It's rather timely in view of my previous post that Craig Murray has now written a blogpost setting out more details about his plans to stand for the Workers Party of Britain in Blackburn, even though he is a member of the Alba Party.  Now, as I've done before, I want to make clear that I am not in any way having a go at Craig - I think Alba should absolutely be flexible and tolerant enough to allow one of its members to stand for another party in England.  But I also want to ensure that other Alba members can expect similar levels of flexibility and tolerance in equivalent situation ..read more

We're now over one-quarter of our way through general election year (no, I don't buy the notion that Sunak will cling on until January 2025), and the independence movement obviously finds itself in a very challenging situation because the SNP are in real danger of losing the majority they hold among Scottish seats at Westminster.  However, it's worth drawing breath and taking stock of the other side of the coin - ie. just how extraordinarily strongly the support for independence is holding up as the SNP have slipped back. As far as I can see, there have been nine independence polls so fa ..read more

Here's a question I never thought I'd ask myself: is Neil MacKay actually half-right about something?  He's got a typically provocative column in the Herald about how the independence movement is tearing itself apart as the general election approaches.  But it's not, as some people automatically assumed from MacKay's track record, about "evil Cybernats" or "Alba splitters".  It's instead about divisions between the SNP and the Greens, and between different factions of the SNP. If part of MacKay's point is simply that pro-independence parties should not be standing against each ..read more

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Redfield & Wilton) Yes 51% No 49% More details and analysis to follow shortly ..read more

Someone claimed on the previous thread that there was a new poll out today showing the SNP on 49 seats.  That seemed highly unlikely, and having checked I couldn't see anything.  I then made five or six attempts to respond to the comment by asking if people were just inventing numbers at this point in the hope that no-one would bother checking.  But I couldn't get my comment published.  I don't know if the bug is at my end or if it's affecting everyone.  I was going to ask people to let me know if they were having the same problem, but of course if they are, it would b ..read more

It's more than a touch ironic that the closest thing Humza Yousaf has had to a good personal showing in an opinion poll has just arrived courtesy of a poll commissioned by the Alba Party.  The reason that Alba have decided to release the numbers is presumably that they're also reasonably good for Alex Salmond. Who would make the best First Minister? (Find Out Now / Alba Party, 18th-24th March 2024): Humza Yousaf (SNP) 25.8% Douglas Ross (Conservatives) 18.2% Anas Sarwar (Labour) 17.1% Alex Salmond (Alba) 15.4% Lorna Slater (Greens) 8.5% Patrick Harvie (Greens) 8.0% Alex Cole-Hamilton (Li ..read more

Not everything in life makes sense, and one example is that Scottish political bloggers seem to be judged by their clerical titles, or lack thereof.  Stuart Campbell has styled himself a "Reverend" since entering the fray a decade ago, and although he's always insisted that's a genuine title, he's nevertheless been coy about how he acquired it.  A Google search suggests the answer may be the "Universal Life Church", which bills itself as "the world's leading online church" (whatever that means), and which allows anyone to be ordained as a priest within minutes simply by filling in a ..read more

Happy Hate Crime Eve, everyone.  (And it's Easter too, apparently.)  I'll just very quickly give you the MRP seats projection from Survation's new mega-poll for the Sunday Times - Labour 468 (+265) Conservatives 98 (-267) SNP 41 (-7) Liberal Democrats 22 (+11) Plaid Cymru 2 (-2) That would obviously be a quite astonishing achievement for the SNP - they would have made Scotland the only place in Britain to resist the enormous Labour tide, they would hold the vast majority of their current seats, they would retain majority status among Scottish seats, they would hold off the Liberal D ..read more

A few people have been asking (perhaps with a touch of mischief in mind) for my views on the Hate Crime Act, which is less than thirty hours from entering into force.  Not for the first time, I find myself somewhere in between the two extremes.  I certainly rolled my eyes to the heavens when I saw that Stuart Campbell had announced that he's temporarily shutting Wings Over Scotland down while he supposedly seeks urgent legal advice (which he's crowdfunded for, naturally) on whether it's safe to put the site back up.  This is a classic exercise in tiresome Campbell theatrics to t ..read more

A Scot Goes Pop reader contacted me last night to ask what I thought about Craig Murray's decision to join the Workers Party of Britain and stand as one of its general election candidates in England, even though it is an avowedly British unionist party led by George Galloway, who famously voted Tory in 2021 in an attempt to stop independence. To be perfectly honest, this was the first I'd heard of Craig's decision, so I had to read up on it.  I suppose it's the sort of thing you can look at either way - on the one hand it compromises Craig's support for independence, but on the other han ..read more