Jeremy's Den: April 2021

28/04/2021

On The Road To Holyrood

In Roman numerals, putting a bar above a number multiplies it by one thousand

Whereas in Scotland, putting a bar above something means it now also has an upstairs bar

(Jimmy Carr, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2014)

In 2010, Kevin Bridges released his debut DVD “The Story So Far”

It proved so popular in Glasgow thefts of DVD players went up 50%

(Jimmy Carr, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2016)

So now we know officially that the counts for the Holyrood election will be held on Friday and Saturday, 7 and 8 May. Let's just hope they have a muckle ferry at the ready in Na h-Eileanan an Iar, to carry the ballot boxes from the wee islands to Stornoway in time, so we don't have to wait for the full Highlands and Islands results until after the proverbial Sabbath Break. Expect an interesting Friday afternoon then, when the pundits will stop ranting aboot Labour losing the Hartlepool by-election, and will start ranting aboot the Tory-enabling Scottish Greens making the SNP lose Edinburgh Central for the second time in a row. Too bad we won't have the results of the Airdrie and Shotts by-election at the same time, but the SNP have only themselves to blame for this massive fuckup. When Neil Gray waited until the very last second to resign his Commons seat, he gifted the Labour-Conservative North Lanarkshire Council a golden opportunity on a silver platter to postpone the by-election until 13 May, and make an utter fucking joke of the SNP's pledge to save taxpayers the expense of a Commons by-election. If the SNP had simply enforced a 'no double-jobbing' rule and demanded that MPs resign from Commons only after being elected to Holyrood, it would have resulted in pretty much the same situation, only in a few more constituencies. Besides, it definitely would have made them look better than a bent rule that's coming back to bite them in the arse. Let's just hope the SNP will be saved the full humiliation of losing the Commons seat on a lousy turnout, which would make them look like fucking glaikits. And don't rule that out too quickly, just remember Labour nearly gained the seat back in 2017 and could very well succeed this time aboot. That's what my Westminster model predicts, based on the last poll from Survation, with regional crosstabs showing Labour would overperform and the SNP underperform in Central Scotland. Labour definitely have some life left in them, mostly in the Auld Strathclyde area, which should keep the SNP on their toes and avoiding complacency.

Then let's focus on the bigger picture of the Great Matter at hand. Recent Holyrood polls have been quite contradictory, with few of them bringing good news for either the SNP or the Alba Party. But it's been quite good overall for the Greens, who will most probably increase their number of MSPs. Which is not that surprising when you consider that, according to the latest YouGov poll, aboot half their list votes come from voters who choose Labour or the LibDems on the constituency vote, and probably don't mind the Greens being low-key on Independence. They're also most likely part of those "enlightened" young ones who will let Patrick Harvie get away with calling a member of the public a transphobe on live radio, because she was arguing for women's sex-based rights. Which, under different skies, would have been the Green variant of Gordon Brown's Bigotgate. But not in Scotland in this day and age, where "transphobe" has become the virtue-signalling rallying cry of the misogynistic gay-denying left. This is just one of the many paradoxes of this campaign, and not the most important. What is most striking, and you have surely noticed it on their national campaign material, is that both Labour and the Conservatives are literally begging for list votes, but leave the constituency campaigning to the local candidates. Which of course has not gone unnoticed by the SNP, who use it to ironically hit at the opposition's lack of ambition. This attitude is even a bit surprising as the trends of the constituency vote show that the SNP has had better days. And we also have Labour first catching up on the Conservatives, then overtaking them. Of course Labour are highly unlikely to gain any constituencies, but they could have a fair shot at holding the ones they have.

It is also quite remarkable that the SNP are the only party explicitly campaigning on becoming the next Scottish Government and having one of their own become the next First Minister. There is a stark contrast here with UK general elections, where the Leader of the Opposition naturally campaigns to become the next Prime Minister. You might even have the leader of the third party fancying herself as the next PM, but that's like a once-in-a-generation stunt. Or Germany, where all major parties have their Spitzenkandidat, the one who will become Chancellor if their party wins the election. And now Nicola Sturgeon has taken the unusual step of campaigning for the benefit of English voters, not surprisingly in that beacon of English progressivism, The Guardian. Which has probably as many readers in Glasgow as The National in London. But never mind, it's the paper of choice of the Woke Labourgravia Elite, and they even seemed to like what she wrote. The list vote trends also show some interesting movement in recent polls. The SNP are bound for a very lacklustre performance, being challenged for list votes by the Greens and the Alba Party, and oddly enough also by Labour. Though here Labour have so far failed to overtake the Conservatives. This is definitely something that should worry Anas Sarwar, as an overperformance on the lists is the only way Labour can beat the Conservatives on the number of seats, and gain back the second party status they enjoyed from 2007 to 2016. But I guess the only way they can achieve this is with a softer stance on holding a second independence referendum. This might not gain them more SNP constituency voters, but they might lose fewer of their own to the Greens. Just saying.

Finally, current polling begs the question: is there a Shy Albannach Factor at work? I do believe there is, as I think the true potential of the Alba Party is more likely to be 8-10% rather than 1%, and only the relentless savaging of Big Eck from all corners of the compass prevents it from being visible in the polls. But of course even True Believers have to brace themselves for failure and accepting it gracefully. If the Alba Party actually bags just 1% on Election Day, that will be a massive missed opportunity and a carefully laid-out own goal for the Yes camp. We can only hope SNP HQ will realise they're not just pissing down the wrong tree, but also in the wrong fucking forest. But if failure is bound to happen only due to personal hostility, there is little even Big Eck himself can do about it, or is there?

