri McAllan, but that would be almost as bad an outcome.  I actually do rate Ms McAllan, but at this stage in her career I don't think she would command the confidence of the public as leader.  We also have to bear in mind that literally no-one who might become leader, and this includes Kate Forbes herself, has shown any sign of being interested in a more credible independence strategy than the one Yousaf and Swinney pursued.

An additional concern would be a 'Sunak effect' whereby the SNP lose credibility by having too many leaders in quick succession, and it gets to the point where it almost doesn't matter who the leader is or whether they're any good.

On balance, I think it might be worth taking the risk of a leadership change, simply because my gut feeling is that the members would choose Ms Forbes in the current circumstances - they would now see that she was right when she said continuity wouldn't cut it.  And I think she's the one person with a bit of X Factor about her who might be able to get the SNP back on the front foot and generate some optimism.  But if I'm wrong in my guess, and if the SNP choose almost anyone but her, they'll end up wishing they'd stuck with Swinney.

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Are Scotland and England still diverging politically, in spite of all the hype?

There's a really interesting Twitter thread by David Clark, a former adviser to Robin Cook at the Foreign Office, in which he argues that the UK is still likely to break up within the next 10-20 years and that last Thursday's election result shows that beneath the headline story of a Labour victory, Scottish electoral trends are still diverging from the rest of the UK.  He points out that Labour has never increased its share of the vote at the end of a full term in power, and that therefore they are at risk of losing at the next election to the second-strongest electoral blocs, which in England is the right-wing vote for the Tories and Reform, and in Scotland is the pro-independence vote for the SNP and to a much lesser extent the Greens.

Obviously this is music to my ears, so I've been trying to work it through and see if it stacks up.  One obvious complication is that power in Scotland is not determined solely or even primarily by what happens in Westminster elections.  When the Holyrood election comes around in 2026, it won't be Labour trying to hold its vote at the end of a full term, it'll be the SNP trying to hold on after four full terms, which is a very different dynamic.  In a worst case scenario where the wheels really come off for the SNP, it might destroy their credibility as the main opposition to Labour in the run-up to the next Westminster election.

However, if the SNP can at least remain competitive in 2026, it's true that they would be extremely well placed to benefit from any Labour slippage in 2028 or 2029.  They are second in the vast majority of seats in Scotland.  I would question, though, how confident we can be that Labour will drop back, because although they may not have increased their vote share at the end of any previous full term, they certainly more or less held their ground in 2001 when Tony Blair was re-elected, and in Scotland their vote actually increased in 2010 after three consecutive terms in office - albeit that may have been partly down to a personal vote for Gordon Brown.  Luckily, in spite of the hype, there aren't many Scots at the beating heart of the new Labour government.

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Having taunted us for months about the SNP backing off from a de facto referendum, unionist commentators haven't got a leg to stand on in retrospectively declaring that the election was a de facto after all

Given how completely obvious it is that the SNP did not fight the general election as a de facto referendum on independence (however much most of us wanted them to), it seems almost unbelievable that unionist commentators like Alex Massie and Stephen Daisley are even attempting the line "you had your de facto referendum and you lost".  If they want to gain a reputation as Trumpian truth-deniers, they're going the right way about it.  But if it really needs to be pointed out why the election was not a de facto, here are several reasons - 

* The amendment to Humza Yousaf's independence strategy, which was passed at the SNP conference (and I believe was tabled by Tommy Sheppard) makes clear that the earliest election which might be fought as a de facto referendum is the 2026 Holyrood election, not the 2024 Westminster election: "Conference further agrees that should an incoming UK Government continue to refuse the demands of the  Scottish people to decide their own future, consideration should be given to fighting the next Scottish Parliament election in 2026 as a de facto referendum on independence; and that a majority at that election for the SNP – or the SNP and any other party with which we have reached a pro-independence agreement – will be considered a mandate to negotiate independence."

* Stephen Flynn was asked more than once during the election campaign itself about the de facto concept, and not only did he make clear that this election was not a de facto, he even claimed that the de facto was never SNP policy and was just a personal initiative of Nicola Sturgeon.

