Winning With Willie (again)

Much of the mainstream media breathlessly and uncritically reported Willie Rennie's claim at the weekend that the Scottish Liberal Democrats were "winning again".  For those with short memories, here is how the Lib Dems actually fared at the Holyrood election in May...

* SLIPPED from fourth place to fifth, after being overtaken by the Greens for the first time.  To put that in historical perspective, in 1999, 2003 and 2007 they were within just one seat of tying the Tories for third place.

* FAILED to make any seat gains, remaining on the miserable 5-seat tally they've held since 2011.  For comparison, they won 17 seats in both 1999 and 2003, and 16 in 2007.

* SLUMPED to their lowest-ever share of the vote on the constituency ballot - just 7.8%.  For comparison, they took 14.2% in 1999, 15.3% in 2003, and 16.2% in 2007.

If all of that amounts to "winning again", the mind boggles as to what a humiliating defeat would look like.  Apparently on Planet Willie, they can tell that they're winning from the "howling" of "Cybernats".  But back in the real world, we can tell that they're losing simply by checking the results of the election.

The losing streak continued today in the Scottish Parliament as the Lib Dems grotesquely joined forces with the Tories to vote against continued Scottish membership of the single market, but mercifully were defeated by the combined forces of the SNP and Greens, with the pro-European motion being comfortably passed by 65 votes to 32.  This means that an absolute majority of Scottish parliamentarians have now explicitly backed continued single market membership, and the taking of any steps necessary to ensure that.

Labour are taking a lot of flak for abstaining on the motion, but for my money it's the Lib Dems who deserve the opprobrium on this occasion.  You can make an arguable case for abstaining on an elaborate motion that contains several different points, some of which you agree with, and some of which you don't think are ideally worded.  But for a party that was once the most passionately pro-European outfit in Scotland to actually vote against single market membership is nothing short of extraordinary.  They have abandoned all pretence of being anything other than British nationalist zealots - for them, as for the other unionist parties, it's now Brexit or Bust.

New Podcast : Trumpocalypse Now

Just a quick note to let you know that myself and Paul Kavanagh (of Wee Ginger Dug fame) are the guests on the latest edition of the Newsnet podcast, hosted as always by Derek Bateman.  Topics under discussion this week include...well, DONALD TRUMP, basically, although we do also touch on the progression of Brexit, and a possible timescale for the second independence referendum.  You can listen to the podcast HERE.

The neverending curse of McTernan produces its biggest catastrophe yet

I don't think what has just happened can be fairly compared to Brexit.  The prospect of losing European citizenship is thoroughly dismaying, but it doesn't scare me in the way that President-elect Trump does.  He properly terrifies me. 

I'm trying very hard to convince myself that it's not going to be so bad, and that life will go on after January.  I do draw some comfort from Craig Murray's assessment that Trump will be more of a peacemaker than Clinton would have been.  As you know, my own instinct is that the opposite is true, simply because Trump is such an unstable character.  In particular, I can't help thinking back to how he went from describing Alex Salmond as "an amazing man" to branding him as "Mad Alex" within a dizzyingly short period of time.  If his opinion of Putin were to change equally dramatically, the potential consequences for the world hardly bear thinking about.  But it's reassuring to know that at least some people have confidence that Trump will deliver what he promised about avoiding military adventurism, and we'll just have to hope they're proved correct.

If Trump can somehow avoid destroying the world, perhaps a little good may yet come out of all this, and some long-cherished goals of the left might be achieved almost by accident.  The inevitable loss of respect for America's leadership role, and the question marks that will now hang over NATO's future, might lead to the birth of a more multi-polar global order, which would be no bad thing.

As for John "The Gardener" McTernan, the extraordinary run of defeats he's helped to mastermind goes on - Gordon Brown, Julia Gillard, Jim Murphy, Owen Smith, and now the biggest casualty of all in Hillary Clinton.  It's little wonder that the media continue to worship at his altar, because there can't be a "political strategist" anywhere else on this planet who can boast a record quite like that.

From Brexit to Trump : can we trust the polls anymore?

I think it's probably fair to say that it's been a great many decades since US media coverage of an American election has referenced British politics so frequently.  That's a sign of how Brexit matters internationally in a way that routine changes of government don't, but it's also a sign of Trump supporters casting around for glimmers of hope wherever they can be found.  The theory is that support for Trump is vaguely similar in character to support for Brexit, and that if the latter was underestimated by the polls, there's no reason to think the former isn't being underestimated as well.

