Jeremy's Den: The Nutters And The Plan

It's shite being Scottish

We're the lowest of the low, the scum of the fucking Earth

The most wretched, miserable, servile,

Pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilisation

Some people hate the English, I don't, they're just wankers

(Mark 'Rent Boy' Renton, Trainspotting, 1996)

We, on the other hand, are colonised by wankers

Can't even find a decent culture to be colonised by

We're ruled by effete arseholes

It's a shite state of affairs to be in

And all the fresh air in the world won't make a fucking difference

(Mark 'Rent Boy' Renton, Trainspotting, 1996)

This is going to be my last blog post of 2021, and Dog knows a lot has happened this year. Not least me turning 30, and I have gotten over it just as my dear friend and neighbour Brian predicted. Climbing one rung higher on the food chain eventually just made me more conscious that the Zoomers are the clearest and presentest danger to Civilisation-As-We-Know-It since Dog domesticated Dofos. But let's not indulge in personal stuff for too long, and let's head straight for the heart of the matter. I intended this last article of the year to be about Scotland only. But I can't not mention the North Shropshire by-election, as the shockwave of its fallout is still sending ripples across the playground of British politics. And making the Liberal Democrats dream about what the future has in store for them. To fully grasp the impact of that political asteroid, let's see first how this constituency had voted since the dawn of the Thatcher Era, and then bear with me as I indulge in some historical trivia.

The constituency was established in 1832 as a two-seater. The first two co-owners of the seat, because that's how it worked in the days of yore, were a Conservative and a Whig, one of those who were to the Liberal Democrats what The Quarrymen were to the Plastic Ono Band. Then, from the 1835 election to the vaporisation of the seat in 1885, both co-owners where Conservatives. A new one-seater constituency called Oswestry was created in 1885, covering pretty much the same area as the current North Shropshire seat. This variant existed for almost a century and returned Conservative MPs all along, except for an unfortunate lapse of reason at a 1904 by-election, when it elected a Liberal, one of those who were to the Whigs what The Beatles were to The Quarrymen. The mistake was corrected at the 1906 general election, an early sign that Libs of all shades are good at gaining blue seats at by-elections, but shite at holding them at the next general. The seat was slightly remodeled and rebranded as North Shropshire in 1983, without changing its political persuasion. So, for 115 years from 1906 to 2021, it showcased an unbroken chain of True Blue MPs, last but not least Owen Paterson, the one who got the ball rolling for this year's '8.5 on the Richter scale' event. But you can legitimately also pin that one on Boris Johnson, and his willingness to protect the never-ending stream of Tory corruption.

The morning after such an event, there are always two sides to the story: what do the numbers actually say? And what do we want them to say? Well, it was a walloping for the Conservatives, and it was a walloping for the Conservatives. Full stop. Boris Johnson will find it hard to put lipstick on that particular pig, as it was an epic disaster of Willie Bain grade, with a swing of 34% from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats. Even worse than Chesham and Amersham, where the swing was 'only' 25%. But I wouldn't take it as clear evidence that Boris Johnson has run out of road, and is now left desperately spinning his legs in mid-air before plunging into the abyss. He's still the boss, after all, as in 'mob boss'. 101 poundshop dalmatians... oops...sorry... libertarians voting against the weakest Covid precautions in the world because, ye ken, their local's profits matter more that a few thousand oiks in intensive care, is one thing. 54 with a functioning brain cell sending a letter of no confidence to the 1922 Committee is another, especially when the New Model Virus provides you with an oven-ready excuse to procrasturbate. So we will have to wait a little bit longer until we know if the Shootout At Oswestry Town Hall was the last straw into Boris's political coffin. And, even if it goes that way, there is still the possibility of a reboot of the 1990 leadership contest. Something like the public's favourite Rishi Sunak, and the Committee's favourite Liz Truss, nuking each other into oblivion, and we end up with Jeremy Hunt sneaking his way through the cracks to Number Ten.

