Scot Goes Pop Fundraising for Independence Polling: an update

As you'll probably have gathered, I was away from home last week in a place with very sporadic internet access, so I have a backlog of about four blogposts I want to write at the back of my mind.  But before I get down to those, I thought I'd pull over for one of my very occasional pitstops to try to give a proper shot in the arm to Scot Goes Pop's ongoing fundraising efforts, and in particular the fundraising for further opinion polls.  First of all, a huge thanks to the people who have sent donations recently - a good few hundred pounds has been raised in recent weeks.  For reasons we all understand, the days of raising several thousand pounds overnight are probably over for the time being, but nevertheless hopefully we can kick on a bit now and get the seventh Scot Goes Pop poll done in a reasonable timescale.  (And, with your indulgence, after this post I'll continue to promote the fundraising at the bottom of each blogpost until enough is raised.)

There are a number of reasons why it's a good idea not to allow all opinion polls conducted at the present time to be ones commissioned by unionist media clients.  We're in a crucial phase where there's a battle to "claim" public opinion on the issue of whether a referendum should take place, or whether the outcome of a plebiscite election should be respected.  The unionists have a huge advantage if they and their fellow travellers effectively get to choose the question wordings in all opinion polls, because the wording and format genuinely make a substantial difference to the reported results.

We're also in uncharted territory at the moment because pollsters are still finding their way in measuring how people might vote in a general election that pro-independence parties have declared to be a de facto referendum.  Any precedents set now in terms of question wordings could prove important later on.

And of course there's the perennial problem of how unionist-flavoured polls can set the agenda for a referendum or election campaign, framing the debate as being all about "fears" over independence.  There are plenty enough reasons to be terrified of remaining in Liz Truss's Brexit Britain indefinitely, and we really should be polling about them.

If you'd like to donate, here are the various options...

Paypal: If you have an account, by far the simplest and quickest way of donating is by sending a direct payment via Paypal.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

(If you wish, you can add a short note saying something along the lines of "for the fundraiser", but don't worry if you don't do that - it'll be very obvious what the payment is for.)

If you don't have a Paypal account, the GoFundMe fundraiser I set up last year is still open for donations HERE.

And if you prefer a bank transfer, please message me on my contact email address, which is different from my Paypal address and can be found in the sidebar of the blog (desktop version only) or on my Twitter profile.  

What are the Greens thinking of?

If true, this is absolutely idiotic (the stand in every seat part, I mean). There are a number of constituencies in Edinburgh and Glasgow where the Greens could win 10-20% of the vote, thus splitting the Yes vote and allowing the unionist candidate to win.https://t.co/eEBzFbyzyB

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) August 1, 2022

I'm trying to make sense of what the Greens are doing, but it's not easy because there's no obvious logic to it. Let's start with the good part - it's extremely welcome that the Greens have adopted a shared position with the SNP that the next UK general election, expected in 2024, will be a de facto independence referendum if the Supreme Court prevents a Referendum Bill from going forward.  It would have been very harmful if only the SNP had explicitly declared the election to be a plebiscite, and if the Greens had carried on with business as usual.

However, the Greens have never even come close to standing in every constituency in a general election before, and even in the constituencies where they have stood, they've sometimes quite rightly come under fire for splitting the pro-indy vote and helping unionist parties to win.  Why on earth they would think a plebiscite election is the moment at which the Yes camp suddenly has the luxury of a nationwide split vote is not immediately apparent.  I can think of three possible explanations of what is going on:

1) This is a bargaining chip to try to force the SNP's hand and get them to agree to a joint slate of Yes candidates which will feature Greens in a handful of constituencies that the SNP don't currently hold.

2) This has actually been agreed with the SNP and is a genuine - albeit highly dubious - joint strategy for attempting to win a mandate in a plebiscite election.

3) This is a go-it-alone partisan decision that the SNP will be horrified about because it could lead to them losing key seats to Labour and the Tories, thus making it much harder to press home any independence mandate that is achieved on the popular vote.