Sometimes you have to learn how to lose before you are ready to win

(Arnold Rimmer, Red Dwarf X: Trojan, 2012)

Resentment of the English is the only thing that holds Scotland together

Otherwise they’d be at each other’s throats

Before the active Union, the Highlands fought the Lowlands

Catholics fought Calvinists, Dissenters fought Anglicans

Campbells fought McDonalds and now Rangers fans fight Celtic fans, they just never stop

Offer them Independence and it’ll scare the pants off them

(Sir Humphrey Appleby, Yes, Prime Minister: Scot Free, 2013)

The trend of IndyRef2 voting intentions is again very disappointing, with four polls in a row putting No in the lead by 1% to 6%. The weighted average of the last five polls, all conducted within the last two weeks, is also far from encouraging. We would have 43.5% Yes to 45.8% No, with 10.7% undecided. Which translates into 48.7% Yes to 51.3% No. Quite far from where we were in October when Yes bagged up to 58%, or even in March when we still had a more satisfying 52-53% for Yes. There are obviously many reasons for this swing towards No. The daftest explanation being what I read from some SNP zealot on Twitter, that Alex Salmond is to blame for that as the numbers were better before the Alba Party appeared on the scene. Surely someone should look up the differences between coincidence, correlation and causality, unless it's asking too much of their wee brain. Or someone should get a crash course at understanding campaign dynamics, and realise some of the Unionists' talking points might work when the SNP sometimes appears off-piste on the constitutional issues. There are many floating voters around here, some of whom might be swayed to No if they agree that now is not the time just yet, or that everybody should concentrate on a short-term recovery plan and forget about the long-term plans. I would allocate some of the blame to the Scottish Greens, who are often even less straightforward and convincing than the SNP on Independence, which already says a lot. There are obviously many Green voters who think a green agenda can be implemented within the limits of devolution, and I think the Harvie-Slater duo have done very little to debunk this.

Another weird take on IndyRef2 undoubtedly comes from Laura Webster in The National, who feigns to discover that Green voters are the weak link in the Yes camp. This has already been highlighted time and time again in previous polls, you just have to pay attention to the crosstabs of IndyRef2 voting intentions with Holyrood voting intentions. Remembered vote at the 2014 referendum shows that Green voters then went 57% Yes to 43% No. Seeing them aboot split down the middle now is in no way surprising, when you consider their increased vote share includes about half who would vote Labour or LibDem on the constituencies. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to add 2 and 2 here, does it? But of course it's far easier to blame Big Eck for everything from lousy polling to rainfall, and cuddle the Greens to protect the identity politics agenda. The real litmus test will come after the election, when we compare the IndyRef voting intentions then with the vote shares of the pro-Independence parties. I have a hunch that only somewhere above 55% of the list votes would translate into 50% Yes, still leaving us with a long way to go before we reach the comfort zone. With the added risk that constitutional issues will again be put on the back-burner for a while, in the name of post-Covid recovery and plans to salvage the economy. Unless the SNP learn how to multitask, which I seriously doubt they will.

We’re all in the same boat, even the Universe

And even though the boat has a hole in it

At least we get to see the sea

(Kryten, Red Dwarf XI: Krysis, 2016)

This is a battle between two ways of life

One that leads inevitably to slavery, the other to freedom

(Margaret Thatcher, The Long Walk To Finchley, 1950 general election campaign)

The interesting part of the voting intentions trends is that the Conservatives are down on their 2016 results on both votes in three out of four of the most recent polls. Of course news from London and Boris Johnson's recent shenanigans don't help. You have to be fair to Oor Doogie Ross, he did say that Bozo's rant about bodies piling high was indefensible. But the episode just points at one of Doogie's biggest problems. He's told so many porkies before that people no longer want to listen to what he has to say. And if they do, they dismiss it as just more porkies or shameless hypocrisy. Which is exactly the case here, and Doogie didn't help his cause later, backpedaling and saying he does not believe Bozo actually made the appalling comments, and still supporting his Overlord in the neverending Tory Sleaze scandal. And Oor Doogie did not really shine either when asked about it during the Channel 4 debate, making it easier for Nicola Sturgeon to score one against him. So Doogie's fair game now and I don't think the stories will go away in Scotland as easily as the Tories hope they will in England.

The most recent snapshot we have now is the last Panelbase poll, commissioned by James Kelly, and conducted between 21 and 26 April. As is usually the case with Panelbase, and is definitely a shortcoming, it does not include regional crosstabs. So I calculated the over and underperformances by region from the averages of the last three previous polls, that were fielded between 16 and 22 April. Not exact science, but that's the best I could possibly do. This Panelbase poll also has what I consider a major flaw: they have the Greens on 4% of the constituency vote, as they are included in the prompts for all respondents. Other pollsters have a different approach, asking for a voting intention only for the parties that are actually standing in each respondent's constituency, obviously delivering more accurate results. Then this is something my model takes care of as it automatically reallocates the votes when a given party is not standing in a given constituency. In that case, it decreases the national Green vote to a more plausible 1.1% while slightly increasing the SNP and Labour votes, consistent with patterns seen in other elections. The combination of this explains why the SNP would end up gaining three constituencies, instead of the overall "no change" you have on uniform swing. Then factoring in under and overperformances on the list votes takes down the Alba Party from eight seats on uniform swing to just six. They would widely miss a seat in Central but be just a few hundred votes shy of one in Glasgow. So there's still hope.

Now there is an interesting twist to this poll if you forget about all the regional crosstabs stuff and simply replay the constituencies on basic uniform swing all across the country. Then the SNP miss their top target Edinburgh Central by 1% with the Greens bagging 14%. The SNP also miss a possible gain in Galloway and West Dumfries by 3% with the Greens bagging 4%. Thusly, on the most commonly used method of seat projection, you have the Greens squarely in the way of an outright SNP majority on the constituencies only, the scenario I have already identified and advocated as the one path to an unquestionable victory. But of course the Glasgow clique at SNP HQ will choose to ignore than and carry on cuddling the Greens, and possibly invite them into government. The Greens' game-plan is painfully obvious: sabotage the chances of an outright SNP majority, so they hold the balance of power when SNP HQ asininely refuse to work with the Alba Party. If the SNP and the Greens actually go into a government coalition after the election, as some have already proposed, I strongly advise Nicola Sturgeon to keep Harvie and Slater on a very short leash. And to be ruthless and unforgiving on coalition discipline. This is Scotland, for fuck's sake, this is not Israel, where they have votes in the Cabinet because members of hotchpotch coalitions can't even agree on some key issues. If you're in government, you toe the line and you suck it up when things don't go your way. Just ask Nick Clegg for advice. And there is no "three strikes" rule here. At the first strike, you're gone. Take it or leave it, or git tae fuck.

I do enjoy a wee bit of Scottish water, that’s the whisky

I went on a whisky diet once and lost three days

(Johnny Vegas, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2016)

There’s an old Scottish saying: give a man a crumb, he’ll try and take the whole loaf.

