Much of central Cowdenbeath was closed down for several hours by the police yesterday to facilitate an Orange Order parade attended by DUP leader Arlene Foster. (Curiously, Ruth Davidson, who’d been vocal in her complaints about traffic disruption in Glasgow due to the recent Yes march, had no objections this time.)
Foster made an audaciously ironic plea for a nation “free from intolerance and hatred“, right before the next speaker stepped up to denounce large sections of the local population as “enemies of Christ”.
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.
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.
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.
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 (-)
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.
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?”
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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