Martin Kettle is wrong to suggest the manner in which Truss has come to power makes an early election inevitable

Conservative leadership election, result of final round:

Liz Truss: 81,326 votes (57.4%)

Rishi Sunak: 60,399 votes (42.6%)

I was asked a couple of weeks ago to give a view on Martin Kettle's article claiming that Liz Truss would have to call a snap election because of the allegedly unusual way that she was coming to power.  Now that she's actually in office as Tory leader (although as I write this she's still an hour or two away from becoming Prime Minister), it might be a good time to do that.  I have to say I think Kettle's logic is atrocious.  Basically he's arguing that something truly out of the ordinary is happening because, in the past, any mid-term change of Prime Minister has been decided by the governing party's MPs, or where it's been decided by party members, their choice has happened to coincide with the MPs' wishes.  He thinks that's as it should be in a parliamentary democracy.  But this time, the elected MPs appeared to want Rishi Sunak and the members have chosen Liz Truss - so, supposedly, to have any legitimacy, she'll have to get a mandate from the country at large.

There are a number of problems with this theory:

* There's no clear evidence that Sunak is the choice of Tory MPs.  He won a plurality on every round of MPs' ballots but was always well short of an absolute majority.  Under the old rules where MPs had the only say, the ballots would have continued until one candidate had 50% + 1.  That candidate might have been Sunak or it might not have been.  (James Callaghan, for example, trailed Michael Foot in the first ballot in 1976 but eventually won a majority.)  So nothing has been "overturned" by Tory members because there was no clear decision to overturn.

* A majority of the governing party's MPs categorically does not constitute the will of parliament in a parliamentary democracy.  For example, John Major was elected in 1990 with the votes of 185 Tory MPs - which constituted just 28.5% of the overall House of Commons.  The reason Major could be said to "command the confidence of the House" (a prerequisite for being appointed PM) was not that he finished in first place in an internal Tory ballot, but instead that he had 'losers' consent' from the Tory MPs who didn't vote for him and therefore was able to command an overall Commons majority.  Losers' consent is just as possible in a system which gives party members the final choice - it really just boils down to whether MPs accept the rules and constitution of their own party.

* And, actually, the Tory party has a system which allows MPs to effectively withhold losers' consent even without breaking the rules.  They can submit letters of no confidence in their leader to the chairman of the 1922 Committee at any time.  Presumably, that hasn't happened so far, or the threshold for a no confidence vote hasn't been reached.

* Last but not least, parliament can at any time bring down a sitting PM by a vote of no confidence in the government.  Any failure to do that is the true mechanism by which a Prime Minister secures legitimacy in a parliamentary democracy.  For that reason, Truss will have exactly the same constitutional legitimacy as any of her predecessors.

I think a much better argument for why Truss should be honour-bound to call an early election is the extent to which her plans diverge from the manifesto that the Conservative government was elected on in December 2019.  That's what perhaps does set her out from previous Prime Ministers who have taken office midway through a parliament.

I don't suppose the Scottish Parliament could rush through emergency legislation this morning to criminalise assignations in privately owned castles?

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) September 6, 2022

If Johnson and Truss really believed all this guff about Our Precious Precious Union, they would have seized a golden opportunity to make a final speech/first speech in Aberdeen. Instead they seem to regard their time in Scotland today as a mildly embarrassing necessary evil.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) September 6, 2022

*  *  *

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.

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

Scot Goes Pop Polling Fundraiser 

If you prefer another method, such as Paypal or 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 surprise challenge for Truss on day one: delivering the REAL result of the 2016 Brexit referendum and getting Britain back in the EU

Over the last 36 hours, Team Truss have fundamentally changed our understanding of how constitutional referendums work.  Gone is the outdated concept of "the winner is the side which wins the most votes".  It turns out that instead the proponents of the status quo needn't turn out to vote at all, unless they just happen to fancy a stroll.  If you don't vote, you've in fact voted against change.  Might be news to you, but that's what you've done.

So far, most of the commentary on this startling new rule has focused on the potential impact on any Scottish independence referendum next year.  But in reality, a much more immediate concern is the fact that the result of the 2016 EU referendum has just been automatically reversed.  Here is the new result...

