Clyde1998

Exactly, newspapers follow public opinion more than they guide it - although there is often a positive feedback loop.

I would say this poll's Westminster VI figures are broadly inline with the polls from Panelbase, YouGov, ComRes and Survation from around the time of the 'mini-budget' when Truss was still PM (the average of those five polls were SNP 44.4; Lab 30.4; Con 14.6; LDm 6.4). The last poll by Panelbase (7-11 Oct) showed SNP 42, Lab 30, Con 16, LDm 6 - which is very similar to this poll. Around that time, Labour were polling just over 50% in GB polling with the Conservatives around 25%. There's been a slight decrease in the Labour lead over the Conservatives in that time, but small enough that this poll's figures could well be replicated by a poll from a more established pollster in Scotland. What may be happening is the media attention on the 'leadership' at Westminster has made a certain percentage of people think voting Labour would remove the Conservative government, when it would have little to no impact on Labour's ability to win the next UK election. I imagine Labour's support will decline, across GB, once people start scrutinising their policies and when 2019 Conservative voters who are presently undecided are forced to make a decision (I imagine they'll break more towards the Conservatives than Labour). That will likely have an impact on their standing in Scotland too.

If the next election is based on independence, I can't see Labour gaining that many seats in Glasgow, nor winning West Dunbartonshire or Inverclyde, on the vote shares in the poll.

True - if we played in the Asian qualifiers, we'd probably qualify more times than not. It's really four/five from Australia, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Iran, with sides like Qatar, the UAE, and China potentially being able to challenge. I think only Japan and South Korea would have a serious chance of qualifying via the European qualifiers atm.

The SNP are on 41% for Westminster (excluding DKs): SNP 41% (-4) Lab 31% (+12) Con 16% (-9) LDm 8% (-2) Grn 2% (+1) RUK 2% (+2) Oth 1% (nc) Labour are gaining more voters from other unionist parties than the SNP. It's 46-43 in favour of a referendum within the next year.

Even at the Euros they haven't beaten many top sides: the Dutch in 1996 was probably their best win, with two wins over relatively poor German sides in 2000 and 2021 being the next two.

Agreed. I think Brazil, France and Spain are the most likely to win it from what I've seen of this World Cup. Argentina, England, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal are in that second tier for me. Belgium have fallen out of that group, in my mind, with their performances; Argentina were in the top tier before the tournament.

Wales are past it with their current crop of players. I'd expect them to finish behind Croatia and Turkey in their Euro qualifying group, so this could be their final tournament for the foreseeable future. Their previous performances afforded them a favourable qualifying group for this World Cup - with their only competition for second being the Czechs who are fairly average. I think they were 19th in the FIFA rankings going into this World Cup, but will be falling to about 30th. They'll probably fall further after the Euro qualifiers are completed. The fact they had four English League One/Two players in their squad is indicative of the lack of depth they've got. In 2016, they had Gareth Bale, Aaron Ramsay, Joe Allen, Ashley Williams, Neil Taylor, Wayne Hennessey, Joe Ledley, Andy King, James Collins and Ben Davies all playing top level football on a regular basis (I may have missed some). That's a strong set of players in different positions to build around for a country of Wales' size. Those who are left are past their peak and the new players coming through aren't at the same level. I think Wales will return to the level they were during the mid-2000s in the coming years.

They've had good results against Iran and Wales - they're not the teams which determine who'll win the World Cup though. The French should beat them, if the Senegalese don't.

The United States have been the better side against Iran - Iran did seem content to sit deep and play for a draw though; 1-0 down at half-time though, with a disallowed US goal in stoppage time (must've been very marginally offside). The Iranians must go for it in the second half.

Morocco have beaten Belgium now. Is this the end of their golden generation?

The question was: "Would you vote SNP at the next general election if a victory for them could lead to Scotland leaving the UK?" - so not a standard independence question. Similarly on the question "Would you vote SNP at the next general election if your vote would be used as a mandate to negotiate independence with the UK Government?", it was Yes 51%; No 33%. The fact as many as 16% are undecided, suggests they could be persuaded to vote SNP in a 'de-facto referendum' - with a potential 66% to be won; support is highly unlikely to get to that level mind. A standard independence question, and election poll, right now would be very interesting.

