SCOT goes POP!

Israel's need to artwash the genocide continues to bring Eurovision to its knees - and the EBU, the BBC and others continue to facilitate that

2026-05-17T02:32:07.733+01:00

At this time last year, someone left a comment on this blog to say that they'd actually been hoping for an Israeli win, because the prospect of a contest in Tel Aviv would have caused the whole house of cards to collapse. I didn't agree with that sentiment then, but I'm starting to see the point. If Israel had won tonight, the boycott next year would inevitably have been far more extensive, enough to call into question the viability of the event, and at the very least that would have forced the EBU to consider switching to an alternative host country - which would have raised the question of why Israel were being allowed to compete at all. Instead, the EBU will presumably be emboldened to just carry on with the farce of Israel finishing second every year as a matter of routine, regardless of the quality of their song, and expect everyone to treat it as totally normal - even though it is effectively happening as a direct reward for genocide. The phonomenon of mass bloc voting for Israel didn't get underway until the genocide started in 2023.

Towards the end of the show, the presenters gazed kindly and patronisingly into the camera and reassured the boycotting countries that they would be welcome back any time. But of course the reassurance those countries actually needed to hear was that the reason for their boycott would at long last be addressed - either by Israel bringing the genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Lebanon to an end, or by the EBU banning Israel until such time as those necessary steps are taken. It's actually disrespectful of the EBU to suggest that any country should return to the contest until their concerns are taken seriously and resolved.

As for the winner, it demonstrates why I've given up trying to predict Eurovision. There was a time, maybe two, three or four decades ago, when you would hear the infuriatingly catchy novelty entry and think "nailed-on winner", but the contest seemed to have decisively moved on from that and anyone who had predicted a winner on that basis would have seemed hopelessly dated. It's not totally clear to me why the Bulgarian song proved to be such a glaring exception to the general rule - the staging was fresh and imaginative, but the same was true of a few other entries as well. But the song itself obviously had some sort of X factor given that it won both the jury vote and the public vote.

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Catch up with Wednesday night's blogpost: "S*** just got real, lads. The famously always wrong blogger "Stew", who said there was "zero chance, barring nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the Holyrood election producing a pro-indy majority, and who said betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central was "free money", has now said there is "NO chance" of victory in a 2029 de facto referendum. Looks like it's ON."

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c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

How rigged will Eurovision be in favour of Israel this time?

2026-05-16T18:33:48.410+01:00

That, I'm afraid, is the correct way of posing the question, because there is no doubt that the voting system remains wide open to abuse by Israel's supporters across Europe, who will not only cast their permitted ten votes each for Israel, but will also break the rules as they did in 2024 and 2025 by finding ways of casting more than the maximum allowed votes, and even of voting in multiple countries.

The BBC deserve almost no credit in this sordid affair, but one small thing I will say in their favour is that at least the UK are going beyond the basic tightening of the rules this year to only allow online voting. That should at least throw an obstacle in the path of the less fanatical Israeli bloc voters, although the true diehards will still find a way. It'll be interesting to see if Israel are at least pushed down to second or third place in the UK televote tonight. If they still get the maximum points (and remember there is no way on Earth that they have the strongest song this year), clearly a much more radical overhaul will be required. By this point, I wouldn't be too unhappy with a return to a jury-only system, or to the juries being given three times the weight of the public vote, or something like that.

Incidentally, one thing that definitely isn't helping the situation is the encouragement to viewers to spread their ten votes between different countries. That just benefits Israel even more, because Israeli supporters will ignore the advice and vote ten times for Israel, while everyone else will heed the advice and split the remaining vote.

If anyone is thinking of tactically voting against Israel, I'd have thought ten votes for the favourites Finland would be the best bet, because you always have to err on the side of assuming that the Israeli bloc vote will be so huge that they could be in with a shout of winning outright.

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c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

It's all or nothing for Andy Burnham - the by-election of the century will take place in Makerfield

2026-05-15T13:32:18.421+01:00

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c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

Two crucial Scottish parliamentary by-elections have been triggered - one should be straightforward for the SNP but the other will be a major test

2026-05-14T16:22:24.748+01:00

So the moment that couldn't be avoided has now arrived: Reform UK have, at least for the time being, overtaken the SNP as the fourth-largest party in the House of Commons due to Stephen Flynn and Stephen Gethins' resignations as SNP MPs. I believe Reform have promised not to take any more Tory defectors, though, which means that the SNP will have a chance to grab fourth place straight back from Reform by winning the two by-elections to fill the vacancies. Gethins' seat of Arbroath & Broughty Ferry shouldn't be a problem, but Aberdeen South will be extremely competitive - Flynn's margin of victory in the overlapping Holyrood seat last week was not overwhelming. It really is so, so important psychologically that the SNP hold that seat, and I'm sure they'll be throwing the kitchen sink at it.

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Catch up with last night's blogpost: "S*** just got real, lads. The famously always wrong blogger "Stew", who said there was "zero chance, barring nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the Holyrood election producing a pro-indy majority, and who said betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central was "free money", has now said there is "NO chance" of victory in a 2029 de facto referendum. Looks like it's ON."

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c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

The Scot Goes Pop fundraiser: time to aim for a rocket boost

2026-05-14T15:23:00.000+01:00

So I just thought I'd put this post up to try to give another little boost to the ongoing Scot Goes Pop fundraiser, and I'll probably keep it pinned second from top on the blog over the coming few weeks. As you may remember me mentioning early during the Holyrood campaign, I'm due to receive some substantial funds at some point during May or June, and after that I should be OK for a decent period, but I've absolutely no idea exactly when those funds will come in, and until then I'm just trying to keep the show on the road.

Just to make you aware, I haven't been manually adjusting the target figure on the GoFundMe page - they've introduced a new system of dynamically changing the target as donations come in, because apparently that produces better results. So there's no magic number on this occasion - I'm just trying to raise as much as possible, although I could certainly do with raising another few hundred pounds at least.

So if you'd like to donate and help Scot Goes Pop keep going with its political, polling and election analysis, there are three main options:

For card donations, the GoFundMe crowdfunder is HERE.

Or you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Or you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

A million thanks to everyone who has already donated - it's very much appreciated.

The BBC's sly defence of Israel's Eurovision participation is profoundly cynical journalism

2026-05-14T12:22:23.693+01:00

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If you enjoyed Scot Goes Pop's 2026 election coverage so much that you started to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome. There are three main options:
a) you can donate by card HERE
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

S*** just got real, lads. The famously always wrong blogger "Stew", who said there was "zero chance, barring nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the Holyrood election producing a pro-indy majority, and who said betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central was "free money", has now said there is "NO chance" of victory in a 2029 de facto referendum. Looks like it's ON.