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?  (23rd June 2016)

Remain / Abstain: 62.5%

Leave: 37.5%

So, contrary to our previous erroneous belief, the UK in fact voted by a landslide margin to remain a member of the EU in 2016, and all the tortuous negotiations over withdrawal arrangements since then have just been a very, very silly misunderstanding.  Doh! Doubtless Liz Truss will waste little time in correcting the error and implementing the real result, although it's going to be a bit awkward for her given that a) she'll need Macron's permission to rejoin the EU and she's just insulted him, and b) many of her supporters have been labouring under the misapprehension that her "I accepted the result" comment referred to the previous false assumption that Leave had somehow "won".  But it's just got to be done - people have got to be given what they voted for, even if they didn't actually know they voted, and even if they didn't know how they voted.

*  *  *

When Britain was going through its epic battles between capitalism and socialism, I doubt if anyone realised that what we'd actually end up with was an idiotocracy.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) September 4, 2022

Tomorrow afternoon, unless all the polls, bookies and pundits are completely wrong, Liz Truss will be declared the new leader of the Conservative party.  On Tuesday, much to the horror of the absurd Nicholas Witchell, she will have to travel to Scotland - bloody SCOTLAND - to be appointed Prime Minister by the Queen.

This is obviously a completely ludicrous situation.  We're talking about an individual who is hopelessly unsuited to high office, let alone the highest office in the land.  But if we can bring ourselves to temporarily take this development seriously, there are two interesting implications.  There's been very minimal mention of the fact that Truss will be Britain's third female Prime Minister, which in itself is a psychological breakthrough, because it means that having a woman in the role has been comprehensively normalised and is now deemed barely worthy of comment.  I'm just about old enough to remember Mrs Thatcher bequeathing an all-male Cabinet to John Major, which made the first female PM look like a freakish historical aberration that was very unlikely to be repeated in our lifetimes.  For many years afterwards, when discussion turned to who might be the next leader of the two largest parties, women barely featured as possibilities, or if they did feature it always seemed like a bit of a long shot.  So we've come a long way in a very short space of time.  It must be hoped that from now on parties will always just choose the best leader available, rather than worrying about whether it "should be a woman this time" - although in Labour's case that's extremely unlikely.  They're going to be incredibly embarrassed about the Tories producing three female PMs before Labour have even managed to produce one.

Secondly, it does appear very likely that Truss will be an extremely unpopular leader, both in Scotland and south of the border.  That's obviously good for keeping support for independence high, but it could also lead to complications if the SNP end up using the next Westminster election as a de facto plebiscite.  If Labour appear on the brink of deposing Truss, could some independence supporters have their heads turned by Starmer?

*  *  *

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.

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

Scot Goes Pop Polling Fundraiser 

If you prefer another method, such as Paypal or 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.

Who has the most vital role in the British constitution - the Queen, or YouGov?

I don't pay the Murdoch Levy, so when I wrote my blogpost last night I didn't realise that the Truss cunning plan for making Scottish self-determination illegal comes in two parts.  Not only is there a near-impossible 50% rule for any referendum that is actually held, there's also a 60% rule to prevent a referendum happening in the first place.  There would have to be "evidence" over a long period that 60% of the Scottish public want a referendum before London would "allow" it.

I must say it's a novel principle in an alleged democracy that before the majority of voters get their way, they require an additional 10% just to be allowed to vote in the first place.  But more to the point, how is this "evidence" of 60% support going to be defined in law?  You can't really have a referendum to decide whether or not there should be a referendum, so I can only assume the new legislation will have to make some kind of reference, whether direct or indirect, to polling "evidence" - in other words to numbers produced by private firms such as YouGov and Survation.

I've written before about how polling companies seem to be assuming a de facto constitutional role, but this would take it to a whole new level.  If YouGov are to be given the power to literally determine the destiny of Scotland, how are they to be regulated?  Sleights of hand like the notorious "Kellner Correction", an artificial mechanism by which YouGov lowered the reported Yes vote in their indyref polls due to nothing more than a hunch by the anti-independence Peter Kellner, could no longer be pretended to be simply a private matter for a private firm.  It would affect the lives of us all.  So would there be a state regulator to keep the pollsters in check?  Would the British Polling Council be nationalised and become Ofpoll?

Incidentally, the extreme nature of the Truss plan demonstrates once again that people are missing the point when they complain that the SNP are closing off too many options too quickly as they rush towards a plebiscite election.  The world has moved on since 2012, and not even the most ingenious strategy has any serious prospect of bringing about an agreed referendum.  When you have a government in London that will go to the extreme of retrospectively outlawing any move towards an independence vote that the Scottish Government make, it's reasonable to conclude that the idea that a bit of extra pressure on the Tories would yield a Section 30 order is for the birds.  The reason why a plebiscite election is realistically the only game in town is that it's the one thing that can't be made illegal.