I've no idea which of those three is most likely, but let's focus on possibility 2, because that's the one everyone will probably assume is correct.  The Greens are of course a different sort of party from Alba or ISP, because a significant amount of their support comes from opponents of independence.  That's probably part of the explanation for pro-indy parties winning a majority of the popular vote on the Holyrood list ballot last year, but not on the constituency ballot.  The Greens bring far more votes to the table on the list, including people who might otherwise vote for unionist parties.  So I suppose it's not totally inconceivable that some bright spark has come up with the idea that a Westminster plebiscite election should be made as similar as possible to a Holyrood list ballot by having the Greens stand everywhere.  But if so, that would appear to be a very stupid strategy for two reasons: a) the Greens will probably lose most of their anti-independence voters overnight if they're true to their word and run a single-issue campaign (albeit one that focuses on the Green case for independence), and b) the pro-independence votes they do take will largely come from the SNP and make it easier for unionist MPs to get elected under the first-past-the-post voting system.  OK, if pro-indy parties win a majority of the popular vote but lose ten or fifteen seats, they'll claim the following day that only votes matter - but will that claim really count for much if there are 20, 25 or 30 elected Scottish unionist MPs ready to take their seats at Westminster?  The leverage needed to press home a mandate would require us to have the vast majority of seats - because then, as a last resort, we could withdraw Scottish MPs from the House of Commons or threaten to do so.  We can't do that if we don't have enough seats.

A broader issue with having pro-indy parties in competition with each other is that it undermines the whole concept of a single issue election.  Pro-indy Labour voters could look at what the SNP and Greens are doing and think "well, if this election isn't special enough for the SNP and Greens to set aside their differences, I'll just continue with my usual party of choice too".

And from a personal point of view, I'm a bit exasperated, because I've been making the point for weeks that having Alba candidates in direct competition with the SNP at a plebiscite election would be strategically foolish, to put it mildly.  I'll continue making that point because it's undoubtedly correct, and because I think Alba should be in the business of maximising the chances of independence rather than copying the Greens on a parochial "it's only fair" basis.  But it's obviously going to be much harder to get anyone to listen to that message if the SNP and Greens really are planning to do something as crazy enough as put up candidates against each other across the board.  I'll just have to cling to the hope that this is a bargaining chip on the part of the Greens.

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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.

VIDEO: Our Precious Union is Precious

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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.

Let's get real about a plebiscite election - we won't win independence as a bunch of Victor Meldrews wrapped up in petty grievances

This way of thinking could lose us a plebiscite election. Worry about the betrayal if and when it happens, not when we're trying to win a mandate.https://t.co/V6b2sa3O5Z

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) July 23, 2022

Explain to me, how every vote for Tory, Labour or Lib Dem is counted towards support for the union. But only votes for the SNP would count towards votes for independence? Because you’re talking about completely different rules for the two sides. Which is bonkers.

— Mel 🇪🇺 (@meljomur) July 23, 2022

Eh? The pro-independence side has benefited massively from a split unionist vote for the last three general elections. If anyone can explain to me why it would be a GOOD IDEA to throw away that massive advantage, then believe me, I'm all ears.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) July 23, 2022

I'm not understanding, are you saying the SNP need to win a majority of seats and votes?

— Cath's new account (@scarycath) July 24, 2022

Dear God, if there isn't a pro-indy majority of seats *at a minimum* we haven't got a hope in hell of pressing home the mandate. So the answer to your question is 'yes', but I'm not really sure why you'd even need to ask it.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) July 25, 2022

I'm away from home at the moment and in a place with very intermittent signal, so blogging will be light for a while.  However, I'm going to struggle my way through a short blogpost because I'm becoming increasingly exasperated - and frankly alarmed - at the willful naivety on display on social media about the idiotic idea that we can somehow afford to be more relaxed about splitting the pro-independence vote at a plebiscite election than we would be at a normal election.  As opposed to, y'know, the self-evident truth that a plebiscite election is a hundred times more important than a normal election and that we will therefore have a hundred times less scope for destructive self-indulgence.

