It looks increasingly like the Swinney plan hasn't been thought through

We still don't know whether there will be a contested SNP leadership election between John Swinney and Kate Forbes.  If there is, I agree with the conventional wisdom that Swinney would start as favourite (he's literally the only potential candidate who would start as favourite against Forbes), but I disagree with those assuming the outcome would be a foregone conclusion.  Those people are laying a lot of emphasis on the sentimental attachment that the SNP rank-and-file have for Swinney, and I don't think there's much doubt that if SNP conference delegates or attendees of branch meetings were deciding the outcome, Swinney would win.  But the SNP's membership is a lot broader than the active core, and I'm not sure we have clear evidence that the sentimentality runs as deep with the more passive members - or, if it does, that it outweighs a similar warmth towards Forbes after her successful stint as Finance Secretary and her near-miss in the leadership vote last year.

The other point people are overlooking is that Forbes may have a killer argument to deploy against Swinney during the hustings, namely that she would be fully committed to the job, whereas he might only want it for a year or two, thus guaranteeing that the party will be plunged back into uncertainty in the very near future.  The mood music seems to be that Swinney would just be seeing the SNP through until the 2026 Holyrood election, but if you think about that, what does it actually mean?  You can't lead a party during an election campaign while planning to step down immediately afterwards, because opposition parties would say voters are being asked to buy a pig in a poke.  Realistically Swinney would have two choices - either commit to the role until at least 2028 (which he probably doesn't want to do), or say he will stand down by the autumn of next year to allow a new leader enough time to prepare for the Holyrood election.  The latter would mean he'd be in harness for a maximum of just eighteen months - not much longer than Yousaf managed.

If Forbes hammers home the point that members have a choice between a leader who wants to see it through until independence is achieved, and a caretaker leader who would just prolong the agonies of the current leadership crisis, she might just put enough doubts in the minds of members to help them set aside any sentimental feelings for Swinney.

Yes, the parliamentary arithmetic would work for Kate Forbes, whether Kenny Farquharson likes it or not

Kenny "Devo or Death" Farquharson, aka "Jurassic Farq", has a really nasty piece in The Times which is ultimately a bigoted rant about why a committed member of a particular religious denomination he personally dislikes should never be allowed to hold high office, but which tarts itself up in progressive-sounding language about how our leaders must reflect the diversity of modern Scotland.  On that note, incidentally, wouldn't it be rather a good idea to at last have a First Minister who is a fluent Gaelic speaker?  Given the dire predictions that Gaelic could cease to be a fully-functioning community language within as little as a decade, isn't this the perfect moment to have in Kate Forbes a national leader who is authentically committed to taking the necessary steps to protect the language, because she embodies what stands to be lost if that doesn't happen?

Farquharson switches from bigotry to innumeracy with this section - 

"There is good reason for the “anyone but Kate” campaign gaining strength within the SNP this week. I am sure any parliamentary vote to install Forbes as first minister would lead to a number of abstentions from the SNP benches. For Forbes to win the prize she would need the Tories to abstain en masse.

SNP folk should ask themselves if this is how they really want to see their new leader take power."

He might as well just have "I don't understand the rules" tattooed on his forehead.  One of the oddities of the Scotland Act is that the votes of a majority of MSPs are not required to be elected First Minister.  A candidate simply needs to have more votes in the final ballot than the other remaining candidate.  That's why Alex Salmond was able to become First Minister in 2007 with the votes of just 49 of the 129 MSPs.  

In Kate Forbes' case, her opponent in the final ballot (if it even got that far) would be Douglas Ross, so there would be no question of Labour and the Greens playing silly buggers by actively voting against her at that stage.  In all probability, she would win by 63 votes to 31.  SNP MSPs would not abstain for exactly the same reason that Forbes and her backers did not abstain on Yousaf becoming FM.  Refusing to vote to sustain an SNP government is inconsistent with membership of the SNP parliamentary party, and anyone who went down that road would inevitably lose the whip.