*  *  *

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.

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

Scot Goes Pop Polling Fundraiser 

If you prefer another method, such as Paypal or 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 Truss cunning plan to rig an independence referendum is a sign of weakness, not of strength

About a billion years ago, I recall seeing a TV documentary about the 1979 devolution referendum, in which George Cunningham (weirdly regarded as a 'moderate' Labour MP who later defected to the SDP) was challenged to defend the notorious 40% rule he had devised.  His justification was that the proponents of devolution had repeatedly claimed that there was "overwhelming public support" for a Scottish Assembly, and that it was not unreasonable to put that claim to the test.  Well, testing is one thing, but requiring is quite another.  If it turns out that there is a narrow majority for devolution rather than overwhelming support, you're entitled to bragging rights because you've been proved correct that your opponents overstated their case.  What you're not entitled to do is use that technical satisfaction as an excuse to deny the public what they've voted for - not unless you're some sort of tinpot dictator, of course.

And yet what Kevin Maguire would call the "anti-devo campaign" just about got away with the 40% rule.  Why?  Probably in part because it didn't set the Yes campaign an insurmountable target.  It required a relatively conventional sort of supermajority, rather than something that was totally impossible to achieve, and therefore seemed to some people just about defensible.  On a 60% turnout, a 2-1 Yes majority would have been needed - which is a very tall order, make no mistake.  But some referendums do produce 2-1 majorities, and some referendums produce turnouts a lot higher than 60%.  The result on the main question of the 1997 devolution referendum would, for example, have cleared the 40% rule if it had been in force once again.

By contrast, almost no democrat in this country or beyond these shores will regard the reported Liz Truss plan for a "50% rule" as anything other than an attempt to rig the outcome of an independence referendum.  The Yes campaign could win by a landslide and be declared a loser based on a rule that did not apply in the 2014 indyref, and perhaps more to the point did not apply in the 2016 Brexit referendum - the ultra-narrow result of which Truss claims to be honour-bound to implement.  How it would actually thwart independence in the real world is far from clear.  If I was the SNP leadership, I would just say "fine, we'll go ahead with the referendum without recognising the legitimacy of the ludicrous rule the Tories have just legislated for".  A clear Yes majority might not carry legal weight but it would carry tremendous political and moral weight, which in the long run would count for more.

An analogy would be the process by which communist rule suddenly ended in Poland in 1989.  The communists thought they had been very clever by agreeing to a deal which on paper guaranteed them a majority regardless of the outcome of the election.  Only the upper house and one-third of the lower house was to be contested on a multi-party basis, which should have ensured a minimum of a two-thirds communist majority in the all-important lower house.  But in the end, the sheer momentum generated by Solidarity's success in the seats they were allowed to contest meant that communist allies were queueing up to desert the sinking ship, and within the blink of an eye there was a Solidarity-led government.  In a similar way, a clear Yes majority in an indyref would likely generate sufficient momentum to clear away seemingly insuperable barriers.

In any case, doesn't a 50% rule send a pretty clear message that Truss and co expect more people to vote Yes than No?  It's a tactic born of weakness, not of strength.

*  *  *

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.

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

Scot Goes Pop Polling Fundraiser 

If you prefer another method, such as Paypal or 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.

Low Noon

It's testament to the fact that the 2014 independence referendum was a very, very long time ago, and not last week (as unionists would like us to believe), that when the media suddenly dredged up Stephen Noon's name a few days ago, I temporarily couldn't recall who he is, even though we used to talk about him on an almost daily basis.  The story was, of course, highly disingenuous on a number of counts.  If Mr Noon thinks independence supporters should, in the year 2022, essentially abandon their goal in return for some halfway-house compromise with unionism that would keep Scotland within the United Kingdom, then logically he should have thought exactly the same thing in 2014.  But he didn't.  A change has indeed occurred, but that change has been in the belief system of one man.  It's not a change in the strength of the case for independence - but of course you'd never know that from the media's reporting of his comments.

In fairness to Mr Noon, he was at pains to point out that the compromise he was calling for would pose just as great a challenge for unionists like Anas Sarwar as it would for Nicola Sturgeon.  But, again, that point was somehow evaded by the media reporting, which instead ludicrously implied that a compromise was somehow there waiting for Ms Sturgeon if she would only 'see reason'.