This by-election was also, even if The Guardian will never print it, quite a doomy and gloomy day for their fairytale Progressive Alliance. Labour HQ got the memo and carefully avoided going anywhere near North Shropshire, clearly wishing for massive LibDem tactical voting. But Their Man In Oswestry, Ben Wood, clearly didn't, even if he had obviously been selected as the beigest possible candidate, with no previous electoral experience and the lowest possible name recognition. And also because he's not a Corbynite, which is enough to grant you a pass to the big boy's locker room in Keir Starmer's multiverse. He nevertheless fought it to the last man, himself, despite the lack of funding and support from Lab Central, and it was even worse with the Greens. Clearly neither the local candidate nor Greenie Central ever seriously considered they should tone it down a few notches, to help oust the Tories, and ended up increasing their vote share. So now Keir Starmer not only has to boost the generic Labour vote across England, he also has to make it Green-proof in every constituency. Which would be a minor challenge with the Greens on barely 3% of the popular vote, as in 2019. But might prove trickier if the Greensters live up to their current polling and bag three or four times more votes. Bully for Keir, the only advice he will get is that of the punditariat punditificating about issues they always get wrong because, ye ken, losing votes at a by-election is a sure predictor of a massive victory at the next general. No shit, Sherlock.

Seize the moment

Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved away the dessert cart

(Erma Bombeck)

The best magician in the world can’t pull a rabbit

Out of a hat unless there’s one already there

(Perry Mason)

So now at last, it's this time of year when I can try and sum up what happened in Scottish polls since the last Scottish Parliament election on 6 May. First of all, fourteen IndyRef2 polls from seven different pollsters. One predicts a tie, two a Yes win and twelve a No win. A popular one was conducted a month ago already, this (in)famous Ipsos-Mori poll for STV that predicted 55% Yes to 45% No with undecideds removed, when the steadyish trend for the previous six weeks had been more like 49-51. The trend of voting intentions since 2014 is just mildly encouraging, as it looks like we have an Ever Given referendum, endlessly stuck between 'almost there' and 'not quite there yet'. Then some may argue, and certainly will, that it's more akin to a Schrödinger's Neverendum, as we never know if it's quite alive still, or quite dead already. Or call it the Snow White referendum, as we can all live happily ever after in the comforting belief that 'someday our IndyRef will come'.

The question is of course what the Scottish Government and the Yellow-Green Axis have done to further the cause of independence. It's fair to say the Greenies have done fuck all, while the SNP has talked a lot. The more you look at it, the more you reach the unavoidable conclusion that Nicola Sturgeon's Master Plan for Scottish Independence is pretty much the same as Boris Johnson's Master Plan to contain Covid. Plan A is to make it up as they go. Plan B is that there never was a Plan B until it was too late to come up with a real Plan B. Of course the SNP have loads of reasons to feel comfy within the confines of devolution. It saves them a lot of the heavy lifting that goes with full government, and offers them endless opportunities to whine about SW1 and boost their support doing that. Then there is the money. It's not just that Pete Wishart would have to live off his share of Runrig royalties, which would be pretty slim as he never contributed anything significant to them either. It's about the party itself, which is currently entitled to a total of about £1.2m every year, in Short Money from the House of Commons and Policy Development Grant from the Electoral Commission. Which is not something you'd want to lose when the equivalent system in Scotland provides far less money, and none goes to the governing party anyway. So I guess SNP Central are not totally unhappy with the current weighted rolling average of IndyRef2 polls, that still has No leading even with a conspicuously Yes-friendly poll in the mix.

Right now there are also some rumours that SNP Central might get on board for a three-way referendum including 'Devo Max', whatever the fuck that actually means, on the ballot. Which is indeed an option Big Eck pretended to consider in 2011-2012, to strongarm David Cameron into accepting the Yes-Or-No question. Because Call-Me-Dave had convinced himself that Devo Max would prevail, and he definitely did not want any of it. It's still quite possible Boris Johnson would accept it, based on the same belief that Devo Max would win, but now this has become SW1's fallback option and they would welcome it, as a way to undermine independence for the next generation and then some. Bear in mind this would be a fully acceptable outcome for Labour too, as it fits with both Gordon Brown's Vow and Keir Starmer's federalism. From the 'progressive' side, The Guardian published a column on the prospects of a second independence referendum, just after the Ipsos-Mori poll was published. And, for once, I must say I quite agree with their views. Though I would say the game looks more like poker than chess, and who will outbluff the other. Unless there never was any such game. The whole thing was just an elaborate panto staged for our benefit, and Nicola always knew Boris was behind her. And kindly asking for a Section 30 Order was just the theme song... as Devo Max was always the real goal for both.

