Which of the criticisms of the SNP's new strategy on independence are fair, and which are unfair?

Not for the first time in my life, I find myself roughly equidistant between Sturgeon loyalists and the First Minister's most trenchant critics in the wake of her big announcement.  That's probably the most realistic and sensible place to be, but it's not always the most comfortable, because there aren't all that many people here with me.   For days, the comments section of this blog has been full of suggestions that nothing has really changed and that the Scottish Government are continuing to act in bad faith by kicking the independence can ever-further down the road.  So I thought it might be an idea to sort through those criticisms and separate out the ones that are well-founded from the ones that seem to be nothing more than unjust knee-jerk reactions.

"Angus Robertson's comment that independence will be 'the key issue' in the SNP campaign for the 2024 election suggests that the notion of a plebiscite election is a confidence trick - SNP supporters will be duped into thinking they're fighting a de facto referendum while the unionist media will hear nothing more than a vague Independence Is Quite A Nice Idea Isn't It."

I must admit I was concerned when I heard the phraseology Angus Robertson was using in media interviews.  However, Nicola Sturgeon is the leader of the SNP, not Angus Robertson, and her own language has been absolutely unmistakeable.  See, for example, her tweet reacting to Boris Johnson's refusal to grant a Section 30 order - 

Just received this from Johnson (one of his last acts as PM?). To be clear, Scotland will have the opportunity to choose independence - I hope in a referendum on 19 October 2023 but, if not, through a general election. Scottish democracy will not be a prisoner of this or any PM. pic.twitter.com/EAgIVvEuoc

— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) July 6, 2022

There's no real space for creative ambiguity in those words - she's suggesting that if a referendum isn't possible, Scotland will be able to choose independence in the general election in exactly the same way that it would have been able to do in a referendum.  So I don't think we need to worry about tricksy language at this stage.  What might be a more reasonable concern is Ms Sturgeon's long track record of repeatedly going back on her word on independence strategy, so it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that she could use crystal-clear language now but not actually follow through on it when the time comes.  However, she surely must realise that the patience of many SNP stalwarts would be pushed beyond breaking-point if she did that, possibly triggering a wave of resignations from the party and perhaps defections to Alba.  So there's a huge incentive for her not to backtrack this time.

"Sturgeon is conning people into thinking there will be a referendum in October 2023!"

To me this is a really odd criticism to still be making, because the whole point of her announcement was to finally drop the pretence that there will definitely be a referendum next year.  The pretence was certainly there before the announcement, and we were absolutely right to call it out for the absurdity that it was, but it's not there anymore.  What we were really criticising her for was not having a credible backstop in the event that a referendum is struck down by the Supreme Court, but she's now introduced a credible backstop in the form of a plebiscite election in 2024.  So until and unless she goes back on her word, I think we should just give credit where credit's due and acknowledge that she's finally done exactly what we've been asking her to do for years.

"Sturgeon has needlessly given the unionists a massive Christmas present by setting the target for victory in a plebiscite election far too high.  She should be saying we only need a majority of seats, not a majority of votes."

I'm not sure that stacks up.  If there's a battle for hearts and minds on the question of whether Scotland can become an independent country on the basis of 35% or 40% of the vote (enough to win a majority of seats under first-past-the-post), or whether 50% should be required, it's obvious that the public will side with the unionists on that point - as indeed will other countries.  The pro-independence camp would be left looking a bit dodgy, as if we were trying to swindle our way to our goal without a proper mandate.  So it's probably best to make a virtue out of necessity by voluntarily acknowledging from the outset that only a majority of votes will do.  Arguably we could fudge the issue for the time being by saying "winning the election" would constitute a mandate without specifying what "winning" means.  But I'm not sure that would be sustainable as the election approaches.

"Sturgeon has undermined the independence cause by failing to appoint a Lord Advocate who is prepared to unequivocally state that a referendum is legal without a Section 30 order."

That is absolutely fair comment.  It would have been perfectly possible to find a potential Lord Advocate with a favourable interpretation of the legal position, and it seems almost negligent that this didn't happen.  There are only really two possibilities: either a) Nicola Sturgeon was trying to sabotage her own chances of delivering her promise of an independence referendum, or b) she had priorities other than independence at the forefront of her mind when she appointed Dorothy Bain, and simply didn't consider the consequences of what she was doing.  I'm fairly sure the answer is b), but that's more than bad enough.  If I was in Ms Sturgeon's shoes, I'd be tempted to rectify the error by hurriedly installing a new Lord Advocate - there would be a hit to be taken as a result of doing that, but in the long run it would probably be worth it.

"The SNP will make a Yes vote harder to achieve by insisting upon a much less broadly-based campaign than in 2014, with Alba and lots of other 'undesirables' left out in the cold completely."

I can't disagree with that, and it's a dreadful indictment of the intolerance of the modern SNP (and indeed of the modern Scottish Green Party).  But that doesn't get the rest of us off the hook.  If the Yes campaign is deeply flawed, we will have to get wholeheartedly behind that deeply flawed campaign and make very, very sure that it wins in spite of itself.  Independence comes before everything else.  As I've said before, I'll quite happily kneel in front of a statue bearing the inscription "FIONA ROBERTSON, MOTHER OF THE NATION", just so long as Scotland is an independent country by then.  Who gives a monkey's where the credit goes after we achieve our objective?

