I'd always hoped this didn't need to be said, but I now realise it probably does.  Notwithstanding my involvement in the Alba Party, this blog continues to represent my own independent thoughts and analysis.  What I say here might be right or it might be wrong, or in some cases there may not even be any clear-cut right or wrong, but you can at least rely on me to be authentic.  If I...

As you'll probably have gathered, I was away from home last week in a place with very sporadic internet access, so I have a backlog of about four blogposts I want to write at the back of my mind.  But before I get down to those, I thought I'd pull over for one of my very occasional pitstops to try to give a proper shot in the arm to Scot Goes Pop's ongoing fundraising efforts, and in...

If true, this is absolutely idiotic (the stand in every seat part, I mean). There are a number of constituencies in Edinburgh and Glasgow where the Greens could win 10-20% of the vote, thus splitting the Yes vote and allowing the unionist candidate to win.https://t.co/eEBzFbyzyB— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) August 1, 2022I'm trying to make sense of what the Greens are doing, but it's not easy...

*  *  *We've already seen since Nicola Sturgeon's announcement that the overwhelmingly unionist mainstream media are attempting a 'shock and awe' campaign to try to kill off independence - and the misuse of polling is playing a key part in that.  If you'd like to balance things out with polling commissioned by a pro-independence outlet and which asks the questions we want to see...

This way of thinking could lose us a plebiscite election. Worry about the betrayal if and when it happens, not when we're trying to win a mandate.https://t.co/V6b2sa3O5Z— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) July 23, 2022 Explain to me, how every vote for Tory, Labour or Lib Dem is counted towards support for the union. But only votes for the SNP would count towards votes for independence? Because...

So first of all, an apology to the Scottish Sovereignty Research Group - we had discussed the possibility of me running a guest post about their forthcoming conference in Dunfermline, but when they sent me their proposed post, it went to my spam folder and I was totally oblivious to it until last night.  The post I was sent has since appeared on Iain Lawson's blog, so you can read it...

Liz Truss is now clear favourite on the betting exchanges to be the next Prime Minister. This is dreamland stuff - we couldn't have asked for better.— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) July 19, 2022Result of today's ballot:Rishi Sunak 118Penny Mordaunt 92Liz Truss 86Kemi Badenoch 59There have been a number of unexpected twists in this race - including today, with it being very hard to understand how the...

We're not going to find out the identity of the next Prime Minister today, but we have finally reached a genuine crunch-point in the race, because the Tory right will have to decide once and for all who their standard bearer is going into tomorrow's final ballot of MPs.  There's no realistic way that both Kemi Badenoch and Liz Truss can make it through - it has to be one or the other, and...

I'm slightly concerned to see it being claimed that the Scottish Government have won a "major victory" in their legal tussle with London over an independence referendum.  First of all, it's not a major victory, it's just the outcome of a preliminary skirmish. But more to the point is that legal rulings should never be how we define victory or defeat.  If we celebrate and bestow...

Penny Mordaunt performed poorly in the Tory leadership debate on Channel Four two nights ago, so it's no surprise to see her support dip in the new ConservativeHome survey.  But what makes no sense whatsoever is that one of the two main beneficiaries of Mordaunt's flop is Liz Truss, who by general consensus performed even worse than Mordaunt in the debate and indeed was probably the most dire...

It suddenly occurred to me the other day that it was almost exactly ten years ago - I say "almost" because it was November - that I was in Edinburgh doing an unusually glamorous day of work (I'll save that story for my memoirs) and I received an email out of the blue from Stuart Campbell.  He was messaging various bloggers asking if we would be interested in participating in a collaborative...

As plenty of people have already pointed out, the stand taken by Alba MPs at Prime Minister's Questions this week has provoked a knee-jerk reaction from certain leading SNP figures that is hypocritical to the point of being almost comical.  What happened on Wednesday was, in fact, strikingly similar to the incident four years ago when Ian Blackford led the SNP group in a staged walkout from...

Today's incident in the House of Commons, which saw a ranting, purple-faced Lindsay Hoyle demean his high office by screaming for the Alba Party's two MPs to be physically ejected from the chamber, has a number of past precedents.  What it reminds me of most is an episode just after the 1992 general election, in which 74% of the Scottish population voted for parties promising to establish a...

I'm completely stunned by the outcome of the latest ConHome survey on Tory members' leadership preferences - which has to be taken seriously, because Tory members will ultimately select the new leader from a shortlist of two handed to them by MPs.  It doesn't matter how decisively Rishi Sunak tops the MPs' ballots - if the second placed candidate is more popular with the members, Sunak will...

During the crisis that led to Boris Johnson's resignation, the BBC used startlingly colonial language to note that Alister Jack was the only one of the "territorial" Secretaries of State who hadn't resigned.  It seems that from the point of view of the state broadcaster, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are not nations, but mere "territories" on a par with the Yukon Territory or...

Not for the first time in my life, I find myself roughly equidistant between Sturgeon loyalists and the First Minister's most trenchant critics in the wake of her big announcement.  That's probably the most realistic and sensible place to be, but it's not always the most comfortable, because there aren't all that many people here with me.   For days, the comments section of this...

Please disregard any scurrilous rumours that I may have stolen the title of this blogpost from a rather splendid rhyme used by the chair of the Alba Party last night.One of the really annoying things about the last couple of days is that every time I have an idea for a blogpost, it's overtaken by events by the time I get round to writing it.  But to hell with it this time, I'm just going to...

From our point of view, the million dollar question is what difference the wave of resignations from the Tory government will make to the Yes campaign in either a 2023 independence referendum, or a plebiscite election in 2024.  I think it's fair to say that Boris Johnson is probably now toast.  Prime Ministers have sometimes held on in unlikely circumstances - John Major, for example,...

I've been astonished by some of the reactions on social media to the prospect of a plebiscite election in 2024 - and when I say 'astonished', I don't just mean that I disagree with the reactions, I mean that I'm genuinely surprised.  For years we've been begging the SNP leadership to commit themselves to a credible Plan B in the event of an ongoing rejection of a Section 30 order, but I was...