What’s Scottish about that? The pertinacity!

(George Warleggan, Poldark: The Original Series, 1975)

And now the return of a feature I used in some earlier articles a long time ago, and dropped until we were really close to Election Day: the full breakdown of seats by region. The lighter Saltire-ish blue shade is of course for the Alba Party list seats. The worst part here is certainly the SNP down to one list seat in South Scotland, meaning only Emma Harper would stay, with Joan McAlpine and Paul Wheelhouse both out. Of course the SNP will blame the Alba Party for this, but they might as well blame the Greens, who would also nick a list seat off the SNP down there. They might actually admit, or not, that they did it to themselves, with the combination of a poor performance and a rigged selection process. I have no problem reminding them Joan McAlpine did win the real selection vote, and only the bent rules propelled Emma Harper from third place to the top slot. Or you might just go for the lex parsimoniae, aka Occam's Razor, and blame it solely on the way AMS works. Gain the East Lothian constituency from Labour by a hair and compound that with a mediocre list vote and you're done, two list seats down. Overall, the SNP are predicted to gain three constituencies: East Lothian from Labour, West Aberdeenshire and Edinburgh Central from the Conservatives, but all three will be extremely close. The crowded field in Edinburgh Central might even result in a situation you rarely see, even with the quirks of FPTP: the winner bagging less than 30% of the popular vote.

Overall, this is really not satisfying for the SNP. Ending up with the same number of seats, with constituency gains nullified by list losses, is possibly the worst case scenario outwith of a net loss. It only illustrates one of the SNP's weaknesses at this election: the distinct possibility of a dismal result on the lists, that can't be cured by smallish overperformances on the constituencies in a few regions. This validates the strategy I have been advocating right from the start: focus on getting a majority on the constituencies only, deploy the yellow steamrollers all over the country and go for everybody else's jugular. Some of the opposition's candidates are so bad you won't need much effort and campaign dosh to knock them out. The strategy is especially valid in South Scotland, where both Dumfriesshire and Galloway and West Dumfries are definitely within reach, allowing both Joan McAlpine and Emma Harper to come back as constituency MSPs. The list vote would thusly become less of a concern, with Paul Wheelhouse likely to come back even on a mediocre performance as the Conservatives would also have to fight off a strong challenge from All For Unity, who are generally predicted to do rather well in the South. In the Borders and on the Border, which George Galloway will have to remember are two different things.

Did you know, for example, “fantoosh” is a word

Used mainly by Scottish people to show extreme pleasure?

For example: “Fantoosh, I’ve found another viable vein in my big toe”

(Jimmy Carr, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2016)

21/04/2021

Alba? Or Did You Say Aɫ̪apə?

Sheepshagger was originally a nickname for the Black Watch,

The Scottish regiment, and this is a fantastic quote,

At least I think it’s fantastic, but I’m a lexicographer.

This goes all the way back, like almost a century.

It said: the use is highly offensive and it should not be used

In the hearing of one member of the regiment, let alone a crowd.

Even a subdued “Baaa” could be dangerous.

(Susie Dent, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2015)

In the first ever dictionary, Samuel Johnson famously defined oats as

“A grain, which in England is given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people”

Nowadays, of course, that definition doesn’t work for oats

Although it does work for ketamine

(Jimmy Carr, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2015)

The last few weeks have been kind of a rollercoaster, haven't they? They were for me anyway, especially after Alex Salmond dropped the A-bomb on Bute House with his Alba Party. I had mixed feelings initially about something that had obviously been in the making for a long time, as a carefully premeditated return to frontline politics. And it was not without its hiccups. First there was what you might call "The Curious Incident Of The Pronunciation In The Presser-Time". Which kind of marred the first day, but was soon forgotten as a forgivable live wart, when they made it right in the studio recording. Then there was a more embarrassing sequence in the aftermath of the Alba Women Conference, with heated controversy about lowering the age of consent, or not. I must confess now, though I would never say it on Twitter, that the factual evidence offered was a wee smitch too sketchy for comfort. And that some, including myself, let ourselves be carried away, even if the real issue there was worth fighting for. I shared the incidents with neighbour and friend Brian, whom you might remember from some of my tweets, and he had pretty much the killer punchline on this: "Jez, your heart is in the right place, but sometimes your brain isn't". Ouch.

Of course this caused a lot of virtue-signalling outrage from Nicola Sturgeon's most obstreperous encomiasts. Who are also joined at the hip with the genderist clique within SNP HQ. Seeing how "transphobe" had become the most over-used word since "unprecedented", they resorted to a new linguistic innovation, calling Alba supporters "queerphobes". But to they/them I say: let he/him who lives in a glass house cast the first stone. Then we now have 112 sub-species of gender identity duly approved by Woko Haram, so we can expect 112 shades of phobe to come out in the debate. Which I don't really mind, as I am kind of a cuntphobe myself. But let's just go back to the issues at hand now, starting with Nicola Sturgeon's approval ratings. Leaving aside the UK-wide results that are quite irrelevant, except for the second-home owners who game the system to vote in Scotland. Then ratings from Scottish voters only show that Nicola's net positive, while still convincingly strong, had declined slowly but steadily for months after her Covid Honeymoon peak. Then it went up again from mid-April, and strongly enough to turn the trend around after the Alba Party launch. Which is quite baffling unless you hypothesise that Scottish public opinion includes its fair share of Salmondophobes. Or you might explain that with the SNP's campaign. Including the SNP's Election Broadcast, with its theatrical-release quality that places it light years ahead of the hotchpotch of home videos and Zoom sessions offered by the other parties. Yes, I do genuinely think it does push all the right buttons, but also works on a rational level, with all the main talking points nicely woven together for maximum effect. Let's just hope it's not where the fenced money for IndyRef2 actually went.