There are no "rules" for a plebiscite election.  There is no neutral arbiter who sets rules that both sides must follow, and the idea that Nicola Sturgeon of all people gets to set rules that unionists will adhere to is just barking mad.  The onus is entirely on the pro-independence side to produce a mandate with enough of a "wow" factor that is very difficult to ignore afterwards.  And yes, that means we have to think about seats as well as votes  It doesn't matter whether that's fair or unfair - it's just the reality of the situation.  However, this shouldn't really pose too much of an additional problem, because getting 50% + 1 of the popular vote is the hard part - as long as we don't do anything stupid, that would generally be enough for a massive haul of seats.  The snag is that some people, for reasons that only they can explain, are advocating doing something very stupid indeed - ie. they want multiple pro-indy parties and candidates to directly compete with each other and split the vote.

Imagine the pro-indy side gets 50.4% of the vote at a plebiscite election.  Although that would be a narrow victory, it would be hard to quibble with, because the conduct of a general election will be beyond reproach and it will produce a high turnout - perhaps not as high as the 2014 indyref, but if it's good enough to elect a UK government, it's good enough for any other mandate.  But then imagine that the 50.4% is split between multiple pro-indy parties, thus allowing unionists to gain several seats.  What side of the equation do you think unionist parties would focus on after the election - votes or seats?  And what could we do to stop them taking that attitude, seeing as unionist MPs would then take their seats at Westminster as the democratically elected voice of Scotland with a mandate to oppose independence?

By contrast, if the pro-indy camp have almost all the seats, we have all the cards to play - including, for example, withdrawing Scottish MPs from Westminster and denying all legitimacy to London rule until the UK government come to the negotiating table.

Let's be honest here.  People may pretend to believe that splitting the vote is somehow a brilliant tactic, but the original tweet gave the game away - what this is really about is a desire to get back to the comfort zone of treating a plebiscite election as a ruse, so we can use it to fight the SNP rather than seek to win our national independence.  Well, count me out of that.  When we look back in a few years' time, do we want to say we did everything we could to seize the opportunity in front of us, or do we want to have been a bunch of Victor Meldrews who were so wrapped up in petty grievances that we invited defeat so we could enjoy blaming others for it?

*  *  *

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.

Scottish Sovereignty Research Group conference in Dunfermline, 29th-31st July

So first of all, an apology to the Scottish Sovereignty Research Group - we had discussed the possibility of me running a guest post about their forthcoming conference in Dunfermline, but when they sent me their proposed post, it went to my spam folder and I was totally oblivious to it until last night.  The post I was sent has since appeared on Iain Lawson's blog, so you can read it HERE.

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This is an absolute disaster. Just goes to show you can never be too paranoid about the 'Team GB' obsession chipping away at existing Scottish representation in non-Olympic events. They really are out to get us.https://t.co/SJDI2L1AJl

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) July 20, 2022

The decision to more or less abolish the Scotland rugby sevens team and instead only allow Scottish players to compete for Great Britain at the World Sevens Series is a real moment of truth for sport in this country.  It gives the lie to the notion that Scottish and British representation in sport can happily co-exist, and that one will never encroach upon the other.  The reality is that independence is needed not just to gain representation for Scotland in events like the Olympics for the first time, but also to safeguard existing Scottish representation in other events.  It's certainly the only way we'll get our rugby sevens team back now.  It's a rather bitter irony that rugby sevens is a sport (or 'sub-sport') that was actually invented in Scotland, and Scotland's two back-to-back victories at the London Sevens event a few years ago were among this country's finest achievements in team sports events.  We'll no longer even have a chance to replicate those triumphs - until we secure our place as an independent country.  

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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.

