Two Scottish Trounces

Thirty years of gradually building, building, building until we get independence over fifty per cent and then thrown away with some self-indulgent nonsense, which even if it was right, which it is nae, would hardly be tactically the most astute manoeuvre when we're meant to be taking Scotland to its next date with destiny.

(Alex Salmond, Burns Supper in Dundee, 4 February 2023)

© Malcolm Arnold, 1957

The choice for Scotland is quite clear. We can choose to remain a bit part player, unable to advance our interests and influence the international agenda other than through the United Kingdom. Alternatively, as an independent country, we can actively seek responsibility, eager for the opportunity to help shape the great global debates.

(Alex Salmond, Scotland In The World Forum, 4 February 2008)

I have neglected Scotland's Great Matters of late, drowned in all the noise from other momentous events in the United Kingdom and France. So now it's time to get back in time, to what Scottish polls revealed over the last two months. With Malcolm Arnold's Four Scottish Dances in the background, that were premiered seven years before John Swinney was born, and Alex Salmond was two. They're also part of rock'n'roll history, as they were selected as the opening act for the 30th Anniversary performances of Jon Lord's Concerto For Group An Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall. The tsunami of polling frenzy around the Independence Day general election also hit Scotland, with twelve Full Scottish fielded in six weeks, including seven in the last ten days. Plus a further five Half Full, that probed only the Westminster voting intentions. I have already told you what the Westminster parts of all these polls revealed, but set aside the Indyref and Holyrood parts, that were not the mandatory focus then. So we will unpack all that now, starting with the updated trends of Indyref voting intentions.

The trendlines are merciless. There has been a steady decline of the Yes vote since John Swinney was anointed First Minister. No ifs, no buts, just numbers. And even the better numbers in the last couple of polls don't make a fucking difference. The more the Great Scottish Public witness the SNP's shenanigans, the less likely they are to support Independence. Nothing new under the sun here, but it's worse now than it was after the Holyrood election of 2021, when the Covid-serendipity Yes surge of 2020 had conclusively collapsed. Humza Yousaf's mercifully short tenure did nothing to buck the trend, and John Swinney's hopefully just as short is also unlikely to do so. Interestingly, Savanta polled their Scottish panel, just a few days before the general election, on how Labour in government in London would influence their vote at an hypothetical Indyref. 25% said they would be more likely to vote Yes, 14% said they would be more likely to vote No. But, and that's a big but, only 4% of presumptive No voters would be more likely to vote Yes, while 6% of presumptive Yes voters would be more likely to vote No. So that pretty much a draw, statistically speaking, and we also have to look at the bigger picture.

The weighted average of the six most recent polls still has No winning, but with such a small margin that it would be summat of a mild trounce. Savanta also found the Great Scottish Public split down the middle about the principle of having a second Independence referendum at some point in the future. Then we know that the Great Public, whether British or Scottish, love nothing more than contradicting themselves when offered the opportunity by follow-up questions. So they do it again when Savanta asks them, not if, but when a second referendum should happen. At the end of this gradual moving of the goalposts, we have only a quarter of Scots opining that a second referendum should never happen ever again, not half. Which I find much more believable, and the tipping point is five years out. Meaning somewhere in the second half of Labour's first term. Because there will be a second term, won't it? If memory serves me well, that's pretty much what Jeremy Corbyn said he would do if, Dog forbid, he had become Prime Minister. But Keir Starmer will have none of that, will he? Even if the SNP ask nicely. Which is, when you think it through, is probably not that bad. Because we would get trounced again, wouldn't we? And Dog only knows what would happen next, in another generation.

Make no mistake. Scotland has already changed. And Scotland is continuing to grow and develop as a nation and a society.

(Alex Salmond, Scotland In The World Forum, 4 February 2008)

© Malcolm Arnold, 1957

This Parliament exists, and always will, to serve the people and to provide national leadership which reflects their hopes, addresses their fears and raises their aspirations. It is a Parliament which the people demanded. It is also a Parliament of which the people make demands.

(Alex Salmond, Third Session of the Scottish Parliament, 30 June 2007)

Of course, there are more pressing issues than independence on the table for John Swinney right now. The whole story is told in the most recent voting intentions polls for the next Scottish Parliament election. After Humza Yousaf successfully transitioned into the Scottish Liz Truss, John Swinney seems determined to emerge of that election as the Tartan Rishi Sunak. The clueless and out-of-his-depth leader who takes a once gloriously triumphant party past the cliff edge and into the wheelie bin. Holyrood polls have now reached the point where generic British polls were around Halloween 2021, and Scottish Westminster polls around the Ides Of March 2024. The incumbent party and the main opposition party tied in voting intentions, with the former going down and the latter going up. The results of the general election tell quite clearly how this is bound to end. The only mitigating factor, for which the SNP should thank whomever came up with it, is that the infamous Additional Members System will dampen the fallout of a defeat, while pure FPTP would amplify it.