Then came the BBC and STV debates, the latter cut into three parts due to ad breaks, but they will segue nicely into each other on YouTube. I must say Nicola did quite well and this time, unlike the botched 2017 Westminster campaign, her reliance on managerial competence in government provided just the right talking points for this campaign. She also had that genius moment during the STV debate when she asked Patrick Harvie a direct question about the powers of the Scottish Parliament and the Tory power grab. The distressed and exasperated look on Douglas Ross's face while they discussed it uninterrupted over his head was pure comedy gold. The best part being of course when both Patrick and Nicola used the opportunity to move on to promoting independence and taking down the "baby steps" of federalism. Those who found Nicola toxic afore the debates still won't touch her with a sixty-foot bargepole afterwards, so fuck them. Her sycophants won't even find fault with her trainwreck remark about "taking our eyes off the ball" over drug deaths, or her weak defence over the SQA fiasco and the QEUH situation, and will instead praise here for acknowledging mistakes and apologising for them. And this point of view will obviously prevail among the SNP membership, whatever the actual number is this week, and also with readers of The National. Which is probably all that SNP HQ expect and think matters. And it definitely works with SNP voters, as Nicola's triple-digit net positive took a slow and steady plunge for months, just as with the Scottish general population, then has gone up again over the last four weeks. Of course this might be just a side effect of the Scottish Juche and how the faithful rally around the Suryong at key moments in the nation's life. Or it can be the mechanical effect of some leaving the SNP for the Alba Party, so that those who remain are more devoted to Nicola and more supportive. And I'm not just being gratuitously sarcastic here.

But the debates weren't all about Nicola, and I have reasons to think they have altered public perception of the other leaders. Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie definitely scored points, and it's probably wise that they stuck to the solid ground of constitutional and environmental issues most of the time, with a little help from Nicola in the second debate. Wandering into identity politics would definitely have been the quicksand they would have sunk into, so it's just as well they avoided it. Oor Doogie Ross is the wannabe power player who forgot his shoulder pads at home, and then he would have needed full body armour during both debates. Doubling down on his anti-Travellers stance was definitely his low point, and yet the bar was set pretty low even afore that. And he was also totally minced to a pulp when faced with questions about the English Government taking the Scottish Parliament to court over children's rights. I dreamt I heard Tory voices in my head afterwards, begging for a third debate so they could send Jackson Carlaw on a damage control mission. Willie Rennie is both insignificant and irrelevant, with barely any idea he hasn't nicked from someone else's playbook. But of course the most unexpected performance came from Anas Sarwar. It's tempting to try and reduce him to a posh cardboard cutout of a Blairite Unionist, which he undoubtedly is, but there's definitely more to the man than meets the eye at first glance. If the SNP and Labour were tied in the polls, instead of the SNP bagging more than double the votes, I'm quite sure he would give Nicola a run for her money. And I'm not even sure Nicola would prevail. The silver lining is that Anas's major liability now is Keir Starmer himself, who is not only acting in contradiction with his party's manifesto, but is also totally out of touch with his own voters on the key issue of the second independence referendum. But of course this is just my take on the debates, and we might get quite a different impression from other campaign events as they unfold.

In England we have Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat

But Scotland’s most popular delivery service is “send the wee man for chips”

(Jimmy Carr, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, 2020)

Half the people I know couldn’t spell eggs Benedict, far less order it

They wouldn’t know what it was

(Kevin Bridges, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2015)

There are lots of other events down the campaign trail, and you have certainly read all about them in the press. The funniest moment was of course when a miffed Doogie Ross had to announce that Boris Johnson would not be visiting Scotland after all, and came within an inch of openly admitting that the sole reason was how toxic the First Minister of England is to a vast majority of Scots. I also think it's quite embarrassing and quite revealing that the SNP concentrate their broadsides on the Alba Party, even with unconvincing shaky math, and fail to take the Greens to task over their vanity candidacies in a number of constituencies. There is no strong evidence that this may result in any SNP incumbents losing their seats, though it might make it tighter for a few of them. Christine Grahame in Midlothian South comes to mind. But the key point is that Green candidacies might jeopardise a couple of potential SNP gains. One such seat is Galloway and West Dumfries. And of course the best example is Edinburgh Central, the top prize on the SNP's target list, where the Greens are obviously to blame for the SNP losing the seat in 2016. Then we had this fake on Twitter pretending to be a Green candidate openly campaigning to defeat the possibility of an outright SNP majority.

That one was quite embarrassing for the Greens, as a lot of people did not question it and spontaneously identify it as a fake, and genuinely believed this was something that could have happened. Probably because the Greens never actually came out with an "SNP 1, Greens 2" catchphrase in the 61 constituencies where they do not stand, while the Alba Party were quite clear with "SNP 1, Alba 2" from day one, and chose to overlook the SNP's constant savaging of them. Then we know why the Greens can get away with it, don't we? Now let's see what the trends of polls tell us about the constituency vote. There have been 74 Holyrood polls since the 2016 election, including 20 in 2021, so we have enough data to identify some interesting phenomena. First we see the SNP's voting intentions sharply falling in 2017 and slowly going up again all along 2018 and 2019. More evidence, if we needed any, that the disastrous 2017 general election campaign deeply hurt them. Then we see that the most significant shifts are between the SNP and Labour, rather than between Labour and Conservatives. Given the choice, Labour voters go for the other left-wing option rather than for the other Unionist one, even more so if they're part of the 35% who would vote Yes to Indy. Which might explain part of Anas Sarwar's strategy: hit harder at the Conservatives and maintain some ambiguity about IndyRef2. Finally, and more importantly, the SNP are still doing really well for a party that has been in power for 14 years and been the target of all oppositions all along. Many governing parties abroad would be more than happy to hold or slightly increase their vote share on the previous election, as the SNP are likely to do on 6 May.

The trends of the list vote convey pretty much the same message. Only with a Green variable added on top, and the Alba Party in the five most recent polls. Here we also see some movement from the Labour constituency vote to the Green list vote. Which is no surprise if you have looked at the fine print of Holyrood polls and Council by-elections. Voters who self-identify as Green today, and were eligible to vote at the first Independence referendum, went 57% Yes to 43% No, according to the last Panelbase poll. Not really the most ringing endorsement of Independence and it helps explain why the Green leadership tend to spend much more time campaigning on other issues. The cartography of transfers at Council elections also shows that, when a Green candidate is eliminated, roughly as many of their preferences go to Labour at the next count as to the SNP. The list voting intentions here only show that the voter-fluidity goes both ways. It might help Labour at some close Council elections, but it also strengthens the pro-Indy camp in Holyrood.