From this side of the Atlantic, there have been two reasons commonly cited for why that is probably wishful thinking.  The first is that we knew in the days prior to the EU referendum that the postal votes that had already been cast were painting a different picture from the opinion polls, and that Remain had a significant deficit to overcome on polling day itself.  On the whole, the opposite seems to be happening in the US at the moment, with the early voting data tending to look more promising for Clinton than for Trump.  The second reason is that, supposedly, the opinion polls in the EU referendum were nowhere near as inaccurate as portrayed.

The first reason makes perfect sense to me, but I have to say I think the second one is pushing it a bit.  This goes back to the meat of a rather unpleasant (and now largely deleted) argument I had with a New Statesman journalist and a few others on Twitter in August, on the topic of "can we ever trust the polls again?".  Immediately after that exchange, I had been planning to write a blogpost setting out my thoughts, but I decided against it because the whole thing had become too heated.  However, this may be a good moment to make some of the points I had been planning to make that night (but leaving aside the personalities involved, obviously).

* First of all, it really must be understood that the standard 3% margin of error in individual opinion polls does not provide any sort of alibi for the polling failure in June.  If the methodology used across the industry is basically correct, the error on the polling average should be considerably lower than 3%.  For example, if one campaign is actually on 44%, you would expect just as many polls to have that campaign one, two or three points below 44% as have them one, two or three points above 44%.  The underestimates would balance out the overestimates, and you would end up with an average that is pretty close to being bang on the money.  So it's a form of sophistry to look at the string of late polls that overestimated the Remain vote, and claim that the ones that fell within the margin of error (or came close to doing so) were all technically "accurate".

Regular readers of this blog will remember that I had been completely open to the strong possibility of a Leave victory throughout the referendum campaign, but when the last polling numbers came in on 23rd June, I finally threw my hands up in the air, and said that if the polls were right, there was clearly going to be a Remain victory of some sort.  My exact words were -

"Leave can only really win now if there's been some kind of systemic problem with the public polls - although that's scarcely unheard of."

I entirely stand by that summary, and exactly the same is true of the situation in the US right now.   Donald Trump still has a chance, but that categorically isn't because he's "within the margin of error".  He may be within the margin of error in individual polls, but if he was really tied with Clinton, and if the polls were getting it right to within the margin of error, there ought to be as many polls putting him three or four points ahead as there are putting him three or four points behind.  Self-evidently, that isn't the case.  The reason he still has a chance is because it's fairly common - as our own referendum demonstrates - for polls to be misleading due to factors that are not taken into account by the standard margin of error.  That 3% wiggle-room only allows for normal sampling variation, and basically assumes that the underlying methodology is otherwise going to be perfect - which is pretty optimistic in this day and age.

If Trump wins, or if Clinton wins much bigger than we expect her to, it'll be because the polls were wrong, just as they were on Brexit.  Not necessarily wrong by all that much, or by a historically unprecedented amount, but certainly wrong in a way that the margin of error can't account for.  (Although polling firms will doubtless attempt to make that excuse by cherry-picking individual polls.)

* It's been suggested a number of times that the EU referendum polls were much more accurate than supposed, because people tend to only look at the last batch of polls, and ignore the ones earlier in June that were more favourable for Leave.  That's plainly a load of nonsense, because the reason why the later polls moved towards Remain is remarkably simple - there was almost certainly a genuine swing towards Remain as polling day approached.

The word "accurate" is a bit slippery when used in relation to opinion polls, because strictly speaking, and with the obvious exception of exit polls, all polls are snapshots of public opinion rather than predictions of election results.  A poll can be an accurate snapshot even if it differs markedly from the final outcome.  Nevertheless, if "accurate" is used to mean closeness to the final result, it's perfectly reasonable to say that later polls should be more "accurate" than earlier ones, because the closer you get to election day, the more people have made up their minds.  Therefore, the fact that the EU polls got progressively less "accurate" towards the death of the campaign makes it worse for the polling industry, not better.  It strongly implies that there was a significant in-built error all along.  When Leave appeared to be slightly behind, they were actually slightly ahead.  When Leave appeared to be slightly ahead, they actually had a decent cushion.  And so on.