I have no idea what Plan B is

But it’s going to be a very big relief when I think of it

(The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Return Of Doctor Mysterio, 2016)

If there is an idiot in power, those who elected him are well represented

(Mahatma Gandhi)

I have finished my assessment of the Johnson Gerrymander, officially known as the 2023 Boundary Review, in Scotland. Before I start, let's be clear that the SNP are pissing down the wrong tree when they whine about Scotland's influence in Commons being unfairly reduced. First of all, we have fuck all influence, and you can't reduce what does not exist. Second, there is nothing unfair in the reduction from 59 to 57 seats, it's basic maths. The allocation of seats by nation and region is based on the electorate, and everybody knows the basic demographics. The overall population of Scotland is increasing at a lower rate than the UK's average and, even with a higher voter registration rate, so is the electorate. Thusly, the Scottish share of the electorate goes down, and so does the number of seats. Ian Blackford can throw all the toys he wants out of the pram, maths is one part of reality the SNP can't alter with a vote in Holyrood. Furthermore, the notional votes in the new constituencies show that the SNP would have bagged 48 seats in December 2019 under the new boundaries, just as they did under the current ones. The Liberal Democrats are the victims here, as they notionally lose two of their four seats, while the Conservatives and Labour hold their respective six and one. Gerrymandering is pretty much Braveheart-Meets-Frankenstein. The constituencies are drawn and quartered and then reassembled with sometimes unintended consequences. Or are they in fact intended? Anyway, here's what the new map delivers for Scotland (click on the images for a larger version).

In the four constituencies that are predicted to change hands, my 'notional MP' is the runner-up at the 2019 election. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that Glasgow and the Highlands would lose one seat each, as several seats were much below the required electorate. But I suspect that the redrawers had an extra clause in their mission statement: deprive both Ian Blackford and Douglas Ross of an obvious successor seat. And they used the same method in both cases: cut the original seat in half and reassemble it with bits and bobs from adjoining areas. The result is actually clean in the Highlands as two of the three current seats are well below the lower edge of the allowed range of electorates. Blackford's only problem with the new boundaries is that his home on the Isle of Skye is now in the new Highland Central, notionally Drew Hendry's seat. Which leaves him little choice but challenging Jamie Stone in the new Highland North. What happened in Moray is odd and anything but clean, as the current seat fits the electorate requirements and is also neatly coterminous (or coextensive, depending on your mood for the day) with the Council area. But the current proposals have it grossly dismembered and shared between three new seats that also include wards from the Highland and Aberdeenshire councils. Which goes against common sense and also against the Boundary Commission's guidelines that promote the preservation of community ties. So I guess there is no conspiracy theory in saying that someone Doon Sooth seriously wanted to get rid of Oor Doogie. Otherwise, the new boundaries protect both the SNP and the Conservatives, as the notional results in the new seats show.

The notional 2019 results are just simple maths, based on the reassignment of votes by ward on the new boundaries. The voting intentions and seat projections for the next election are based on the average of the constituency and list votes at the last Holyrood election, to illustrate the point with an hypothetical situation totally disconnected from current Westminster polling. It is quite clear that one of the goals of the Review, implicitly or explicitly, was to be kind to the SNP. As for which ulterior motives, your guess is as good as mine. Another visible consequence is to shield the Conservatives from most of the impact of a slump in their voting intentions, as they would fare better under the new boundaries on the same share of the popular vote. Before I forget, there is another interesting stunt in the new Boundary Review, compared to the previous version that was published in 2018. This time, the changes to the Edinburgh constituencies have been kept to the minimum, with just Musselburgh rejoining Edinburgh East, as was the case between 1997 and 2005, and some minor reshuffling of wards within the City Council boundaries. But the most significant change is that Edinburgh South West keeps the exact same boundaries, instead of being dismembered and part of it reassembled with Livingston. The 2018 version would basically have seen Joanna Cherry and Hannah Bardell pitted against each other in a new seat. Now Joanna's seat is kept unscathed and she has the obvious opportunity to stand again on her home turf. Of course it's not like someone in SW1 is taking the mick out of Nicola Sturgeon here, making it her problem to use her foot soldiers in the SNP's NEC to kick out Joanna. Or is it? Anyway, this is probably not the last we hear from the Boundary Commission as pretty much everyone in the Scottish political biosphere is opposed to the proposals. Watch this space.