I do have a few criticisms of Mr Noon himself, though.  If there is quite simply no negotiating partner available, it's arguably a form of intellectual dishonesty to criticise a political leader for not seeking a compromise.  The Tories and Labour are currently both doubling down on hardline, no surrender unionism and there appears to be very little recognition of the reality of that situation in Mr Noon's comments.  I'm also troubled by his remarks about Quebec, which seem to suggest that if you encounter irrational anger and/or hatred towards people who legitimately seek democratic self-determination for their nation, your instinct should be to 'empathise' with that anger and hatred, and seek to compromise with it.  No.  What you do is point out to people that their proprietorial arrogance is unsustainable and urge them to reacquaint themselves with the basics of democracy.

It may surprise you to learn that as a matter of principle I don't actually disagree with Mr Noon's belief that a grand compromise in Scotland would be desirable.  Imagine if we were offered genuine Devo Max, meaning the devolution of everything apart from foreign affairs and defence, in return for accepting there would be no further constitutional change for a prolonged period - say ten or fifteen years.  Such a package would clearly be inferior to full independence, because we would still be lumbered with Trident and we could still be dragged into London's illegal wars.  But on a "bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" basis, it would make tactical sense to accept the offer.  After ten or fifteen years of this country governing itself, we'd be pushing at an open door in suggesting to the electorate that we should control our own foreign and defence policy too.

But that offer of compromise does not and will not exist, so there's no point wasting a moment even thinking about it.  Full independence is the only game in town, so let's get on with winning 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.

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

Scot Goes Pop Polling Fundraiser 

If you prefer another method, such as Paypal or 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.

No, support for independence among women has not "fallen 17% over the last few years" - it's actually increased markedly

Keep in mind that support for independence amongst women has fallen 17% over the last few years. Due to the direction the SNP have taken on women’s sex based rights.

— Mel 🇪🇺 (@meljomur) August 29, 2022

A few weeks ago on Twitter, I was on the receiving end of what I think can reasonably be described as a mini-pile-on, simply because I was pointing out a self-evident truth: that it would be catastrophic to split the pro-independence vote in a plebiscite election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system. The bottom line, I think, is that there is a small but vocal group of people who are emotionally wedded to the idea of taking on the SNP about the gender identity issue at the next general election regardless of circumstances, and who now regard that battle as more important than independence, at least in the short-to-medium term.  To justify going ahead with a vote-splitting exercise that any serious person can see would significantly lessen the chances of success in a plebiscite election, they're working backwards to come up with reasons for supposedly believing that it's possible to have our cake and eat it, ie. that vote-splitting would somehow help the independence cause.  And chief among those reasons is that there are purportedly huge numbers of female voters out there (the implication is tens of thousands or possibly even hundreds of thousands) who are so angry about gender self-ID that they would never vote for SNP candidates in a plebiscite election, but might vote for another pro-independence party with gender critical views.  Thus, the suggestion is, the total vote for independence would markedly increase if pro-independence parties stood against each other.  (Incidentally, this approach might well cost the gender critical SNP MP Joanna Cherry her seat, because presumably she'd have a pro-self-ID Yes candidate splitting her vote in a constituency that in the past has been a very tight marginal.  That's an odd risk to take if you regard women's sex-based rights as the most important issue.)

To support the 'vote-splitting is good' interpretation, a dodgy-as-hell and weirdly specific claim was repeatedly made during the pile-on: namely that support for independence among women has fallen by 17% over the last few years, allegedly due to the gender identity issue.  And as you can see from the tweet at the top of the blogpost, that claim has been given yet another outing today.  It really ought to be blindingly obvious to everyone that it's utterly nonsensical, for the following reasons:

* There was a substantial gender gap in the first independence referendum, with men significantly more likely to vote Yes than women.  The failure of the Yes campaign to convince women in the same numbers as men is one of the principal reasons that Scotland is not already an independent country.  The "17% drop" claim invites us to believe that a gender gap that was already big has grown astronomically wider - which makes no sense in the context of a Yes vote that is actually now higher than it was in 2014.

* The Scot Goes Pop poll on the GRA issue last autumn found that self-ID was very unpopular among women, but also found that it was even more unpopular among men.  If it was really true that self-ID was causing support for independence to plummet among women, it therefore ought to be having the same or an even bigger effect on male support for indy.  Yet the "17% drop" claim instead invites us to believe that a fall in Yes support among women has somehow been offset by a massive increase in Yes support among men - because there would be no other way to explain the overall Yes vote holding up so well.

