Wings Over Scotland

We noticed a recurring theme in our latest Panelbase poll. In recent years Scottish politics has of course been defined mainly by the constitution, with all three major UK parties united in opposition to the SNP more or less reflexively. But if you strip out questions about the constitution, voters have largely reverted to the previous norm of a broadly centre-left consensus against the Conservatives.

For years now Lib Dem voters have shown up in polling as essentially Tories Lite, not because individual people’s opinions had changed but because most of the party’s traditional left-leaning voter base had abandoned it in disgust after the 2010 coalition which saw Lib Dem support plunge from 23% to 8% in a single Parliamentary term.

But now – although Lib Dem support has barely increased – things are changing.

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Yesterday we reported on the Sunday Herald’s bizarre and blatant reversal of the plain facts about OBFA prosecutions in its front-page lead. But it wasn’t the only paper pulling that trick this weekend.

The Sunday Times ran a major piece on results from a poll it conducted at the same time as our most recent one, spinning the outcome as voters rejecting the SNP’s plan to boost the Scottish economy via more immigration.

But as so many stories in the press do, the article simply disintegrated before readers’ eyes almost immediately after the headline.

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One of the uglier facets of opposition to the hugely-popular but now-repealed Offensive Behaviour (Football) Act was the 100% uniform stance against it in the Scottish press. Despite the Act being backed by a large majority of voters across every demographic and political divide, not one print or broadcast journalist ever stood up for the public.

The reason, of course, is that bigots (and lurid stories about them) are a large part of what keeps the Scottish media’s life support machine functioning, and so the media panders cynically to the extremist sections of the Celtic and “Rangers” support who still buy papers for the latest transfer gossip and soft-soap interviews with ex-players.

And so it is with a remarkably mad front-page lead in today’s Sunday Herald.

The paper reports that “over half” – 44 out of 86 – outstanding OBFA charges have been “converted” into other types of offences and are still being prosecuted by the independent Crown Office, claiming without explanation that this is “an embarrassing move for the SNP Government”.

But it rather seems like the opposite is true.

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In our latest Panelbase poll, we asked the same independence question we asked in the last one, and got much the same answer. (Technically the indy vote went up by about a sixth of one percent, but that’s statistically meaningless.)

That’s a bit disappointing after the events of recent weeks, but also not very surprising – after all, the way the question is framed pretty much guarantees at least 38% of the population will choose the second option straight off the bat.

Much more interesting is the question we asked next.

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Political pundits on both sides on the border often marvel at how the SNP appear able to defy the normal rules of electoral gravity, still holding a comfortable double-digit lead in the polls after more than 11 years in power. But there’s no great mystery to it, and the answer is simple, in several senses of that word.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow us to present to you Scottish Labour’s offering for who’d be in charge of all the Scottish Government’s money if the SNP weren’t in power – finance spokesman James Kelly MSP.

Let’s check those numbers, shall we?

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As alert readers will know, we’ve heard little from the Unionist parties in Scotland over the last couple of years but “SCOTLAND SAID NO!”, “SCOTLAND DOESN’T WANT ANOTHER REFERENDUM!” and “WHAT PART OF NO DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?”

That clutch of blunt, angry slogans was (and remains) pretty much the entire Scottish Conservatives manifesto, for example, and it rests on the claim – based on some extremely misleading selective reading of opinion polls – that the nation is implacably opposed to a second vote. The reality, as we know, is somewhat more balanced. But it’s never been quite THIS balanced before.

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We’ve just got the results back from a new Panelbase poll of Scottish voters. As ever there’s some fascinating stuff in there, but we’ll start with the headline voting numbers:

HOLYROOD VOTING INTENTION (excl DK, chgs vs Dec 2017)

SNP 41 (+2)
Con 27 (-1)
Lab 22 (-3)
LD 6 (-)
Grn 2 (-)

(1018 Scottish voters, fieldwork 21-26 June 2018)

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Part 1: the story.

This year’s Scottish Social Attitudes Survey has found, yet again, that Scottish people trust their government in Holyrood vastly more than they trust the one in Westminster. The figures transcend party loyalties, with far more people saying they trust the Scottish Government than vote for the SNP.

Trust in both governments was down by five points, which meant the Scottish Government had lost 7.6% of its trust (66 down to 61) while the UK government had lost 20% of its trust (25 down to 20).

Now let’s see how two newspapers owned by the same company reported the news.

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Leaflets being given out by Labour today in Scotland and England respectively:

But for some reason there don’t seem to be any going around in Labour-run Wales.

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Michael Gray and Robert Somynne’s Scotia Live, episode 1:

The Sunday Times puts some poll results in an interesting frame today:

And readers who’ve learned anything at all from this site over the last six years will be looking at that tweet and immediately wondering “what AREN’T we being told there?”

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Willie Rennie in the Daily Record today:

And to be absolutely fair to the Scottish Lib Dem leader, he’s always been consistent in his beliefs, such as the view that elected members should be given a second chance when they’ve committed a minor misdemeanour, and NOT have to (for example) stand down and face re-election.

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