McVitie: It might have been an internecine feud
Taggart: Aye, that or a fight among themselves
(Taggart: Death Call, 1986)
Weird times indeed, and Covid-19 is just part of it. So now it looks like Alex Salmond is determined to live up to the Stuarts' motto, Nemo Me Impune Lacessit, which translates more or less to Don't Fuck With Me Or Else... And we're told to just wait for Big Eck's Book Of Revelations, which rumour says will be something like invoking Den'Sha on anyone who, ye ken, fucked with him. Book hits the shelves, shitload of shit hits the fannies. Now let's just expect Big Eck will be wise enough not to trigger an all-out SNP civil war, as these sort of fights generally don't end well for anyone. Interestingly the fault lines within the SNP, and the root of all their current woes, basically overlap: Eckites vs Nicolistas, TERF vs Woke, New Fundamentalists vs Gradualists. You name it, you got it. Let's just hope now that some modicum of sanity will prevail on both sides of the Great Divide, and that the selection of Holyrood candidates will not turn into a massive cats-in-a-bar-brawl. We already have one in Edinburgh Central and we definitely don't need others, especially in the SNP's open seats and in the current Labour-held seats that are ready to fall. A truce is the price for victory.
If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of you enemies will float by
(Sun Tzu and Gil Grissom, CSI: Homebodies, 2003)
© Anonymous, 1745 or aboot
No invader can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever
There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom
Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand
(Ambassador G'Kar, Babylon 5: The Long Twilight Struggle, 2259)
Few new IndyRef2 polls lately, but they all say the same thing. The good news is that we have reached a plateau for some time now, with Yes and No statistically tied. The bad news is that we have reached a plateau for some time now, with Yes and No statistically tied. Whatever each camp says or does it's No 50.5% / Yes 49.5% and stuck there. Of course Kenny Farquharson's prophecy that Covid-19 would hurt Independence because the English government would handle it so well has fallen flat on its face in a pool of chemical waste. But day after day of gloomy news means the public have no reason to be overly rejoiced with the Scottish Government's response here either, no matter how consistent and efficient press briefings made it sound in the early stages. Then you can't dismiss the idea that the Calderwood fiasco, which is much more than just a PR disaster, will also shake some 'soft Yes' voters. Because even unrelated events can influence the answer to a straight Yes-Or-No question, just ask anyone who ever held an unlosable referendum and flunked it. Anyway here's what the trend of IndyRef2 polling over the last five years and some says: better now than ever but still not good enough.
The most recent polls totally point in that direction with one tie, two No victories and two Yes victories in 2020 polling. Now the Scottish Government and the SNP must really up their game as their Plan A is only bound to fail again and again. In this scenario there is only ONE No vote that matters: the one from Number Ten. And don't even think that would change in the unlikely event Keir Starmer ever becomes Prime Minister, as he and his sidekick Ian Murray now have the magic word that will allow them to paint the Yes Movement as doctrinaire naysayers: federalism. Don't even try to argue that it would never work in an England-dominated United Kingdom, they just won't listen. Remember this is the party that allowed the first devolution referendum to be deliberately sabotaged from their own ranks, and then passed only a weak devolution settlement as distant from federalism as can be. So it's definitely time to switch to Plan B, the Cherry option, which would certainly already have been endorsed by the First Minister if it did not come from the Eckite-TERF corner of the field. Fortunately the SNP will have plenty of time to refine their strategy, as there is a reality that I find self-evident while many others don't: IndyRef2 won't happen until 2022 no matter what path the Scottish Government chooses. And that also gives the SNP all the time they need to hone their campaign soundbites and remember that managerial proficiency might win a Scottish Parliament election, but it won't win independence. Just sayin'
We are star stuff, we are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out
And, as we have learned, sometimes the universe requires a change of perspective
It broke itself into pieces to examine every aspect of its being
We are the universe trying to understand itself
(Satai Delenn, Babylon 5: A Distant Star, 2259)
© James MacLean, 1970
It's not about the size of the dog in the fight
It's about the size of the fight in the dog
(Officer Andy Renko, Hill Street Blues: El Capitan, 1985)
We haven't had a real general election poll for Scotland since 11 December on Election's Eve, which doesn't mean we don't have clues on how Scotland would vote now. There have been 22 GB-wide polls since the December election, 20 of them with subsamples for Scotland totalling 2,676 respondents. Even if subsamples are less reliable than real polls and subject to random variation, this batch nevertheless paints a rather constant picture of Scottish public opinion. We also have three recent Holyrood polls and, even if it's a different election with different voting patterns, they also shed an interesting light on Scotland's current state of mind. Below are my seat projections based on what would happen if Westminster voting intentions duplicated current Holyrood constituency voting intentions (more on this below), which might be irrelevant, or might not. Just note that the Scotland subsample of the last general election poll from Opinium would deliver the same seat projection as the Holyrood polls. Then we have what the subsamples of GB-wide polls predict, month by month and globally. And it's only getting better for the SNP as time goes by. Make sure you never mention that to Jackson Carlaw, as it is his strongly held belief that Covid-19, and the masterful way the English Government handles it, hurts the case for Independence. Just let Jackson be a good Tory, the kind that would never let facts get in the way of a good soundbite. Or would he?