*  *  *

We've already seen since Nicola Sturgeon's announcement that the overwhelmingly unionist mainstream media are attempting a 'shock and awe' campaign to try to kill off independence - and the misuse of polling is playing a key part in that.  If you'd like to balance things out with polling commissioned by a pro-independence outlet and which asks the questions we want to see asked, one way of doing that would be to help Scot Goes Pop's fundraising drive - see details below.

Direct payments via Paypal - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

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The clincher was Pincher

Please disregard any scurrilous rumours that I may have stolen the title of this blogpost from a rather splendid rhyme used by the chair of the Alba Party last night.

One of the really annoying things about the last couple of days is that every time I have an idea for a blogpost, it's overtaken by events by the time I get round to writing it.  But to hell with it this time, I'm just going to write the post I had in mind before Boris Johnson resigned, even though it's entirely academic now.  There was speculation yesterday that the one way Johnson might have been able to circumvent the fact that he had clearly lost the confidence of the overwhelming majority of the Tory parliamentary party was by dissolving parliament and calling a general election before MPs had a chance to oust him.  You can see the attraction from a selfish point of view - if, as seems highly likely, he had lost the general election, he'd have been no worse off than he otherwise would have been, but if he somehow had gained a renewed mandate from the public, it would then have been impossible for MPs to move against him.  

But would the Queen have granted a dissolution in these extraordinary circumstances?  There's one really interesting precedent which hasn't been mentioned much because it happened outside the UK.  In 2008, there was a constitutional crisis in Canada, which has a Westminster-style system of government, with the Governor-General performing the Queen's functions.  The Conservatives emerged from a federal election as the largest single party, but without a majority.  The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation idiotically kept announcing on their results programme that a "Conservative minority government has been elected" - an entirely meaningless concept, and sure enough the three main opposition parties swiftly concluded a coalition deal to oust the Tories.  But the Tory Prime Minister Stephen Harper had a cunning wheeze. He knew that if he could prevent a no confidence vote in his government from taking place for a few weeks, there was a decent chance that the Liberals would change leader and withdraw from the proposed coalition.  So he went to the Governor-General and requested an extended and entirely needless prorogation of parliament.  As in the UK, it was theorised that dissolution and prorogation is one of the few genuine powers that the monarch or Governor-General holds, and that there was a real chance that such a cynical request from the PM would be rejected, especially as there was no parliamentary majority for it.  

But it wasn't. The Governor-General took advice and clearly concluded it was constitutionally unthinkable to resist the Prime Minister's wishes.  Harper's brazen plan came off exactly as intended - parliament was prorogued, a no confidence vote was averted, the Liberals changed leader and withdrew from the coalition, and Tory minority rule trundled on.  So perhaps Boris Johnson would have got away with a dissolution request - although he would have gone down in infamy (or even more infamy) if he'd attempted that tactic.

One interesting thing now is how Boris Johnson will fare in the historical rankings of Prime Ministers - because although his premiership fell apart in even more catastrophic manner than Theresa May's, he did (unlike her) achieve the goal of "getting Brexit done".  He's a bit like Edward Heath - a short-term Prime Minister who nevertheless did something huge and with lasting consequences during that short term. In the case of Johnson those consequences will be heavily negative, but nevertheless Brexit was what he was elected to do, so his place in the rankings will presumably have to take some account of that.

*  *  *

We've already seen since Nicola Sturgeon's announcement that the overwhelmingly unionist mainstream media are attempting a 'shock and awe' campaign to try to kill off independence - and the misuse of polling is playing a key part in that.  If you'd like to balance things out with polling commissioned by a pro-independence outlet and which asks the questions we want to see asked, one way of doing that would be to help Scot Goes Pop's fundraising drive - see details below.

Direct payments via Paypal - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

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If you prefer a bank transfer, please message me for details using the contact email address which can be found in the sidebar of the blog (desktop version only), or on my Twitter profile.

The Boris butterfly effect: what are the SNP's options in the unlikely event of a snap general election?

From our point of view, the million dollar question is what difference the wave of resignations from the Tory government will make to the Yes campaign in either a 2023 independence referendum, or a plebiscite election in 2024.  I think it's fair to say that Boris Johnson is probably now toast.  Prime Ministers have sometimes held on in unlikely circumstances - John Major, for example, seemed to be on the way out on numerous occasions, but somehow saw out his full five-year term between 1992 and 1997.  That can be partly explained by a few random twists of fate, most notably the sudden death of John Smith in 1994, which effectively took the heat off Major for a few crucial months by producing a totally unexpected vacancy at the top of the Labour party.  And it may well be that only a big and unforeseen event can save Johnson now - but would even that be enough? After all, even Major didn't see his Chancellor resign in a deliberate attempt to unseat him.  The better comparison is with the resignations of Nigel Lawson in 1989 and Geoffrey Howe in 1990, which did manage to bring down Mrs Thatcher - although admittedly there was no sense of inevitability about the success of that tactic until the final hours.  