* One of the apparent saving graces for the polling industry in June was that, against all expectations, online polls proved to be somewhat more accurate than telephone polls.  Nevertheless, the performance of the online polls was significantly tarnished by a Populus poll published on referendum day that was absolutely miles out from reality - it gave Remain a 55% to 45% lead.  It was suggested to me that somehow that poll doesn't really count, because it was the only published Populus voting intention poll of the entire campaign, and is therefore difficult to put into proper context.  I must say I can't make head nor tail of that line of argument.  We know that Populus had been conducting extensive private polls throughout the campaign, meaning they'd had as much opportunity as any other firm to hone their techniques.  It may well be that a 55%-45% lead was an outlier from their normal results, but it shouldn't have happened at all if their methodology had been essentially sound.  (Even the occasional 'rogue poll' that statistically will happen one time in every twenty shouldn't really be out by as much as 7%.)

So, yes, that Populus poll does deserve to be treated as an online poll like any other, and the fact that it was one of the final polls of the campaign (when it should have been more accurate, not less) does detract from the notion that online polls in general performed tolerably well.

*  *  *

To return to the original question, I think the simplest way of putting it is this.  If you want polls to be as accurate as the industry claim them to be, then you can't and shouldn't trust them, because recent history suggests you'll often (but not always) be disappointed.  If, however, you just want a ball-park sense of public opinion that is more reliable than, say, Neil Lovatt's beloved betting and financial markets, then yes, polls are still a very useful tool, and the outcome in June bears that truth out.  It really just depends on how demanding your own expectations are.

A progressive alliance may soon be needed more than ever

Just a quick note to let you know that I have a new article at the TalkRadio website, about how last week's High Court ruling could turn out to be an emergency for pro-Europeans and progressives if it triggers an early general election.  You can read it HERE.

Freedom to silence

I had a short Twitter exchange with the Spectator's Alex Massie earlier tonight, which was sparked by his observation that "a free press requires accepting the freedom it will write things you find distasteful or even deplorable" - a reference to the pro-Brexit media's appalling reaction to the High Court judgement. I pointed out to him that freedom of speech also requires the press accepting the freedom of others to criticise the press. He innocently denied that anyone had ever disputed that point - and so I reminded him of the furious reaction from journalists to the measured criticisms a couple of SNP politicians made of Stephen Daisley. Suddenly the goalposts shifted - somehow the criticism of Daisley wasn't legitimate after all, because that was 'beyond' criticism. It was a 'silencing'. I'm puzzled by that distinction, because although the sequence of events is hotly disputed, one fact that no-one can reasonably deny is that the Scottish Government and the SNP have no power whatever over broadcasting. Even if it's true (and it doesn't seem to be) that John Nicolson and Angus MacNeil had something to do with STV's decision to change Daisley's role, the only weapon they ever had at their disposal was the strength of their own arguments. If that alone proved sufficient, doesn't it suggest that their arguments were actually rather persuasive, and probably correct? A cynic might conclude that Massie doesn't so much have a problem with the freedom to criticise journalists, but rather with the freedom to do so convincingly and non-impotently.

The other point that occurs to me is this : if Massie thinks that the freedom to criticise journalists is not absolute, but must always fall short of his own arbitrary definition of "silencing", shouldn't exactly the same exception apply to the freedom of the press? Why should the press be allowed to intimidate judges, for example? It doesn't seem terribly outlandish to suggest that the real target of the reporting in the Daily Mail and the Sun was not so much the three High Court judges who were vilified, but rather the Supreme Court judges who will hear the appeal. The message was effectively : "you're next, unless you make a decision we approve of". Does Alex Massie think the freedom of the press extends to the right not merely to 'silence' judges, but to actually subvert the law of the land?

By the way, a little memo for the press : a direct democracy involves the electorate making decisions by referendum, and those decisions being automatically implemented by virtue of the rules laid down by the constitution. Theresa May getting to decide whether and when to invoke Article 50 is not direct democracy, any more than parliament making exactly the same decision would be. If you don't like it, campaign to change our constitution to make it more like Switzerland's. There's no point in moaning because judges refuse to ignore the law.