These trendlines are bad because they imply that Labour could score big gains in the constituencies. Bear in mind here that Scottish voters defied the polls at the general election, and won. The pollsters got the breakdown of votes about right, but we all forgot how many marginal seats there were. A lot. And that just a few dozen voters changing their mind at the last second can flip a seat. They did. If that happens again, and in the same regions as at the general, all the lists seats in the world won't make a fucking difference. It is also interesting to take a closer look at what each of the last six Holyrood found, bearing in mind they were fielded sometimes on the exact same days, and sometimes just a few days apart.

It is quite remarkable, and never ceases to amaze me, that the Great Scottish Public is still ready to give conflicting and contradictory answers to the very same questions, only asked by a different pollster on a different day. Though it may not be the public's fault, but come totally from the spells the pollster cast on their raw data before coming up with the published headline results. What we have here is anything between Labour being 4% ahead to the SNP leading by 5%. Interestingly, Savanta, always sponsored by The Scotsman, are the only ones finding the SNP visibly ahead, and even increasing their lead from one week to the next.

I'm not saying that I distrust Savanta here, just stressing that their last poll is part of the unfortunate batch, sponsored by The Scotsman, that also included the infamous Westminster poll that gave The Scottish Pravda  a collective non-binary hard-on because it found the SNP three points ahead of Labour. On Election Eve. If they missed the Westminster result by 8%, by how much should we expect them to miss the Holyrood result? Scottish Westminster polls that went against the prevailing trend were also proven to be the wrongest of all, as the trends were right in predicting a massive Labour come-back. So, why would we believe Holyrood polls that go against the prevailing trends? Nothing personal here, but not all polls should be considered equally reliable, and some surely need to be taken with a bigger pinch of salt than others. Not naming names, though. Just watch and draw your own conclusions.

In this Parliamentary Chamber, above the clash of debate and the arm wrestling over amendments and motions, these enduring themes prevail. Our responsibilities to the people we serve, our responsibility to our country and Scotland's responsibility to the world.

(Alex Salmond, Third Session of the Scottish Parliament, 30 June 2007)

© Malcolm Arnold, 1957

I don't think it's a good idea for politicians to design television programmes, but what we can do is design policies. And by implementing those policies we help to create an environment in which talented people can do great things.

(Alex Salmond, National Museum Of Scotland, 8 August 2007)

The SNP's believers may clutch at straws as much as they want, all the recent polls have one thing in common. They all predict the end of the formerly pro-independence majority, and the return of a rainbow Unionist majority. Four out of the six most recent poll also predict that Labour would be the first party, which would obviously be a great bonus for wannabe First Minister Anas Sarwar. But these polls don't solve the most important question, is there a working majority in there? Which would be one including neither the SNP nor the Conservatives. With a very plausible fine print, that the Liberal Democrats emerge of the election stronger that the Greens, so that the Greens no longer have the extortionate blackmailing power they had during the era of the Yellow-Green Axis. As always, visible differences in the voting intentions spawn visible differences in the seat projections. But none look really good for the SNP so far, when the most favourable outcome is the loss of 17 or 18 seats.

Another issue with Scottish polls is that they don't use the same list of parties as their prompts. Explicitly including Reform UK and the Alba Party, rather than bundling them with the nondescript Others, clearly makes a difference. This is made painfully obvious when you get a poll that predicts that the combined forces of Reform and Alba would amount to 10 seats, which is massive in a 129-member Parliament. This should be incentive enough for all pollsters to include both parties in their future polls, if only just to see if they are as popular in the long term as some past polls imply. Given the results of the general election, and their many similarities with Holyrood polling, my best educated guess is that it's not a given for either. And, sadly, Reform UK may well get properly elected MSPs, instead of just defectors, sooner than the Alba Party.

Even summing up the most recent batch of polls, with a seat projection based on their weighted average, doesn't resolve all issues. There is nevertheless one reassuring feature in that mix. The Scottish Greens seem to be no longer on an ascending trajectory, but between stagnation and descent in a significant number of polls. Then the main lesson is obviously that this batch of polls says that the SNP would be trounced, and Labour emerge as the first party in a hung Parliament. The infamous Traffic Lights Coalition would get a majority on 66 or 67 seats, with the bonus that the Greens would be the weakest party in that threesome, totally enabling Labour to tell them to fuck off with their most asinine student politics. Then we will need a bigger poll soon, to check if Labour still have some momentum from their astounding success at the general, or if the SNP have already started recovering from their massive bruising. 