2026-05-13T20:10:25.086+01:00

One of the most important truths about life, which has been passed down from father to son and from mother to daughter over the centuries, is that you always know you've succeeded in getting right under Stew's skin when he starts calling you a "mouth-breathing imbecile" or an "Olympic-class moron". Yup, you've guessed it, he's written yet another novel-length rant about me on Wings today, and as per usual he hasn't mentioned me by name so he can later do his innocent spiel of "look, search for his name on my site, you'll see I barely even mention the guy!" So I've had to make do with the thrillingly exotic insults instead.

While I've been gathering my thoughts to write this brief reply, it's occurred to me that the frame of mind I've had to get into to do it is very similar to the one I would normally adopt if I was rebutting an argument from hard-core British nationalists about how Scottish independence is a perfectly preposterous idea. But you know what? It's not just "very similar", it's actually one and the same thing. Look at how Stew's propaganda since the election has totally converged with the hardline British Nationalist Sam Taylor of "These Islands" fame. Both men have been arguing that the record-breaking mandate for pro-independence parties last week was in fact not a mandate at all, and was instead somehow a ringing endorsement of Our Pweshus Union. Both men have argued that the synthetic controversy over Q Manivannan's visa status is somehow proof that Scotland is not capable of governing itself. Both men have stated that Scottish voters are simply not up to scratch and that it's not only necessary, but also a matter of tremendous comfort, that the British state has retained for itself the powers to overrule the democratic decisions made by the substandard Jocks.

These arguments are not 'adjacent to unionist arguments'. They are unionist arguments, plain and simple. They are coming out of Stew's mouth because he is now a unionist. I no longer have any intention of indulging the people who fatuously excuse him by saying "och of course he's still a Yesser, he's just going through a grumpy fascist spell". This is the guy who told you to either vote for anti-independence parties or abstain at the 2021 Holyrood election. He told you to vote for anti-independence parties at the 2024 UK general election. He told you to vote for anti-independence parties at the Holyrood election last week. He has said he would abstain if he had a vote in another independence referendum, and he has said *today* that he is opposed to another referendum taking place. It has now reached the point that if a tweet calls Stew a "pro-independence blogger", we should community note it. If a newspaper calls him a "pro-independence blogger", we should complain to IPSO under the "accuracy" clause of the Editors' Code. And if the BBC or STV call him a "pro-independence blogger", we should complain to Ofcom. The evidence is there, let's stop ignoring it, or giving others a pass when they pretend not to see it.

What's got Stew's goat this time is my statement that the Scottish Government must now act on the clear mandate that they and the Greens have just won, and move forward to using the next Westminster election as a de facto independence referendum if a Section 30 order is yet again refused. Stew's Brit Nat argument that the refusal of a Section 30 will be the upholding rather than the defying of democracy is very easily dealt with, because in a parliamentary democracy it's the number of seats in parliament that determines whether a mandate is there or not, and the SNP and Greens between them have 57% of the seats. If parliamentary democracy didn't work that way, we wouldn't talk about Labour's mandate to govern at Westminster, we would instead talk about how they had been overwhelmingly rejected by the British people by a 2-1 margin. Only 34% of the electorate voted Labour in the general election two years ago (that's four percentage points lower than the SNP on their own managed in Scotland last week), and 66% voted for other parties.

Stew pretends to only be opposed to using a Westminster election as a de facto referendum because he is "concerned" that we would lose it, whereas in fact he is terrified that we would win it and unleash a self-governing "Woke Scotland" in which his beloved Reform fascists will struggle to get elected. However, just for the hell of it, let's deal with his bogus "reasoning" for believing that using a Westminster election would be tactically foolish.

"The media coverage will treat Scotland as an afterthought because it’s only 8% of the country"

What he's saying here is that the media will be preoccupied with the UK-wide election narrative - but what will that show? It might well show that Nigel Farage is days away from power, and I can hardly think of a better way of concentrating minds on a "vote for independence as your last chance to avoid Farage rule" message.

"and you’ll lose the heavily indy-favouring 16/17-year-olds and EU citizens"

Labour are committed to introducing votes at 16 for the next general election. It remains to be seen whether they will keep that promise, but the fact that Stew doesn't even seem to be aware of it speaks volumes. It would obviously be preferable to have an electorate that incorporates EU citizens, but even at the time of the 2022 census they made up only around 4% of the Scottish population (it'll probably be lower now), so the difference that will make shouldn't be exaggerated.

"Using a UK election also prevents voters from separating the issues of the plebiscite and normal politics (because they only have one vote), whereas in a Holyrood vote you can say that the constituency vote is for independence and the list vote is for the actual election."

I'm sorry but that's gibberish. Probably the most powerful argument in favour of using a Westminster rather than a Holyrood election is that there is only one vote and there is no danger of getting an inconclusive outcome due to the constituency and list results contradicting each other. Using a Westminster election also prevents "normal politics" from muddying the waters earlier in the campaign, because the SNP will not be standing for re-election as the devolved government of Scotland and will not have to focus on setting out their stall for a new term in office.

"But secondly, you really do have to be an Olympic-class moron to imagine that the SNP are likely to be MORE popular in 2029 than they are now. They’ve been in power for 19 years already..."

That ignores the fact that the SNP's best ever election performance occurred in 2015 after eight years in power, and after they had been showing clear signs of losing popularity with the public (the 2014 European elections and the Cowdenbeath by-election, for example). As soon as voters became focused on independence rather than on "normal politics", the SNP suddenly found they had an almost 50% vote share at a Westminster election.

In any case, if a de facto referendum is done properly, it won't be the SNP trying to win on their own - ideally there would be an agreed slate of pro-indy candidates, or failing that it would at least be made clear that a vote for any pro-indy party would count towards the majority.

Excitingly, the fraudulent "47% graph" has survived into the Fascist Era at Wings, but I've already debunked that umpteen times.

"There is NO chance, not a ghost of a crumb of an atom of a hope, that the SNP can secure 50% of the Scottish vote in the 2029 UK election."

You know, that comment would really worry me if it wasn't coming from the same guy who told us that there was "zero chance, barring a nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the SNP and Greens winning a majority between them last week, or by the same guy who said "I'm calling it now, Humza has lost" in the middle of the 2023 SNP leadership election, or by the same guy who said "betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central is FREE MONEY". As it is, the excitement and anticipation is now coursing through my veins.

