A Scottish Play Special: Waiting For Big Eck

© Alec Dalglish, 2012

Nobody has a problem with the Celtic race

Probably because it’s a myth, there is no such thing as a Celt

Don’t idealize the Scots

They were the most brutal and enthusiastic of empire-builders

Some of them are still at it

(Harry Pearce, Spooks: The School, 2007)

Scottish polls are wild beasts and full of surprises indeed. The last time I wrote about future Scottish elections, the most recent polls seemed to vindicate my view that the situation had become less predictable and more risky. Back then Yes to Independence was stuck in the low-to-mid 50s, the SNP lost ground in Holyrood polling so that an outright SNP-only majority had become less likely, Scottish Labour no longer looked as dead as earlier polls suggested and an upset rebirth could even propel them back to second party status again. Two months and eight polls later we have quite the same picture, except on one very specific and limited point. But we'll burn that bridge when we come to it, won't we? The trend of IndyRef polling since that fateful day in 2014 is highly encouraging. Soon it's gonna be like the BBC's 2015 Election night all over again, and we'll blow the fucking swingometer out of its axis. But today, just like a month ago and just like a year ago, the only No vote that matters is Boris Johnson's, unless courts find a legally super-solid way to hold a second referendum without a Section 30 Order, which I still think has about even odds of happening, and the local Tories would still say it doesn't count. But Bozo's pigheaded denial of Scotland's real state of mind can't last for very long when faced with overwhelming evidence that Yes is now firmly the default option. Boris should also remember what happened to Margaret Thatcher just days after she delivered her infamous 'No! No! No!' speech in Commons. But for now let's just have a look at the evolution of IndyRef voting intentions, up to and including the very last Survation poll that was conducted from 4 to 9 December, but released only on Monday, probably so they could refine the announcement on their site. Data points reflect the 'headline result' once undecideds and non-voters have been removed.

A lot of the support for Independence is rooted in deep distrust in the UK Government, which is not a specifically Scottish trait. It's also quite widespread in Wales and London's Labourgravia, and now also in many areas in the North of England, who have some buyer's remorse over repainting the Red Wall blue. Which can only make you wonder which kind of legitimacy the UK Government really has when their power base is restricted to the Midlands and the rural South. Interestingly this distrust also extends to Sly Keir's New New Labour in some counties of the Realm, who are following in Scotland's footsteps. So not only do we have a stronger movement for Welsh Independence, but we also have the brand new Northern Independence Party, who are trying to attract disgruntled Labour voters by making a left-wing working class case for an Independent North, free of Westminster's London-centric rule. Not that they can be expected to succeed, but it's still fun to watch while New New Labour are still struggling with putting some flesh on their 'progressive federalism' that nobody really wants or understands. Meanwhile Boris Johnson has again established himself as the Yes Camp's main asset with his remarks about devolution that drew flak even from within his own party. It's definitely a sign of the times when even The Guardian realise that arch-unionism does not work and Severin Carrell ends up relaying Nicola Sturgeon's tweets and the SNP's talking points about Johnson. But Scotland is definitely very fortunate to have John Curtice and other entitled luminaries enlightening us about something even Oor Doogie Ross-For-Moray has known for the last six months, aren't we? For now let's just have a closer look at the most recent IndyRef polling, what the weighted average of the two most recent polls says, both of them conducted within the last month.

Even if this instant snapshot is not entirely satisfactory, besides and beyond the redundant phrasing, the Yes camp will find several reasons to be cheerful in the full data tables for the last Scottish survey conducted by Ipsos MORI, the one that had the best Yes result in six weeks. Part one is that the raw data, before any weighting, have Yes ahead 51% to 41% with 8% undecided. Right now, only seven of the last sixteen polls predict an outright majority for Yes at that stage. Part two is that the result becomes 53% Yes to 41% No with 6% undecided when it is weighted by likelihood to vote. Meaning that there is a stronger motivation to get the fuck oot of the couch to vote on the Yes side, something that was not a foregone conclusion in older polls, but should be easy to encourage and build on with the proper campaigning. Part three (and I bet you didn't see THAT video coming) is that the new voters, those who weren't there in September 2014, are predicted to go for Yes 66% to 26% with 8% undecided. That's how we get to the published headline result with undecideds discarded: Yes winning 56-44 overall, with the new voters spectacularly choosing Yes 72-28. So it's safe to guess that every passing week, bringing more and more new voters into the fold, increases the Yes vote. To sum it up, I wouldn't mind waiting just a little bit longer if that means a stronger and safer Yes victory. Would you?