Witch hunts never end, you burn one, you have to find another

Everyone needs to have something they can feel good about hating

Plus everyone loves a bonfire

(Cully Barnaby, Midsomer Murders: The Straw Woman, 2004)

Winning is all about looking happier than the other guy

Talk with confidence even if you’re terrified

Act as if you know their plan and sometimes

If you’re very lucky, they’ll actually tell you it

(The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Girl Who Died, 2015)

There have been 36 Full Scottish polls of Westminster voting intentions since the 2019 general election, including seven since the last Holyrood election. We also have a massive fuckload of Scottish subsamples from GB-wide polls, which we should obviously not take at face value, because of the higher margin of error. But the combination of the two nevertheless paints an interesting, and probably quite reliable, picture of the trends behind the evolution of the Scottish electorate over the last two years, or the last six months. And the current trends, with the SNP back in the mid-40s, Labour coming back strongly to second place, the Conservatives down to the low-to-mid-20s, and the Liberal Democrats crawling back to around 10%, are definitely not the best case scenario for the SNP. I even have a tenner on this situation being Nicola Sturgeon's worst nightmare.

There are many counter-intuitive traits in Scottish voting intentions. First is that the Conservatives were not that much of a threat to the SNP, as long as the LibDems were down the pipes on 5% or lower. Any seat that the SNP might have lost to the Conservatives (insert Gordon or Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock here) was easily compensated by the SNP bagging the three LibDems mainland seats, and plausibly Orkney and Shetland too. Second is that Labour was never definitely irrelevant and off the pitch for good. At the 2019 election, five seats came out as SNP-Lab marginals, while Ian Murray was deeply entrenched and out of the danger zone in Edinburgh South. The Airdrie and Shotts by-election proved that you should not write off Labour prematurely, even if the SNP held the seat with an increased vote share. The current configuration adds some interesting challenges for the SNP. The unexpected LibDem surge means that their seats are no longer easy preys for the SNP. Regional crosstabs of the most recent Full Scottish polls even say the LibDems might be in a better position than ever in Edinburgh West and North East Fife. Then the Conservatives, even on 20-22%, are still predicted to hold three to five seats (Banff and Buchan, at least two of the Border seats, possibly West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine). Finally Labour is likely to benefit from the SNP's self-inflicted wounds in the two seats currently held by the Alba Party. An SNP-Alba split vote would instantly switch both back to Labour. So the current snapshot of possible outcomes of the next general election is not all milk and honey for the SNP.

These projections are based on polls conducted over the last six weeks. Here I have nine Scottish subsamples of standard GB-wide polls, with sample sizes in the 100-150 range. The last Full Scottish poll from Opinium, with a sample size of 1;328. And finally the Scottish subsample of Focaldata's massive MRP poll, which has a sample of 24,373 GB-wide, and a Scottish subsample of 2,106, bigger than any standard Full Scottish poll fielded since December 2019. So the tone is set pretty much by Opinium, who had the the SNP on 48%, and Focaldata, who had them on 37%. Interestingly there are similar patterns here as in GB-wide and English polling. A mild recovery for the Liberal Democrats, from their abysmal results in earlier polls, undoubtedly boosted by their by-election gains. More significantly, a surge of the Labour vote, who appear to snatch additional votes from both the SNP and the Conservatives. The combination of this swing and regional variations puts five of the SNP's 2019 seats squarely in the danger zone. By order of likelihood to fall: Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, Airdrie and Shotts, Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill, East Lothian, Motherwell and Wishaw. This even without factoring in the accelerant that SNP-Alba split votes could be. Even if my projection is less radical than Focaldata's, which predicted 11 Scottish seats for Labour, it confirms that Labour is still a force to reckon with in the Central Belt. But also in West Scotland, where Inverclyde and West Dunbartonshire would be Labour's next top targets. So the SNP should probably brace themselves for upsets where they least expect them. Just saying.