*  *  *

As you may already have seen, the Tories scored two local by-election gains in Aberdeenshire on Thursday.  Both were in wards where the SNP topped the popular vote last time around, although thanks to the now-familiar quirk of the STV voting system, the Inverurie result was technically a gain from the Liberal Democrats rather than the SNP.  (And I'm sure we've all noted that Mike "can't be arsed" Smithson is considerably less eager to propagandise about technicalities when it's the Lib Dems on the receiving end.)  Weirdly, the SNP vote more or less held up in Inverurie but dropped steeply in Banff - I don't know if that contrast can be wholly or partly explained by personality factors.  In both elections, though, it looks as if the Tories ultimately have unionist tactical voting to thank for their triumph (along with the traditional tendency of Tory voters to be more inclined to turn out in low-interest contests).

Inverurie and District by-election result :

Conservatives 38.8% (+21.4)
SNP 34.6% (-2.6)
Liberal Democrats 22.5% (+5.2)
Labour 4.1% (-9.1)

Banff and District by-election result :

Conservatives 44.0% (+20.9)
SNP 36.2% (-19.2)
Liberal Democrats 19.8% (+8.7)

There's actually nothing radically new in these results - they follow the same pattern as the Holyrood election in May, with heavily No-voting areas coalescing around the unionist party best-placed to beat the SNP.  To the extent that some ex-SNP voters are switching direct to the Tories, those are highly likely to be people who voted No in 2014 and who have little prospect of changing their minds at the next indyref.  What we're seeing, then, is simply a mirror-image of the phenomenon of Yes voters in working-class Scotland bringing their party allegiance into line with their constitutional preference.  That's not a cause for concern for the Yes campaign in a referendum (we're chasing floating voters, not the unpersuadables), but it might well pose a problem for the SNP in the snap general election that now seems to be a distinct possibility.

For the first time in my life, I must say that I can't muster much enthuasiasm for the prospect of an early election, because I struggle to see how it can possibly leave us in a better position than we're already in.  The likelihood is that the SNP would remain dominant, but would shed a few seats - to the Tories, and possibly to the Lib Dems as well.  The crude projections suggesting Labour could be wiped out are almost certainly wide of the mark - unionist tactical voting would once again save Ian Murray's bacon.  And the seemingly inevitable Conservative landslide at UK-wide level would rob the SNP of the balance of power they currently hold on a small number of key issues where the Tories are divided.

Would there be any advantages?  Well, it would be an opportunity for Nicola Sturgeon to further amplify the mandate she already has to hold a second referendum if she deems it to be in Scotland's interests.  And it's possible that a 1983-style crushing UK-wide defeat for Labour might lead to 'constructive despair' among the progressive unionist vote in Scotland, thus boosting support for independence.

So, yes, there are pros and cons, but on the whole I hope Theresa May continues to bottle it.

*  *  *

"But what will [the Tories] do about the Fixed Term Parliaments Act?" asks Mr Smithson in big bold letters.  Hmmm.  Would "repeal it" be too obvious an answer?  The other options would be to obtain a two-thirds majority for an election by daring Labour to vote in favour, or to deliberately lose a vote of no confidence in the government.  One way or another, though, there isn't really much of an obstacle to an election if May decides to go for it.

Why I held my nose and voted for Hillary Clinton

I've voted in every US presidential election since 2004.  I could have voted in the Bush v Gore election in 2000 as well, but irritatingly I didn't even realise I was eligible to vote until several years later.  I don't need to beat myself up too much over that, though, because I wouldn't have been voting in Florida, or in any other swing state for that matter.  And the latter point is what it all boils down to, really - I've voted for fringe left-wing candidates in all of the last three elections (including a revolutionary communist in 2012, who strangely enough I backed with the encouragement of Lib Dem blogger Caron Lindsay!), because there just didn't seem to be any point in doing anything else.  If my vote has no chance whatever of swinging the balance, why would I give my endorsement to centre-right Democratic candidates who take an abhorrent stance on the death penalty?

There is something intensely irritating, though, about seeing your vote for the most powerful office in the world treated as an abstention or a non-vote.  If you look back at footage of results programmes from previous presidential elections, you'll find that with very few exceptions, the vote tallies for third parties are not even mentioned or shown on screen.  Of course, that's a very good argument in favour of continuing to vote for fringe candidates - ie. to embarrass the media into changing their ways and helping to open up the system.  But throughout this year, there's been a nagging voice at the back of my head saying "wouldn't it be nice, in this election of all elections, to be able to vote for a credible non-Trump candidate, and to do so in all good conscience?"