Recent events have triggered some more name-calling about the infamous list vote. Which is like the right time to make my own position on this clear, and expose my own contradictions, in case you hadn't spotted them already. Those who knew my previous Twitter incarnation in 2016 might remember I strongly supported Both Votes SNP then. The obvious reason being that this very pattern delivered the SNP majority in 2011, and there was every reason to believe it would again in 2016. It's also fairly easy to simulate what Both Votes SNP would have delivered in 2016: 67 SNP MSPs and 2 Green MSPs for the same 69-seat pro-Indy majority. Which would definitely have been a win-win in my book. Bear in mind this was afore Woko Haram's infiltration of the SNP's Ninth Circle, gender self-identification and the Thought Police Bill. So it definitely made sense and still does today. It also was the valid option early in this campaign when various alt-Yes mini-parties started to emerge. I did the math several times to show how this could be counter-productive and deliver fewer pro-Indy seats, and I still stand by it. The basic math of AMS says that you need aboot a 6% national average to be competitive on the list vote. Though there are precedents showing you can bag list seats on 3% nationally if your vote is very unevenly distributed, as in concentrated in one or two regions. Then two events totally changed my perspective on this. As MacMillan said, when in doubt, blame the events.

The first was of course the shamelessly rigged process for the selection of the SNP's top list candidates. A supposedly "inclusive" process by which you could end up in the top slot though being in the middle of near the bottom of the pile when the real votes were counted. A lot was said at the time about this process, so I will not elaborate more. Only to remind you it was quite transparently designed to bring back candidates from a vocal extremist fringe within the party, who had been rejected as constituency candidates. And even that failed in an iconic case in Argyll and Bute. This left me orphaned for a while as I was totally sure to never cast my vote for the SNP top candidate in Lothian, a parachuted Glasgow councillor among the worst of the Woko Haram wing of the SNP. Then came the Alba Party, which started really well with the unification of the clans, though some regrettably strayed away from that course later. It also offered the only viable alternative for anyone with a social-democratic vision of an Independent Scotland, and totally unwilling to support the Greens. I was reluctant at first to go Full Alba, for fear they would jeopardise Joan McAlpine's reelection in South Scotland. Polls soon proved this was unlikely to happen: either Joan was predicted to gain the Dumfriesshire constituency from the Tories, or regional crosstabs predicted Alba would underperform in the South and would be no threat to the SNP's three list seats there. Now we have a very credible scenario in which Alba can bag 5 to 7 list seats and nick only one from the SNP, in Highlands and Islands. Which is good enough for me, as Alba have now reached the level of voting intentions that would actually increase the number of pro-Indy MSPs. So "SNP 1, Alba 2" it is, as the catchphrase goes on Twitter. And I don't even feel pedantic enough right now to explain again why "1" and "2" is a gross misrepresentation of the way AMS works.

The expression "born with a silver spoon in his mouth" means being born into a rich family

Whilst the expression "born with a silver spoon in one hand and a lighter in the other"

Means born in Glasgow

(Jimmy Carr, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2016)

According to the University of Glasgow, there are over 420 Scottish terms for snow

They include snow-way, pal, I’ve got snow-money, and snow-vegetables for me

(Jimmy Carr, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2016)

Oddly, when you consider the number of polls we've had this year, none has been conducted over the last ten days. What are pollsters mair feart of unveiling? That the Tories are nosediving after Oor Doogie got his arse skelped in the debates? Or that the Alba Party has finally reached double-digit voting intentions? Oor Doogie's latest own goal, refusing to support consumption rooms despite evidence that it works, after taking Nicola Sturgeon to task over drug deaths during the second debate, will certainly not improve his credibility. On the Alba side, the last Panelbase poll triggered a funny incident on Twitter. Panelbase had used the wording "The Alba Party (led by Alex Salmond)" in a previous poll. So the SNP's Light Brigade were prompt to charge at Panelbase, accusing them of using the same "biased" wording in the new poll. Which was total porkies, just proving that Nicola's keyboard warriors too are quick to shoot from the hip first and check the facts later. The final irony being that the Alba Party actually did better without Big Eck being mentioned than they had done earlier with his name included in the prompt. So the last instant snapshot we have dates back from just before the second debate, but is surely as good as any. This is what my model makes of the last Panelbase poll, conducted between 9 and 12 April, compared to the simulation on uniform swing that was published at the time by James Kelly.

Whichever simulation you choose to believe, this is an extremely satisfying result. The number of pro-Indy seats jumps from 69 to 78 in both cases, and the Alba Party contribute their fair share. Then the SNP's Virtual Guerrilla Squad should not be so dismissive of that Panelbase poll, because it shows some interesting and counter-intuitive side effects of AMS. Namely that the SNP can bag the same number of seats, and possibly a couple more, with a mediocre performance on the constituencies and losing a fuckload of votes on the lists. My model says the SNP would gain three constituencies: Edinburgh Southern and Dumbarton from Labour, Aberdeenshire West from the Conservatives. The most important part is that all three are in regions where the SNP have no list seats, so would lose sweet fuck all from the compensatory mechanism embedded in AMS. The SNP's lower share of the list vote would have only a marginal impact as it is irrelevant in the six regions where they have no list incumbent. They would lose only one list seat to the Alba Party in Highland and Islands, which is better value for votes in my book, knowing the genderist leanings of the SNP top candidate there. The most interesting situation here is in South Scotland where no constituency would change hands. But the regional crosstabs of the list vote say that the SNP vote there would go totally against the national trend and go a wee smitch up. While Alba would significantly underperform and the Conservative vote would be seriously dented by George Galloway's All For Unity. So the SNP would hold their three list seats and return all their incumbents, most importantly Joan McAlpine, and the Conservatives would lose one to All For Unity. Enter George Galloway, for worse or for worst.