* The line "Nicola Sturgeon said this election would be fought as a de facto referendum on independence" is dishonest unless you complete it by saying "but shortly afterwards she stepped down and her successor reversed that policy".

* Many SNP leaflets during the campaign did not even mention independence and instead focused on a scattergun list of other policies.  That is plainly not how a de facto referendum would be fought.

* Having given consideration to using the word "independence" in their ballot paper description, the SNP decided against even doing that.

* The SNP's main opponents did not treat the referendum as a vote on independence either. Anas Sarwar directly pitched for votes from independence supporters without asking them to change their views, and when endorsing Labour the Daily Record's first words were "this election is not about independence".

* If anyone is going to argue that the "page 1, line 1" of the SNP manifesto means that anyone who voted against the SNP was voting against independence, they're then going to have to explain how the Tories' election defeats over the last decade were not a vote in favour of Indyref2, because their constant refrain has been "a vote for the Conservatives is a vote to stop Indyref2".

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I hope that the SNP see the light, but the independence movement needs a Plan B for 2026 in case they don't

IFS mentioned the latest Wee Ginger Dug post, so I had a look and there is indeed lots to agree with in it. Paul Kavanagh basically argues that the SNP's strategy of moving towards independence by demonstrating competence in government has failed, and that they now need to move towards using the 2026 election as some sort of de facto independence referendum and galvanising Yes support for an all-out push to win a majority at that election and get this done once for all.

However, that starts from the premise that everyone in the SNP agrees that independence is the single-minded objective and that the only disagreement is over the tactics on how to get there.  In the real world it's not really like that. There are other people who see the SNP as a political party like any other, for which the goal is power.  A party pursuing power generally reacts to a defeat by looking at its menu of policies and working out what can be removed and what can be added to maximise its level of support.  Hugh Gaitskell and Neil Kinnock both reacted to Labour defeats (in 1959 and 1987 respectively) by deciding unilateral nuclear disarmament had to be removed as party policy, even though it was a fundamental belief for many members.  Similarly, there will be SNP parliamentarians and ex-parliamentarians who are currently thinking that independence has to be ruthlessly sacrificed in an election-winning push.  They're barking up the wrong tree, because abandoning the SNP's unique selling point would actually be the fast lane to election defeat.  But the fact that they believe it might work and believe it's worth doing is what matters, and that means the genuine independence supporters are going to have to face them down in the months to come.

If they are successfully faced down and if Paul Kavanagh's strategic advice (or something similar) is accepted, there's no problem.  But if the 'endless delay' faction get their way yet again, the independence movement is going to need a Plan B, one that is external to the SNP.  And for the avoidance of doubt, I am not talking about replacing the SNP as the main independence party - that is completely unrealistic, whatever Stuart Campbell's wild fantasies may be.  But what may be possible is an electoral force that wins a modest number of list seats and then lends support to an SNP government on condition that independence is genuinely pursued.

Paul Kavanagh says of the Alba party: "It lost its two MPs and attracted only a handful of votes. It is over as a political project."  Well, I'm on the inside of Alba - I'm certainly not part of the in-group, but I'm an elected member of three of the party's national committees and I've been to branch meetings, so I know how determined Alba members are to see it through. Alex Salmond is the master of surprise, so who knows, maybe he'll stun us all by declaring Thursday was a setback too far and then wind the party up, but I very much doubt it.

There does, however, need to be an injection of realism about just how far Alba currently are from winning list seats, and what will need to change to make that happen.  I presume the leadership must have been expecting better results on Thursday, because Mr Salmond had been confidently predicting throughout the campaign that the results would surprise people, and even on the BBC results show he announced that Alba was going to save two deposits.  By that point, Alloa & Grangemouth and Lothian East had already been declared, so I was really puzzled as to where he thought two saved deposits were going to come from - Cowdenbeath & Kirkcaldy seemed the only realistic possibility, but it didn't come close to happening even there.