Of course nothing is carved in stone and we definitely need a full Scottish poll soon. Though it is already safe to predict that the main battleground will be the closest Con-SNP marginals (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, Moray, Dumfries and Galloway) and the Conservatives might even have a shot at taking back Gordon. Then the major casualties would be the Liberal Democrats with their predicted vote share plummeting in Scotland just as polls say it would all over Great Britain. This is obviously the direct backlash of Brexit falling off the radars for now, and center-right Europhiles switching back to the Conservatives to show unquestioning support for The Precious Union. Which would only marginally help the Conservatives in Scotland, but wreak havoc on the LibDems. Jamie Stone, Christine Jardine and Wendy Chamberlain are definitely toast, and even Alistair Carmichael could be endangered, just as he was in 2015 when he held his seat by just 817 votes. But let's just be Curticely cautious here, as once again the next general election in Scotland might not be the Conservatives' to win, but the SNP's to lose. Just remember 2017.
One more bud to blossom and then you'll sing
One more fear to sting, love is what the victors bring
(Ichabod Crane, Sleepy Hollow: Dead Men Tell No Tales, 2015)
© Martin Gillespie, 2020
Buy and donate on Skerryvore's website
If you do the right thing for the wrong reasons
The work becomes corrupted, impure and ultimately self-destructive
We need the right people in the right place at the right time
(Lennier, Babylon 5: Comes The Inquisitor, 2259)
Now we also have the third Holyrood poll of 2020, conducted by Panelbase on 24-26 March. That is more than three weeks after the first case of Covid-19 was reported in Scotland and 11-13 days after the first reported deaths. So if there is any early Covid-19 effect influencing voting intentions, it was surely there already. There is also no Salmond Effect visible here after the verdict, and the next poll will tell us is there's any Calderwood Effect after the well-publicized fiasco. The new poll we have now is interesting because Panelbase were the least SNP-friendly pollster in 2018 and 2019, but their two 2020 polls have taken a very different direction. Since their methodology has not changed, we can safely assume that voting intentions have quite convincingly moved in the SNP's direction. And again this last poll does not show the Unionist vote coalescing around the New Great Leader Jackson Carlaw, but just the Holyrood Conservative vote aligning with their Westminster vote. The same trends are seen here as in Westminster polling. First the end of the Brexit Effect with right-wing Europhiles switching back from the LibDems to the Conservatives. Second a steady flow of pro-independence left-wingers switching from Labour to the SNP. On 13-14% Labour would have their worst performance outside European Parliament elections since the First World War while the SNP's voting intentions on the constituencies would be their best result ever in any election. So here are the voting intentions and my seat projection:
Early projections based on the rounded voting intentions in the press release delivered 'only' 70 SNP seats and 3 Greens. Then I got the complete crosstabs from Panelbase, that allow vote shares to be recalculated with decimal places and the headcount rose to 71 SNP and 4 Green seats. What a difference a decimal place makes..... And it only shows how close some of the list seats would be. Compared to the earlier headline-based projection, the Conservatives would lose one list seat to the SNP in North East, and another to the Greens in Mid and Fife. The reassessed allocation of list seats by region includes some interesting effects of AMS's quirks. Mostly that the SNP's voting intentions are high enough to get them list seats even in regions where they already bag all or almost all constituencies. In the constituencies the SNP would unseat all three remaining Labour MSPs though all three would probably hold on to a list seat. Which would be easier for Daniel Johnson and Iain Gray as both sitting Labour list MSPs in Lothian are standing down. Will be just as easy for Jackie Baillie in the West as two-term Labour list MSP Mary Fee has indicated she's standing down too. So we'll miss the fun of seeing Labour's Depute Leader out of Holyrood and a job. The SNP would also kick out Alex Cole-Hamilton in Edinburgh, which would be mechanically compensated by the LibDems gaining one list seat in Lothian, so all Alex has to do is to also top the list.
Of course, and as I pointed out in my previous article about future Scottish elections, every new poll is ground to reassess tactical voting. Again Both Votes Or Not Both Votes for the SNP. The projection of this poll's voting intentions by region shows that the seventh list seat could be a close call between the SNP and the Conservatives in Central, Glasgow, North East, South and West, with the Conservatives bagging only the West Scotland Seventh by a projected 350 votes. Greens would not even be truly competitive for any of these seventh seats. So it definitely makes sense to stay with an SNP list vote in all regions where the SNP would bag the seventh seat by a narrow margin, and switch it from the Greens to the SNP in West to secure an additional pro-Indy seat. Even in Lothian the Greens would come third behind the LibDems and Conservatives for the seventh seat and miss it by nearly 4,000 votes, so there is really no chance that even a massive switch of SNP voters would save their second seat there. The only region where shifting the list vote from the SNP to the Greens makes sense is Mid and Fife, where the SNP would not be competitive for a list seat and the Greens would win theirs by an uncomfortably close margin of only about 250 votes. Obviously this might change again after the next poll, especially if list voting intentions are less favourable for the SNP and better for the Greens. Finally here is the full projected breakdown of seats by region:
Just bear in mind that this poll is the best for the SNP since October 2016 and the second best since the last election, actually among the top five best since the Scottish Parliament was re-established and much better than any polling prior to the so far most exceptional 2011 election. Future ones might not be so good, especially if the election is postponed. Which looks like just a distant prospect right now, but you never know... It ain't over till it's over, so stay tuned for further updates and upsets
Adventurers strike at the heart of the bear
But first seek the entrance to its lair
Yesterday returneth not
Today is thine, misuse it not
Tomorrow perchance cometh not
(Taggart: Flesh And Blood, 1989)
© Colin Maxwell, 2013
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