* If self-ID is impacting female support for independence, it ought to be having a similar or even bigger impact on female support for the SNP - because, after all, it's the SNP that is introducing self-ID, and that's happening under devolution, not independence.  And yet the SNP easily won last year's Holyrood election with a slight increase in their number of seats.

The reality is that the public resoundingly oppose gender self-ID, but by and large that's not affecting their voting choices - or not yet, anyway.  And, let's face it, if that wasn't the case, the SNP leadership wouldn't be risking a change in the law.  They may have fallen hopelessly under the spell of the new Stonewall ideology, but above all else they care about power, and they would be absolutely ruthless about ditching self-ID if their internal polling and/or focus groups showed that it could cost them the next election.  However, there are people who are clearly caught in a Twitter bubble and don't find the notion of self-ID causing a 17% drop in Yes support among women inherently implausible.  So let's knock it firmly on the head with some hard polling numbers.  

It's pretty much impossible to find women-only figures for every single independence poll that has been conducted since the first indyref, because they only appear in the detailed data tables, which are often hard to locate.  However, Panelbase are probably the most active pollster in Scotland and appear to have a fairly intact archive of datasets.  I've looked at three distinct periods of Panelbase polls - the last few months, five years ago (because sometimes the 17% claim specifically references "over the last five years"), and the period immediately after the indyref.  To my surprise, I found that Panelbase didn't conduct their first post-indyref poll using the standard independence question until April 2015.  (There was a Wings poll much earlier than that which attracted a lot of attention because it showed a Yes lead, but the question was non-standard.)

How women would vote in response to the question "Should Scotland be an independent country?"

April 2015: 

Yes 42.3%
No 57.7%

June/July 2015:

Yes 44.2%

No 55.8%

September 2015:

Yes 44.4%

No 55.6%

AVERAGE OF FIRST THREE POST-INDYREF PANELBASE POLLS:

Yes 43.6%

No 56.4%

****

May 2017:

Yes 40.8%

No 59.2%

June 2017:

Yes 41.2%

No 58.8%

August/September 2017:

Yes 39.0%

No 61.0%

AVERAGE OF THREE MID-2017 PANELBASE POLLS:

Yes 40.3%

No 59.7%

****

April 2022:

Yes 46.0%

No 54.0%

June/July 2022:

Yes 49.1%

No 50.9%

August 2022:

Yes 47.7%

No 52.3%

AVERAGE OF THREE MOST RECENT PANELBASE POLLS:

Yes 47.6%

No 52.4%

So the conclusion is unmistakeable - not only is the "17% drop" claim untrue, it's the polar opposite of the truth.  Support for independence among women is currently much higher than it was five years ago, and significantly higher than it was in the post-indyref period.  I suspect this will come as a disappointment to some people, but it really shouldn't - it's a good news story that actually gives us a decent chance of winning a mandate for independence next year or the year after.  And that (as opposed to spending all our time dreaming up imaginary reasons for thinking we're doomed to failure) is supposed to be our objective.

However strongly feelings are running on the gender identity issue (and I share those feelings, remember), I'd urge everyone to make their case based on real facts rather than Trump-style invented facts that pander to what people would like to be true or think ought to be true.  

*  *  *

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.

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

Scot Goes Pop Polling Fundraiser 

If you prefer another method, such as Paypal or 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 people of Scotland SUPPORT using the next general election as a de facto independence referendum, reveals sensational new Ipsos poll - as Daily Record cynically misrepresent the numbers

My eye was caught earlier by a tweet from the rabidly pro-London-rule Paul Hutcheon, Political Editor of the ever-contemptible Daily Record.  He claimed that an "independence poll" had found that "less than 40%" of the public support Nicola Sturgeon's plan of a plebiscite election in the event that the Supreme Court rules that the Scottish Parliament cannot unilaterally hold a referendum.  This of course is intended to give the impression that "more than 60%" oppose a plebiscite election - but they don't.  The poll actually shows that 38% of the public do not agree that a majority for pro-independence parties at the general election would constitute a legitimate mandate for independence, compared with 39% who do agree.  The remainder of the sample said they didn't know or had no strong views.

Or, to put it another way, a plurality of the Scottish public, and a clear majority with Don't Knows stripped out, support the principle of a plebiscite election - the total opposite of the impression given by the piece in the Record.  To be sure, it's a tight result, but if it had gone the other way it seems phenomenally improbable that the Record would have been saying "less than 40% oppose Nicola Sturgeon's plan, in staggering blow to unionist parties".  It would simply have been reported that a plurality was opposed.