We stand on the brink of a glorious new Elizabethan age as Scots come together in unison to say...IN LIZ WE TRUSS

Liz Truss is now clear favourite on the betting exchanges to be the next Prime Minister. This is dreamland stuff - we couldn't have asked for better.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) July 19, 2022

Result of today's ballot:

Rishi Sunak 118

Penny Mordaunt 92

Liz Truss 86

Kemi Badenoch 59

There have been a number of unexpected twists in this race - including today, with it being very hard to understand how the redispersal of Tom Tugendhat's votes led to the gap between Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss somehow narrowing further.  So perhaps I shouldn't say anything with too much certainty, but it's now very hard to see how Mordaunt isn't going to be overtaken by Truss tomorrow, thus eliminating her from the contest.  It's probably true that Badenoch's support was a more complex coalition than it's generally been portrayed as, so her votes won't go uniformly to Truss, but they don't have to - Truss just needs the lion's share, and she'll probably get that. 

In theory, Sunak could save Mordaunt's bacon by 'lending' her some votes if he calculates that she's now a more beatable candidate in the run-off than Truss.  We've seen shenanigans of that sort in past Tory leadership contests (most notably in 2001 to squeeze out Michael Portillo), but it's a dangerous game to play.

If, as is now generally expected, the run-off is Sunak v Truss, the polling currently suggests Truss will win with a bit to spare.  It's tempting to assume Tory members would come to their senses over the course of the campaign and realise that Sunak is the more voter-friendly candidate, but they didn't come to their senses about Iain Duncan Smith in similar circumstances two decades ago.  A Truss premiership would be the ideal outcome for the Scottish independence movement - I don't think we could ever have dreamed that the Tories would follow up Boris Johnson with someone equally as perfect.

*  *  *

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.

Tory right-wingers have reached their decision day

We're not going to find out the identity of the next Prime Minister today, but we have finally reached a genuine crunch-point in the race, because the Tory right will have to decide once and for all who their standard bearer is going into tomorrow's final ballot of MPs.  There's no realistic way that both Kemi Badenoch and Liz Truss can make it through - it has to be one or the other, and judging from yesterday's result, right-wing MPs just can't make up their minds.

Result of yesterday's ballot:

Rishi Sunak 115

Penny Mordaunt 82

Liz Truss 71

Kemi Badenoch 58

Tom Tugendhat 31

Given that Badenoch is not that far behind Truss and is clearly the more telegenic of the two, you'd think this might be the moment at which MPs take a step back and and realise they still have a golden opportunity to switch to a better path.  But Badenoch has two problems.  The candidate who has just been eliminated is Tom Tugendhat, and it's assumed that almost all his votes will go to either Penny Mordaunt or Rishi Sunak.  So Badenoch will almost certainly need a good number of direct switchers from Truss to overtake her rival - but Truss herself has some momentum behind her from yesterday, which will make it psychologically harder for her supporters to desert her.  

So I would still expect tomorrow's ballot to be contested between Sunak, Mordaunt and Truss.  The narrowed gap between Mordaunt and Truss could dramatically widen again today due to the redistribution of Tugendhat's votes, although it's hilarious that Boris Johnson has managed to reduce Mordaunt's support by one vote by removing the whip from one of her backers!  Nevertheless, the combined Mordaunt/Tugendhat vote yesterday was smaller (113) than the combined Truss/Badenoch vote (131), so it's still perfectly possible that Mordaunt will be squeezed out tomorrow.

*  *  *

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.

A Supreme Skirmish

I'm slightly concerned to see it being claimed that the Scottish Government have won a "major victory" in their legal tussle with London over an independence referendum.  First of all, it's not a major victory, it's just the outcome of a preliminary skirmish. But more to the point is that legal rulings should never be how we define victory or defeat.  If we celebrate and bestow importance upon the Supreme Court rejecting London's call for the Lord Advocate's referral to not even be considered, we would logically have to bestow even greater importance on London eventually winning the substantive case, which remains likely.  That's not what should matter to us.  We're looking to win a mandate for independence from the Scottish people, not from a handful of conservative judges hundreds of miles away.

That said, the Supreme Court's decision is a relief.  If it had gone the other way, the impression would have been that Nicola Sturgeon's strategy had already failed, because she clearly wanted the theatrics of a televised court defeat to justify moving on to a plebiscite election.  With the Supreme Court refusing to even adjudicate on whether a referendum is legal, she would have been left with an embarrassing choice between just two options - either a) hurriedly replace the Lord Advocate with someone willing to certify the Referendum Bill as legal, or b) declare that the Supreme Court refusing to make a decision is identical to them striking down a referendum, and proceed with a plebiscite election anyway.  I presume she would have plumped for the latter, but her reasoning would have rung a bit hollow.