And for long spells, it looked like that might just turn out to be possible.  Although Bernie Sanders was always the underdog in the Democratic primaries, there were times when it seemed he had a genuine chance of pulling it off.  And there were certainly times when it was hard to see how Clinton could ignore the Sanders movement in her choice for Vice-President nominee - surely, even if she couldn't bring herself to pick Sanders himself, she'd have to reach out to his voters with someone like Elizabeth Warren?  But no, it wasn't to be.  The choice of right-wing, pro-death penalty Tim Kaine seemed like an absolute kick in the teeth, and a classic example of an arrogant politician saying to her own base : "I can do whatever I like and you'll have to support me, because you have nowhere else to go".  Well, there's always somewhere else to go, and I started resigning myself to 'opting out' for a fourth time in a row, and voting for the Green candidate Jill Stein.

However, the attraction of voting for the only candidate who can actually defeat Donald "Make Our Doons Great Again" Trump just wouldn't quite let me go.  When I filled in my ballot paper a few days ago, I voted in every single down-ticket race before I could even bring myself to properly look at the presidential box - that's how ill the dilemma was making me feel.  In the end, I averted my eyes from the words "Jill Stein" and "Green", and got the dirty deed over with as quickly as possible.  This is how I justified it to myself -

1) This election, far more than most, doubles up as a proxy vote to decide control of the Supreme Court - possibly for the next two decades.  In the wacky world of US politics, the Supreme Court has effectively become a quasi-legislature with well-defined conservative and liberal caucuses.  From that point of view, voting for anyone other than Clinton or Trump genuinely is an abstention - because one or the other will be nominating the new justices.  In the dream scenario, if Clinton wins and the Democrats make significant gains in the Senate, there would be no impediment to the shaping of a liberal-dominated court that could transform America over the coming years.  It would be a decisive victory in the interminable culture wars.  (The alternative, of course, is to risk a decisive defeat under Trump.)

2) By American standards, Clinton is reasonably strong on gun control, which was the one issue on which she ran clearly to the left of Bernie Sanders.  That's not nothing.  I haven't bothered checking whether our old friends in the Kevin Baker Fan Club are generally backing Donald Trump or Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party, but I think we can safely assume that a Clinton presidency is just about their worst nightmare.

3) During the primaries, Clinton was dramatically challenged by a man who had spent years on death row for a crime he didn't commit, and asked how she could possibly maintain her support for capital punishment after hearing his story.  I was quite surprised by how far she went in her response - she said she would be happy enough if the Supreme Court eliminated the death penalty in the states, leaving only a federal death penalty for the worst terrorism offences.  It goes without saying that it is disturbing and appalling that in the year 2016, a supposedly "liberal" candidate in a "liberal democracy" is still in favour of the state putting its own citizens to death.  But the depressing reality is that Clinton's words represented progress in an American context.  She may well not really have meant them, but if a Democratic congress were to pass legislation imposing new restrictions on the federal death penalty, she'll find it very hard to justify using her veto after what she's said.

4) I suggested in the spring that there was perhaps a 3% chance of a Donald Trump presidency resulting in the destruction of human civilisation.  A couple of anonymous commenters mocked me for saying that (one of them used it as an example of why I don't understand 'real' politics and should stick to polling analysis!), but I absolutely stand by it.  If you look at the sequence of events that triggered the First World War - an accidental and unnecessary war that nobody really wanted - it's clear that bombast, buffoonery and narcissism played a big part.  The mere possibility of an unstable character like Trump having his finger on the nuclear button is a crisis for the whole of humanity, and averting the danger overrides all other priorities.  What complicates that point, of course, is that Clinton herself is being deeply irresponsible in her hawkish noises-off about Russia, meaning that the risk of nuclear war under her presidency would not be zero.  But I'm confident that the risk would be dramatically lower with her than with Trump.

5) If there's a Brexit-style, small-to-moderate systemic error in the polls, it's still perfectly possible Trump could win the national popular vote.  That obviously matters less than the outcome of the electoral college (which only voters in swing states can meaningfully affect), but if, say, Clinton were to win the presidency and Trump were to win the popular vote, it would be much easier for Trump to cast himself as the 'rightful king across the water', and keep his 'movement' alive to fight another day.  It's probably a good idea to try to prevent that happening.