On Twitter the other day, Shannon Donoghue reverted to the comfort zone of the "stab in the back" theory by announcing that Alba's poor election results were all the fault of Denise Findlay and "the wee gang".  I mean, come on.  I know Shannon to a small extent because I'm on the Constitution Review Group.  A vacancy on that group came up a few months ago after a prominent member left the party in disgust due to some of the things that had been going on behind the scenes, and Shannon filled his place as a sort of 'lucky loser' from the January election, so I've attended a few meetings with her.  I'll try to be diplomatic here, but the idea that Denise Findlay or anything else to do with Alba internal politics is the explanation for Alba's electoral failures to date is just so many light-years away from reality that heaven help us all if that's the theory that starts to take root within the party.  That would be a party slipping into delusion.

99%+ of the public do not know who Denise Findlay or the so-called "wee gang" are, but they most certainly know who Alex Salmond is, and to a lesser extent they know who Ash Regan, Kenny MacAskill, Neale Hanvey and Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh are.  That is their point of reference for the party and that is the basis on which they cast their votes. For whatever reason, and I'm not going to pretend to fully understand why, the Alba brand just doesn't seem to have enough appeal for the electorate.  I'm wondering if one way of squaring the circle might be to build on the 'Scotland United' idea and have Alba as a component part of a much wider electoral alliance standing on the list in 2026.  That alliance's branding and its collective leadership might have much broader appeal and get us to the 5-7% threshold for winning list seats.  It's just a thought, but I do believe we're going to need some blue-sky thinking to get ourselves out of this trap.

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The Inverness result narrowed the national gap between Labour and the SNP even further. The election in Scotland produced a very modest win for Labour, and the media coverage isn't reflecting that.

I was going to put this in a tweet but it just wouldn't fit in.  The belated final result from Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire, in spite of being a bitterly disappointing defeat for the SNP in a seat that had been assumed to be safe (albeit almost certainly due to mass Tory tactical voting for the Lib Dems), has had two positive effects.  Firstly, it has nudged the SNP's national vote share up from 29.9% to 30.0%, which is psychologically helpful, but more importantly it reduces Labour's Scotland-wide vote share to just 35.3% and their lead over the SNP to just 5.3%.  In ordinary speech, the lead will be rounded down to five percentage points, rather than the six we were talking about before Inverness declared.

That means several pre-election polls actually overestimated Labour's lead.  As I said yesterday, I can totally understand why the SNP are terrified of saying anything that would appear to be denialism or a minimising of their defeat, but that doesn't stop the rest of us from pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.  This was no landslide victory for Scottish Labour that exceeded expectations - it was a very modest win that was either in line with expectations or that fell slightly short of them. The lopsided result in terms of seats was caused by the quirks of a discredited voting system, not by anything the voters themselves did.

Final result of the 2024 general election in Scotland:

Labour 35.3%

SNP 30.0%

Conservatives 12.7%

Liberal Democrats 9.7%

Reform UK 7.0%

Greens 3.8%

Alba 0.5%

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Memo to Stewart McDonald: you've had your "pause" on independence for the best part of the last decade. It didn't work and we can now see what the consequences were. The excuses have run out: it's time to press the "play" button and move ahead to a de facto referendum in 2026

Very, very long-term readers of this blog may recall that several years ago I used to be a columnist for a couple of UK-wide news websites, and without naming names or specifying which site it was, I've got this vivid recollection of sending in my column the day after one of Nicola Sturgeon's landslide election triumphs.  Whoever was on duty wrote back and said: "Thanks James - and congratulations.  I just wish we in England could have escaped from Conservative rule in the same way."  The point was that he just took it as read that because the SNP had such an overwhelming mandate, they would be pushing forward towards independence as promised.  The idea that what you do with mandates is collect them, and then twiddle your thumbs for a few years and let them expire, is a good deal more odd than some people on the 'delay' wing of the SNP would have us believe.