COP26 was held in Glasgow, but I'm not sure Glasgow is the right city

If you're trying to convince the world it's worth saving

(Jimmy Carr)

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes an act of rebellion

(George Orwell)

Now I have to devote some time, again, to the chronic over-representation of Scotland in GB-wide voting intentions polls. Because we had this miraculous YouGov poll just before Christmas, that gave The National and the Sturgeonist Twittersphere a massive hard-on, because it infamously had the SNP on 6% of GB-wide voting intentions. Which neither one nor the others questioned, while also mentioning that the SNP bagged 47% of the Scottish subsample, and it was quite obvious that the two numbers just did not add up. Let's go back to the basic facts first. In December 2019, Scotland accounted for 8.4% of Great Britain's population, 8.6% of registered voters and 8.8% of valid votes cast. I use GB-wide figures here because almost all polls don't include Northern Ireland, so any valid argument has to be GB-based. Thusly, the SNP bagging 45% of the Scottish vote at that election translated into 4% GB-wide, which is quite probably the magic number everyone has in mind when assessing current polls. It was actually 3.98%, but never mind. It is very easy to figure out how Scottish voting figures translate into GB-wide votes, and vice-versa. Just use the 8.8% share of votes cast as the ratio in both directions, and here is what you get.

So, YouGov's infamous 6% never were 6%, and not even close. 47% of the Scottish vote is actually 4.2% of the GB-wide vote, which YouGov would have rounded to 4%, not 6%. 6% would have been an implausibly high 68% of the Scottish vote, which you don't have even in Pete Wishart's wettest dreams. This sort of misrepresentation only happens because there is a significant over-representation of Scottish voting intentions in all polls. It is quite easy to detect when pollsters actually release the full data of their surveys, as per British Polling Council rules. These have to include the number of respondents in the original sample and every subsample used in any of the polls crosstabs. And then the same level of detail for the final panel on which the poll's headlines results are based. These are what I call the 'valid answers', as in the 'valid votes cast' in a real election. This final panel is the end product of the pollster's sausage-making algorithms that generally include weighting by demographics, likelihood to vote, remembered vote at past elections... All this voodoo-dolling actually alters the poll's results, which is readily noticeable when both the raw results and the final headline results are disclosed. Simple maths, on a sample of recently conducted polls, show a major flaw: Scotland's share of the valid answers is over-weighted, and sometimes quite significantly. On average, and I think quite coincidentally, it matches Scotland's share of registered voters in the original panels. But Scotland's share of votes cast is 1% higher than at the last election. Which results in a major distortion of the SNP's vote share in the GB-wide headline results. QED.

I don't have the similar data for YouGov, as they have a far more restrictive interpretation of their duty of disclosure, under British Polling Council rules, than any other pollster. YouGov publish rounded vote shares and don't disclose the exact numbers of valid answers in every cell of the crosstabs, as other pollsters routinely do. They also don't define exactly what the sizes of their samples and subsamples represent, though there is circumstantial evidence that they represent the original sample and not the valid answers. YouGov's Scottish subsamples are always aboot 8.6% of the GB-wide sample, which is the correct ratio based on registered voters in December 2019. It also hints that there is a massive distortion in their final panel of valid answers, as their much-publicised headline results are ridiculously at odds with the results of the Scottish subsample. The massive inconsistency between the two hints that the over-representation of Scotland in their final weighted and filtered panel is probably even bigger than with other pollsters. So this another reminder that everyone should think twice before celebrating an 'unprecedented' SNP vote share in any poll's headline result. And just look at the Scottish subsample first, to get the real snapshot and not a distorted one.

It is quite possible that we are descending into an age in which

Two and two will make five when the Leader says so

(George Orwell)

Half of my stories are true, the other half just haven’t happened yet

(Sam Garner, Doctor Who: The Angels Take Manhattan, 2012)

Since the last Scottish Parliament election, there have been eight polls of voting intentions for the next one. Which show different patterns from the House of Commons voting intentions, which has its own logic but might also be just the last ripple of previous trends, as the last Holyrood poll is a month old and couldn't register the fallout, if any, of all the stuff that has happened in SW1 since. The results of the constituency voting intentions (top chart) and the list voting intentions (bottom chart) show no buyer's remorse over the last election, and indeed quite the opposite. Contrary to Westminster polls, there is no Labour surge to be seen here, although the most recent polls was fielded more that three weeks after the shit hit the fans in SW1 and Owen Paterson resigned. That's the neverending story of our Tale Of Two Nations: Keir Starmer may look like a welcome alternative to Boris Johnson, but Anas Sarwar is not one to Nicola Sturgeon. Neither is Oor Doogie Ross, as shown by the Conservatives' mediocre polling.