This is really happening, guys. It seems to be nature's way of telling us that victory at the 2029 de facto referendum is nigh-on certain.

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Wes Streeting makes his move - but the soft left should be able to block his path to Downing Street, unless they get their tactics all wrong

2026-05-13T14:17:57.729+01:00

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If a Section 30 order is refused for the umpteenth time, there must be no further procrastination - the next UK general election must be used as a de facto referendum on Scottish independence

2026-05-13T08:16:04.930+01:00

I keep wondering what effect the Labour leadership crisis, immensely entertaining though it is, is having on Scottish public opinion. The general rule of thumb is that the public will not vote for divided parties, so this spectacle could have a positive effect by making Labour unelectable for a very long period to come, in much the same way that the Tory government was doomed from the moment of the Trussmageddon, with Rishi Sunak effectively just serving out time from that point on.

On the other hand, the crisis does distract from the SNP's election win and the renewed mandate for the two main pro-independence parties. The one thing we mustn't allow to happen is for the independence issue to go back to sleep as a result of Labour's woes. We have the mandate and we must maintain a sense of urgency and use it. The vote on a Section 30 order must go ahead, and if Westminster then say no, it's reasonable to conclude after so many exhaustive attempts that the intransigence is permanent and an alternative means of exercising the mandate must be found. The independence movement is not going to be tolerant of any further procrastination, and justifiably so. As Believe in Scotland said last year, the obvious way forward is to use the next UK general election as a de facto referendum on independence.

I was criticised for making that point the other day by Angus Brendan MacNeil, the former MP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar. He wants a snap Holyrood election to be held within months instead. I really don't think that's a helpful suggestion. I have no problem with the principle of using a snap Holyrood election further down the road, but if you did it so soon after the election we've only just had, many voters would be furious at what they would see as self-indulgent game-playing, and pro-independence parties would be punished. The beauty of using the Westminster election is that everyone would know it would be taking place anyway. The other advantages are:

* If Reform UK appear to be on the brink of taking power UK-wide, the crisis would be imminent and voters might well be highly receptive to the message that voting for independence is the "last chance" to stop Farage.

* In a Westminster election, it's feasible to run on an independence-only or independence-dominant platform. In any Holyrood election, a devolved government is being elected and the SNP would be seen as irresponsible or frivolous if they did not set out their stall for what they would do with devolved power.

* There are still plenty of sceptics about the principle of a de facto referendum, and if it's going to happen in the real world we need to build a consensus for it. That consensus is much more likely to emerge if we focus on the Westminster 2029 option, given that the mainstream and SNP-allied organisation Believe in Scotland have already proposed it. The more outlandish proposals like MacNeil's just make the whole idea seem unserious. Stick to the credible plan and let's actually make it happen this time.

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Post-election GB-wide poll shows Labour slumping to joint third place with the Greens - SNP surge to massive 22-point lead in Scottish subsample, with Labour on course for TOTAL WIPEOUT in Scotland

2026-05-12T12:30:00.004+01:00

On some measures, Reform UK actually had a poor result last Thursday. In the English local elections, their showing in the projected national vote share dipped quite sharply from 30% last year to 26% this year. In the Scottish Parliament election, they significantly underperformed their polling average, while in the Welsh Senedd election, they had thought they were roughly level-pegging with Plaid Cymru but ended up quite a bit behind, both in terms of votes and seats. However, that's not the impression you'd have got from looking at the media, and this may be an example that demonstrates the theory that what the media tells you about an election result is far more important than the election result itself, because the first GB-wide YouGov poll since Thursday shows Reform getting a post-election bounce, as if they're basking in the glory of having done really well.

GB-wide voting intentions (YouGov, 10th-11th May 2026):

Reform UK 28% (+3)

Conservatives 17% (-)

Greens 16% (+1)

Labour 16% (-2)

Liberal Democrats 13% (-1)

SNP 3% (-)

Restore Britain 3% (-1)

Plaid Cymru 2% (+1)

Scottish subsample: SNP 39%, Reform UK 17%, Greens 13%, Conservatives 10%, Labour 10%, Liberal Democrats 9%, Restore Britain 1%

Welsh subsample: Plaid Cymru 40%, Reform UK 33%, Conservatives 10%, Labour 6%, Greens 3%, Liberal Democrats 3%, Restore Britain 2%

On a more positive note, the straw in the wind that is the Scottish subsample may suggest there is momentum for the SNP and none (for example) for the Liberal Democrats, which would imply the public are interpreting the Holyrood result in a rather different way than they're 'supposed' to. Individual Scottish subsamples are very small, of course, but YouGov do weight and structure theirs correctly, so if just for the hell of it we plug those numbers into a seats projection model, this is what we get for the Scottish component of the next UK general election: SNP 51, Liberal Democrats 5, Conservatives 1. A total wipeout for Labour, and no breakthrough for Reform.

Your Party are literally polling at zero in England, Scotland and Wales, despite the fact that YouGov now include them. Incredibly, despite Jeremy Corbyn's name recognition, they've failed as an experiment even quicker than Alba did, and I think Corbyn and Sultana should be thinking creatively about a way out of their predicament. Their best bet might be to simply throw in their lot with Polanski and the Greens, but if they don't want to do that, the second-best option may be to negotiate a limited electoral pact in which the Greens agree to stand aside in a small number of seats like Islington North and Coventry South. I can't see any other way that Your Party aren't going to fade into total irrelevance.

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As Keir Starmer nears his exit, who should the independence movement want to replace him?

2026-05-11T23:59:00.001+01:00

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My theory as to why Labour and the unionist media chose the wrong saviour in Anas Sarwar

2026-05-11T14:12:00.000+01:00

As I pointed out after one of Anas Sarwar's catastrophic TV debate performances during the campaign ("HOW DARE YOU JOHN DON'T YOU DARE JOHN THAT MAN WANTS TO DEPORT MY FAMILY JOHN THIS IS A MORAL ISSUE JOHN DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT JOHN"), I have genuinely regarded him as an atrocious politician since long before he became Scottish Labour leader. That opinion was largely formed by seeing him in action during the 2014 referendum campaign when he was Johann Lamont's deputy as leader. I was completely bewildered by Labour's and the media's total faith in him as some sort of charismatic, inspiring leader who had great things ahead of him, and sure enough their faulty perceptions have finally faced the inevitable rendez-vous with reality.