I don’t know that dreams are bad

Just the people who promise to make them come true

(Calleigh Duquesne, CSI Miami: Darkroom, 2006)

© Billy Sherwood, Chris Squire, 1997

Computer models are no different from fashion models

Seductive, unreliable, easily corrupted

And they lead sensible people to make fools of themselves

(Jim Hacker, Yes, Prime Minister: The Poisoned Chalice, 2013)

Some say Scottish polls for the next general election are irrelevant because, ye ken, we will of course be an independent country by then. Don't be so sure of that, lads. First I certainly won't rule out another snap election happening before 2024. Boris Johnson has already extended feelers about repealing the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, or even the possibility to call a general election without a Commons vote, just as if he already plans just that. A sure sign that something is in the air would be Boris fast-tracking the now approved 2023 Boundary Review, which would gerrymander whole swathes of UK even more than they already are, under the pretext of a fair representation of all regions across England. Then Boris might still be deposed by his own backbenchers in a replay of the 1990 coup against Margaret Thatcher, with the new First Minister of England seeking a personal mandate through a snap election. Finally, and perhaps more conclusively, the master plan in 2014 provided for full Independence only 18 months after a successful referendum. So there is still the prospect of some sort of 'rump election' happening in 2024, pretty much on the same pattern as the unnecessary and costly European Parliament election of 2019, with Scottish MPs sitting only for the time needed to wrap up the divorce settlement. So here is the snapshot I get from all polls conducted over the last four weeks, including three Scotland-only polls as well as the aggregate of UK-wide polls' Scottish subsamples. 

You can see here that my seat projections err on the cautious side, even with the SNP back to a 2015ish level of support and the three English parties in disarray. For most recent polls, the pure math projects 58 SNP seats with one Red Island left in Edinburgh South. I think this is obviously the best case scenario for the SNP and I don't completely rule it out. It just looks a wee smitch extreme when other factors than poll results are taken into account. I fully anticipate Conservatives and Liberal Democrats being more resilient in a few seats than the polls imply, even if they have once again to rely on strong Unionist tactical voting. Which is why I credit the Conservatives with holding Banff and Buchan, Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk and possibly Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale. But that still means both Alister Jack and Douglas Ross would be wiped out, which is in itself reason to celebrate. Similarly I don't see the Liberal Democrats losing Orkney and Shetland, and possibly Edinburgh West on tactical voting and a bad day for the SNP. Then I will closely watch the results in the overlapping Holyrood constituencies next May. Even if the two votes follow different logics and patterns, I have no doubt the Holyrood results in these areas will be enlightening. Just wait and see. 

I don't know if it's true, I'm just telling you what we're putting in the paper

That will irritate the shit out of people

(Benjamin Headless, House Of Cards, 1990)

© Peter Gabriel, 1977

Next to a small war, there's nothing quite like a general election

To stiffen up the sinews and summon up the blood

(Francis Urquhart, House Of Cards: To Play The King, 1993)

Of course the most important part in all this polling is what they have to say about the next Scottish Parliament election. First of all, the approximation of a trend, as given by seat projections from all polls conducted since Oor Doogie Ross from Elgin became Branch Office Manager for the Conservatives. There is something of a pile up now in this chart, so I guess I will have to find another Poll Zero next time. Of course we all know Doogie has been quite lame at the job, as standing up against both Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon, while approving both Boris Johnson's and Nicola Sturgeon's decisions in statements just days apart, is definitely not the path to a resounding success. There's even a solid case to be made about Labour proving more resilient than the Tories in the prospect of a SNP landslide, which definitely belongs under 'unintended consequences'. Though the unfolding Labour Civil War may also change that again in future polls. Let's just say the idea of reviving the plot to depose Richard Leonard does sound weird when most of the polls hint that Labour would lose fewer seats than the Tories. Some within Labour seem to forget that a mediocre showing in nationwide voting intentions is only part of the equation. Labour still have a strong base in a few regions, mostly in their former heartlands in the Auld Strathclyde, where they regularly bag more list seats than uniform swing based on the national trend predicts, and the way AMS works protects them from total extinction.