Of course, the strong support for the SNP-Greens coalition, often stronger than at the last election, is puzzling for many reasons. First there is no such thing as a honeymoon period when you start your fourth term, but there is something of one here. Then it gives credibility to what was once just one of Anas Sarwar's quips during the last campaign, that the SNP's talking point should be that "at least, we're not as bad as the other lot". That may also be a vote by default for Nicola Sturgeon, as nobody actually wants Anas Sarwar, Douglas Ross or Alex Cole-Hamilton as the next First Minister. Now the real issue is how all this polling, if it ever came true, would affect the allocation of seats at Holyrood. I ran a simulation based on the weighted average of all eight polls, which is as good a scenario as any when you're more that four years away from the next election. My results, including the regional variations in both votes, are pretty much the same as what you get on uniform swing, as the compensatory nature of the Additional Member System irons out the differences. And in both cases we would have a stronger pro-Independence majority, and Labour counter-intuitively doing better than the Conservatives on smaller vote shares for both. The key here is obviously Labour being more resilient on the list vote, while the Liberal Democrats would gain back 'big boy status' thanks to their higher list vote.

There is an obvious risk in all this polling, that it will fuel the SNP's hubris and their already strong tendency to take voters for granted, despite 2017 having set a precedent to the contrary twice. The SNP shouldn't ignore the risk of the next election cycle being a reboot of 2017, or warnings that they may well go down the same road as Labour before them, even when they come from people SNP Central relentlessly smear and demonise. Because the actual point here is what is the point of a stronger pro-Independence majority in Holyrood, or a stronger SNP group in Westminster, if it has fuck all impact on the SNP's strategy? There is an easy way to remember what the point is: Nicola Sturgeon must always be one step ahead and have one more mandate for Independence than Boris Johnson has children. Simples. Which is of course not the point at all, innit? Hoarding mandates like hunting trophies, to let them gather dust on a shelf at Bute House, is definitely not what Independence supporters expect from 'the one party of Independence'. Not acting beyond sheepishly asking for a Section 30 Order again, and whining about it when it is predictably turned down, just does not cut it. The SNP should be paying more attention to the natives getting restless over unkept promises. Otherwise there will be an electoral price to pay sooner or later, and it will be too late to whine about that too.

I love the way Scotland gets all celebrations in one corner of the year

So that, being Scottish, you have Christmas craziness

And then Hogmanay insanity, Burns Night three weeks later

And then, for the rest of the year, nothing, just a long hangover

(Stephen Fry, QI: Highs And Lows, 2010)

A Scottish friend of mine used to say “I don’t know why

You English people go on about our accent being impenetrable

Americans find it easier to understand, easier than English”

Then I saw ‘Trainspotting’ in America

And there were subtitles all the way through

(Stephen Fry, QI: Highs And Lows, 2010)

Another poll should trigger some alarms at SNP Central, or not, given that they are genetically engineered to dismiss anything that goes against the party line. It was conducted by Opinium in early December, surveying people across the North of Scotland, about various issues related to the oil and gas industry and more specifically the Cambo oil field. It was not widely covered by Scottish media, especially not The National, but it was deemed important enough by the Press and Journal and The Times to warrant full coverage. It was fielded after Nicola Sturgeon publicly stated that Cambo should not get the green light, and Shell withdrew from the project, with a panel covering the North East and Highlands and Islands electoral regions. The raw data say that 36% oppose Sturgeon's position and 29% support it, which is definitely not an endorsement. The tweaked data, with "don't knows" removed, also show at best lukewarm support across the political spectrum, and significant opposition in some corners of the compass. I excluded Green voters here, as political affiliations are based on the 2019 general election votes, and this returns a ridiculously small Green subsample.