We've actually had a succession of good news stories from the polls recently.  The Ipsos poll shows that the public feel that a positive result from either a plebiscite election or a referendum held without Westminster's permission would constitute a mandate for independence.  The Panelbase poll found that respondents want a referendum within the next five years, and think the decision should be made by the Scottish Government, not the UK Government.

You have to wonder where the Record is heading under the reckless direction of Hutcheon.  In spite of the notoriety of The Vow back in 2014, they were very careful not to explicitly back a No vote because they knew that would alienate a massive proportion of their own readers.  If Hutcheon thinks for some reason he's on firmer ground in adopting an outright anti-independence posture this time, he's catastrophically "misreading the room", to use one of his own favourite phrases.

Incidentally, I see that Ipsos-Mori have now been rebranded as Ipsos UK, which is a bit of a shame given the long history of the Mori brand in British political polling.  But on the plus side, at least this is the end of the road for the tiresome troll who for years has ranted at me every time I decline to put the word Mori in capitals. 

*  *  *

Alba NEC nominations update: A huge thanks to all the Alba members who have got in touch over the last few days to nominate me for the upcoming election to the party's NEC.  I was very pleasantly surprised by the numbers - there was more than double the ten nominations required.  I submitted my nomination form earlier today, so we'll see what happens.  

*  *  *

SNP leadership: "Our vermin supporters must stop attacking BBC journalism, which is the envy of the world and beyond reproach, and...and...and...we wholly agree with Emily Maitlis that the BBC are in collusion with the Tory party."

Seems OK when an establishment figure says it.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) August 25, 2022

*  *  *

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 (the simplest and quickest method) - 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.

Nominations for Alba NEC election

This is a message for fellow members of the Alba party.  As you probably know, all of the elected positions within the party - leader, depute leader, office bearers and ordinary members of the National Executive Committee - will come up for re-election shortly.  I was lucky enough to be elected as one of the eight ordinary NEC members last year, and I'm going to attempt to stand for the NEC again, but to do that I'll need to clear the hurdle of the nominations process.  In order to make the ballot paper, I'll need one of the following -

A nomination from a LACU at a properly constituted meeting

OR

Nominations from ten party members

I can't really predict whether I have any chance of being nominated by a LACU, and to the best of my knowledge there's no imminently planned meeting of my own local LACU (unless I've accidentally fallen off the North Lanarkshire mailing list or something - it's all gone very quiet on that front recently!), so with the deadline being quite tight I'm going to see if there are ten individual members willing to nominate me directly.  The procedure is different from last year, because I have to fill in a form with a list of the members (or the LACU) nominating me.  

So if you're an Alba member and you'd like to nominate me, the way to do it is to contact me directly.  My contact email address is:  icehouse.250@gmail.com

As I said at this time last year, whatever you may think about me, there's no way anyone could ever accuse me of being an unknown quantity - my views have all been well-rehearsed in public and there'll be no surprises further down the line.  If you'd like those views to at least be part of the choice on offer to Alba members at the conference in October, I'd be really gratefully for a nomination.  And rest assured that if I don't hit the magic number quickly, I'll keep plugging away until the deadline!

IN LIZ WE TRUSS: Stunning new Panelbase poll shows Scotland will be on course for independence as soon as Liz is Leader

Perhaps nothing speaks volumes about the SNP's failure to start a suitably intensive campaign for a referendum / plebiscite election quite like the recent dearth of independence polling.  There's been a wait of the best part of two months since the famous Panelbase poll that unexpectedly showed Yes back in the lead.  OK, it's summer, but clearly the media don't think anything of note is happening - although in fairness they'd probably be pretending nothing was happening anyway, because they're largely unionists and are perfectly capable of weaving their own fictional reality.

Many thanks to Marcia for alerting me to the fact that the drought has finally been broken - and, once again, it's a Panelbase poll.  On the face it, the headline numbers look mildly disappointing, because the modest Yes lead has been replaced by a modest No lead.  However, you have to bear in mind that the Yes lead was very unusual by recent Panelbase standards, and the new Yes figure is thus still on the high side, relatively speaking.  The changes are also small, within the margin of error, and continue to leave us with a 'statistical tie'.