So I have no time whatever for the utterly predictable suggestion of Stewart McDonald, former MP for Glasgow South and the SNP's leading enthusiast for British militarism, that Thursday's defeat means the time is now ripe for yet another "pause" on independence.  How many would this make now?  Five?  Six?  He has reacted to just about every previous victory by calling for delay, so he's got very little credibility in now saying that the reaction to defeat should be exactly the same.  It was always obvious, and I can remember writing posts on this blog pointing this out years ago, that if you let mandate after mandate expire while waiting for the "perfect moment" that will never actually arise, eventually your luck is going to run out and voters will stop giving you a mandate, either because they can see you were never serious about delivering or because they get tired of you for another reason.  Anyone on the gradualist wing who didn't foresee that their own tactics would guarantee that a defeat like the one on Thursday would happen before independence did was guilty of astounding political naivety or self-deception.

In one sense, though, the SNP have been fortunate, because when the defeat eventually came it was at Westminster, where they were in opposition, rather than at Holyrood, where they are in power.  They are still a party of government today every bit as much as they were on Wednesday.  They still have the ball at their feet and there is absolutely nothing to stop them moving ahead with a de facto referendum in 2026.  They promised in 2016 that the changed circumstances of Brexit meant that Scotland would definitely be given a choice on independence.  Ian Blackford boomed every week that Scotland's voice MUST and WILL be heard.  Well, eight years on that still hasn't happened and it's about bloody time that it did.  Frankly, the excuses have run out.  Covid wasn't a valid excuse because by the time that happened in 2020 they had already let mandates from 2016 and 2017 run out.  The loss of twenty seats in 2017 wasn't a valid excuse because that still left them with a practically identical type of mandate to the one Labour won in Scotland on Thursday - one that the SNP themselves seem to be in awe of.  If they're so impressed by Labour's mandate, why on earth weren't they impressed by their own mandate in 2017 and why in God's name didn't they make use of it?

I'm not remotely swayed by the argument that you can no longer use a Holyrood election as a de facto referendum in circumstances where there is no longer a pro-independence majority among Scottish MPs at Westminster.  In fact, if you think about it for more than a few seconds that argument falls apart completely, because we've been told that the reason the 2021 Holyrood election no longer provides a mandate is because it has since been superseded by a more recent mandate for Labour.  It therefore inevitably follows that if you win a pro-independence majority at the 2026 election, that supersedes what happened on Thursday and then becomes the operative mandate.

And what happens, you might ask, if the UK Government then turns around and says they're not going to respect that mandate until and unless there is also a pro-independence majority among Scottish MPs once again?  In that case, you then fight the 2028 or 2029 general election on a simple message to independence supporters: "Are you going to stand for your democratic decision being ignored?"  You might actually win the general election that way, and what's more, it might be the only way in which it's even possible to win the general election.  I'm actually pretty optimistic about the SNP's chances in Holyrood 2026, but I'm not at all optimistic about their chances of winning Westminster 2028/9 if they try to do it against the odds on bread-and-butter issues when everyone knows they can't form a government in London.  The "stop the Tories" pitch from Labour would still work - unless it was a special sort of election in which the SNP were seeking to seal the deal after a de facto triumph in 2026.

As for any suggestion that Thursday's defeat means that 2026 is not a suitable time to be trying to win a majority for independence, frankly that's complete rubbish.  Electoral politics is a pendulum and often the best chance to prosper is on the rebound, because a new situation has been created and voters are looking at you afresh.  Think back to 2015 when the Scottish Tories suffered their lowest ever share of the vote.  Was that their worst possible moment to try to mount a major comeback?  No, it turned out to be their ideal opportunity, and they made huge unexpected gains in the elections of both 2016 and 2017.

As I said in my article in The National today, it's perfectly conceivable that the SNP could remain the largest party at Holyrood in 2026 with a dull managerial campaign that takes advantage of the fact that John Swinney and/or Kate Forbes are seen as more competent than Anas Sarwar.  But I think that would be a narrow result and there might well be a unionist majority in the parliament, possibly leading to Sarwar becoming First Minister from second place with Tory support.  So even from the point of view of the gradualist wing's bottom line (ie. staying in power), aiming higher and trying to win a majority for independence actually makes perfect strategic sense.  Otherwise it's just managed decline which has only one destination sooner or later: the opposition benches.