If Johnson does go, the pro-independence campaign will arguably lose its biggest asset - but the equation is no longer as simple as it was once was.  The ideal scenario from a strategic point of view was to have Johnson wildly popular (or at least reasonably popular) south of the border but totally loathed north of the border.  We used to have exactly that, but no longer - he's loathed everywhere.  That's potentially a problem for us, because if - hypothetically - Johnson were to remain in harness until the general election, it might start to appear certain that a Labour government is on its way, which would make it harder for us to continue framing the choice as a straight one between independence and Tory rule.  So there may actually be certain advantages in Johnson being replaced, as long as his successor isn't popular in Scotland (which seems unlikely, but you never know).

The other issue is whether a new leader will cut and run by calling a snap election before the Supreme Court has had a chance to consider the legality of a 2023 independence referendum, thus disrupting the SNP's plans.  I still think that's unlikely - the fate of both Gordon Brown and Theresa May will be cautionary tales for any new Prime Minister about what can happen if you even flirt with a needless election.  And, in any case, it would only be a realistic option if there's a big bounce for the Tories after a leadership ballot, which is by no means certain.

If a snap election does occur, the SNP will have a finite number of options, which are as follows:

1) Go ahead and use the snap election as a plebiscite election.  This would go against their instincts because they want a Supreme Court defeat to justify the plebiscite election tactic.

2) Indicate that they will instead engineer an early Holyrood election to ensure a plebiscite election in 2024.  Before the usual suspects turn up with the usual refrain "they can't do that without a supermajority", it would actually be pretty easy - if the Scottish Government resign, there would be no viable alternative government without the participation of the Greens, so an early election would inevitably follow. Again, this would be against Nicola Sturgeon's ultra-cautious instincts, though.

3) Indicate that they will instead use the scheduled 2026 Scottish Parliament election as a plebiscite election.  This would cause huge discontent within the independence movement, which has been led to expect a vote on independence by 2024 at the latest.  It wouldn't be hard to imagine defections from the SNP to Alba in this scenario.

4) Indicate that they will instead use the scheduled 2027 Westminster general election (that would be the scheduled date if there's a snap election soon) as a plebiscite.  This would cause the same problem as option 3), but with bells on.

My guess is this is all academic, though - I still expect the general election to take place in 2024 (probably May 2024).

*  *  *

We've already seen since Nicola Sturgeon's announcement that the overwhelmingly unionist mainstream media are attempting a 'shock and awe' campaign to try to kill off independence - and the misuse of polling is playing a key part in that.  If you'd like to balance things out with polling commissioned by a pro-independence outlet and which asks the questions we want to see asked, one way of doing that would be to help Scot Goes Pop's fundraising drive - see details below.

Direct payments via Paypal - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

Scot Goes Pop Polling Fundraiser 

If you prefer a bank transfer, please message me for details using the contact email address which can be found in the sidebar of the blog (desktop version only), or on my Twitter profile.

Persuading the SNP leadership of the need for a Plan B is a triumph for the independence movement - we now need to park our cynicism and make this work

I've been astonished by some of the reactions on social media to the prospect of a plebiscite election in 2024 - and when I say 'astonished', I don't just mean that I disagree with the reactions, I mean that I'm genuinely surprised.  For years we've been begging the SNP leadership to commit themselves to a credible Plan B in the event of an ongoing rejection of a Section 30 order, but I was very, very sceptical that we'd ever be able to persuade them to do that.  If you'd asked me two weeks ago whether I thought Nicola Sturgeon would unambiguously commit herself to using the 2024 Westminster election as a de facto plebiscite if a consultative referendum in 2023 was blocked, I'd have said that was very unlikely.

Having got so much of what we wanted, against all the odds, I'd have thought we would then have all fallen over ourselves to smooth the path towards a plebiscite election (should the Supreme Court ruling go the wrong way).  Instead, there's been endless chatter on Twitter about using a plebiscite election to take on the SNP and to have as many pro-independence parties and candidates standing against each other as humanly possible.  With all due respect to the otherwise sensible people saying this stuff, it's absolutely bats**t crazy.  As the Alba Party leader Alex Salmond has made clear in his statement, the objective has to be for us all to unite behind a single pro-independence candidate in each constituency.  The first-past-the-post voting system will punish us heavily if we don't - a factor which is more important in a plebiscite election, not less so.

I think what's probably going on here is that some people have become so alienated from the SNP that they're finding it emotionally impossible to imagine being required to vote SNP to deliver independence.  So they're casting around for plausible-sounding reasons why it would somehow be helpful to have multiple pro-indy parties directly battling against each other in a plebiscite election - but, of course, it really, really wouldn't be.  One common argument is that seats don't matter this time - all we need is 50% + 1 in the popular vote, and it therefore doesn't matter if we lose seats by splitting the Yes vote.  By having multiple Yes parties to choose from, it is said, we would actually boost the combined vote for Yes parties, because there are supposedly people who would never vote SNP, but would vote Alba or Green.