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

Yes 49% (-2)

No 51% (+2)

Curiously, the headlines generated from this poll have been less about the headline numbers, and more about the hypothetical numbers in the highly likely event that Liz Truss becomes Prime Minister next month.  Yes would supposedly move into a 52-48 lead in that scenario.  As is always pointed out, results from hypothetical questions have very little credibility - we've seen that in the past with results predicting there would be a decisive swing to Yes if Brexit occurred, or if a particularly Hard Brexit occurred, or if Boris Johnson became Prime Minister.  The problem is that by asking how people would vote in an indyref, and then asking how they would vote in an indyref if Truss is PM, you're drawing attention to the Truss Factor and implying it's the sort of thing that could change people's votes, which might in itself be enough to nudge certain respondents in a particular direction.  It's worth noting that the hypothetical question about Sunak being PM also shows a lower No vote - which makes no sense, because voters should already be factoring in the certainty that either Truss or Sunak will shortly be in Number 10.

Nevertheless, the poll is still extremely valuable because it helpfully feeds the narrative that a Truss premiership will be a gift for the pro-independence campaign (as indeed it probably will be in the long run).

*  *  *

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 (the simplest and quickest method) - 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.

Edinburgh Fringe mini-reviews: A War of Two Halves and Guide to Surviving Masculinist Territory

Slightly caught in a time-warp from last year, I find myself saying again: for one night only, here is the return of a much-missed-by-pretty-much-nobody Scot Goes Pop feature from the past - yes, it's the Edinburgh Fringe mini-reviews!  And it really is for one night only, because I live with a vulnerable person and my former routine of going to the Fringe six or seven times over the course of August is very much on hold for the time being.  Last year I decided to go in just once and I managed to find a couple of shows that were completely outdoors (albeit one of them was cancelled at the very last moment).  So I thought I'd be able to do the same thing again this time - I assumed with the Fringe back to a full programme it wouldn't be beyond the wit of man to find at least a handful of shows that were outside.

How naive of me.  The pandemic "is over", don't-cha-know, everything is "back to normal".  I cast the net pretty wide, I searched for drama, dance, musicals, physical theatre, etc, etc, but after dredging through eighty-odd pages of results, I literally found just two shows that I was confident were fully outdoors.  One of those was Sweet FA, which was the only show I actually managed to see last year (it's a play about women's football during and after the First World War), and the other was an "audio walk" through the streets of Edinburgh as you listen to a pre-recording of a feminist talking about the incel movement, which didn't sound exactly like my cup of tea.  And as good as Sweet FA is, I couldn't quite convince myself that a repeat performance was what I was looking for if I was only going to Edinburgh once.

I almost started to wonder if I should abandon the idea of booking anything and just wander around watching the street theatre instead - but I realised the day would end up a bit too heavily-weighted towards escapology and fire-juggling.  So I decided to just plump for the best fit I could find.

A WAR OF TWO HALVES (Tynecastle Park)

Rating: 5 stars (*****)

This is Sweet FA's sister show, but is staged differently because there isn't a fixed outdoor stage - instead you're led around various spots within Tynecastle.  I formed the impression from what I read that the bulk of it would be outdoors, and although I was right about that, it was the 25% that's indoors that was the absolute killer.  About one-third of the way through, there's a prolonged sequence in the Hearts dressing room in which the cast of ten are shouting and screaming very close to the audience in an extremely confined space - it's just about the highest risk environment you can possibly imagine from a Covid point of view, and if I'd known it was going to be like that, I wouldn't have gone.  I don't blame the production, because there was nothing inaccurate in the description I read, but I do blame the Fringe centrally for not arming people with enough information.  When you search for shows on the website, you can find out how accessible they are, whether you're likely to find them offensive, exactly how many miles away from you they are, and what the babes-in-arms policy is.  But the one thing you're left totally in the dark about, right in the middle of an ongoing pandemic, is the degree of risk that you'll catch a serious virus while you're at the venue.  The implied message seems to be: the Fringe is only for people who don't care about avoiding Covid, or to put it another way, stop caring about avoiding Covid if you want to come to the Fringe.  In the end I just had to trust in my N95 mask (needless to say I was the only person in the audience wearing a mask indoors), and over a week later, touch wood, it looks like I might have got away with it.

The play itself is about the Hearts team that was on course to win the league at the outbreak of the First World War, but ended up losing out to Celtic after the team joined the army and started to pay the price of military training.  In a far crueller twist, several of the players went on to die together at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.  There isn't an explicit anti-war message in the script, but you're shown the massive external pressure the team were under to join up, from the military, from the press, and from young women delivering white feathers.  And then you're left in little doubt that the players' sacrifice was essentially futile, because it was obvious before the scheduled advance that there was no realistic prospect of success.  Since the purpose of pressuring the team into fighting in the war was to coax Hearts supporters into following their idols' example, you're left wondering how many of those supporters ended up having their lives needlessly thrown away too.