As you might expect, Conservative voters are up in arms against the cancelling of Cambo, but LibDem voters also oppose it by a teeny weeny margin. Which will be called 'not valid' only by those in the metropolitan bubble who will overlook the fact that the Conservatives are breathing down the SNP's neck in the North East, and the LibDems still have higher than average support in Highlands and Islands. The obviously inconvenient truth for SNP Central is that their own voters offer only minimal and lukewarm support: 34% of the full subsample, and 47% of those who express an opinion. There is actually a majority of SNP voters sitting on the fence, when you add those who neither support or oppose (25%), don't know (21%) or prefer not to say (5%). Then the panel were asked to rank the SNP-Green deal's and the oil economy's impact on a scale from 'very positive' to 'very negative'. Massive majorities agree that the oil and gas industry has had a positive impact on both Scotland's and the UK's economy. Which is kind of a proven fact, but it's still worth checking people are aware of it. There is obviously no such enthusiasm over the coalition deal, and probably for a fuckload of different reasons, not limited to just the economic impact on the North East, even if it's what the question asked. SNP voters massively support it, and the only reason I see for this is that they believe ScotGov's promises that there will be sunlit uplands beyond the horizon. Time will tell, I guess.

As part of the drive to Net Zero, 44% of the panel think Aberdeen should receive priority financial support while 20% think the resources should go elsewhere and 36% have no opinion. Prioritising Aberdeen surely makes sense, as you can expect it will take years to retrain an oil rig worker to become a worker for the wind industry for example, if you target only retraining within the energy sector. Public funding appears to be the key here, as the panel don't have a really positive view of the energy companies' willingness to invest in the North East after the SNP-Greens deal. 28% think they will invest less, 19% think it will be more and 15% it will be the same, while a massive 37% have no idea. Interestingly, the poll's wording explicitly mentions direct funding from the UK government in a reserved matter, presumably to get all options covered, and that does not seem to be a red line for the public. And, in this specific case, there are a thousand reasons why the SNP should forget their objections, no matter how relevant and justified they are, and just take the money and run. Finally, the panel were asked how the canceling of Cambo had influenced their assessment of the First Minister, the SNP and Independence, from 'more favourable' to 'less favourable'. With 'unchanged' split into two subsets: was favourable before and still is, was unfavourable before and still is.

Of course this comes mostly from a region that has turned from an SNP heartland to a Tory heartland after Brexit, and with stronger than average opposition to Independence. But, even so, it's far from a ringing endorsement of the deal and its fallout, and should not be brushed aside lightly. Patrick Harvie must have the only rose-tinted glasses left in Scotland, if he expects all issues here to be resolved as if by magic and to everyone's satisfaction. Or that imposing an ideologically-driven policy, no matter how sound it is in the long run, without due attention to the short-term impact, will not have electoral consequences. Or he doesn't care because the Greens have a weak voter base in the North East, while their key metropolitan voters in Glasgow and Lothian will love every aspect of the plan. But this obviously just Classic Paddy, the same one who claimed with a straight face that only far-right obscurantists opposed shafting the oil and gas industry and its workers. Then we already know that only the far-right will dare challenge Nutter Paddy on his most asinine opinions, and only fascists will disagree with Paddy's strongly held beliefs, even when they reach a level of stupidity and delusion not even mendacious hardline Tories can match. We'll see how well that works at polling places soon enough, won't we?

A lot of the stuff Scots claim to like, they only do to trick us

Like haggis is something they pretend to like

So when you go to Scotland, you have haggis and you find out it’s rancid

They all have a jolly good laugh about it

(Jon Richardson, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, 2014)

Same with that Rabbie Burns, even they can’t understand it

It’s just made-up language and they pretend it’s ancient Scottish poetry

But it’s not, it’ just gobbledy “Haigh tha morra, flookie da pookie”

And they go “Och, aye, that’s ancient lyricism, that is”

He was just pissed the whole time, aye, and a hogey had a bogey

(Jon Richardson, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, 2014)

Next stop is now the Council elections that will be held on 5 May 2022. And the poll of North East Scotland I mentioned just before highlights one of many issues that will undoubtedly have an impact on the results. Their electoral system (Single Transferable Vote, STV) is praised by the supporters of proportional representation (PR) against the so very British first past the post (FPTP) as more diverse, inclusive, democratic and whatnot. Which is of course fucking bullshit as STV is actually an intrinsically perverse system. It does not deliver PR and allows for more tactical voting than FPTP, because it's a multi-round system where each party can choose to field several candidates, and the multiverse of lower-rank preferences is a worse challenge than Star Trek's three-dimensional chess. One of the best examples of STV's built-in perversity is the 2020 Dáil Éireann election, where cross-tactical down-ballot voting from Fianna Fail and Fine Gael defeated several Sinn Féin candidates who topped the first preferences. Numbers easily prove that both genuine PR and FPTP would have delivered Sinn Féin as the first party, while STV relegated them to second place and out of government.