Well, there are two answers to that.  Firstly, seats do matter.  We can undermine a mandate on the popular vote by needlessly throwing seats away, and we can buttress the mandate by maximising the number of pro-indy seats.  But more importantly, the idea that you increase the pro-indy vote by having multiple candidates to choose from is completely misconceived, because it looks at the problem from the wrong way round.  A single-issue election means exactly what it says - the objective is to convert voters to independence, to get them excited about it, and then to direct them to the option on the ballot paper that will deliver it, whether that be a Yes alliance, or the SNP on their own, or whatever.  If you try to squeeze out an extra 0.5% here or there by saying (for example) "here's an independence option for people who dislike Sturgeon's neoliberalism", it's fool's gold because you're undermining the clarity of the single issue message.

I'm not going to rehearse this point endlessly, though - there's no need to, because I'm actually pretty confident that common sense will prevail and we'll all be getting behind a single slate of candidates in any plebiscite election.  As I've said a few times, the trickiest part of the equation will probably be the two constituencies where Alba have the incumbent MPs.  Common sense would suggest that the SNP should give the incumbents a clear run (as the Liberal Democrats did with the remaining SDP MPs at the 1992 general election), but we know that the SNP have long since abandoned common sense and reason in their attitudes to the Alba Party.  However, even in those two constituencies, I believe the problem will somehow resolve itself, even if it's not yet clear how.  There's a tremendous incentive for the independence movement to clear the path towards victory.

James epitomises the 'hope over experience' ideal in his post. Anyone with an interest in Scottish politics knows that Sturgeon's NuSNP will always put party before country. They will say anything to maximise their number of MPs and, once in, will continue as loyal colonialists.

— John Bell (@Jigger639) July 2, 2022

The above is typical of the more negative reactions to my blogpost yesterday.  "It doesn't matter what the SNP have committed themselves to, we can't trust anything they say, this is just a way of getting Pete Wishart another five years at Westminster to do sod all".  Well, frankly, if we're quite as cynical as that, what was the point of pressuring the SNP to adopt this new strategy?  We might as well have just packed up and gone home several years ago, because although the pressure can come from the grassroots and other parties, it's only the SNP leadership who can actually deliver what we want, and we've known that all along.  If we were ever going to achieve our objective, we were always bound to arrive at this moment where a leap of faith is required.  Yes, the SNP could just pocket a mandate at a plebiscite election and do nothing much with it apart from Mr Wishart getting even more comfy in his slippers.  But if you think about it, exactly the same could be true of a consultative referendum.  The important thing is that we've finally persuaded the SNP to decouple the problem of legally securing a mandate for independence from the problem of legally securing independence itself.  We now have a golden opportunity to secure the mandate, and we need to make damn sure we actually do that.  If we succeed, it's possible we may subsequently need to hold the SNP's feet to the fire as far as using the mandate is concerned - but that's a battle for the future.  First things first.

Astounding #Referendum2023 poll shows a pro-independence majority for the first time in any Panelbase poll since April 2021

Should Scotland be an independent country?  (Panelbase / Sunday Times)

Yes 51% (+2)

No 49% (-2)

For my money unionist politicians are going to be absolutely stunned and horrified by the results of the new Panelbase poll - which appears to be the second poll conducted since Nicola Sturgeon's announcement, but the first with a normal sample size of 1000 respondents or so.  Even as an independence supporter, I'd have put money on a Panelbase poll right now showing a small to middling No lead.  The last five Panelbase polls in a row have shown No ahead, and the most recent poll from the firm to have a Yes lead was just before the Holyrood election in the spring of last year.  An outright Yes lead will not have been what the Tories and Labour were expecting, particularly in view of the onslaught from a media that has dropped all pretence of being anything other than a British nationalist propaganda front.  This may be the first sign of the dividends we can expect as a result of the SNP leading from the front, rather than forever running away from making the case for a referendum or for independence.

Similarly, I'm pretty sure unionists would have been expecting sizeable opposition to Nicola Sturgeon's choice of date for a referendum, whereas in fact there's a practically even split, with 43% in favour of the date and 44% opposed.  The naming of the date may well have changed the dynamic by concentrating voters' minds.

The poll also contains Scottish voting intentions for Westminster, but it uses a non-standard question which asks respondents to specifically say how they would vote if the SNP use the election as a de facto independence referendum.  That may well be a more meaningful measure of how such an election would play out, but it does mean that these results aren't directly comparable with any previous poll.

Scottish voting intentions for a UK general election used as a de facto independence referendum:

SNP 47%

Labour 23%

Conservatives 19%

Liberal Democrats 8%

Other 3%

As with the ComRes poll, it's really frustrating that Panelbase haven't offered the Greens as an option - because if, by any chance, all 3% of the "others" are Green (or Alba) supporters, that would take the combined vote for Yes parties to the magic 50%.  However, what is really encouraging here is that the SNP vote isn't falling off a cliff when the plebiscite aspect is specified.  Quite the reverse, in fact - the SNP vote is five percentage points higher than in the last Panelbase poll using a standard Westminster question.

Among the supplementary questions, respondents were asked to predict which way the Supreme Court will jump.  48% think the judges will strike the October 2023 referendum down, and 33% think they will give it the green light.  I must say I can't for the life of me see what the point of that question is, because voters have no control over what the Supreme Court will do, and for the most part aren't qualified to make legal predictions.  Perhaps of more interest, though, is that the percentage of voters who expect Scotland to be independent within five years has shot up by ten points, and the total percentage who expect independence within ten years has increased by four points.