Support for independence stands at 47% in new Poll of Polls

An otherwise surprisingly fair piece in the Economist about the prospects for Scottish independence is slightly tarnished at the start with a statement about the current polling situation which is flatly untrue - in fact, it's basically the polar opposite of the truth.  We're told that "opinion polls now put support for a 'Scoxit' from the United Kingdom at or below the 45% achieved when the question was formally put in 2014".  Rubbish.  Every single opinion poll that has asked about independence since the EU referendum has put the Yes vote above 45%.  The lowest figure has been 46% (albeit admittedly the most common figure is only a little higher, at 47%).  Even if you include the dodgy BMG poll, which was misrepresented in much of the media as an "independence poll" when it clearly wasn't, the lowest figure would be 45%.  It is literally impossible to find a poll that can even be misrepresented as showing that Yes support has fallen since September 2014.  Even at a stretch, then, the most that the Economist are entitled to say is that "opinion polls now put support for 'Scoxit' from the UK at or above the 45% achieved in 2014".

So how did the word "below" get into the article in the first place? The most likely - and disturbing - answer is that the author didn't even bother to check the numbers, and just assumed that the narrative being pushed by the right-wing London press must have some vague basis in reality.  Always a schoolboy error, that.  Perhaps the time has come to challenge the misinformation with an update of this blog's Poll of Polls.

SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 47.0% (-3.8)
No 53.0% (+3.8)

The reason for the drop in the Yes vote is that the last update was way back in late July, and all but one of the four polls taken into account at that point had been conducted in the days immediately after the EU referendum, when there appeared to be a sharp pro-Yes swing which later receded.  But as you can see, Yes support remains 2.3% higher than its September 2014 level.   Given that most firms now weight by recalled indyref vote, we can be pretty confident that's a genuine increase in support.

The methodology for the Poll of Polls remains exactly the same as before - only the most recent poll from each firm is included, and if a firm hasn't reported for more than three months, they are left out altogether.  Therefore, the five polls taken into account on this occasion are YouGov from late August (Yes 46%, No 54%), TNS from August/early September (Yes 47%, No 53%), Survation from early September (Yes 47%, No 53%), Ipsos-Mori from early September (Yes 48%, No 52%) and Panelbase from mid-September (Yes 47%, No 53%).

Needless to say, the dodgy poll from BMG has been excluded, because contrary to the bogus claims that were made about it (including disgracefully by the firm themselves), it simply didn't ask a question about independence.  It instead asked whether Scotland should "remain a member (sic) of the United Kingdom" or "leave the United Kingdom".  For the avoidance of doubt, "leaving the United Kingdom" can in no sense be regarded as a proxy form of words for "independence".  There are several potential outcomes to leaving the UK, of which independence is only one.  Here are some others -

1) Becoming a self-governing dependency of the UK.  (Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man are all in this position - they are all outside the UK, and indeed outside the EU.)

2) Entering into a free association agreement with the UK.   (This is a form of 'sovereign non-independence'.  The best-known example is perhaps the Cook Islands' relationship with New Zealand.   When the Cook Islands were formally decolonised, they freely agreed to allow New Zealand to continue to make decisions for them on foreign affairs and defence.)

3) Becoming part of another existing sovereign state.  (An example of this is the decision of northern Schleswig, by referendum in 1920, to leave Germany and become part of Denmark.)

Without specifying what Scotland would be leaving the UK to do, the BMG question was utterly meaningless.  I hope we're not going to see any more of that kind of nonsense - and if by any chance we do, I certainly hope that reputable sites like What Scotland Thinks will stop joining in with the pretence that we are somehow dealing with genuine polls on independence.

*  *  *

NOTE : I've had to make a small adjustment to the numbers originally mentioned in this post.  Ironically that's because, for quick reference, I had used the What Scotland Thinks list of polls, which I've since realised contains a little error.

Throw Scotland out! Take your blasted oil away! And give us our nukes back so we can stick them on the Thames - where they belong!

Just a quick note to let you know that I have a new article on the TalkRadio website, about the epic pleasures of the #ThrowScotlandOut hashtag, and the petition that inspired it.  You can read the article HERE.

A question for Theresa May

"The UK must speak with one voice on Brexit."

"In all of its public statements, the Scottish Government must loyally support the single UK negotiating position.  If they do not, they will be undermining us."

"The Scottish Government does not have a veto on the UK negotiating position. We will tell them what it is, and then they must support it to the hilt."

Isn't that called colonialism, Theresa? It sure as hell isn't called the respect agenda.