However, I have now developed a little theory as to why they went so badly astray. It seems like a billion years ago now, but regular readers might recall that last June I attended the Holyrood Sources event at which both Sarwar and John Swinney were interviewed, and I was fortunate enough to be called to ask Sarwar a question about the Gaza genocide. After I had finished reading my question out, Sarwar said "it sounds like you have a particular view on the Scottish constitutional question" and it suddenly became obvious that I was in the midst of a heavily Labour-supporting and unionist audience, because I heard lots of knowing chuckles around me as if my question had somehow just been deligitimised. After the podcast recording was over (or possibly it was at the half-time break), Sarwar came up to close to where I was sitting and greeted a lot of the people near me, several of whom he seemed to already know. I got the opportunity to see what he's like when he's not conscious of TV cameras on him, and he actually came across completely differently. He was very likeable and had an easygoing charm about him.

I think the media and Labour genuinely believed they were onto a winner because of the man they actually knew in person, and were forgetting that he comes across as a half-automaton, half-clown on TV screens. You sometimes hear the claim that it's better if parliamentarians rather than rank-and-file party members choose leaders, because they know all of the candidates' strengths and weaknesses, but Sarwar is actually a good advert for the opposite being true. You might well be better off leaving the decision to people who only know the candidates via mass media, because exactly the same will be true for voters at election time.

I know a lot of people had a similar epiphany about Douglas Ross during his stint as a pundit on the BBC results programme, because as soon as he was no longer functioning as a politician, the real person started to shine through and you could see for the first time why people like Ruth Davidson rated him highly. (But that of course doesn't even begin to excuse what he did to David Duguid. What. A. Cad.)

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A crucial arithmetical point: the SNP on their own have more seats than all of the unionist parties combined

2026-05-11T09:53:00.004+01:00

SNP: 58 seats

All unionist parties: 56 seats

Greens: 15 seats

This hadn't occurred to me until I saw someone mention it on Twitter this morning, but from a psychological point of view it's absolutely vital. Now, to be clear, I never thought the target of a single-party overall majority should have been set, I spoke out against it vociferously at the time, and I voted against it as a delegate at the SNP conference in Aberdeen. In a proportional representation system, it shouldn't matter a damn whether you achieve the near-impossible feat of a majority. But if unionists try to take advantage of the fact that the target was set, it's a massive problem for them that their combined forces in parliament are clearly outnumbered by the SNP as a single party. The only way they can arithmetically claim that the SNP have been denied a mandate for an independence referendum is by actually counting the Greens on the unionist side, which is the sort of logical gymnastics that even our biased media would be likely to find too much of a stretch. The Green manifesto, even though Andrew Neil apparently didn't bother checking it, baldly stated that "Scotland should be an independent country" and called for an independence referendum.

I also have very little time for unionist commentators (or for those who are, let me politely put it, adjacent to unionist commentators) who are trying to retrospectively claim that vote shares are more important than seats. I'm no great enthusiast for the Additional Member System - I've called for years for a switch to a pure list system as has just happened in Wales, and failing that STV would probably be my second choice (although STV is actually a lot, lot less proportional than people assume). But given that Westminster introduced our current voting system in the first place, the cheerleaders for Westminster rule really don't have a leg to stand on in saying that the result the system produced should not be respected. Let me remind them of the way they reacted with incredulity two years ago when I pointed out, entirely accurately, that the SNP's result in the UK general election was nowhere near as bad as was being portrayed, because for every 7 votes Labour had received, the SNP had received 6. "The system is the system!" they spluttered with entitled rage. "You're in denial about a total wipeout for the SNP across the central belt!"

If unionists now want to claim the electoral system is a problem, get back to us when you're ready to introduce a voting system at Westminster that would have given the SNP their rightful six-sevenths of Labour's seats at the 2024 general election.

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All I needed was the love you gave, all I needed for another day, and all I ever knew, only Stew

2026-05-10T21:26:00.005+01:00

Tragically, the controversial Somerset-based "Stew" blogger stopped updating his little shrine to me a few months ago, but I no longer need to feel neglected because he's been properly going off on one about me since the election. He made a rather optimistic effort to accuse me of contradicting myself on the interminable subject of "tactical voting on the list", because on Thursday morning I urged people to vote Both Votes SNP, while on Saturday I pointed out that the reason the pro-indy majority at Holyrood had increased was because a significant proportion of SNP supporters had tactically switched to the Greens on the list. But unfortunately for him, the screenshots he used demonstrated rather helpfully that there was no contradiction, because they clearly showed that I went on to say that the tactical voters had been taking a hell of a risk that could easily have backfired if their assumptions about how the constituency results would pan out had been proved wrong. In other words, the tactical voting produced a good outcome simply because of luck - and one of the main reasons for my Both Votes SNP advice was because I didn't think (and still don't think) that people should be relying on luck.

However, all of this begs a question that I genuinely don't have an answer to. One thing that is beyond dispute is that the tactical voting only worked because the recipients of the tactical votes were the Greens. No other pro-independence party was remotely strong enough to win seats - by Stew's own admission Atlas were a "shambles", while all of the other pro-indy fringe parties were even less popular. And yet we know he categorically did not want people to vote Green - he hates the Greens with every fibre of his being, and wanted everyone to vote against them on principle. So when he says that people like me who voted SNP on the list were stupid because we were "helping to get unionists elected", who does he actually think we should have been voting for instead? Who is actually left once you exclude the SNP, the Greens and the "shambolic" fringe parties like Atlas?

OK, we kind of know the answer in the sense that he was obviously gagging for people to vote Reform. But that wasn't his official advice, because he kept saying that SNP list voters were helping to elect Reform MSPs, as if that was a bad thing. So who was he officially telling people to vote for on the list? Can anyone fathom it?

Actually, if anyone is still on good terms with him, please do ask him, I'd be genuinely fascinated to find out the answer. It'll be like cracking the code of an unsolvable equation.

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Please check out the Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser, particularly if you'd be interested in helping me commission another opinion poll in the future at a moment of maximum impact.

The full results of the 2026 Scottish Parliament election: and how the biggest pro-independence majority in history was won

2026-05-09T12:10:00.007+01:00

For those of you who were asking, here is the final result of the 2026 Scottish Parliament election, both in terms of vote shares and seats.