*  *  *

We've already seen since Nicola Sturgeon's announcement that the overwhelmingly unionist mainstream media are attempting a 'shock and awe' campaign to try to kill off independence - and the misuse of polling is playing a key part in that.  If you'd like to balance things out with polling commissioned by a pro-independence outlet and which asks the questions we want to see asked, one way of doing that would be to help Scot Goes Pop's fundraising drive - see details below.

Direct payments via Paypal - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

Scot Goes Pop Polling Fundraiser 

If you prefer a bank transfer, please message me for details using the contact email address which can be found in the sidebar of the blog (desktop version only), or on my Twitter profile.

If 2024 becomes a plebiscite election, there are only two viable options: either a Yes alliance should put up a single slate of candidates, or the Alba Party should mostly sit out the election and lend its support to SNP candidates

I'd have thought the title of this blogpost should be a statement of the obvious, but I've seen one or two prominent people suggesting on Twitter today that Alba should not only stand against the SNP in a plebiscite election, but that they should stand against the SNP in every single constituency.  That would be a catastrophic misstep, not only for the cause of independence but also for Alba as a political party.  And if this debate is already taking place out in the open, I'm not going to shy away from contributing to it, because often the seed of the most foolish and self-defeating ideas takes root at a very early stage.  

So let's knock this one firmly on the head.  If the next general election becomes a plebiscite election (and it's still an "if" because we've yet to hear the Supreme Court's decision), Alba should for the most part not participate in it, or at least not as a party in opposition to the SNP.  If Joanna Cherry's excellent suggestion of a unified Yes alliance is taken forward, that would be fabulous, and Alba's biggest stars could then stand as Yes alliance candidates.  But if, as seems likely, the SNP insist on standing as a single party in the usual way, or perhaps as part of a narrower SNP-Green alliance that specifically excludes other pro-indy parties, Alba should sit the election out in the vast majority of constituencies and get behind the SNP candidates.  Yes, that will mean turning the other cheek to some extent, but that's been the Alba way from the start - we always do the right thing for the independence cause no matter what the provocation. That's why we supported the SNP's constituency candidates in the 2021 Holyrood election even when senior SNP people were routinely screaming abuse at us.

There are a number of reasons why the whole Yes movement essentially needs to get behind a single slate of candidates in a plebiscite election, regardless of whether that slate fights under a Yes alliance or an SNP banner:

* It may seem unfair, illogical and irrational, but a single-party or single-slate majority of the popular vote will be taken more seriously in London than a multi-party or multi-slate majority.  We saw that in 2015 when the SNP and Greens between them took an absolute majority of the popular vote, and when there were still newspaper articles (I distinctly remember blogging to correct one) claiming that there was a unionist majority, because the SNP on their own fell just short of 50% and journalists just lazily assumed that any non-SNP vote was a unionist vote.

* In a plebiscite election, the popular vote matters most, but seats matter too.  Given that Westminster elections are fought by first-past-the-post, a split pro-indy vote will cost us seats.  That matters at both the 'higher end' and the 'lower end' of Yes support.  If we actually achieve a popular vote mandate - ie. the 'higher end' - having as many pro-independence seats as possible gives us the maximum leverage in pressing home that mandate.  If, for example, it's decided to withdraw pro-indy MPs from Westminster either temporarily or permanently, the impact will be greatest if those pro-indy MPs constitute as near as possible to 100% of Scottish representation in the Commons.  We wouldn't want a 2% vote for Alba helping one or two unionist MPs get needlessly elected.  And at the 'lower end', if we fail to achieve our popular vote mandate, we don't want to compound that setback by losing a truckload of seats to unionist parties at the same time.  It's always important to live to fight another day.

Alba do of course have the incumbent MPs in two constituencies.  In those two seats, the debate is different, because I don't think it's for me or for anyone else to tell incumbent MPs that they shouldn't seek to defend their seats if they feel very strongly that they want to do so.  It would be a very powerful unifying gesture if the SNP were to decide not to put up candidates against those two MPs in a plebiscite election - but if the SNP do stand, a decision will have to be made on the Alba side.  The same problem applies in those constituencies as everywhere else - a split pro-indy vote could be very harmful.

I've heard it said that "political parties stand for election, that's what they do".  Absolutely - but that doesn't mean you stand in every single election, regardless of circumstance.  Alba has already shown great wisdom in choosing its battles with care - in 2021 it stood on the list ballot but not the constituency ballot, and it then declined to stand in a string of local by-elections in order to keep its power dry for the local elections this May.  There's no more important time to keep choosing your battles wisely than when the independence of your country is on the ballot.

