It seems that it’s fine to farm important judgments out to mysterious shadowy figures who just make important chunks of them up out of thin air, and then issue them in your own name. Back in your boxes, plebs.
This clip was broadcast on ITV News Wales this week.
It’s a staggeringly obvious mess for a whole raft of reasons – a number of completely spurious, illogical and unsupported claims are accepted as facts without any sort of challenge or balancing voice (which has been standard practice on ITV News for a while now across almost any contentious political topic) – but it led us to somewhere magnitudes of crazier still.
My first ever real experience of politics was playing Dictator.
Originally written by Don Priestley for the Sinclair ZX81 in 1982, it was a simple text-based game which subsequently came to other formats including the Commodore 64, BBC Micro, Elan Enterprise and the ZX Spectrum, which is where I encountered it.
It’s almost – almost – worth voting SNP in May because of this:
Because it would be at least momentarily absolutely hilarious watching Swinney try to explain why his “100% guaranteed” second indyref didn’t happen if the SNP actually did get a majority on 30% of the vote (which is narrowly feasible on current polling).
This week The National published a poll it commissioned from Find Out Now for this May’s Scottish Parliament election, alongside a seat projection from Sir John Curtice. Here are the list-vote figures from the poll.
The seat projection calculated that the election would result in 59 SNP MSPs (six short of the number John Swinney says is the minimum needed to force a second indyref), 25 for Reform, 13 for the Greens, 12 each for Labour and the Tories and eight for the Lib Dems.
It didn’t specify how many of the seats were constituency ones and how many were list ones, so we dropped Sir John a line and asked him.
Yesterday we noted in passing that independence support now outstrips that of the SNP by more than 20 points, making the party into a gigantic liability as the vehicle for enabling Scots to leave the UK. Put simply, even when voters want independence (as most now do), they’re not willing to vote SNP to get it.
(Not, of course, that they WOULD get it if they voted SNP – the party still having no coherent or credible strategy to achieve it – but more than 40% of would-be Yes voters are no longer prepared to even try giving them the benefit of yet another mandate.)
And since what everyone loves most of all on New Year’s Day is a good old wade in some political stats, we thought we’d take a little more detail on that.
With Reform now pretty consistently miles in front in polling for the next UK election, logically this is brilliant news for the Scottish independence movement, isn’t it?
So can anyone explain why the SNP is so desperate to stop them?
sarah on The Marshalling Plan: “Great news that Alliance to Liberate Scotland is now registered with the Electoral Commission. This gives a real pro-independence option…” Feb 4, 20:58
Southernbystander on The Marshalling Plan: “Maybe they like the colour?” Feb 4, 20:52
James Barr Gardner on The Marshalling Plan: “Birds o’ a feather flock the gither……..” Feb 4, 20:38
Willie on The Marshalling Plan: “Anybody like to put odds on how long before the Prime Minister stands down. Like a rat in a trap…” Feb 4, 20:32
Rev. Stuart Campbell on The Marshalling Plan: ““I dont think the constituency vote is first past the post” The constituency vote is DEFINITELY First Past The Post.” Feb 4, 20:03
Chas on The Marshalling Plan: “Did you notice that the curlers are British? That colonialism gets everywhere! Baird will be apoplectic.” Feb 4, 19:52
Nae Need! on The Marshalling Plan: “Apparently there’s pressure on McSweeney to take the rap for Mandy’s appointment. But, without McSweeney where is 2Tier?” Feb 4, 19:02
Cynicus on The Marshalling Plan: “@ agentx “Speaking to ITV Border on Wednesday, Scotland’s first minister……” ========= Swinney was also on STV an hour later…” Feb 4, 18:57
The Flying Iron of Doom on The Marshalling Plan: “Ah, so Reform won’t be coming up with the goods either? That’s going to annoy a few folk, but what…” Feb 4, 18:44
Nae Need! on The Marshalling Plan: “The conversation has moved since I was last here, and so has my thinking (or what passes fir thinking in…” Feb 4, 18:40
agentx on The Marshalling Plan: “Don’t forget the curlers are in action in the Winter Olympics – live on iPlayer now.” Feb 4, 18:08
Cynicus on The Marshalling Plan: “A Farage fanboy opines. I have no idea what he means and don’t really care.” Feb 4, 18:08
Aidan on The Marshalling Plan: “‘No judges’ – so how do you think the law might be administered in that context?” Feb 4, 18:08
Hatey McHateface on The Marshalling Plan: “If Reform do what they say, reform our politics, then they will have succeeded in working themselves out of a…” Feb 4, 17:21
agentx on The Marshalling Plan: “John Swinney has ordered an investigation into his government’s dealings with Peter Mandelson to see if the “interests of Scotland…” Feb 4, 17:21
Cynicus on The Marshalling Plan: “BigJay says: 4 February, 2026 at 3:32 pm . “…….lots of people are saying at the moment that they’ll vote…” Feb 4, 17:02
Hatey McHateface on The Marshalling Plan: “Whooda thunk it, eh? The academic in his ivory tower, poring over his books, references and arcane theories reaches exactly…” Feb 4, 17:00
Chas on The Marshalling Plan: “Unbelievably you make more sense when you write about the 300 year old pish. How do individuals get appointed to…” Feb 4, 16:35
James Cheyne on The Marshalling Plan: “Hatey, Never a truer word spoken, Perhaps they should all be fully transitioned, a new disguised terminology for ( medically…” Feb 4, 16:07
Alf Baird on The Marshalling Plan: ““The only hope of getting rid of the SNP” and ensure you vote for independence is to vote for THE…” Feb 4, 15:52
James Cheyne on The Marshalling Plan: “It is with valid reasoning of the above alone that Scotland should have a Sovereign peoples parliament in Scotland, run…” Feb 4, 15:37
BigJay on The Marshalling Plan: “It’s 92 days (including today) to the Holyrood election on the 7th of May. Candidates have to be registered 23…” Feb 4, 15:32
James Cheyne on The Marshalling Plan: “Willie, The present labour prime minister does not have a clean track record on past judgements or a present one…” Feb 4, 15:18
Cynicus on The Marshalling Plan: “factchecker “ The only hope of getting rid of the SNP is to vote for a party that already has…” Feb 4, 15:00
James Cheyne on The Marshalling Plan: “Willie, The case for Andrew is still as yet incomplete, I am sure there is more to come out, and…” Feb 4, 14:56
DaveL on The Marshalling Plan: “Factchecker would be better served hanging pencils from his nostrils…” Feb 4, 14:48
Bono bunny on The Marshalling Plan: “‘100% Yes’ Scottish nationalist says he’ll vote for a 100% No English Nationalist, who will stop free prescriptions, abolish our…” Feb 4, 13:30
James Cheyne on The Marshalling Plan: “Factchecker, it has always been notable that no attention has been paid to – facts, but rather to learned opinion…” Feb 4, 12:59