The most popular verbs in England are eat, sleep, drink and run

Whereas the most popular verbs in Scotland are booze, fry, inject and scavenge

(Jimmy Carr, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2013)

It’s quite surprising, it disnae feel like a radical movement tae git Scottish Independence

If feels mair like a sort of coming th'gither of pals tae hae a wee fly cup and a blether

(Alistair Heather at SNP Conference, BBC Scotland: Rebel Tongue, 2020)

Polls on the second Independence referendum have been quite disappointing this year. An uninterrupted streak of 23 Yes leads was brutally interrupted in early February. Then we had a sequence of swings form No to Yes to No until mid-March. There weren't enough polls showing No in the lead for a long enough period of time to drag the trendlines to a sustained No majority. But that does not make them look really better. The polls fielded from mid-March to mid-April remain quite worrying, with Yes very far from the double-digit leads it enjoyed in every other poll not so long ago. And the weighted average of the most recent batch of polls has been flatlining at aboot 51-49 for Yes for some weeks now. Uncomfortably close, innit? But we can only hope that the Holyrood campaign will boost the Yes vote. First Nicola Sturgeon and Patrick Harvie are like pig and blanket when discussing it during a debate, and ticking all the right boxes to get the message through. You can doubt their actual commitment to Independence, and I do, but you can hardly find fault with the current talking points. Oor Doogie Ross and Wee Wullie Rennie are also of great help, though unwillingly. Doogie only makes an arse of himself every time the issue comes up. Wullie was successfully baited by Nicola into admitting that all his significant manifesto pledges could only be implemented with Westminster's approval, thusly making the case for Independence against his own will. And Labour are obviously moving towards endorsing the principle of a second referendum, if not Independence itself. All Anas Sarwar has to do is acknowledge that Double-Devo-Max Federalism might be the sunlit uplands in some alternate reality, but will definitely never work in this one. Of course, we also need a strong Yes movement from the grassroots, ready and willing to campaign tirelessly whatever the result of the election and the shortcomings of the next Scottish Government. In the end, it's aw up tae us.

Now, if you want to always see the bright side of life, we still have plenty of time to boost support for Yes. Setting the bar at 70%, as Shettleston's MSP John Mason recently did, is plain daft. There will never be 70% for Yes, not in the foreseeable future and not even in the unforeseeable one. A sustained 60% in future polls would be enough to make me happy, but timing will be of the essence. So I advise to avoid holding IndyRef2 in 2022. Because it will be Elizabeth Windsor's Platinum Jubilee, her unprecedented 70 years as Queen of England and Colonies. There is no doubt it will be quite grandiose, a much bigger thing than the rather subdued Sapphire Jubilee in 2017. So expect an unprecedented outpour of shameless corny unionism and monarchism, with unionjacked bunting all the way up and down the Mile and across Freedom Square. Add the mandatory reruns of Philip Mountbatten's funeral, plus Oor Doogie on top, if he's still around as Branch Office Manager, yelling "how dare you even contemplate holding a divisive referendum while we are celebrating the best Queen our Union has ever had". 2023 it is, then. Two years to get Yes past 60% and keep it up there, and the real Independence Day some time in 2025. Unless Lizzie makes it even worse and abdicates during the Jubilee, so we would have to put up with celebrations for Charlie's coronation a year later, with yet another serving of unbridled unionism. Holy shitballs. So brace yourselves for the SNP still competing in the next UK general election, whenever that happens. But that's a wholly different story, innit? And one we'll deal with later.

I always thought there are broadly two kinds of Scot

The angry ginger kind and the brooding intensely private satellite type

(Tony Blair, The Deal, 2003)

14/04/2021

Anarchy In The Police State

The average IQ in the UK is just 102

Although that does increase when Joey Essex goes away on holiday

(Jimmy Carr, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2014)

What’s the point of bring intelligent? I’m not and I’ve done awright

(Joey Essex, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, 2015)

Say what you will about the First Minister of England but he's an expert at PR stunts, legerdemains and squirrels. which he has liberally used all along his career, and also welcomed those that were gifted him on a silver platter. But Oor Boris also knows when to bring down the wrecking ball on the remnants of British democracy. When there's a world beating vaccine rollout granting you record approval, though sometimes, as MacMillan warned, "the events" will come in your way and make you look less grand. Surely there's no better moment to debate the Police State Bill than the day after an out of control police mob waited until one of Royal Family Ltd. had had her photo op, and then brutally manhandled grieving women while trampling underfoot flowers brought to a peaceful vigil, or is there? But never mind. I'm quite sure there are a shitload of shitwanks Doon Sooth who will never say it aloud, but think: "They asked for it, they were breaking Covid regulations after all". Just don't mention the Covidiot March one week later that never had a copper near them because, ye ken, "they're fighting for our freedoms". And the same Leafy Southerners will agree with the Police State Bill because, ye ken, we can't have those pesky wummin, darkies and underage wokos on our streets all the time, can we? And fuck the fucking Travellers too. They should know their fucking place and just stop travelling, we don't go roaming the roads of Ireland all year round, do we? That's just common sense, innit? And only criminals have anything to fear, haven't they? And that's why Boris Johnson's ratings in the Preferred Prime Minister polling are skyrocketing to Covid Honeymoon levels, while Keir Starmer's are crashlanding.

The interesting part about the vote on the Police State Bill's second reading, and that few people may have noticed, is that the DUP sat it out. And if something is too extreme for the DUP to support, that says a lot, doesn't it? Another embarrassing point here is surely that a lot of Johnson's success has to do with overage overweight Leave voters thinking "Holy shitballs, we'll soon be back to the sunlit uplands of Benidorm where we can boak in the streets and piss on the beaches, but always in a Churchillian way, after hacking the neighbour's iPlayer to watch the reruns of 'Fawlty Towers' because there's no way we will pay the fucking licence fee to the fucking lefty woke BBC, and pretend we don't understand a word the fucking natives say, which is actually true as we could never be arsed to learn the fucking language". A proud example of true Englishness making "progress along the road to freedom", as Boris put it just after leading the UK up the garden path to submission. Of course the First Minister of England is still the same brand of mendacious plonker and finagler he was a year ago, but he's got such a herd of lumpsuckers in his wake that it doesn't affect his ratings. And getting his jag of the Oxford vaccine, with the added glee of flipping the EU bureaucrats the bird, did wonders to improve his public image well outwith the reaches of Middle England.

