Hi, I'm James Kelly, and I write the pro-independence blog Scot Goes Pop. Since January 2020 I've commissioned five full-scale Scottish opinion polls about independence and related matters, all conducted by reputable firms affiliated to the British Polling Council. Polls are very expensive to commission and are therefore mostly the preserve of the mainstream media - which means that it's mainly...

With grateful thanks for your patience, I'm pleased to be able to tell you that I've finally commissioned the comprehensive poll on reform of the Gender Recognition Act and related gender issues that I crowdfunded for in the summer.  However, this has been a much more challenging and stressful process than previous Scot Goes Pop polls, so I'll need to briefly explain how we've ended up where...

I gather that Ruth Wishart has issued a call for an end to "internecine warfare" in ths Yes movement, although ironically I can't see what she said because she blocked me in the summer after I sent her a couple of polite replies.  Nevertheless, unity is obviously a desirable objective, and here are my own concrete suggestions about how it can be achieved.1) Set a date for a referendum, and...

As you may have seen, the SNP won a local council by-election in Falkirk overnight.  It's being reported as an 'SNP gain from Labour', although as is often the case with STV by-elections, things are not quite as they seem - the SNP won the popular vote in the ward last time around, and the real battle was with the Tories, who came very close to topping the first preference vote. ...

Reading through the account in the Guardian of the report into the UK's catastrophic failings in the early weeks of the pandemic, I initially got the impression that the ludicrous fiction that there was never any herd immunity policy was being maintained.  But thankfully no.  The distinction being drawn is simply that the authorities didn't necessarily believe that mass infection was...

With the normal caveat that I'm not a legal expert, it seems to me to be utter nonsense to claim that the Supreme Court ruling a few days ago scuppers hopes that a legal referendum can be held without a Section 30 order.  The issues involved are very different.  The crux of the ruling was that the Scottish Parliament cannot constrain the UK Parliament's unlimited powers to legislate for...

Did Kirsty Blackman genuinely retweet a call for Joanna Cherry to be expelled? Any chance a screenshot was doctored or something like that? It's extraordinary (and appalling) if she did.— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) October 4, 2021 The fiction that Joanna Cherry was sacked because she's "not a team player" is wearing a bit thin. There's clearly been a very nasty, bitter vendetta against her from...

Naming no names, but someone has been challenging me today to...well, to do what you can see above in the title of this blogpost.  Where on earth is this nonsense coming from all of a sudden? Brexit has given EU citizens an enormous incentive to vote Yes in any future independence referendum, and anecdotally that does seem to be exactly what the majority of them plan to do.  This is...

So a few miscellaneous things while I'm thinking of them.  First of all, I meant to mention last week that I was quoted in Alasdair Soussi's latest piece for the Al Jazeera website, about the UK Government's attempts to turn COP26 in Glasgow into a Union Jack fest.  You can read it HERE.Secondly, I promised our regular commenter 'Independence for Scotland' that I'd let him know if I...

This is bordering on defamatory. I'm a Catholic of overwhelmingly Irish ancestry. I went to Catholic schools. I still go to the Easter vigil every year. When Rangers fan sing about Fenian blood, who do you think they're singing about? t.co/w6VBlHWjuS— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) September 28, 2021 But then, this is Jeggit we're talking about, so I'm too busy laughing to consider a...

Do you remember back in 2018 or early 2019, when the bulk of us in the independence movement were still giving the SNP leadership the benefit of the doubt in relation to their assurances that an independence referendum had merely been delayed slightly and would still take place before Brexit? Journalists and certain academics used to treat us as hopelessly naive, and would say that "everyone knows...

A reader has just emailed me.  He had complained to the press regulator IPSO this morning about the Daily Record's blatant lie that the new Redfield & Wilton poll shows a "drop in support for independence" (in fact the result is literally identical to the previous poll).  IPSO wrote back to him requesting supporting evidence within seven days about the results of the poll and how...

Answers on a postcard, folks.  The new Redfield & Wilton poll on independence shows a literally identical result to the last one, with 44% saying they would vote Yes and 47% saying they would vote No.  (Those figures do not exclude Don't Knows.)  And yet for some inexplicable reason that is probably a mystery even to themselves, the Daily Record have decided to report the poll...

A few years ago, I had a brief discussion on Twitter with the pollster Keiran Pedley (then with GfK NOP, now with Ipsos-Mori) about what I believed to be the unfair practice of polling firms failing to include one particular political party in the main menu of options that respondents are provided with, even though other parties of similar size are included.  He made the point that it wasn't...

I'm really honoured to say that I've been elected as one of the eight ordinary members of the Alba Party's National Executive Committee.  The successful candidates are:Female ballot: Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, Michelle Ferns, Denise Findlay, Suzanne BlackleyMale ballot: Roddy MacLeod, Josh Robertson, James Kelly, Hamish VernalCongratulations to all of the above, and commiserations to the many...

I'm really honoured to say that I've been elected as one of the eight ordinary members of the Alba Party's National Executive Committee.  The successful candidates are:Female ballot: Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, Michelle Ferns, Denise Findlay, Suzanne BlackleyMale ballot: Roddy MacLeod, Josh Robertson, James Kelly, Hamish VernalCongratulations to all of the above, and commiserations to the many...

In order to justify throwing the book at Craig Murray, the presiding judge notoriously dreamed up the novel principle that us mere bloggers must be held to a different legal standard than 'proper' journalists, on the dubious grounds that the latter are bound by codes such as the IPSO Editors' Code of Practice - a voluntary set of rules that to the best of my knowledge has no legal underpinning...

A couple of people asked what happened to my blogpost from last night. I realised when I woke up that it (unwittingly) contained misleading information, and I didn't have enough time to edit it, so I just took it down. Alas, the Stack Data poll turned out to show the complete opposite of what I thought - I was led astray by the unconventional way it was presented in a tweet. It in fact showed a...

I've got a fair bit of half-news for you tonight, but hopefully the mists will have cleared by the morning.  There seems to be a new Panelbase poll on independence (Marcia warned us to expect one), because a right-wing commentator on Twitter is furiously spinning some of the supplementary results, but I haven't seen any sign of the headline Yes/No numbers yet.Secondly, there's a single tweet...

If you registered for the Alba party conference, you can vote for me online, today or tomorrow (11th-12th September 2021) for one of the male positions on the National Executive Committee.