The Supreme Court just ruled occupied nations are allowed self-determination (Paragraph 89 of the judgement) 😉. Some 18-dimensional chess 🙃.

Of course. Wales have clearly been a team for a while; they've had Bale to get them out of some holes, but even when they've not had him available they've got some good results. On paper, we've had a stronger squad that them over the past decade, but they've seemingly had the fight and confidence we've not had.

That was exactly what I was expecting. Their view was it doesn't impact on the union legally - which was my interpretation, but the political aspect was something I wasn't expecting. The argument of the UK is a voluntary union has completely died today.

Hopefully not that far, but something like UDI after a general election suddenly becomes more viable.

I don't we can judge teams on single matches - if you judged us on our performance against Ukraine in the play-off alone, we wouldn't be anywhere near promotion to Nations League A. Iran did win their qualifying group ahead of South Korea; Qatar are Asian champions, beating Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Japan along the way, and reached the semi-final of the North American Gold Cup, narrowly losing to the USA in Texas. Obviously that's quite different to qualifying out of the European or South American qualifiers, but they're not joke sides. Italy, Ukraine, Hungary, the Czechs and Sweden would all be in for a shout for European sides who'd be ahead of us.

The problem always becomes when you take away a political route for something, you drive people to more extreme measures.

Supreme Court can judge on case; holding a referendum on independence is not within the powers of the Scottish Parliament - unanimously. This ruling was based on the point that an advisory referendum would have political consequences for the future of the union. Wouldn't an election not have political consequences for the union?

The mood of the media makes me think the Supreme Court will 'allow' a referendum; we're moving back into the scare campaign of 2014. In theory it should be easier to counter it this time, due to the 'fool me once' principle - especially when it comes to issues around being more secure within the UK; however the SNP haven't had amazing campaigns (at least at a national level) since Salmond resigned. On independence, they've avoided discussing too much about the subject. They have to be ready for a campaign if they're going to hold a referendum. Unless something drastically different happens in an independence campaign from the recent SNP campaigns, we'll only win a referendum by accident (or rather, the UK will lose the referendum). I believe we can win a campaign, but I felt more confident in 2014 under Salmond's leadership than I do now - despite being along way behind in the polls for most of the campaign and the events which have occurred since.

I'll need to update my prediction now the squads have been announced and to take into account the matches played since that last prediction (I believe the final matches before the World Cup are tonight); I've also got to get the penalty ability for each side. I'm using the current ability from the Football Manager database to estimate the strength of each player in each squad and a 1:2 ratio of player ability and Elo rating to calculate the starting strength of each team. There are four teams where their player ability and Elo ratings are over 200 points different: Germany, England, Senegal, Ghana (the player ability is greater than their Elo rating in all cases). 200 Elo points roughly is the difference between us and Germany in the current standings for context. I'll see if my updated prediction changes things, but Brazil and Argentina are likely to still be the two favourites.

Worth noting: Greece drew 2-2 in Malta, Hungary had the same outcome in Luxembourg, Austria required an 87th minute winner in Andorra. I'm not sure we can read too much into results from this break. Hopefully we'll've learned from this game and have players back come our game against Cyprus. I can't imagine Fraser, Hanley, Gilmour, Dykes or Armstrong will start if we have our strongest squad available; I would expect a return to the 4-2-3-1 system too.

I've had the same experience and I'm also surprised by these figures. Perhaps the arguments from Scotland are slowly making their way down south.

I think Iran will be their toughest group game - I think there's not much between Iran, the US and Wales on paper, but Iran will be used to playing games in the climate of Qatar. I could see a side like Iran, Senegal or Morocco being dark horses at this World Cup.

Interesting additional question: And if Scotland leaves the UK and becomes an independent country, do you think that this will make the economies of England, Wales and Northern Ireland better off, worse off, or would it make no difference? England: Better 21%; No diff 31%; Worse 35%; DK 12% Wales: Better 15%; No diff 35%; Worse 38%; DK 12% NI: Better 12%; No diff 36%; Worse 41%; DK 11% Scotland: Better 12%; No diff 34%; Worse 45%; DK 9% Don't think I've seen a poll showing voters in the rUK think they would be economically worse off if Scotland became independent before.