Regional crosstabs from the most recent polls also show that the Tories are giving Labour a run for their money in the North and Midlands. One pollster has even surveyed a selected list of 45 Red-To-Blue Wall seats twice and the results are devastating for Labour. In November 2020 they found a massive swing from the Tories to Labour, predicting 36 out of 45 seats would turn red again. Then in March 2021 they found a strong swing back to the Tories, leaving Labour with no more than a handful of possible gains across the area. Obviously there is still a long way to go before La Reconquista Del Norte works. Part of that may be the old geezers who have got their two AstraZeneca jags and not died of thrombosis, or it might just be Keir Starmer misreading the Northern electorate, just as he misreads Scotland. I guess Sir Keir KCB QC would be within his comfort zone in Marchmont but probably outwith it in The Calders, though probably not as much as in Croydon. Quite surprisingly, the situation is not that good for Labour in Keir's own backyard, even with polls predicting that Sadiq Khan might well be the first Mayor of Labourgravia elected on the first round. But the parliamentary polls are far less satisfying. The Liberal Democrats have been leaking votes from both ends to the Conservatives and Greens over the last two months, which will not only cost them the usually hard-fought Richmond Park, but might also make things tricky for Labour both in the heart of the City and in some of the marginal Auld Middlesex seats. Polls of Wales are quite bad too, with YouGov's last predicting Labour and Conservatives tied on 35% and Plaid Cymru nearly doubling their share on 17%. Which means Labour could lose up to three seats and Plaid Cymru could gain two for an all-time high of six. And the general trends of general election polling just confirm all isn't going smoothly for Labour.

You just have to wonder how Sly Keir would have fared in a normal environment. Like one where Covid never reached the White Cliffs Of Dover, and all of Johnson's record was abject cronyism and mismanagement of taxpayers' dosh. Would Keir have been just Kinnock 2.0 or already Blair 2.0? There's no doubt in my mind than Blair is his role model, but a year on from becoming Leader Of The Opposition, he's not even doing remotely as well as Kinnock. The Hartlepool by-election will be something of a litmus test but I would not hold my breath, as Labour seem to have forgotten that their core target here is Andy Capp and not Owen Jones' wee kid brother. Hartlepool is obviously a dilemma.for New New Labour spads. The one sure way to win it is to snatch more of the 2019 Brexit Party voters than the Conservatives, because there's not a lot of woko students up there, is there? But Labour pandering to Leave voters might lose a significant number to the Northern Independence Party, who challenge them from the left. From a Corbynist perspective, shall we say? The first poll of Hartlepool, though having just a weeish sample and with no background to accurately assess its reliability, definitely looks like Labour's worst nightmare: another historic heartland seat lost. Now, on the quadrinational level, the real benchmark for Sly Keir is Blair's 2005 performance, which was 356 seats. Or 316 without the Scottish seats that will never come back, and would still put Keir in the best position to form a minority government. Even better with case-by-case support from other parties that are not based in Scotland, that lovely arrangement called "confidence and supply" that James Callaghan used, though it did not end well. In that dream timeline, Starmer could be close to Blair 2.0, though he might have to content himself with being just kind of Blair 1.5. But in the real world, you now have the social-liberal Guardian joking that Keir could be no better than José Mourinho 2.0. Holy shitballs, that hurt.

I don’t like people who buy council houses and put them lions up

(Johnny Vegas, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2015)

You’ve got to reach for the stars, and you might just touch up a cloud

(Jon Richardson, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2015)

The impact of Sly Keir's ratings on Labour's electoral performance is also made painfully obvious by YouGov's latest "Leaders' favourability" poll, which they mercilessly dubbed "Keir Starmer Performance poll". Starmer scores a dismally dire -11% net rating with the general population and a smallish +26% with Labour voters. While Boris Johnson scores -1% with the general population and +64% with Conservative voters. More worrying when facing a possible snap election that nobody except himself has mentioned, is that Keir is less popular than Boris all over England except in London. And even in London, Keir scores just a measly +1%, while Boris scores a more satisfying +12% in the Leafy Blue South. Keir's only consolation could be that he is more popular than Boris in Scotland, inasmuch as a net -9% is actually better than -44%. And it certainly won't help Labour in any election North Of The Wall, when the same poll has Nicola Sturgeon scoring a net +17% with Scottish voters. But of course England is much more of a problem for Labour than Scotland, as current polling shows they still haven't fully recovered Doon Sooth. The aggregate predictions for the three English meta-regions, factoring in the regional crosstabs published by the various pollsters, also show that Labour has recovered more significantly in the South than in the North and Midlands, and quite suprisingly even beyond their 2017 result. One of challenges for Labour is that the Reform UK vote, or Brexit Party as it used to be known, has not fallen as sharply in the North as in other regions. And what little they have lost seems to have migrated fully to the Conservatives. And this is exactly the pattern that spells doom for Labour in Hartlepool.

My current Poll'O'Polls shows how far from an electoral victory Labour are. It's made up of just the last three polls, conducted between 8 and 12 April. Super-sample size is 5,614 with a theoretical margin of error of 1.3%. With Labour 8% behind GB-wide, it's the worst prediction since the days of Johnson's Pandemic Honeymoon eleven months ago. Which was cut short by Dominic Cummings' infamous trip to Barnard Castle. But nothing similar is looming on the horizon right now, with national mourning and all the sycophantic media banter around it providing adequate cover-up for the most embarrassing news. Right now the weighted average says the Conservatives are roughly on the same vote share as in 2019, as these are GB-wide polls that must be compared to the GB-wide results, not the UK-wide ones, with Labour only 3.3% up. This places the Conservatives in a slightly better position than in 2015, the last general election that was held at the scheduled date. We also have the Liberal Democrats massively underperforming on their 2019 result, that had been kind of a wee comeback after being punished for the Coalition twice in 2015 and 2017. But now they're predicted to do worse than at both these elections. Which is not good news for Labour as the lost LibDem voters have switched to the Conservatives in Wales, but also to the Greens and various minor parties and independents in most of England. And Sly Keir has yet to find a convincing way to lure some of them to Labour. This looks like just another iteration of the already seen paradox of some English LibDems fancying themselves more progressive than Labour and changing their vote accordingly, no matter how much of born-again Blairites New New Labour want to rebrand themselves.