Seats:

SNP 58

Reform UK 17

Labour 17

Greens 15

Conservatives 12

Liberal Democrats 10

PRO-INDEPENDENCE PARTIES: 73 seats

ANTI-INDEPENDENCE PARTIES: 56 seats

PRO-INDEPENDENCE MAJORITY OF 17 SEATS

Constituency ballot:

SNP 38.2%

Labour 19.2%

Reform UK 15.8%
Conservatives 11.8%

Liberal Democrats 11.4%

Greens 2.3%

Regional list ballot:

SNP 27.2%

Reform UK 16.6%

Labour 16.0%

Greens 14.0%

Conservatives 11.8%

Liberal Democrats 9.4%

As we hoped would be the case, this is the biggest pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament's history, albeit only just. The 73 seats for the SNP and Greens in combination exceeds the 72 for the SNP, Greens and Margo MacDonald in 2011, the 69 for the SNP and the Greens in 2016, and the 72 for the SNP and the Greens in 2021.

I have to say I am completely and utterly baffled and bewildered by the people this morning who are continuing to moan about what they call "the SNP 1&2 strategy", because for the first time in history those people got what they claimed to want. "Pro-indy tactical voting on the list" ceased to be simply a social media bubble obsession of activists, and was adopted wholesale by the general public in far bigger numbers than ever before. The SNP vote slumped much more on the list ballot than it did on the constituency ballot, and the only plausible explanation is that tens of thousands of SNP-supporting voters tactically switched to the Greens on the list because they'd heard the argument that it would bolster the pro-independence majority. That is precisely why we ended up slightly increasing the pro-independence majority compared to 2021 even though the combined vote share for pro-independence parties on the list ballot actually dropped by several percentage points. As Ailsa Henderson pointed out on the BBC results programme, although the strategy worked a treat this time, the tactical voters were taking an enormous risk because they were making an assumption of how the constituency results would work out, and they could easily have been wrong.

Mark my words: this may come back to bite us in the future. People have a nasty habit of learning the wrong lessons from history, and if there's a kind of 'folk memory' in five years' time that voting SNP constituency, Green list produces a good result for independence, many voters may try to replicate the strategy in an even more risky scenario where the SNP are being seriously challenged in the constituencies. You could easily end up with a dreadful result for the SNP where they finish with ten or fifteen seats fewer than they should have received on a proportional basis, because one-third of their supporters have abandoned them on the list.

Incidentally, don't allow anyone to get away with offering the combined SNP-Green vote share on the list as the definitive vote for pro-indy parties. Although the fringe pro-indy parties such as Atlas had dreadful results in isolation, they did in combination with each other manage to take around 2% of the list vote, and of course there were also pro-indy independent candidates on the list such as Sean Davis, Denise Somerville and Ash Regan. The biggest vote for a pro-indy fringe party was the 0.8% for Atlas, in part due to Tommy Sheridan's name recognition in Glasgow, although Sheridan's own result on the Glasgow list was still relatively poor compared to his previous efforts with Solidarity. The ISP and the SSP (the latter of which most people have probably forgotten even exists anymore) took 0.4% each.

The weirdest quirk of the result is that Labour, in spite of their disastrous reverses, still ended up moving from third place in 2021 to joint second this year. However, they were pipped by a small margin in the popular vote on the list ballot by Reform UK. The Greens are now a larger party than the Conservatives, which in historical terms is a mind-boggling thought.

Although the SNP had some wonderful constituency results (Shetland was the stuff that dreams are made of), the two results I found most painful were Na h-Eileanan an Iar and Skye, Lochaber & Badenoch. That is why the SNP list seat on the Highlands & Islands is so soothing - it directly compensates for one of those two defeats and means that one of them doesn't actually matter (take your pick as to which one).

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Free Money with the Reverend Stuart Campbell: an update on how to collect your winnings

2026-05-09T10:20:00.006+01:00

Seriously, folks, I've never steered you wrong on a bet recommendation about Scottish politics, and 5/4 on Angus Robertson is absolutely free money. pic.twitter.com/cGvR1ZzIBD
— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) April 15, 2026

Now, for full disclosure, I did actually agree with Stew that Angus Robertson was the likely winner in Edinburgh Central, but unlike Stew I made clear that there was a plausible path to victory for both Labour and the Greens, and I certainly wasn't so idiotic as to go around telling people to bet the house on Mr Robertson winning. Although the numbers are dwindling, Stew does still have a few sheep-like followers who adhere to his every utterance as if it's the Word of God, so it's actually highly likely that people took his advice and put money on Mr Robertson. We can only hope that nobody is waking up this morning to the loss of their life savings.

So the Edinburgh Central prediction now joins the vast collection of Stew Predictions That Were Wrong, and given the way he made it, it's perhaps the crown jewel of the lot. (My previous all-time favourite was "we're calling it now, Humza has lost" during the 2023 SNP leadership election.) But it doesn't end there, because he made other predictions about the Holyrood election that also proved to be hopelessly wrong. I can maybe let him off the hook with his claim the other day that Iris Duane had no chance of being elected, because it was ambiguously worded and possibly referred to the constituency contest only. But for the following he has no alibi:

* In an effort to convince people not to vote SNP on the list, he claimed a year ago that the SNP were nailed-on to win at least 65 constituency seats, he provided a map of the 65 he was referring to, and he challenged anyone to demonstrate which of those 65 the SNP might not win.

In the actual result, the SNP took 57 constituency seats.

* He said a year ago that the SNP were guaranteed to win zero list seats, and that anyone who voted SNP on the list could therefore know with absolute certainty that their vote would be wasted.

In the actual result, the SNP took one list seat - meaning the SNP have taken at least one list seat in all seven Holyrood elections since the start of devolution in 1999.

* He later modified that prediction to say there was a chance of the SNP winning one list seat, but only if they lost to Fergus Ewing in Inverness & Nairn.

In the actual result, the SNP defeated Fergus Ewing in Inverness & Nairn, but still took one seat on the Highlands & Islands list.

So what was Stew's sheepish reaction to his latest bonanza of hapless wrongness? Yup, you've guessed it, folks, the opening words of his blogpost this morning were (and what else could they be): "Well, we told you so."

It's an art form in its own way. Dear old Stewie.

Scottish Parliament election results 2026: How we've moved closer to a decision on independence

2026-05-09T00:10:00.002+01:00

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The SNP must go ahead with the Section 30 vote on day one of the parliamentary session - and then when Westminster say no, we move forward to using the 2029 UK general election as the final act of this drama, and to win independence outright

2026-05-08T18:57:00.003+01:00

I suppose when election results come in, we all tend to look back at the predictions we made during the campaign and compare it to reality. I used to pride myself in avoiding hard predictions, but writing the 73 constituency profiles for The National effectively forced me into it, and I think I did pretty well on the whole. Although I said Angus Robertson was the likely winner in Edinburgh Central, I did say I thought both the Greens and Labour had a chance there, which pretty much leaves Glasgow Southside as the only one of the 73 that I got completely wrong, which is not a bad record. Can I just take this opportunity to thank the person who wrote to me before I did the Shetland profile and pointed out that Hannah Mary Goodlad's chances were being underestimated, because I took that tip seriously and looked into it as thoroughly as I could.