I'm more than happy to criticise Ms Sturgeon when it's justified, but I do think it's a tad unfair to criticise her for throwing away the chance of a consultative referendum by allowing the Supreme Court to set a precedent by ruling that such a referendum can only be held with Westminster's permission.  The reality is that there's no way of attempting to hold a referendum without risking the Supreme Court striking it down and setting a nasty precedent.  This moment was always going to have to arrive - it couldn't be averted, unless we had jumped straight to a plebiscite election.  Admittedly, it would have been preferable for the Scottish Government to pass referendum legislation and then wait for it be challenged, rather than effectively challenge their own law.  But the outcome would almost certainly have been identical - remember that the Supreme Court had no qualms about striking down legislation that had already been passed unanimously by the Scottish Parliament.

In any case, I'm not sure we should be scared of a legal precedent that essentially renders any future independence referendum impossible, because that would put an end once and for all to "once in a generation".  We would then revert to the pre-1999 position of seeking an outright mandate for independence via a scheduled election - and there's never longer than five years to wait for the next scheduled election.

*  *  *

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.

In Liz we Truss-t: new leadership poll confirms Tory members are from another planet

Penny Mordaunt performed poorly in the Tory leadership debate on Channel Four two nights ago, so it's no surprise to see her support dip in the new ConservativeHome survey.  But what makes no sense whatsoever is that one of the two main beneficiaries of Mordaunt's flop is Liz Truss, who by general consensus performed even worse than Mordaunt in the debate and indeed was probably the most dire of the five candidates.  When the membership of a party are seeing and hearing things so differently from everyone else, it suggests they may not be ideally placed to select a general election winner, and I'm sure most of us will agree that a Truss premiership would be like Christmas for the Scottish independence movement.

In fairness, Truss is not quite the biggest gainer in the survey - Kemi Badenoch has stormed to the top of the rankings.  That's a bit peculiar too, though.  She didn't embarrass herself in the debate, but she didn't come across as someone who was ready to be Prime Minister either.  And her surge may not actually matter all that much, because Tory members will only get a chance to choose her if she's one of the two candidates put forward by MPs, and for that to happen she'd have to overtake both Mordaunt and Truss over the next couple of days.  The big gains for Truss in the survey mean there will be no great incentive for the backers Truss already has to switch to Badenoch.

ConservativeHome leadership survey of Conservative members:

Kemi Badenoch 31% (+12)
Liz Truss 20% (+9)

Penny Mordaunt 18% (-2)

Rishi Sunak 17% (+5)

Tom Tugendhat 10% (+3)

I said the other day "I think Penny Mordaunt is the next Prime Minister".  Obviously I now have to row back from that level of certainty, but nevertheless I think it can be credibly argued that Mordaunt should still be considered just about the favourite, because there's a high probability of a Sunak v Mordaunt run-off, and the members clearly aren't at all keen on Sunak.  But, yes, it has to be said that there's now a non-trivial chance that Liz Truss will be Prime Minister within a few weeks, and that's tremendously exciting for all of us.

*  *  *

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.

A wake-up call: with a referendum or plebiscite election just around the corner, we URGENTLY need to rebuild a vibrant pro-independence New Media

It suddenly occurred to me the other day that it was almost exactly ten years ago - I say "almost" because it was November - that I was in Edinburgh doing an unusually glamorous day of work (I'll save that story for my memoirs) and I received an email out of the blue from Stuart Campbell.  He was messaging various bloggers asking if we would be interested in participating in a collaborative pro-independence website with which we could take on the overwhelmingly unionist mainstream media at the independence referendum, which by then was less than two years away.  I agreed in principle to take part, but not long afterwards Stuart decided on a completely different path - he continued solo, and crowdfunded so he could effectively 'hire himself' as a full-time journalist working on his own website.  Several of us later followed his example by individually crowdfunding to blog more or less full-time in the run-up to referendum day.  From my own point of view that was a much better outcome, because I strongly value my own editorial freedom - and I think it was also a good model for the Yes movement, because the readership numbers for Scot Goes Pop were astronomical in 2014, and I presume that was being replicated across many of the leading blogs.

