YouGov stood to have its reputation shattered if it continued to put out polls showing ten point leads for No, when Yes is very obviously headed for a majority.
Those massive YouGov leads for No were all part of the Unionist tactic of making independence appear both uniquely impossible to Scotland, as opposed to any other small nation state you can name, and an unattainable dream. Too poor, too wee, too stupid and politically isolated. YouGov are known in the trade as “You Can Have Any Result You Pay For Gov”. For months, James Kelly on the Scot Goes Pop blog has brilliantly analysed the methodologies they employed to give those large No leads – asking prior leading questions, a large preponderance of Labour voters in their panel, and the “Kellner Correction” – an assumption that lies or faulty memory about how people last voted, would penalise Labour unless corrected for statistically. The result was YouGov polls that were great reading for the No camp, but made no sense whatsever to anybody who had talked to voters.
My own view is that there has not been an extraordinary 12 point swing in a fortnight, as illustrated by YouGov’s last two polls. What there has been is a continuing stead swing and a realisation in YouGov that, having helped the No campaign for over a year by trying to make a Yes vote seem hopeless, to be over 12% out on this vital vote might damage YouGov’s share price fatally. So they have had to start publishing something close to the truth.
As I have been reporting, the truth has been very obvious to people on the ground for weeks. And the truth is not only that independence is coming, but that the entire political class, BBC and mainstream media has been rejected, and a new form of popular power, based on community democracy and social media, has taken over.
I received an invite from the National Library of Scotland to a post-referendum debrief at 9am on 19 September. Anybody sober at 9am on 19 September (unless having medical excuse) is not part of the New Scotland. But more crucially, the panel includes Henry McLeish and Michael Moore – and they want people to pay 35 pounds to listen to their words of wisdom.
They really haven’t got it yet. Nobody will ever care what Moore and McLeish and their like have to say again, and the kind of democracy we will have will not involve paying substantial sums to hear pearls of wisdom drop from troughers on a pedestal. Nor will members of the old political establishment have a future in that career. It was a good tactic for Alex Salmond to say that Darling and Carmichael will be on the negotiating team: the people will not allow it to happen.
There is at last some understanding that Yes will win: the penny has not yet dropped that this is a revolutionary moment, not a polite constitutional shuffle.
Craig I very much enjoyed your speech at the Steps, a great evening in a packed theatre. I had already watched the video of you in St Andrews but listening to you in person telling us about the terrible events that took place was truly heartrending.
Thank you, you are indeed a brave man.
This morning’s Metro had a lingerie tycoon, Michelle Mone, complaining of intimidation during her support for the No campaign.
Now, if fear is the reason why No supporters aren’t revealing themselves, the supporters of Yes could be in for a shock. So I wouldn’t count your chickens before the result is known.
Bit daft trying to find people for discussions during National Hangover Week. Still, I am sure they can get plenty of angry unionists. Why change the format that they have used throughout the campaign?
I hope you will be on ‘Team Scotland’ your inside and outside experiences of our perfidious neighbour.
“Rupe backs winners. Like it or like it not.”
Rupe creates winners, for a price.
So what is so different about this New Scotland Craig says I’m not welcome in then?
‘The Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant with her second child, Clarence House confirms.’
To be named Hamish or Flora I’m told!
@Abe Rene,
Win or lose, the ‘Yes’ voters will count and locate, the ‘No’ voters.
Maybe there will be an exchange of peoples, like the partition of the Indian subcontinent.
Scotland is about to vote out England, because Scottish people have been subverted to believe that all their personal woes are tied up with the national identity of the English, despite the masters of the British Bureaucracy being composed of a disproportionately large number of Scots.
With the greatest respect, Jimmy, that is total ****ing *******ing *****.
Scotland is about to vote out UK plc (or not, let’s none of us count our chickens) because UK plc has turned into a subsidiary of International Hedge Funds and Market Casinos LP, with the result that economic decisions are taken on behalf of people with groaning bank accounts in tax havens and nothing of any actual value is produced any more. It’s voting out (or maybe not) UK plc because UK plc doesn’t work for Scotland, or, indeed many of the English regions, as it is fixated on London and the Southeast. It’s voting, etc, as much as anything, because UK plc’s lower chamber is disproportionately composed of English lawyers, and its upper chamber of placemen who have made donations to parties. And at the top of the pile a cabal of Old Oxonians previously at pricy public schools – yes, Labour too – who don’t know if their arses are bored, punched or countersunk.
Scotland, I think would be glad if any persons claiming to be Scottish and working against its interests on the UK plc board of directors, would kindly stay there and refrain from claiming the credit attached to being Scottish.
Rupe creates winners, for a price.