However, I think the point on which I've been vindicated the most is what I said last October about the unlikelihood of John Swinney's target of an overall majority being met. I said at the time that I thought it was a 1 in 200 chance, and even if you think that was an underestimate, I hope you'll agree that the result vividly demonstrates just how murderously difficult the target was to meet, and also demonstrates why that target must never be set again. We're now going to have to work hard to undo some of the damage caused by setting a precedent that simply cannot be allowed to stand. The argument was that the stars were aligned for a majority on this particular occasion due to Reform splitting the unionist vote - well, we've fallen a few seats short, and there's no particular reason to think the stars will ever be aligned in that way again, so the hardheaded reality is that if we're going to win independence or an independence referendum, regardless of whether it's with this mandate or a future mandate, it will have to be done with a multi-party Holyrood majority and not a single-party majority. So the single-party majority target will have to be binned and never allowed to rear its head again.

The way forward is simple enough: we have to act as if we were always looking for the multi-party majority, and go ahead with the vote on the Section 30. When Westminster say no, we take the Believe in Scotland advice, and use the 2029 Westminster election as the final act in this unnecessarily long drama. If Reform appear to be on course for victory in England, we ask for an outright mandate for independence as Scotland's last chance to escape Farage rule. That may well work, but even if it doesn't the strategy will be an each-way bet, because there's always the outside chance of a Green-led government being formed at Westminster that would grant us a referendum anyway.

The rumour mill and the art of the possible

2026-05-08T11:52:00.003+01:00

As we await the initial results and as the first strong rumours start to come through, could I just make a gentle suggestion to all SNP supporters. Just completely stop talking about an SNP overall majority for the rest of the day, and start talking excitedly about an unprecedented pro-independence supermajority that will take this country closer to self-determination. If it's true that the Greens are taking two or three constituency seats, the path to 65 for the SNP is now so narrow as to be almost closed off, notwithstanding the very interesting rumours about Shetland. But the combination of a strong Green performance with Labour saying they've had a disaster in Glasgow (which is likely to be replicated elsewhere) could still mean by the end of the day there will be a really, really sizeable SNP-Green majority after list seats are taken into account. Let's start talking the significance of that up.

Final Holyrood opinion poll round-up, plus the seven constituencies YouGov say will decide whether the SNP win an overall majority

2026-05-07T13:23:00.001+01:00

So I voted a couple of hours ago, and I Made Mine A Double, Stoo. No real clues about the turnout because I always choose a quiet time of day, but there was a steady trickle of people going in and out. The fabled 'peach' ballot paper is so enormous that it's almost farcical.

I ran out of time last night to cover all of the remaining opinion polls, so just for the sake of completeness, here are the ones I didn't get round to...

MORE IN COMMON

Constituency ballot:

SNP 32%

Labour 20%

Reform UK 18%

Liberal Democrats 13%

Conservatives 13%

Greens 2%

Regional list ballot:

SNP 23%

Reform UK 22%

Labour 19%

Liberal Democrats 12%

Greens 10%

Conservatives 10%

IPSOS

Constituency ballot:

SNP 35%

Labour 20%

Reform UK 18%

Liberal Democrats 11%

Conservatives 10%

Greens 2%

Regional list ballot:

SNP 26%

Reform UK 18%

Greens 17%

Labour 15%

Liberal Democrats 11%

Conservatives 10%

YOUGOV MRP

Constituency ballot:

SNP 39%

Reform UK 18%

Labour 18%

Liberal Democrats 11%

Conservatives 10%

Greens 2%

Regional list ballot:

SNP 28%

Reform UK 19%

Labour 16%

Greens 15%

Conservatives 11%

Liberal Democrats 9%

I can't really discern any consistent trend across the polling industry, except maybe that the SNP do seem to have slipped back a little on the list over the course of the campaign. But their constituency vote seems to have held up fine, at least according to the majority of firms. Perhaps the oddest finding is Ipsos showing Labour making a five-point recovery on the constituency ballot, which if the poll is exactly right will do them no good whatsoever in terms of seats because they remain stuck on a dismal fourth place on the list.

Although the central finding of the YouGov MRP is that the SNP will be three seats short of an outright majority, it does suggest there is still an 11% chance of a majority because a handful of constituency seats are so tight. If the poll is exactly right (a big if), the SNP would need to win *six* of the following seven coin-toss seats in order to win a majority of one.

Aberdeenshire West (YouGov projection: SNP 32%, Conservatives 31%)

Dumbarton (YouGov projection: Labour 37%, SNP 36%)

Dumfriesshire (YouGov projection: SNP 31%, Reform UK 27%, Conservatives 25%)

Eastwood (YouGov projection: Conservatives 30%, SNP 29%)

Glasgow Kelvin & Maryhill (YouGov projection: Greens 32%, SNP 29%)

Strathkelvin & Bearsden (YouGov projection: Liberal Democrats 36%, SNP 32%)

Edinburgh Southern (YouGov projection: SNP 34%, Labour 32%)

I would also give special mentions to Edinburgh Central, which YouGov have as a likely Green gain, Edinburgh Northern, which YouGov say is a likely Lib Dem gain, Galloway & West Dumfries, which YouGov say is a likely SNP gain, Banffshire & Buchan Coast, which YouGov have as a likely SNP hold, and East Lothian Coast & Lammermuirs, which YouGov say is a likely SNP hold. We have good reason to believe all of those could be very competitive.

Make Mine A Double: as the polling stations open, be a 'peach' and listen to the strong case for Both Votes SNP

2026-05-07T08:44:00.003+01:00

The polling stations are now open and the Scottish Parliament election of 2026 is well underway, so let's be 'peachy' and have a final word about the voting system. I've been writing this blog since 2008, and I feel as if at least 10% of the posts over that time have consisted of me explaining that you should vote for your first choice party on the list ballot, because the system simply does not lend itself to tactical voting on the list - there's too big a risk of it backfiring.

The voting system hasn't changed over the years, so the logic I was setting out in 2011 and 2016 for the most part has remained sound. That logic was:

* The overall composition of parliament is determined by the list ballot, not by the constituency ballot. If Party X gets 15% of the vote on the list ballot, the system will aim to give Party X roughly 15% of the overall seats in parliament, regardless of whether it receives 5% or 40% of the vote on the constituency ballot. The list ballot is therefore the more important of the two, and should be used for your first-choice party.

