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Shona Robison, drum roll, deputy First Minister

Good speech there from Lorna Slater, gung-ho on independence.

That last tweet has just reminded me. I assume that Tartan Tonna got banned for his racist posts at the start of the campaign. It’s says something good that he seemed to have disappeared without comment from anyone.

Disgusting

You trying to say that Finance Secretary is an easy gig? You weren’t saying that during the election 😉

Well put it this way, I doubt had she won she’d be going back onto maternity leave.

Give her Health and see how much she likes it - the most difficult brief in the cabinet. Seriously, she should stick in at Finance, the problem though is if she wants to continue her maternity leave, there’d need to be an interim which could be awkward, maybe Swinney could be convinced to hang on for a few months.

It’s also not 1979 either and I doubt the SNP would “pay a heavy price” for scuppering a Labour government that wouldn’t do a deal. As you say, all about arithmetic though.

I agree with this. I think that the polls will narrow between Labour and the Tories as the election gets closer. Labour aren't under any scrutiny right now - that will change - and I'm not sure that they can go all the way without taking a position on anything. I still think Labour will be the largest party but maybe without an overall majority - whether they'll deal with the SNP is another matter. Interestingly, the Lib Dems don't seem to be making much headway in England, which might help the Tories to hang on to some seats where the Lib Dems are second and Labour a poor third. The Scottish results are a lot more complex though. With one party being so dominant - the SNP - and consistently polling in the 40s, a change of a few % either way can have a relatively large shift either way. That's because the SNP are either first or second in each seat. As an example. In 2015, the SNP had 50% of the vote and won 56 seats. In 2019 they had 45% of the vote and won 48 seats, current polling with them on 40% shows them picking up 38 seats. So you get and idea of the swing. +- 5% gives you +-9 seats (or 15% of the seats). That's a factor of how FPTP works in the current state of play in Scotland. Conversely for Holyrood elections it has the opposite effect, if the SNP were to lose constituency seats to Labour then you could almost guarantee that they would pick up list seats to compensate and also where Labour would constituencies they'd lose list seats. For some of the more extreme predictions to happen, the political landscape in Scotland would have to revert to pre-2007 levels and with the constitution being the defining theme of Scottish politics, I don't see that happening.

Hampden loon’s timescale for SNP Armageddon pushes out to “a few weeks”.

That’s not really a good comparison. Truss was the choice of the members but not the parliamentary party. Humza is the choice of the members - albeit a narrow majority - and the parliamentary party. Truss implemented a reckless and radical set of policies that in some cases were a complete 180 from the manifesto they’d been elected on, Humza, by all accounts, is the continuity candidate. He might ultimately make an arse of it but if you’re holding out for some rapid turnaround and Kate Forbes riding into save the day, you’ll be waiting along time.

I can recall a friend of mine’s son who was at Stirling university in 2014 but was from down here. I was talking to him in the summer of 2014 and he said that although some of his friends were intending to vote and were voting no, he wasn’t because he didn’t think it had anything to do with him. I respected that position. I also understand why Salmond went for the franchise he did as to do anything else would’ve been too complicated and that he regretted that Scots who didn’t live in Scotland had to be excluded. As I said before, it’s not straightforwards. edit. Just to add, even if I never ever live in Scotland again, any future referendum would actually have a direct impact on me as it would affect my nationality. In 2014 that might have been more of an arbitrary thing but post Brexit, it has real significance.

As I said, nothing for a couple of weeks and very little before that. If you don’t believe me, believe Prof Curtice who’s pretty much said that what polling was done was of little use.

Clearly not in the one poll which counted. BTW, there was next to no polling carried out and nothing for a couple of weeks.

Twice in one day, getting to be a worrying habit. I hope a lot of this is just people letting their emotions get the better of them after a disappointment.

Who was the popular alternative? He’s starting to see right through Alba, I’ll give him that much.

Who should have a vote, a student from overseas studying in Scotland with no intention of remaining or a Scottish student studying overseas who fully intends to return? Questions over the electorate and who it should contain are often not straightforwards.

Likewise. It seems that for some people your vote only counts if you vote they way that they want. That’s pretty much a microcosm of how the Scottish electorate is treated in the UK,

This “disastrous deposit return scheme”? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-65079902

This is interesting. 37.7% of HY’s 2nd prefs went to KF and 46.6% of KF’s went to HY. Maybe it’s not as binary and divisive as the top line is being result is being portrayed.

Wings always knows.

Greens have voted unanimously to continue the Bute House agreement.

Join the party then.

Did the site not crash then?

😂😂😂