The words "de facto referendum" mean different things to different people, so let me be clear about what I mean by them - I'm talking about an election in which the SNP and other pro-indy parties state in their manifestos that a majority for them would constitute an outright mandate for independence (and not for a referendum, which is a concept that some people seem incapable of wrapping their heads around).  It wouldn't necessarily have to be a single-issue manifesto and nor would it be a one-off event you couldn't afford to risk - if you didn't get the mandate in one election you could then try again five years later.

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Some thoughts on how the voting system severely distorted the election outcome in Scotland

If the UK really is going to ludicrously persist with first-past-the-post in an increasingly multi-party system and with increasingly perverse outcomes, I would suggest there's a special responsibility on the media to explain to viewers, listeners and readers that there is a disconnect between how people actually vote and the election results that are produced, and also to explain the reason that is happening.  Robert McKenzie, who was one of the resident psephologists along with David Butler for the BBC's election results shows between the 1950s and 1979, was extremely good at doing that - he would just bluntly say "these results are nothing like how people voted, here is what the result would have been if we had a proportional system like every other country in western Europe".  Nobody is really filling that role now, except maybe for John Curtice, but he only appeared very sparingly on the results show.  

As you know, I wrote constituency profiles for The National over the course of the campaign, and almost on a daily basis I would sit down, look at another central belt constituency, and say to myself "ah, it's yet another one of those", in other words a constituency where the SNP were around twenty points ahead of Labour in 2019 and thus would lose the seat this time even if Labour were a few points behind the SNP nationally.  If Labour were a few points ahead of the SNP, which is what was actually happening, all of those seats would go, and by quite some distance, and it would look like a bloodbath even though that didn't reflect how people actually voted.  

If there have been a few half-hearted attempts in the media to explain this inbuilt advantage for Labour and to put the result in its proper perspective, they haven't been anything like sufficient.  So that's partly the topic for my piece in The National analysing the election outcome, and entitled "For every six Scottish Labour voters, there were five for SNP".  I'm not sure if it's on the main part of the website, but you can certainly find it in the print edition or in the digital edition (page 26) if you're a subscriber.

When I wrote it, I was trying to squeeze in a few introductory points about the wider UK result, but if I'd left those points in I wouldn't have had much room left for anything else, so once again, as a sort of "DVD extra", here is the part I cut out...

"The one-third of UK voters who actually voted Labour in this general election must be congratulated on getting the government they voted for.  The two-thirds of people who did not vote Labour were, however, not quite so fortunate.  This is a familiar objection to the legitimacy of first-past-the-post election results that has been heard since the 1970s when the share of the vote for the winning party typically started drifting well below 50%, so we know from past precedent that the problem will be shoved under the carpet by the new government, the official opposition and much of the media.  

But nevertheless 34% is yet another new all-time low for the winning vote share, and it must raise the question of where the cut-off point lies, beyond which it would not be possible to maintain the fiction that the will of the people is being enacted.  Commentators presumably wouldn't be able to claim with a straight face that Starmer had an overwhelming landslide mandate if he'd won it on 25% of the vote, so there must be a magic figure somewhere in the narrow band between 25% and 34% where the perverse effects of the electoral system become acceptable in polite society.

Another fiction that is skating on very thin ice is the notion that the changes Keir Starmer made to the Labour party, and his ruthless treatment of MPs and candidates who had ideological disagreements with him, were necessary to rebuild the trust and support of voters.  In fact, although Labour has undoubtedly changed out of all recognition since Jeremy Corbyn's period as leader, that hasn't happened in a way that has made the party any more popular.  Starmer's 34% vote share is six percentage points lower than the one achieved by Corbyn in his first general election in 2017, and is very similar to the 32% result in 2019 that was supposedly so intolerable that it was used to justify Corbyn's expulsion from the party.  As Professor John Curtice has been at pains to point out, Labour's support actually fell in Wales and remained more or less static in England, with the modest GB-wide boost being caused only by the recovery in Scotland.  Starmer's apologists have accordingly shifted their ground, arguing that Labour's shift to the right was never intended to increase vote share, but was instead aimed at playing the voting system and ensuring the most efficient geographical distribution of support.  But that just makes clear to voters that it was never actually about them, and that they were mere bystanders in the process of government selection."

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