* Although the greater importance of the list ballot can break down a bit if one party has a totally dominant lead on the constituency ballot, and although that leads people to feel they can 'hack' the system by tactically voting for a second-choice party on the list, you can only do that safely if you know what the constituency results are going to be at the moment you cast your vote, and by definition you don't. If you think you do, the information you're basing that belief on is nowhere near as reliable as you think it is.

* In both 2011 and 2016, it was fair to say that past history suggested there was a significant risk that the Greens might not win list seats in most regions, so if an SNP supporter voted 'tactically' for a second-choice party on the list, regardless of which party that was, there was a danger they were voting for a party that wouldn't win any seats in their region and would thus help unionists to win seats - a classic example of an intended tactical vote completely backfiring.

If the logic has changed at all, it's only on that third and final point, because the Greens are now much more established and it's arguably extremely unlikely that they won't take a significant number of list seats. So the risks attached to voting Green are now lower than they used to be - but it's important to stress that the point remains unchanged for all of the non-Green fringe pro-indy parties. If you vote 'tactically' on the list for any of those tiny parties, you are throwing your list vote away on parties that cannot possibly win any seats, and you are helping unionists to win seats. That is true beyond a shadow of doubt.

The choice on the list for sensible independence supporters therefore narrows to just two: SNP or Green. I'm a member of the SNP, so I'll leave it to Green members and supporters to make the case for the Greens. I'm going to make the case for Both Votes SNP, and it remains an extremely strong one.

The nub of it is this: as things stand this morning, you really don't have a clue what the constituency results are going to be. There is a huge spread in the polls from a 12-point SNP lead in the constituency ballot with More In Common to a 24-point lead with Find Out Now. Polling accuracy is not determined by majority vote, or by averaging - often an outlier poll proves to be the most accurate, as we saw in 2017. I therefore would not be totally surprised if the SNP clean up in the constituencies to such an extent that they win an overall majority on constituency seats alone, and I also would not be surprised if the wheels come off and they lose a truckload of constituencies that most people are assuming are safe. There's one overnight projection on Twitter based on the More In Common poll that has the SNP on just 43 seats. That would be a catastrophe that could potentially even open the door for a unionist government. It's a real possibility because with a 12 point SNP lead on the constituency ballot, unionist parties start to move into the fringes of contention in a large number of seats, and in some cases unionist tactical voting on the constituency ballot will get them over the line. (To be clear, tactical voting does work on the constituency ballot.). If people have abandoned the SNP on the list ballot because they assume SNP list votes will be 'wasted', the SNP will not be compensated for their constituency losses with list seats, and the disaster will be compounded, wholly unnecessarily.

As we survey this scene of massive uncertainty on the morning of polling day, with both an SNP overall majority and a disastrous SNP result remaining realistic possibilities, we can really only look back in wonder at the unutterable folly of the people such as Somerset Stew who were absurdly trying to convince you a year ago that they already knew with absolute certainly how many constituency seats the SNP were going to win today and therefore that all SNP list votes would be wasted. If you're an SNP supporter who is tempted to vote 'tactically' on the list, it's true that in the best case scenario where the SNP clean up in the constituencies, you could look back with the benefit of hindsight and think to yourself that there was a missed opportunity to get rid of one or two unionists on the list. But in the worst case scenario that the More In Common poll is right, you could end up with the psychological catastrophe of Reform outpolling the SNP on the list ballot (it's within the poll's margin of error), and such a poor seats tally for the SNP that it would set the cause of independence back years. You would then spend the next five years kicking yourself for being so daft as to not vote SNP on the list and to contribute to that result coming about. The latter danger is far more scary than the former.

I don't know which way it's going to go - I don't even have a particularly strong gut feeling about whether the polling average is underestimating or overestimating the SNP. There's a plausible case to be made for either, and I therefore can't promise you that you won't end up with regrets if you take my advice. But it's the very fact that we don't have a crystal ball handy that means the logic points overwhelmingly, in my view, to being safe, being responsible, and voting Both Votes SNP.

MRP latest: Survation sizzler gives SNP huge 20-point lead over Labour on the constituency ballot

2026-05-06T20:24:00.000+01:00

There may be blogposts coming at you all evening, because we've got polls coming out of our ears at the moment. Hot off the press is the Survation MRP poll, which I find really interesting, because although the actual seats projection for the SNP isn't stellar, the SNP's constituency vote share is nudging 40% and they have a 20-point lead on the second-placed party. So if there's something not quite right about the projection model, it's not hard to see how these numbers could translate into a superb result.

Constituency vote share (Survation MRP):

SNP 39%
Labour 19%
Reform UK 17%
Conservatives 12%
Liberal Democrats 10%
Greens 2%

Regional list vote share:

SNP 29%
Reform UK 17%
Labour 16%
Greens 15%

Conservatives 13%
Liberal Democrats 8%

Seats projection:

SNP 59

Reform UK 18

Labour 17

Greens 16

Conservatives 13

Liberal Democrats 8

Survation's chief Damian Lyons-Lowe tried to cover himself in advance with reverse psychology by predicting "hot takes" about individual constituency projections that might render this a poor MRP poll. Challenge accepted, Damian, and let me present to you Exhibit A: Paisley. You've got Labour winning that by 32.2% to 31.6%, and it's hard to see why, because although it's not one of the SNP's safest seats, it's not at the most vulnerable end of the scale either. You only have one other surprise Labour gain in the central belt (unless you count Edinburgh Central, which I wouldn't really regard as a shock due to the Green splitting the pro-indy vote), so what is it about Paisley in particular?

Then we come to Exhibit B: Airdrie. You have that as Reform UK's only constituency gain. That's perhaps not quite so absurd, because the local demographics do favour Reform, but if Reform win *only* one constituency seat, I'd be very surprised if that's the one.

The good news for the SNP is that Survation have them ahead in Banffshire & Buchan Coast, Edinburgh Northern, East Lothian Coast & Lammermuirs, Edinburgh Southern, Galloway & West Dumfries, Eastwood, Aberdeenshire West, Glasgow Kelvin & Maryhill and Strathkelvin & Bearsden.