But even assuming Farquharson is right that there are SNP MSPs ready and willing to throw their careers away to stop Forbes, her 32-vote cushion over Ross means there would need to be at least 32 SNP abstentions to stop her - more than half the entire parliamentary party.  Who precisely are these thirty-two martyrs, Kenny?

Once Forbes is actually in office, the first thing she would probably try to do is mend relations with the Greens, and she might have a chance of succeeding on a sort of "Nixon in China" basis - ie. any agreements with her would be so toughly-negotiated and businesslike that the Greens would trust her to stick to her word.  But even if the Greens continue to dislike her so much that they try to bring down the government she leads, they quite simply wouldn't have the numbers to do that.  Kate Forbes and Ash Regan are old friends, and it thus seems inconceivable that Alba would ever help bring down a Forbes-led government.  At worst, then, a confidence vote would result in a 64-64 tie, with the Presiding Officer voting to save the government with her casting vote in line with convention.

Again, SNP MSPs cannot abstain or vote against the government on a confidence vote without effectively excluding themselves from the party.  So what it really boils down to is whether you think SNP MSPs will defect outright to the Greens.  And while that's not totally impossible, defections among MSPs are rare enough that I'd want specifics about who these people actually are before taking the idea remotely seriously.

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It's getting close to the last-chance saloon, but there's still time to help Scot Goes Pop continue through this general election year.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, although if you have a Paypal account, a better way to donate is by direct Paypal payment, because the funds are usually transferred instantly and fees can be eliminated altogether depending on the option you select from the menu.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

The Scottish public want Kate Forbes to be the next First Minister, reveals new Ipsos poll

Ipsos are out of the blocks at lightning speed with a poll conducted yesterday and today on the SNP leadership race.  As expected, Kate Forbes is once again the voters' clear choice as First Minister.

Which SNP politician would make the best First Minister? (Ipsos, 29th-30th April 2024)

Kate Forbes 26%

John Swinney 20%

Stephen Flynn 7%

Angus Robertson 4%

Shona Robison 2%

Mairi McAllan 2%

Humza Yousaf 2%

Jenny Gilruth 1%

Swinney does have the consolation of leading among SNP voters, but remember once you start digging into subsamples like that, the chances of inaccuracy become greater because the margin of error is bigger.  However, it does appear that Forbes remains best-placed to broaden the coalition of support for independence by appealing to non-SNP voters.

It's safe to say from the above numbers that a re-run of Yousaf v Forbes would be likely to produce a very different result from last year!

One consolation for the SNP: YouGov poll says their vote share has increased in spite of the crisis

Amidst all of yesterday's mayhem, it shouldn't be overlooked that YouGov published a full-scale Scottish poll, which was conducted before Yousaf resigned but only just before, so it takes into account the impact of the pre-resignation crisis but not the impact of the resignation itself.  Amazingly, it shows the SNP slightly on the up.  That's probably just a reversion to the mean after a poor previous poll, but nevertheless even just holding steady should be regarded as a major relief.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election:

Labour 34% (+1)

SNP 33% (+2)

Conservatives 14% (-)

Liberal Democrats 8% (+1)

Reform UK 5% (-2)

Greens 4% (-1)

Scottish Parliament constituency vote:

SNP 36% (+2)

Labour 32% (-)

Conservatives 16% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 9% (-)

Greens 3% (-1)

Scottish Parliament regional list vote:

SNP 31% (+2)

Labour 28% (-1)

Conservatives 17% (+1)

Greens 8% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 8% (-)

Alba 3% (-)

Reform UK 3% (-2)

Before anyone makes a smart-alec comment about how the SNP should have stuck with Yousaf because clearly it was all going swimmingly, the fact that Yousaf's approval rating has gone through the floor leaves no room for doubt that the SNP vote has held up in spite of him and not because of him.  Actually, Alba-bashers had better thank their lucky stars that Yousaf is departing, because if he'd stayed it would have deprived them of one of their most cherished attack lines.  His rating is now very similar to that recorded by Alex Salmond over the last four years or so.