Don’t let me hear a word against Tony from a Labour supporter. He may have gone completely off the rails you thought he was on, five minutes after the election, but you loved him when “it was the SUN wot won it!” in 1997.
Didn’t you?
Realpolitik, Fred. Realpolitik.
“Don’t let me hear a word against Tony from a Labour supporter. He may have gone completely off the rails you thought he was on, five minutes after the election, but you loved him when “it was the SUN wot won it!” in 1997.
Didn’t you?”
No, I probably I voted Liberal in that election if I voted at all.
So the New Scotland Plc. would just be the same old same and you are now defending what you once criticised.
‘The Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant with her second child, Clarence House confirms.’
Quite genuinely, I had no idea who the ‘Duchess of Cambridge’ was. I sorta guessed, but really wasn’t sure.
The Royals belong to the dark ages. No wonder neoliberals are happy to prop them up.
BBC Prop – full welly – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04g7lhg
2hrs 10mins in for 17 mins!
John Humphreys
Jim Naughtie
Alistair Darling
+ Nick Robinson at the end
No Yes representative seems to have been available. Humphreys acted as devil’s advocate. Scripted?
~~~~
2hrs 43ins in for 5 mins Same link
John Swinney
John Humphreys
~~~
BIASED BBC BIASED BBC BIASED BBC
Thanks Mary – Have you any clues as to how the Scotland referendum voting process is organised. I failed to find specifics from the Electoral Commission.
We detect vote rigging fears:
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/scottish-independence-vote-rigging-fears-1-3533762
And please keep in mind the wrecking of the Scottish elections in 2007:
It later emerged that more than 140,000 ballots were declared spoiled. Some 70,000 of these
were rejected by the counting machines with no human oversight, effectively disenfranchising
almost two per cent of the voting public. First Minister Alex Salmond described the news as
‘astonishing’, and deeply disturbing.”
http://www.instantrunoffvoting.us/scotland.html
Deary me Jimmy, You sound like Fred on Retalin.
Gestapo ?? National Socialist ?
Gie’sa Break!
So the New Scotland Plc. would just be the same old same
What makes you think that, Fred? Are you seriously suggesting that anyone aiming above the district council can hope to get elected without media support and money? It’s a crap system, but it’s what we’ve got. Much easier to change if you’re independent, too.
No, I probably I voted Liberal in that election if I voted at all.
In retrospect, why? And are you proud of your choice? (Granted, Libs used to be ace constituency MP’s when they were hungry for parliamentary seats. Look at the buggers now)
“the penny has not yet dropped that this is a revolutionary moment”
Last night radio 5 had an independence phone-in where the English and American panelists expressed shock that a Scottish woman mentioned Iraq and Afghanistan. “What has Iraq and Afghanistan got to do with Scottish independence?”
Of interest.
4 September 2014
Scottish independence: North Sea ‘fracking’ proposal made
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-29063365
The bookies odds are changing but you can still double your money if you bet today.
@DonnyDarko,
Sorry I couldn’t ameliorate your angst with Tramadol.
I hope Scotland votes for independence but the people need to take care. The Establishment will do whatever they can to stop it happening including, I believe, rigging the vote. If YouGov poll had stayed negative then people on the ground would readily have understood it was biased. Bringing the Yes vote to be marginally above is a clever ploy. The UK government will now put forward lots of seemingly persuasive enticements and when the No vote wins claim it was this that turned the tide.
The people of Scotland have to stand guard over the ballot boxes until they’re counted. Once they’re done they have to check that the results of the postal votes synchronise with the other results.
It would be a really good idea to run independent opinion polls just before the election and take note of how people have voted at polling stations.
I agree Mark. Cannot find anything on the logistics even in this long entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence_referendum,_2014
~~~~
Loving Chunky Mark the Artist Taxi Driver on Osborne’s interference.
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1410164220.html
Great stuff Craig!
Next up from project fear: A YES vote is a vote for ISIS.
Looks to me that there has not yet been a victory swing for the Yes vote in the referendum- London just fears there might be one, and has precipitated a selling off of the pound in the hope of creating a No vote backlash.
Still holds Bardarbunga apparently in reserve.
Love from Galiza/Galicia…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFPteFulAD0
@Jimmy Giro “Win or lose, the ‘Yes’ voters will count and locate, the ‘No’ voters.”
I thought that voting was by secret ballot. At any rate, if Scotland votes for independence, I hope that the resulting relationship will be something like that between Norway and Sweden.
Bardabunga? Nah. The CIA/Rothschild/Mason black ops submarine laser bomb thingies are currently deployed to Papua New Guinea.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/australiaandpacific/papuanewguinea/11081083/Dramatic-volcanic-eruption-caught-on-film-in-Papua-New-Guinea.html
the resulting relationship will be something like that between Norway and Sweden.