As we bloggers are supposed to be egotists, I should really make more of the fact that I was probably the most-read pro-indy blogger during the 2014 indyref campaign.  That happened pretty much by accident. I had been a columnist on the International Business Times for two or three years by then, and I suddenly found that around 30% of my columns were being syndicated on Yahoo, where they were reaching enormous audiences - presumably even bigger than Wings Over Scotland.  To their tremendous credit, the editorial team at the International Business Times were keen to be part of the antidote to media bias during the campaign, rather than part of the problem, and it really did make a difference in balancing up the content featured on the Yahoo homepage.

Can we be confident that the pro-indy New Media is in a position to make as helpful a contribution in a campaign now?  That question really matters, because unless Nicola Sturgeon totally backtracks on what she's promised (and admittedly she did exactly that in 2017), we are now either only fifteen months away from a second independence referendum, or only around two years away from a general election which will be used as a de facto referendum.  And I was a bit shocked - although I shouldn't have been - by how overwhelmingly hostile the mainstream media was in the immediate aftermath of Ms Sturgeon's announcement.

Balance in places like the Yahoo homepage and Google News is of course outwith our control - we'll be relying on individual initiatives from enlightened editors, and on the prominence given to articles from our only pro-independence newspaper.  (I think I have seen articles from The National featured on Yahoo, but not for a few months.)  But the genuinely independent pro-indy New Media is something we do have to claim responsibility for, and that's where I have major concerns about whether enough is being done.  The obvious difference from 2014 is that we now have a big black hole where Wings' positive contribution used to be.  It may be that if the Supreme Court surprise us all by giving its blessing to a referendum, Stuart will return to full-time blogging of the type he produced eight years ago.  But in the more likely scenario that we move on to a plebiscite election, I have grave fears that Stuart will misuse his influence by concentrating on trying to unseat individual SNP MPs who disagree with him on the trans issue.  I was absolutely astonished that having got exactly what he wanted last year with the creation of the Alba party, he then spent the entire Holyrood election campaign blogging about the trans debate, rather than trying to create a buzz about independence and urging people to grab hold of the opportunity Alba were offering.  Even on polling day itself, his post was devoted to effectively telling his readers to vote for unionist parties in a large number of constituencies where he disapproved of the SNP candidate.  That was in direct contravention of the Alba strategy, which was to advocate an SNP constituency vote everywhere in Scotland.  If Stuart does the same thing at a plebiscite election, Wings will have to all intents and purposes morphed into a unionist website.

So I'd suggest we urgently need some blue-sky thinking about what can fill the gap left by Wings - and we should probably think even bigger than last time, because after all we didn't actually win the 2014 referendum.  My own feeling is that crowdfunded TV or radio channels are a dead end, because they suck up vast resources but end up attracting tiny audiences, if they even get off the ground at all.  It's similarly hard to gain much traction with start-up print publications.  So it's mostly websites we need to be thinking about, and as good as something like CommonSpace was under Ben Wray's editorship, that had too narrow an appeal.  What would be ideal would be a glossy, professional-looking website, with no paywall, packed with new content on a daily basis, and that is capable of bringing in a mass audience, including women, young people and the working-class.  I'd suggest to do that at least 50% of the content would have to be about entertainment, sport, lifestyle, etc, etc, acting as a gateway drug for the remaining content about politics and independence, which of course would be strategically placed to catch people's eye.  

The obvious barrier to achieving this would be a) money, and b) finding writers and other creatives willing and able to produce large amounts of quality non-political content.  But that's the sort of thing we need to start thinking about pretty soon.  And if anyone has some alternative ideas, feel free to leave a comment below.

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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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