Net approval ratings of leading politicians:

Stephen Flynn (SNP): -9

Anas Sarwar (Labour): -9

John Swinney (SNP): -15

Alex Cole-Hamilton (Liberal Democrats): -16

Nicola Sturgeon (SNP): -18

Ash Regan (Alba): -25

Patrick Harvie (Greens): -27

Lorna Slater (Greens): -32

Douglas Ross (Conservatives): -34

Humza Yousaf (SNP): -35

Net approval ratings for how party leaders are doing their jobs:

Anas Sarwar (Labour): +4

Douglas Ross (Conservatives): -27

Patrick Harvie / Lorna Slater (Greens): -29

Humza Yousaf (SNP): -47

Slightly annoying that YouGov asked about John Swinney but not about Kate Forbes, although in fairness they wouldn't have had a crystal ball handy.  On past form I suspect Forbes would have been top of the pile.

I doubt if Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater will be too worried about their own poor personal ratings, because they're only trying to appeal to a specific section of the electorate, rather than to "Middle Scotland".  But what will disappoint them is that there's no sign of a wave of sympathy for the Greens in the headline voting intention numbers.

The public as a whole think by a margin of 37% to 27% that the SNP were right to end the coalition with the Greens, but the SNP's own supporters take the opposite view by 32% to 25%.  You can kind of sense the confusion of SNP voters on that question - they used to be massively in favour of the coalition, probably because the SNP leadership kept telling them how wonderful it was, but now the SNP leadership has done a sudden U-turn, they don't know what to think anymore.

Installing the ill-suited John Swinney as leader would amount to "faction before country, faction before party"

Professor John Curtice has summed it up - 

"Swinney’s expertise, I think, is being able to say nothing for three minutes. Definitely who you want as your deputy but it’s not the person to front an election campaign."

The problem being that the SNP face one of the most important election campaigns in their history within a few months at most, and the continuity faction are hellbent on installing the ill-suited Swinney to front it.  For the second time in just over a year, we're watching them make a destructive mistake in real time.  On some sort of level, they probably even know themselves that they're doing the wrong thing, but they don't care, because their priority is different from ours.  Faction before country.  Faction before party.

There's an extremely silly reason suggested for why Kate Forbes shouldn't want the job right now, and yet it's bandied around dozens of times a day - that she'd be better off waiting until someone else takes the blame for the SNP losing dozens of seats at the general election.  I don't know about anyone else, but I don't want Forbes to become leader simply because I think it would be a nice birthday present for her - I want her as leader because my judgement is that she's the person best placed to stop the SNP losing dozens of seats at the general election and thus rescue the independence cause.  Installing her five minutes after the avoidable disaster occurs would completely defeat the purpose.

However, the "let her profit from calamity" brigade should realise that even on their own logic, it now makes sense for Forbes to stand, because if she does, Swinney will still be favourite to win and she'll be able to reap the "I told you so" benefits when Swinney falls flat on his face at the general election.  She won't be able to do that if she doesn't stand, and especially not if she backs Swinney, because she'd be effectively buying shares in the coming disaster.  

To be ideally placed to take over after the general election, she needs people to look back at that point and say "actually, Kate Forbes had the right prescription for avoiding this defeat".  But they'll only say that if she stands up to be counted right now.

John Swinney as leader? "We tried that, it didn't work."

The title of this post contains the exact words John Swinney himself used a few years ago when someone suggested he might be a future leader.  Because he was of course leader between 2000 and 2004, and it really didn't work.  The SNP had convinced themselves that the public would warm to Swinney as an 'elder brother' figure who was much less divisive and Marmite than his predecessor Alex Salmond, but the public had other ideas. 