Mutual incomprehension? We’ve got that already.
“In retrospect, why? And are you proud of your choice? (Granted, Libs used to be ace constituency MP’s when they were hungry for parliamentary seats. Look at the buggers now)”
Don’t remember, not even sure I voted that year, I often didn’t.
I know I opposed Murdoch then and I oppose Murdoch now. At least I’m consistent.
The response from the No campaign to the latest YouGov poll has been both wooden – Darling on the Today programme – and panic-stricken: Osborne’s hint of new devomax bribes (but too late to influence those who have already cast their postal ballots).
The Yes campaign’s strongest argument has always been the ambiguous rhetorical question: “Surely we can do better than this?” The ambiguity is, first, that the listener has a long list from which to select things that could be better: labelling/ libelling the disabled and the unemployed as cheats, skivers and failures; failing to prosecute cupid, irresponsible financiers; rewarding company and public service executives as if they were Premiership players; distrusting teachers, doctors and nurses; trusting and accepting money from commercial lobbyists; creating and subsidising private monopolies and cartels in transport, security and energy; illegal overseas aggression; curtailing human rights (especially for those who are not Anglo-Americans); and the abuse of elected office for personal gain. [I admit that for some the list will include other topics: uncontrolled immigration; staying in the EU; being soft on criminals; changing the meaning of marriage etc]
However, it is the second ambiguity that is now starting to kick in. “We” need not be limited to those on Scottish electoral registers. A positive response to that rhetorical question by Scottish voters will allow voters in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to ask it of themselves; and to see that the Scottish Yes could well make things better for them too. They might decide that university tuition fees are not the best way to encourage social mobility; and that welfare services should be improved rather than degraded. Take another example – Trident. Removing nuclear weapons from Scotland would cause real problems, of local and national acceptability as well as expense, if Trident is to be relocated. The alternative of not replacing it might start to seem the most rational response to a “Yes” vote.
There will be many No scare stories between now and 18 September. As the children’s story of the wind and the sun competing to see who can get someone to remove their coat shows, these cold blasts will only make electors heading to the polling booth wrapped in the saltire hug it ever closer. What would be a really dramatically sunny offer from the Better Together campaign would be to say: “Vote No and we will say No to Trident – that’s how much keeping together matters to us”. Of course, the real lesson from this scenario is that the three parties running the Better Together campaign actually “believe” – at least as a matter of their political fortunes in England and Wales – that it would be better to let Scotland go its own way than to lose Trident from the UK’s armoury. That is especially true of the Conservative Party. It ought not to be true of Labour and LibDems, but that’s another way in which “we could surely do better than this”.
The Better Together campaign might have been better if the three parties had kept apart. Each would then have been able to develop separate visions of how Scotland could be become better off than now, in a transformed UK with a distinctive Scottish contribution. With the opportunity of a debate on competing forms of federalism – or at least radical decentralisation from Westminster – having now been missed, it seems that the Together Grand Coalition is now providing new arguments for “Better Apart – for all parts of the UK”. By making the debate primarily about what is best for Scotland, the Better Together campaign may well have transformed a “Yes” vote in the referendum into a “No” vote in answer to a different question – “Is the United Kingdom better together? “, even though only Scottish electors are being asked for their views.
BLiar.
Watchdog alerted to Tony Blair’s role at charity
Charity Commission to meet Tony Blair Faith Foundation representatives over concerns raised by former employee
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/11079948/Watchdog-alerted-to-Tony-Blairs-role-at-charity.html
No worries for him. Just going through the motions. CC chair Shawcross is a Zionist.
http://coolnessofhind.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/william-shawcross-the-neocon-zionist-anti-muslim-head-of-the-charity-commission/
I know I opposed Murdoch then and I oppose Murdoch now. At least I’m consistent.
You’ll never be a politician, lol. Politics is the art of the possible. Salmond knows the rules as well as Murdoch, which is a good starting point for dealing with him. He also knows that the Labour Record and the Tory Mail are not going to unlock the Unionist toilet. If he wants a tabloid dump, he needs the Sun. Happily he’s got the Herald, so his need for the Times isn’t as great as far as upmarket is concerned, but it’s still handy, against the Hootsmon, DC Thompson and all the local rags. And either party can dump the other later on and no hard feelings.
But for now…
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/louisemensch/5606739/Scottish-independence-would-be-good-for-all.html
Louise Mensch, ffs! That cheered up my Monday. You have to ask whether Rupe’s on side or cackling into his Horlicks as he sabotages the whole bloody thing, don’t you?
I can’t wait for it all to be over. Really I can’t.