It's an excellent production, although apart from the safety aspect the one thing that bugged me was the anachronism of using what appeared to be radio commentaries to tell the story of the football season in shorthand.  As is being well and truly shoved down our throats, this is the centenary year of the BBC, and although there were amateur radio stations prior to 1922, it seems pretty unlikely that there was such professional-sounding football commentary on the radio as early as 1914.  But I suppose you just have to suspend disbelief.

GUIDE TO SURVIVING MASCULINIST TERRIRORY (starts at Summerhall Courtyard)

Rating: 4 stars (****)

After a bit of reflection, I decided there was actually something to be said for making a virtue out of necessity by going to one of the extremely unorthodox Fringe productions that I read about every year but wouldn't normally take a punt on.  My main misgiving about this was not actually the subject-matter, but instead that the pre-recorded nature of the monologue about incels meant that I wouldn't even be spending my money on seeing a live production.  However, you're led through the streets by a lone woman, and she stresses before the start that "it only works" if you keep a bit of distance from her, so presumably the visual effect of that is intentional - meaning there's a small element of live performance, albeit of a very basic type.  But what really counterbalances the non-live audio is the very high level of individual interaction with the audience, more so than I've ever experienced at any other Fringe show.  Our guide spoke to most of us individually before the start, and I'm pretty sure she sought every single one of us out after the end.  I was a bit startled when she approached me and asked what I had thought about the way she paced the walk, and also how I had found out about the show.  I said to her: "I know this will sound ridiculous, but I wanted to see something that was mostly outside, I live with a vulnerable person and I didn't want to be stuck inside for two hours".  She said "yes of course!" but then apologised for the fact that she couldn't give me a light, funny show.  I told her that wasn't what I was looking for (and it wasn't), but as a group of Swiss feminists seemed to be behind the production, I think I was just relieved to be able to offer a plausible reason for turning up that had nothing to do with a keen interest in the subject of incels.

The other thing that considerably enhanced the experience was that, just by chance, the world's most enthusiastic audience member was there and talked excitably to our guide in both English and fluent French about how much he was looking forward to the production and how he thought more Fringe shows should try something daring and different.  She warned him that the audio was very dark, but he said "that's great, I like to be challenged!"  When the walk started, he turned to me with a huge grin and said "here we go!" as if we were setting off on a reindeer ride in Lapland.  I did wonder if his attitude might have changed by the end - but not a bit of it.  He said it had been amazing, that the walk had taken him close to where he lived and that he would never see those streets in the same way again.  (Possibly that was overstating the case just slightly.)

I was curious about the back-story of the production, because in spite of the Swiss origin of it, the audio is performed by a Scottish actress, and the script was very obviously written by a native English speaker.  It was presumably an adaptation of the French language original, but even so, it must have taken quite a bit of organising.  Before going, I read a short review in the Guardian, and the main misgiving mentioned was that the incel movement is small in number and thus is not really the chief explanation for women feeling unsafe when they walk the streets alone.  Although it's haunting to observe a lone woman while listening to an account of an extreme misogynist ideology, the fixation of the character delivering the monologue can only be explained as symbolic rather than a concern about something that is particularly likely to affect her directly.

The final flourish at the end of the walk is that you're led back into Summerhall (the room was large and well-ventilated so I can't complain too much) and given a little gift to take home.  I suppose this falls into the category of "spoilers" but suffice to say that part of the gift I received was edible and in a rather startling shape.  I'll be charitable and assume that it's an example of offbeat Swiss humour, because the alternative explanation would be a touch of 'revenge misandry'.

Probably part of the reason I've given the show a high rating is its novelty - if there were lots of audio walks in the Fringe, I've no idea if this would stand out as one of the best.  But it was certainly a memorable experience.  Because it was an exceptionally hot day, I was a bit worried beforehand that I was getting very tired, so in order to be ready for an hour's walk I went to the Meadows with a sandwich and forced myself to just lie there for a good forty minutes.  The irony was that the walk eventually took me back to almost exactly the same spot in the Meadows, where every single person in the audience proceeded to have a lie down!

And just a word about Summerhall: I'd only been there twice before, and one of those times was to attend a presentation by John McTernan.  So, let's face it, the only way was up.