The perversity of the system is amplified by the strategy to 'vote till you boak', ranking candidates until you find one that's genuinely so offensive you don't want him anywhere near a Council seat. Then a candidate who is just 'not as bad as the really bad lot' might get massive third of fourth preferences from all corners of the political compass and end up defeating the genuine preferred candidates who did better on first preferences. Just think of Labour candidates, who might be considered as 'not as bad as really fucking bad' by pretty much everyone from Greens to Conservatives for hugely different and conflicting reasons, and end up hoarding enough transfers to bag a seat against all odds. It has happened, hasn't it? Then there is every reason to not believe Council elections polls, which have proved to be a massive fuck up in 2017. If their predictions had been right, the SNP would have bagged more seats than they fielded candidates. In the end, the SNP's actual results were the same as in 2012 in both votes and seats, give or take a handful that were doubtful anyway, because of the confusion between actual seats won in 2012 and notional seats on the new 2017 ward boundaries. So I won't comment any further on this year's polls, as the only one we have so far looks just as shite as the two we had in 2017. The main flaw is obviously ignoring independent candidates, who are quite a presence at Council elections, and don't fit in the 'others' category used by pollsters. Until pollsters have found a credible way to address this flaw, and my educated guess is that they won't, just ignore the polls.

The hustings ahead of these elections, whatever form they take during a pandemic, are the right moment to grill candidates about everything within the Councils' remit. Which is not just potholes and bin collections, but everything that happens in schools and warrants scrutiny by concerned parents. First the Scottish Government's non-legally-binding, probably because it's not law-abiding in the first place, 'inclusive' guidance for schools, which addresses an issue that pretty much does not exist, and should be dealt with on a sensitive and sensible case-by-case basis when it does. Then the state-funded promotion of highly controversial 'educational' material from TIE, often seen as grooming schoolchildren into an ideology parents are likely to oppose, which conjures ghosts of sinister times past in sinister places afar. Or overzealous stonewallised headteachers enforcing unisex toilets that nobody asked for and girls would not use, until public outrage forced the Council to backpedal in a hurry, or be taken to court for knowingly violating the provisions of the Equality Act 2010. Finally the infamous 'sex census' targeting school-age kids, which definitely did not go down well with the general public, and received mostly hostile media-coverage when details surfaced. These are all legitimate issues and parents should not fear being smeared as bigots if they hold their Councillors to account over these. Especially when the SNP are not really in a strong position in outgoing Councils, as the year-by-year evolution of seats shows.

Five seats are currently vacant, but only one by-election is scheduled (Preston, Seton and Gosford ward of East Lothian Council, on 20 January) as the last four vacancies occurred less than six months before the elections. So, whatever the result of the last by-election, and there is every reason to believe it will be a Labour hold, the big picture we have now is representative of what will have on the eve of the elections. Which is not good for the SNP as they will be below 400 seats, their lowest number since the end of the 2007-2012 term. They have so far lost 35 seats, when they had lost only 19, and remained above 400 seats overall, during the 2012-2017 term. The main reason is the same in both terms: defections. But, while defectors sat as independents in previous terms, almost half of them have joined the Alba Party during this term. So what we need now is 354 candidates from the Alba Party, one in every ward, or from other like-minded small pro-Independence parties, as long as they strike a deal not to compete against each other in the same wards. This is the only plan we should have, to kick out the most outrageous gender ideology nutters, without resorting to the nuclear option of massive abstention that would hand control to the Tories in many cases. By the way, I must say that the reactions to my deliberately provocative tweets on the matter were really fun. But I had warned you beforehand that these were mind games, hadn't I? And you still fell for it and made my day. Bait, hook, line, sinker and the whole rod too. Be seeing you.

It’s always quite weird Scotland comes on top of these

“How happy are you with your life?” studies, and I think

That’s because researchers don’t really understand sarcasm

(Frankie Boyle, Room 101, 2017)

Jeremy's Den

31/12/2021

The Nutters And The Plan

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