Then only clear thing in this batch of polls is that the SNP have dug themselves in fucking deep shit indeed. But the most recent poll we have here was fielded before the general election, and there's been quite a lot of bad blood under the bridge since. Mostly Labour demonstrating that they don't need any opposition party undermining them, as they are as good as ever at sabotaging themselves. One of the fun questions, before the general, was how long Labour would need to start alienating voters. My hunch was three months, with the Autumn Statement being the trigger. Turns out it took them just three weeks, and most of the fallout has been felt in Scotland. Rachel Reeves literally handed the SNP a quick win on a sliver platter with her ill-advised announcement about the Winter Fuel Allowance. There's an own goal and then there's this. Reeves made it almost too easy for the SNP to climb on the moral high horse, and then stress the contradictions between Anas Sarwar and Keir Starmer, pre-election Starmer and PM Starmer, pre-election Rayner and DPM Rayner. A turkey shoot in a barrel, and I guess some pollster will soon let us know how this sequence has affected Labour's credibility with the Scottish electorate and their prospects at the next Holyrood election. My tenner is on some sort of backlash, the only unknown unknown being the size of it, but it's likely it won't be big enough to save the SNP's arse. The most likely scenario remains that the SNP will be trounced again in 2026, and will no longer be the Scottish Government.

I do not favour the mushy ground of false consensus. The public interest is not served by parties incapable of defining their driving principles and standing their ground. Politics is either about the competition of ideas or it is about nothing.

(Alex Salmond, Scottish Parliament, 23 May 2007)

© Malcolm Arnold, 1957

I would say that Scotland is all about communication. This is a nation that loves to express itself, to retell old stories and share new ideas, to pass on information, to hear what's happening.

(Alex Salmond, National Museum Of Scotland, 8 August 2007)

You could almost feel sorry for Labour here, as they were doing quite well in the qualitative part of Scottish polls, before Rachel Reeves started self-identifying as the Ghost Of George Osborne Past. And that was before riots spread like Wi-Fi all across England, with this weird combination of Hamas apologists threatening journalists and the public, and white Anglo-supremacists looting bathroom products and sausage rolls by the truckload. This was a golden opportunity for the rump SNP to climb on their moral high horse again, with both Flynn and Yousaf directly intervening in English matters than have no relation to Scotland whatsoever. Clearly some yellow feathers had been ruffled by Savanta's latest Scottish Tracker, that found that Labour have a better image than the SNP with the Great Scottish Public, and the Yellow Dogs had to fight back.

Of course, such polling is not the alpha-and-omega of the public's mood, but the net ratings are bad enough for the SNP to leave them worrying. Savanta also probed their Scottish panel about which party they trust most to deal with a number of issues, and the results are just as diverse as they are ambiguous and inconclusive. The Great Scottish Public are clearly not sure about Labour, their intentions and abilities, if they ever became the Scottish Government again. Despite all their shortcomings and failures, the SNP still enjoy a fair level of support and credibility, which will probably grow if the new New New Labour government in London is perceived as acting against Scotland's best interests, which it certainly will. The SNP will also surely grant us a song and dance about the English Civil War 2.0, how Labour handled it and how the SNP single-handedly prevented it spreading to Scotland. Which is bollocks as it was fairly predictable, despite John Swinney's and The Scottish Pravda's fearmongering about a non-existent 'far-right threat' because, ye ken, This Is Not England. Future polls will tell us which way these very English events sway the Scottish public, if they do, but it's fair to assume that opinions about Labour and the SNP will remain split, though probably not on the same patterns.

There is of course a way for Scottish Labour to stop being hit by backlash at the failures of the Labour Party in London. That's actually becoming Scottish Labour, unilaterally declaring independence from the UK party and no longer taking the Labour whip in Commons. I'm pretty sure they will reach this conclusion before the next Holyrood election, and there's jack shit Keir Starmer can do to block it, especially as an amicable split would be in his best interest. With the voter base they have know, and all their MPs and MSPs, Scottish Labour would surely have no problem getting recognition by the Electoral Commission as a totally separate party. The Scottish Greens did it in 1990, so there is a conclusive precedent for that. Finally, as a bonus, I give you the complete original performance of Concerto For Group And Orchestra on 24 September 1969, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Arnold. It's quite good quality for 55-year old stuff, with some hilarious scripted moments in the opening sequence, and a wee smitch of classic rock history. Have fun, then.

Our national story has its full share of grief and pain as well as triumph and expectation. But through it all, hope remains and dreams do not die.

(Alex Salmond, Third Session of the Scottish Parliament, 30 June 2007)

© Jon Lord, with Second Movement lyrics by Ian Gillan, 1969