Yes, James Mitchell, of course there's such a thing as a de facto referendum

James Mitchell writes very fine prose, but he's an example of why academics don't make the best political strategists. If the SNP listened to him too literally, they wouldn't even try to deliver independence, because he tells them no strategy is viable.https://t.co/UQ3Vf2D7ik

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 30, 2022

Come to think of it, they probably have been listening to him too literally for the last five years.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 30, 2022

For many years, Alex Massie regarded Nicola Sturgeon as a fellow traveller.  He thought - and he was probably right - that she shared his view that the only truly dignified way of attempting to achieve independence is to not particularly attempt to achieve it at all.  On that basis he lauded her as a "serious" leader.  But now that Sturgeon has returned to her roots as a politician who wants independence in practice as well as in theory, Massie is attacking her with all the bitterness of a lover spurned.  The latest leg in his neverending whingeathon concerns Sturgeon's repudiation of Professor James Mitchell's claim that "there is no such thing as a de facto referendum" and that people can and will vote on all sorts of issues in an election.

The way I was originally going to put it was that Mitchell was half-right and half-wrong, and that it was the half-wrong part that was far more important.  But actually, on reflection, he's just plain wrong.  Of course there's such a thing as an election which functions as a de facto referendum, and there are examples of it from the past.  From a UK perspective, the best-known one is the Irish component of the 1918 general election, which was decisively won by Sinn Féin and was regarded as the mandate for Ireland to become an independent country.  Essentially that's the precedent the SNP would be trying to emulate if the 2024 election becomes a plebiscite election, although it remains to be seen whether they would be brave enough to do what Sinn Féin did after winning the 1918 election - ie. refuse to take their seats at Westminster and instead unilaterally set up an independent parliament comprised of their MPs.

Of course no party can simply decide on its own that an election is going to function as a plebiscite - but the voters can.  If the voters give more than 50% of the vote to a party putting forward a single-issue proposition, then they are simultaneously doing two things - they are giving majority assent to the idea that the election is a plebiscite, and they are also giving majority assent to the party's preferred position in that plebiscite.  So in the case of 2024, an SNP popular vote majority would mean that a majority of voters are saying Yes to the principle of a plebiscite election, and Yes to independence.  If fewer than 50% of the electorate vote for the SNP and allied parties, there is no clear majority for the principle of a plebiscite election and no clear majority for independence.

That's pretty straightforward and I don't really see how Mitchell or anyone else can credibly argue with it.

*  *  *

Just a quick postscript to my post about the ComRes poll: I meant to mention that it showed Nicola Sturgeon has a better net personal rating than other Scottish political leaders, including Anas Sarwar.  This leaves Mandy Rhodes looking a bit foolish for putting all her eggs in the basket of an earlier individual poll which gave Sarwar a better net rating than Sturgeon -  and on that basis declaring that Sarwar "looks increasingly credible as a future First Minister".  In truth, net ratings can be a bit of a red herring anyway, because a lesser-known leader can have a better net rating than a well-known leader while still having a lower percentage of people feeling positively about them.

*  *  *

We've already seen since Nicola Sturgeon's announcement that the overwhelmingly unionist mainstream media are attempting a 'shock and awe' campaign to try to kill off independence - and the misuse of polling is playing a key part in that.  If you'd like to balance things out with polling commissioned by a pro-independence outlet and which asks the questions we want to see asked, one way of doing that would be to help Scot Goes Pop's fundraising drive - see details below.

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Dramatic Savanta ComRes poll suggests pro-independence parties could be just 1% away from winning an outright mandate for independence at a 2024 plebiscite election

After the shocking events of the #Matchettgate fake poll scandal in the early part of last year, it's entirely rational for us to treat any Scotsman poll written up by Conor Matchett with a due amount of scepticism until the full facts become clear.  Matchett's piece on the new poll yesterday is hidden behind a paywall, but it certainly looks to me like his claim that voters are opposed to Nicola Sturgeon's date for the independence referendum is not quite what it appears - because the only Scotsman poll mentioned on the ComRes website was conducted before Nicola Sturgeon announced the referendum date.  I can't find the relevant question in the data tables, so I suppose it's possible Matchett is referring to a second poll conducted immediately afterwards, but that seems highly unlikely.  So presumably this was just the typical generic question about whether voters want a referendum within a couple of years.

The whole point about the setting of the date is that it changes the dynamic - for the first time the Scottish Government is attempting to lead public opinion on referendum timing rather than being a slave to it.  Instead of hypotheticals, any future polling on timing is likely to be a binary choice on whether voters want the referendum on 19th October next year as announced.  It's perfectly possible there might still be a degree of public opposition even with the greater clarity we now have - but it looks like Matchett's poll can't tell us that one way or the other.  

What it can tell us, though, is that the Yes vote is holding up nicely on the main independence question.

Should Scotland be an independent country?  (Savanta ComRes / Scotsman, 23rd - 28th June 2022)

Yes 49% (-)

No 51% (-)

Remember that ComRes tended to be on the No-friendly end of the spectrum last year, so a virtual dead heat is very creditable for Yes at this stage.

There were also Holyrood numbers in the poll...