Clearly we are past the point where the SNP were dangerously close to 65 seats, and the trend looks quite good, with poll after poll predicting better results than in 2011, despite the many fuckups we make fun of on Twitter. I find there are similarities here with BBC Scotland's game-show "Impossible", which I've been binge-watching in a very specific and limited way recently, for some unfathomable reasons that are best left unexplored, but might have something to do with Level 3 boredom. Just imagine the question is "Why does nothing that happens on Twitter have any impact on Scottish voting intentions?". And your answers are: A) Because nobody gives a fuck about what happens on Twitter, B) Because nobody even knows what happens on Twitter, C) Because the SNP never do a fucking stupid thing. Of course here C) is your impossible answer and A) would be the right answer. Now the SNP have avoided the worst own goals when only two out of nineteen Woko candidates for selection actually made it (incumbent MSP Shirley-Anne Sommerville in Dunfermline, twice loser Toni Giugliano in Dumbarton). The funniest moment of the selection process was of course when 'he-him no-to-yes' candidate Michael Sturrock was forced out of the race in Edinburgh Southern as he hadn't bothered to check if he had been vetted by the party's NEC, and it turned out he hadn't despite loud support from Woko-compliant MPs Stewart McDonald and John Nicolson. And the best result was when Rhiannon Spear failed in her bid to succeed Michael Russell in Argyll and Bute, an outcome that was to be expected for a Women's Convener who sided with extremists willing to undermine women's rights. Bully for her. Now let's have a closer look at the Holyrood part of the last Survation poll. As usual my projection of the lists seats is based on the regional crosstabs provided in the poll, not uniform national swing. And thusly we have the third best result for the SNP and the second best for the pro-Independence parties overall since August. And also the second best for Labour and the second worst for the Conservatives.

The results projected from this poll are impressive, and also quite enlightening in many ways. First we have the SNP bagging more votes on the constituencies than all other parties combined. Of course we have seen it before, but it still makes good PR, doesn't it? The SNP bagging more votes on the regional lists than Labour and the Conservatives combined doesn't sound half as good, does it? Of course the best part is something we have seen only once before: Labour beating the Conservatives on both votes and coming back as the second party. Which is quite spectacular but probably not as good for the SNP as you might think at first glance. There is massive evidence from past polls that a significant fraction of the electorate, possibly 5%, are definitely an SNP-Lab battleground and could go either way depending on who has the most convincing campaign. Think of them as 'soft Yes' voters who could choose the SNP on 'managerial competence' but have voted Labour previously and could be convinced to just stay where they are. Earlier polls mostly hint that the SNP have won over these voters, but a few have sent the opposite message, so you never know. The SNP should not feel everything's in the bag just yet. We have had elections before where polls made everything look fine until the real campaign started, and then it all went tits up. You can also compare the projection from this poll with the results of the previous elections, and there are several firsts and records here too (see the chart below). Based on the last poll, the SNP would not only bag more seats than any party, including themselves, ever did. They would also bag more seats than either of the Lab-Lib coalitions in the olden days. Which would of course deliver the strongest pro-Independence majority ever. Finally it's great to see the Conservatives kicked back in time, almost to where they were in the early years of devolution. Evidence again that they have become irrelevant again in Scotland, after benefiting from a PR-savvy leader for a few years, and that Oor Doogie is definitely the worst casting error the SNP could hope for.

 

The fun part in reactions to every Scottish poll is that, whatever the poll says, supporters of alt-Yes regional lists always find it vindicates their views. If the SNP do (relatively) poorly, then it's further proof that Scotland does need alt-Yes MSPs to strengthen the next mandate for Independence. If the SNP do well enough to bag a sizeable majority on the constituencies only, it's further proof that the SNP list votes are wasted and voting for alt-Yes lists is a better choice to hold the SNP to account over the next mandate for Independence. Scotland, the only place on Earth were you can have it both ways and nobody will bat a fucking eye. Their only problem is that, even when some brand of alt-Yes list is explicitly included in the poll's prompts, they fail to register even on Mariana-Trench-grade sonars. Now the next big issue, and a controversial one too, is bound to be postal voting for the incoming Holyrood election, to circumvent the Covid-related problems. The USA's omnishambolic response to a world-beating unprecedented influx of postal votes is a clear sign of what can happen when a whole country is ill-prepared to handle a totally predictable situation. Of course the key to the problem is that the US Constitution devolves that part of the electoral process to the states, so there is no unifying doctrine and pretty much every very specific situation can be used to support any very specific point of view, even in a limited way. 