I can remember multiple appearances by John Curtice on Newsnight Scotland in which he urged the SNP to face up to the fact that they had a major leadership problem.  The polls consistently showed Swinney was the least popular of the four main party leaders - which not only meant he was less popular than Henry McLeish and Jack McConnell, but also less popular than the Tory leader David McLetchie and the Lib Dem leader Jim Wallace.  That predictably was reflected in election results, with the SNP losing ground in terms of both votes and seats at the 2001 general election, before a major setback at the 2003 Holyrood election when they slipped from 35 seats to 27, followed by the ultimate humilation when they dropped below 20% of the vote at the 2004 European elections.  At that point the game was up, Swinney was replaced by his predecessor Salmond, and the general consensus was that his whole four-year leadership was a failed experiment.

Why, in an emergency situation, would you return to a failed experiment?  Unless of course your only priority is to muddle through and maintain the control of the ruling faction any way you can, rather than to work out what is in the best interests of the SNP and the wider independence movement?

Even now, even after the catastrophe of the last year, they still just don't 'get it'.

Yousaf's departure is necessary, but is only one-half of what is needed - if a low-grade continuity leader is selected to replace him, the independence movement will be in an even deeper hole

It's no secret that I've wanted Humza Yousaf to resign from literally the day he was elected.  I was constantly told that there was no chance of that happening before the general election, and my reply was always that it quite simply needed to happen before the general election, otherwise the SNP were going to get hammered.  So in a sense his departure today might look like a dream outcome, but it's only half of the necessary equation - if the SNP replace him with someone even worse, such as Jenny Gilruth or Neil Gray, today will be a further setback not a step forward.  And that's particularly the case given what might be called the "Truss effect", ie. it's possible that a leader can be so disastrous that they have a severely negative impact on the fortunes of their successor, so whoever takes over may need to be an exceptional leader, not a workmanlike stopgap.

This depends of course not only on whether the SNP are willing to choose the right sort of person, and not only on whether the continuity faction will once again throw procedural dirty tricks in the way of the right sort of person, but also on whether the right sort of person is actually willing to put themselves forward.  We all understand that Kate Forbes is a young mother and thus has personal as well as political considerations to take account of, but if she wavers at all about running, I hope people close to her will tap her on the shoulder and say "your country needs you".  We're in an emergency situation, and if Forbes doesn't stand, the consequences could be incalculable because we're likely to end up with a low-grade leader from the continuity faction.

One thing I'm fairly sure of is that there won't be an early Holyrood election now.  Stuart Campbell is trying to make the logic of the situation fit his desired outcome and thus is insisting that if Yousaf resigns, the Greens and Alba are both likely to still vote in favour of Sarwar's motion of no confidence in the whole government.  I very much doubt that - I think the Greens will abstain and allow the leadership election to run its course.

And naturally there are commentators who are suggesting that if Yousaf prefers resignation to a deal with Alba, that must mean Alba are toxic in the extreme.  More realistically, it actually means Yousaf or someone advising him can count, and has worked out that a deal with Alba would only get him to a 64-64 split in the chamber - which would be enough to save his bacon this week, but wouldn't be enough to pass legislation or Budgets.

Ultimately we're in this mess because the

ruling faction wouldn't allow the leadership election last year to take place on a level playing field, and insisted on a loading the dice in favour of a wholly unsuitable candidate with abysmal public approval ratings.  The independence cause has been paying the penalty ever since.  I beg of our friends in the SNP to use this golden opportunity to repair the damage, rather than digging the hole even deeper.

Has The Times misrepresented what Alex Salmond said about his price for backing Yousaf?