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 46% (-)

Labour 25% (-)

Conservatives 18% (-)

Liberal Democrats 8% (+1)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 33% (+2)

Labour 24% (+1)

Conservatives 20% (+2)

Greens 13% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 8% (-2)

Alba 2% (-1)

So barely any change at all on the constituency ballot, and nothing hugely significant on the list either. Of note is the fact that Alba are still very much registering, even though they're down one percentage point on the previous ComRes poll.  In the briefing SNP sources gave to the press on Nicola Sturgeon's new strategy, there was a thinly-coded signal that part of the motivation was to get Alba voters back on board with the SNP.  Even though Alba haven't won any seats in the two elections they've fought so far, the SNP will probably feel they need to have those 2% of voters back in the fold, especially in a Westminster election - and making it a plebiscitary election is an elegant way of achieving that.  If that has been part of the thinking, we in Alba should be patting ourselves on the back - it means we've played a crucial role in dragging the SNP to where they need to be on independence strategy.  Our role now is not to impede the SNP as they pursue the new strategy, but to support them - unless of course they start backtracking, in which case we'll need to hold their feet to the fire.  (They may not think they want our support, but they certainly need it whether they realise that or not - many of the most experienced pro-indy activists are in Alba's ranks.)

Last but by no means least, we have Scottish voting intentions for Westminster, which show us how close the SNP are to achieving a mandate for independence in a plebiscitary election.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election:

SNP 46% 

Labour 25%

Conservatives 18%

Liberal Democrats 8%

Another party 3%

I wouldn't normally bother including the "another party" figure, but in this case it's absolutely crucial, because if those people are basically Greens, the combined SNP-Green vote share (ie. the pro-indy vote share) could be just 1% or 2% shy of the magical 50% threshold.

We also have a snap independence poll from a firm I've never previously heard of called Techne (it looks like the offshoot of an Italian firm), and this one was carried out after the First Minister's announcement.  It has Yes 46% and No on 54%. I'd treat this with caution, because the sample size was only around 500 - which is high enough to be credible, but is only about half of what is normal.  There's also a degree of uncertainty due to the firm's lack of any track record in Scotland, although it is a member of the British Polling Council.

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We've already seen in the three days since Nicola Sturgeon's announcement that the overwhelmingly unionist mainstream media are attempting a 'shock and awe' campaign to try to kill off independence - and the misuse of polling is playing a key part in that.  If you'd like to balance things out with polling commissioned by a pro-independence outlet and which asks the questions we want to see asked, one way of doing that would be to help Scot Goes Pop's fundraising drive - see details below.

Direct payments via Paypal - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

Scot Goes Pop Polling Fundraiser 

If you prefer a bank transfer, please message me for details using the contact email address which can be found in the sidebar of the blog (desktop version only), or on my Twitter profile.

A reminder of the mountain of polling evidence that the Scottish public strongly support the "Plan B" options for seeking a mandate for independence if the UK Government continue to refuse a Section 30

As I mentioned yesterday, I've used several of the full-scale Scottish opinion polls that I've commissioned for Scot Goes Pop over the last two-and-a-half years to test public opinion on a range of "Plan B" options for seeking to secure an independence mandate if the UK Government remains intransigent on a Section 30 order.  It might be worth refreshing our memories of the exact results of those polls in the wake of Nicola Sturgeon's announcement.  As you can see below, no matter which "Plan B" option was presented and no matter how the question was posed, there was consistently clear public support for the proposition that the Scottish Government should circumvent any attempted Westminster veto and find a way of giving Scottish voters the promised choice on independence.

Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, 28th-31st January 2020: 

There are differing legal opinions on whether the Scottish Parliament currently has the power to hold a consultative referendum on independence without Westminster’s permission. If the UK government continues to refuse to give permission, do you think the Scottish Parliament should legislate to hold a referendum and then allow the courts to decide whether it can take place? 

Yes 50% 

No 39% 

With Don't Knows excluded:

Yes 56% 

No 44% 

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Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, 1st-5th June 2020: 

If Boris Johnson and the UK Government manage to block an independence referendum, do you think that pro-independence parties such as the SNP and the Greens should consider including an outright promise of independence in their manifestos for a future election, to give people an opportunity to vote for or against the idea? 

 

Yes 49% 

No 29% 

With Don't Knows excluded: 

Yes 63% 

No 37%

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Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, 5th-11th November 2020:

Imagine that the pro-independence parties win a majority of seats in next year's Scottish Parliament election, but the UK Government still refuses to agree to an independence referendum. In that scenario, do you think the Scottish Government should ensure the Scottish people are given a choice on independence over the course of the next parliamentary term, or should it accept that the UK Government has a veto on an independence referendum? 

The Scottish Government should ensure the Scottish people are given a choice on independence: 63%

The Scottish Government should accept that the UK Government has a veto on an independence referendum: 37%

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Scot Goes Pop / Survation poll, 11th-13th January 2021:

The UK Government has stated that it will seek to prevent a Scottish independence referendum taking place for several decades, regardless of whether Scottish voters elect a Scottish Government committed to holding a referendum. In view of this stance, do you think pro-independence parties, such as the SNP and the Scottish Greens, should or should not include an outright independence pledge in their manifestos for this year's scheduled Scottish Parliament election, to give people the opportunity to vote for or against independence? 