I expect some lull in polling for the rest of the week, as all headlines for the duration of the mandatory national mourning have already been reserved for celebrations of Philip Mountbatten on a loop, except The Guardian who are not necessarily the most effective of Starmer's supporters. I guess this will be serendipitously good news for Team Bozo, as outbursts of English nationalism and rallying around the Crown rarely benefit the left. Unless of course being force-fed young Phil, old Phil and cold Phil by the BBC and ITV sorely backfires, but so far it has backfired only against the broadcasters, not the English government that orchestrated it all. Then I can easily picture the swarm of spads in the basement at Conservative HQ, coming up with the best ways of making political gains out of Phil's death. Without even having to actually campaign, as pandering to the deep-running currents of cap-doffing English exceptionalism will obviously be more awkward for Labour, no matter how hard they try, and Keir might be a wee smitch clumsy at handling the pump and circumstance. Just witness the reactions to his comments about "faith in the monarchy" and "the people's love for Prince Philip". Alleged, that is. And now there's a pile on against Keir, with even Wee Owen Jones doing his best to prove David Tennant right, when he commented on "Have I Got News For You" that Sly Keir "successfully brought the party together in thinking that he's not doing a very good job". Holy shitballs, that hurt again. Or not, if you consider it's just Backstabbing Wokowen channeling his inner backstabber again, after performing the same stunt on Jeremy Corbyn. Which does not mean that Keir should feel better about it, does it?

You don’t bury hatchets... only in someone’s head

(Jon Richardson, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2015)

Faith is nourishment, but only porridge has slow-release carbohydrates

(Jon Richardson, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2015)

As you might expect, the seat projection from the most recent batch of polls is quite dismally dire for Labour. Here I used the patterns of my Poll'O'Polls only for the English seats outside London. We also have recent polls of London, Wales and Scotland which I used to fill in the blanks. So the overall picture is a wee smitch different from what you would get from a simulation on uniform national swing using the Poll'O'Polls' weighted averages. But not by much, and the current projection from Electoral Calculus is actually pretty much the same, give or take a couple. In case you wonder, the two 'Others' here would be an environmentalist independent in East Devon and the Ashfield Independents in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire. The latter walk and quack like closet LibDems, but have actually attracted a large swath of former Labour voters at the 2019 election, turning it into a massive double-whammy humiliation for Labour. Not only did they lose the seat, that they had held since 1918 in two successive incarnations, except for a brief period in 1977-1979 after a by-election. But they also ended up third after losing almost 10k votes to the Ashfield Independents. And the next election could also bring some more upsetting results for Labour, as the projection looks definitely 2015ish, not really what Labour should be aiming for these days. This result would in fact be better for the Conservatives than 2015. After that election, David Cameron and then Theresa May had a 15-seat working majority. The current projection means that Boris Johnson would start his second term with a 35-seat majority. All he has to do then is stay put for five years and avoid another snap election, as those can deliver unpredictable results that even John Curtice wouldn't foresee.

The main point here is that the seat projections in the three meta-regions of England confirm what the predicted vote shares imply. Labour are still not back up to their 2017 results in the North and Midlands, and even further from the 2005 benchmark results that would propel Not-So-Hardy Keir to Number Ten. There are strong hints that the Red-To-Blue-Back-To-Red patterns Labour expected in the North have actually turned out to be more like Red-To-Turquoise-To-Blue, with the Brexit Party vote providing an oven-ready decompression chamber to the Tory vote. And Labour being halfway to their 2017 result in the Midlands can't hide the sobering fact that the Conservatives still bag an outright majority of the popular vote there. But of course the biggest sensation here is Labour's result in the South, where they would not just surpass their 2017 result, but be halfway to their 2005 result. This thanks to regional crosstabs predicting a 6% swing from the Conservatives to Labour there, three times the GB-wide average. The most likely explanation is a significant change in demographics, which YouGov already foresaw in 2018. It certainly helped already at the 2019 election, when Labour's decline had far less impact in the South than in the other regions on their number of seats. There is also circumstantial evidence of this in the projection saying that half of Labour's gains in the South, or a quarter of their gains in England, would be in the South East, the region closest to London. Since then, it has certainly been accelerated by the effects of the First Great Lockdown, especially working from home making living close to work far less attractive, and housing costs within London. Labour would thusly gain 14 seats all over the Leafy South, half their overall gains in England, with some big fish going down: Robert Buckland, Alok Sharma, Chloe Smith and Brexiteer Covidiot-In-Chief Steve Baker. This last one is probably the most remarkable as Baker currently represents Wycombe, an historic seat that has existed since the Model Parliament of 1295, and has been previously held by Labour for only six years in 1945-1951. Two of the other predicted gains (Filton and Bradley Stoke, Truro and Falmouth) exist only since 2010, have never been held by Labour, and don't even have an exact predecessor seat that was ever held by Labour.

Labour would be on more familiar territory in their eleven other Southern gains, all of which they held during most or all of the Blair years, and lost in 2005 or 2010, with only Southampton Itchen remaining in their hands until 2015. Three of these eleven (Ipswich, Peterborough, Stroud) also turned red again briefly between 2017 and 2019. So I definitely think we should have a closer look at the South, and especially the South East, when the next batch of polls are delivered. To try and guess if the major road to Labour's recovery isn't down there rather than in the historic heartlands, which would be quite a turning point in English electoral history. Then on 7 May this year, the eyes of the punditariat will not be trained on the English Councils and probably not even on Scotland, mostly because the results won't be there already, which probably won't prevent some from commenting on them anyway. But the focal point will be Hartlepool, where the by-election will obviously be scrutinised and dissected from all possible angles. Labour HQ belatedly casting doubt on the one poll we have so far does not make it more or less valid. But prevailing trends both GB-wide and specifically in the North East lend some credibility to it. And Labour HQ are obviously worried enough to send a flock of big guns there, though that might not be the miracle cure they hope it can be. The only certainty is that, whatever happens there on 6 May, the media will make a national event of it. They probably already have two versions of their post-mortem: one explaining why losing the seat is a personal disaster for Keir Starmer, and one explaining why holding it is a massive success for the local party. Never mind the bollocks. And before we move back to Scotland for my next article, let's enjoy again David Tennant's Saltire Moment on "Have I Got News For You", joyfully giving all obsessive EngNat flagshaggers the finger. Be seeing you soon.

Don’t confuse us with the American Dream, this is the UK

You work hard here, but you don’t prosper

(Peter Boyd, Waking The Dead: Pieta, 2008)

28/04/2021

On The Road To Holyrood

21/04/2021

Alba? Or Did You Say Aɫ̪apə?

14/04/2021

Anarchy In The Police State

We Must Be Dreaming