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Dramatic Find Out Now poll gives the SNP a mammoth 24-point lead, puts pro-independence parties on course for 60% of the seats, and suggests Labour could finish SIXTH

2026-05-06T18:56:00.004+01:00

As you'd expect on the eve of polling day, there's quite a bit of new opinion poll information, so I'm going to try to split it over several different blogposts this evening to make it more manageable. First of all, let's take a look at the new Find Out Now poll, because the figures from that can be directly compared to the Find Out Now poll I commissioned for Scot Goes Pop two weeks ago.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot (Find Out Now, 1st-6th May 2026):

SNP 41% (+6)

Reform UK 17% (+1)

Labour 15% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 12% (+2)

Conservatives 10% (+1)

Greens 2% (-11)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 26% (-1)

Reform UK 18% (+1)

Greens 17% (-3)

Labour 12% (-)

Liberal Democrats 11% (-)

Conservatives 11% (+1)

Seats projection:

SNP 61

Reform UK 19

Greens 17

Liberal Democrats 11

Conservatives 11

Labour 10

The apparent surge for the SNP on the constituency ballot is misleading, because it's caused by Find Out Now changing their methodology since the last poll to exclude the Greens as an option in the constituencies where they aren't standing. Nevertheless, it's still an extremely encouraging finding, because it shows that the SNP are picking up the lion's share of those Green votes, which has not always been the pattern seen in polls from other firms.

The eye-catching finding from the Scot Goes Pop poll was the Greens on an all-time high of 20% on the list ballot, so the big question was whether that would turn out to be an outlier. The answer to that question appears to be yes, but only in part, because the 17% for the Greens in today's poll is still exceptionally high by normal standards. They're still in the hunt for second place in terms of seats, and they're still contributing to a pro-independence supermajority of sorts, although this it's time it's 'only' 60% of the seats in parliament.

And Labour are down to sixth place in the seats projection - oh my goodness me. In a way you could argue that's an artificial finding because Labour are in third place in terms of votes on the constituency ballot, and fourth place on the list. But it's the sort of outcome that could actually happen in the real world, because the Liberal Democrats will probably take more constituency seats than Labour do, and that might give them slightly more seats overall than they would really be due on a strictly proportional allocation.

This poll muddies the waters somewhat, because it doesn't replicate the trends shown by other firms. There's no telling recovery for Labour on the constituency ballot as Ipsos are showing today (hopefully more on that in a later blogpost), and there's no renaissance for the Tories as Norstat showed, notwithstanding a trivial one-point increase in the Conservative vote share on both ballots.

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Is tomorrow's Scottish Parliament election the end of the road for Labour in Scotland?

2026-05-06T13:01:00.003+01:00

I've now completed my profiles of all 73 Holyrood constituencies for The National. I reckon in terms of combined word count they must come to somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 words - which is almost the equivalent of writing a novel over the course of two months. But at least I didn't have to devise the plot! The final one is Uddingston & Bellshill, and you can read it HERE.

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Paradoxically, the Daily Record's endorsement is clear evidence of both Labour's weakness and the Record's weakness

2026-05-06T11:00:00.002+01:00

The Daily Record's mindless support for the Labour party, regardless of circumstances, will survive the heat death of the universe. But it's no longer 2007, and very few people are going to be influenced by this. https://t.co/gEsWe1UgF1
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 5, 2026

Nope, nice try, Paul, but the status quo - which you favour - is "more of the same". Voting for change would mean voting for independence. And if you stick a saltire on a call for change which doesn't mention "Labour", on a casual glance people will assume you mean independence.
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 6, 2026

The fact that Hutcheon needs that explained to him - and almost certainly will still resist it even now it has been explained - demonstrates the extent to which he's caught up in groupthink. He lives in a bubble in which the opponents of the British state, rather than the British state itself and its upholders, are "the establishment", and the existence of people who see things the other way around doesn't even enter his head when he puts together a front page like that.

Nevertheless, in all sorts of ways this "endorsement of Labour" is evidence that the Record are acutely aware of the weakness of both their own position and Labour's position. If they weren't worried about angering and alienating a large number of their readers by endorsing Labour, they wouldn't have taken the extraordinary and possibly unique step of not even mentioning the name of the party they're supporting, or even of referring to that party obliquely. In 2007 they felt able to be much more full-on, and the fact that they no longer do speaks volumes.

It's also clear that they know that saying "vote for change", even leaving aside the interpretation of that phrase as referring to independence, cannot be used as a less offensive proxy for "vote Labour", because it's not at all clear that Labour are the SNP's main challengers in this election. So in order not to be misunderstood, they've had to tie themselves up in knots by attacking both the SNP and Reform while still not actually mentioning the word "Labour". That's weakness because it's a tacit admission that Labour are in severe danger of finishing third or fourth (or even fifth, as the Scot Goes Pop / Find Out Now poll showed).

The parroting of Labour's own message "Reject Reform, Beat the SNP" strongly suggests that Labour have found on the doorstep that Sarwar's overture to Offord has harmed Labour and that some anti-Reform voters are turning to the SNP. The fact that they're needing to go to such lengths to address that problem is a sign of weakness - as is the fact that the polling evidence shows that there are a number of seats in which a tactical vote for the SNP can help stop Reform, but there are no seats in which a tactical vote for Labour can have the same effect. So if challenged on the claim that you can stop Reform by voting Labour, they wouldn't even be able to justify it coherently.

The Record also know that their only credible objective in making this endorsement is to stop the SNP winning an overall majority - it's extremely unlikely that the SNP can be prevented from forming a government. So they ought to have some concerns about the effect their decision will have on their relationship with the Scottish Government over the next five years. I can't remember the last time I looked inside the Record, but I'm vaguely aware that they occasionally run columns from SNP politicians and supporters. I remember Alison Thewliss had a regular column with them until Hutcheon treated her like dirt and dropped her because she wouldn't write what he wanted her to.

Now, of course there are benefits for the SNP to a relationship with the Record because it allows them to reach a particular audience. But I'm not sure it's an act of charity on behalf of the Record - running the occasional column from John Swinney or whoever is also a signal to SNP-supporting Record readers that the paper they read is not unremittingly hostile to the party they support. Will the SNP continue to allow the Record to have its cake and eat it now that it has run a front page explicitly calling the SNP "hopeless" and telling people to vote them out of office? I mean, would Nigel Lawson have written columns for the Mirror or the Morning Star in 1987? Just a thought to ponder on. If the Record are determined to be hostile, then perhaps they should be treated as hostile and forced to live with the full consequences of that in terms of sales figures and political relevance.

Meanwhile, I've now completed my profiles of all 73 Holyrood constituencies for The National. I reckon in terms of combined word count they must come to somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 words - which is almost the equivalent of writing a novel over the course of two months. But at least I didn't have to devise the plot! The final one is Uddingston & Bellshill, and you can read it HERE.

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