Which would not happen in Scotland as someone in high places is definitely thinking in terms of a 'postal vote only election' and the Electoral Commission has had YouGov survey Scots about the possible options. As you might expect, the answers are not that clear-cut in any specific direction. People are not supportive of a 'postal vote only election', even if twice as many as before are willing to cast a postal vote. And, at face value, the preferred option seems to be a 'socially distanced' election with special precautions during the count, even if that means getting the final results only a few days later. Which sounds like reasonable middle ground and a way to avoid unnecessary controversies, as we know now that the YouGov poll had in fact been commissioned by the Scottish Government and clearly influenced the proposed Scottish General Election (Coronavirus) Bill that passed Stage 1 in Scottish Parliament last week. Of course Stage 1 is more a technical than political decision, and we will soon have more substantial debates on this matter. What seems carved in stone right now is that dissolution will be postponed to 5 May, the day before the election, so that any contingency plan can be approved up to the last minute. Which could include postponing the election itself by no more than six months, or allowing it to take place over several days, possibly from 6 to 13 May if I decoded Minister for Parliamentary Business Graeme Dey's position right. 

Now is of course just the right moment for Vladimir MacAskill to subliminally remind us how much grander life was under Alex Salmond, and Estragon Kerevan to tell us how much Alex can still contribute to the Scottish political debate. While the English 'progressive' press are busy speculating and salivating over Alex's return being Nicola's demise. All of which kind of makes sense if you look at the current SNP Civil War from a different angle than just GRA vs women's rights. Of course the Scottish Parliament passing Johann Lamont's 'sex not gender' amendment to the Forensic Medical Services Bill, by a totally unexpected 113-9, was fought along those lines and indicated something of a tectonic shift within the SNP. My educated guess just after the vote was that SNP HQ had had a headcount and realised the amendment would pass, despite the Scottish Government's opposition, with the help of a significant number of rebel SNP MSPs. We had confirmation later, from reliable sources, that it is exactly what happened. The SNP votes splitting would have been an unambiguous PR disaster that SNP HQ couldn't allow. So they had no choice but to U-turn and support the amendment, and the genderist MSPs, within both the SNP and Labour, had to suck it up and vote as whipped. Except Nicola Sturgeon, who seems to have done a Johnson and sneaked out of the Chamber after FMQs, so she had no vote recorded. The SNP rebels were undoubtedly emboldened by the earlier crushing defeat of Woko Haram at the SNP's NEC election, which I think is also explained by the uneasy coexistence of two distinct ideological lines that go back decades. 

A social-liberal one favoured by the current party leadership, that you could call Scottish Macronism without it being a cheap shot. And a social-democratic one in the direct tradition of Alex Salmond's 79 Group, who were kicked out of the SNP by a more traditionalist leadership before coming back with a vengeance and taking over the party. This faction within the SNP is today roughly synonymous with the Common Weal Group, who unsurprisingly endorsed Joanna Cherry and like-minded figures on the left of the party, many of them also endorsed but the SNP Women's Pledge. Unsurprisingly too, the divide between identity politics and class politics matches the one between social liberalism and social democracy. So it's easy to see that the fault lines run much deeper than the Wokos vs Terfs brawl, and are actually all about the country's direction after Independence: somewhat Macronish or somewhat Corbynish? Oddly similar to the fault lines within Keir Starmer's New New Labour, and I guess you know which side I'm on here. Not that I really believe Big Eck's hypothetical return would be like the dawning of a new era (and I bet you did not see that one coming either) for the SNP and Scotland, but you never know what can happen in the last mile before the election, between the release of the Scottish Parliament's report on the botched handling of the Salmond sexual assault case by the Scottish Government, and the publication of Salmond's Book Of Revelations about the same events. Neither of which will look good for Nicola Sturgeon. To end on a lighter note, the fun part of the Salmonite arguments is the analogy between Big Eck and Charles de Gaulle, who came back to power in France at 68, which definitely makes 65yr-old Salmond a Young Un.

But remember, in the play, where famously "nothing happens... twice", they waited and waited.... 

And Godot never came.

This is us versus the establishment! Our truth versus their lies! Yes!

(Alexis Meynell, Spooks: On The Brink, 2008)

© Martin Gillespie, 2019