Should: 45% 

Should not: 36% 

With Don't Knows excluded: 

Should: 55% 

Should not: 45%

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Although there's been a certain amount of coincidental convergence in recent times between Stuart Campbell's analysis of the political situation and my own, as a matter of principle I really must call out the dodgy graph he keeps punting as supposed proof that support for independence has remained static at 47% during the entirety of Nicola Sturgeon's reign as First Minister.  It's an absolute embarrassment which makes a typical Lib Dem bar graph look statistically robust.  Judging from the small print, what he appears to have done is cherry-picked six individual polls, which are not even comparable with each other due to being conducted by different firms, and which just happen to all show a Yes vote of 47%.  The problem, of course, is that those individual polls are not representative of the state of polling in each given year.  The average Yes vote in 2019 was significantly higher than the average Yes vote in 2018.  The average Yes vote in 2020 was significantly higher than in 2019, and was in the majority for the first time.  There was then a sharp dip in 2021.

This is what is so self-defeating about what Stuart is doing.  The actual trend would give him the perfect basis for charging the Scottish Government with building up a sizeable Yes lead in 2020 and then losing it again in 2021 due to a number of mis-steps.  But instead he wants to peddle a fantasy of a flatlining trend which the facts simply do not even come close to supporting.  If you want to look like you're putting together a forensic case, it's always best to underpin it with the truth, rather than doing a Donald Trump. 

(And of course Stuart is also wrong with his claim - that he's repeated yet again - that the SNP had some kind of arithmetical leverage in the Commons prior to the 2019 general election which they could have used to gain a Section 30 in return for facilitating Brexit.  The reality is that Theresa May wouldn't have touched a deal of that sort with a bargepole, but I've rehearsed that point multiple times.)

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Scot Goes Pop Fundraising

Over the years, Scot Goes Pop has provided extensive Scottish polling analysis and political commentary, as well as commissioning no fewer than six full-scale opinion polls, and producing numerous podcasts and videos.  If you'd like to help me continue this work, donations are welcome via any of the following methods...

Direct payments via Paypal - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

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If you prefer a bank transfer, please message me for details using the contact email address which can be found in the sidebar of the blog (desktop version only), or on my Twitter profile.

The practical implications of using the 2024 general election as a de facto independence referendum

There's one caveat that needs to be placed on my two previous posts from earlier today, which relates to the fact that the referendum legislation the Scottish Government are referring to the Supreme Court specifies that the question would be exactly the same one that was asked in 2014, ie. 'Should Scotland be an independent country?"  Since the outset of devolution in 1999, it's been widely felt that a referendum held without Westminster's consent would have the best chance of being legal if it asked a more indirect question about whether the Scottish Government should open independence negotiations with Westminster.  The fact that Nicola Sturgeon is very deliberately spurning that tactic makes it look as if she's actually trying to maximise the chances of the Supreme Court rejecting the legislation.  I would be incredibly cynical about that if she hadn't so firmly committed herself to the Plan B of a plebiscitary election in 2024.  Nevertheless, it's legitimate to ask questions about why the SNP leadership now seem to actively prefer a plebiscitary election to a legal referendum, given that they've spent several years lecturing us that a legal referendum is the only viable way of achieving independence.

The explanation is, as ever, likely to be bound up in the SNP's own partisan interests, and I'm wondering if they fear a Scottish Labour surge at the general election if it looks like Starmer could become Prime Minister.  They may have calculated that turning the election into a de facto referendum is the best way of ensuring that Yes supporters don't drift off to Labour.  It resolves the 'Cat Boyd Paradox', ie. the problem of left-wing Yes supporters who seem to sincerely believe that voting Labour at a general election is not irreconcilable with their backing for indy.

I've always said that there are dangers in using a Westminster election, rather than a Holyrood election, as a de facto referendum, because it's harder to control the narrative - we have a London dominated media that will always tell us UK elections are about UK-wide issues.  That may explain why pro-indy parties in combination won an absolute majority in the Holyrood list vote last year, but not at the Westminster election in 2019.  But let's accentuate the positive - there has been one occasion in the past when Yes parties won more than 50% of the vote at a Westminster election, so that shows it can be done in theory.  It happened in 2015 in the very special post-indyref atmosphere, and it may well be that a plebiscitary election is a potential way of recreating that atmosphere.

I would imagine it's also occurred to the SNP that even if Yes parties fall short of a popular vote majority, they can still win a majority of seats with the help of first-past-the post.  That would allow them to muddy the waters with a 'contested mandate'.  The biggest threat to a majority in terms of seats would be a formal unionist electoral pact - but I just can't see that happening, because it would be tantamount to a unionist concession that the election is functioning as an independence referendum.

One obvious practical issue is what the non-SNP pro-indy parties will do at the 2024 election.  The SNP are in coalition with the Greens, so those two parties will undoubtedly have already nailed things down between them.  I hope to goodness there's no electoral pact allowing the Greens a clear run in one or two constituencies, because there are plenty of people who would vote SNP but would never vote Green. From a popular vote perspective, we can't afford to squander those votes.  

As far as my own party Alba are concerned, we're all still processing today's announcement, but it's pretty much inconceivable that we would do anything to impede a serious attempt by the SNP to secure an outright independence mandate - exactly what we've been begging them to do from the start.  So I would imagine we'd end up backing the SNP in the vast majority of constituencies.  The only real question mark would be over the two constituencies in which Alba currently have the incumbent MPs.  There will be considerable thought on the latter point, I'm sure, but I'm very confident that any decision will be taken with the best interests of the independence cause in mind, rather than the partisan interests of the Alba Party.