The Times website has an "exclusive" claiming that Alba are making a 'Scotland United' electoral pact the price of any support for Humza Yousaf in the no confidence vote.  Some people are interpreting that as a demand that is intentionally so unpalatable for the SNP that it's actually meant to be rejected, in other words that Alba have already made up their minds to vote against Yousaf and are just working their way through the pre-vote choreography.  But this may be one of those occasions where it's worth looking beyond the headline and reading the details of the article, because what Alex Salmond said was more conversational and open-ended than you might realise, and at least for now I think it remains an open question whether he has been interpreted correctly.

Mr Salmond even goes out of his way to suggest that an electoral pact for the general election may not actually be possible at this stage because candidates have already been selected.  He goes on to say he might want to have a discussion about a pact for Holyrood 2026, but the wording is vague enough that I'm not convinced he's deliberately making impossible demands.  And although the electoral pact issue is described as "top line", elsewhere in the interview he describes independence itself as the "number one priority".

My question would be this: if Yousaf concedes the referendum legislation that Ash Regan has argued for, and makes some sort of concession on the rights of women and girls, but refuses an electoral pact, would - or should - Alba say that's not enough?  I doubt it.  The referendum in particular would be a monumental win for Alba and it would be crazy to spurn it. But that may be an academic point, given how the usual suspects are lining up to demand that Yousaf treat Alba as complete untouchables.

I'll actually be happy enough if Alba end up voting to remove Yousaf in the coming days, but only as long as it's done surgically and doesn't topple the government or trigger an early election.  As Tyrannical Theresa might put it, now is not the time for that.  Although, as we now know beyond all doubt, no time was ever the right time for Humza Yousaf to be First Minister of Scotland and leader of the independence movement.

Exactly half of MSPs (64 out of 128) want Yousaf to go - and that's as close to checkmate as may make no difference

The impression I formed from listening to interviews with Green MSPs yesterday is that they don't necessarily want to topple the SNP government or to bring about an early election, but they are determined to remove Humza Yousaf as First Minister, if they can.  And whatever you think of the Greens, that's actually an understandable position because he's been thoroughly duplicitous in his dealings with them, pledging an undying commitment to them one day and then unceremoniously dumping them the next day.  They're perfectly entitled to say that if they're going to work with an SNP minority government over the next two years, they need to be able to trust that any ad hoc deals that are formed on policy are worth the paper they're written on, and the trust simply won't be there until a First Minister who has proved himself to be untrustworthy is replaced.

(There is an obvious irony here, though, in that some would argue that the Greens overstepped the mark last year by interfering in the SNP's leadership election to try to get Humza Yousaf installed, and could barely contain their jubilation when they got their way.  That hubris is perhaps the one sense in which they were authors of their own downfall.)

The SNP might be tempted to respond by saying that it is up to themselves to decide who their own leader is.  But if they are, they'd be wise to learn a lesson from relatively recent history, because what the current situation reminds me of most of all is the crisis in the Welsh Assembly in early 2000.

If you recall, Tony Blair was an extremely reluctant devolutionist, and wanted to ensure that he effectively retained the power he was nominally ceding.  He wanted to hand-pick the leaders of Scotland and Wales, and just to drive home the message that London rule was being repackaged rather than ended, he rather absurdly wanted those devolved leaders to simultaneously serve, at least to begin with, as Secretary of State for Scotland and Wales respectively in his own UK Cabinet.

Initially he didn't run into any major difficulties with his picks, because Donald Dewar and Ron Davies were immensely popular and were probably the leaders Scottish Labour and Welsh Labour would have chosen anyway if they had been left to their own devices - although to his great credit Dewar threw a small spanner in the works by refusing to serve as both Scottish Secretary and First Minister at the same time, which he felt would have been incompatible with the principles of devolution.  But then Ron Davies had his "moment of madness" on Clapham Common, and suddenly Blair found himself imposing a new leader on Welsh Labour that they did not want. Two-thirds of Welsh Labour members voted for the charismatic maverick Rhodri Morgan, but due to a blatantly rigged election process that gave a third of votes to MPs and a third to trade unions who didn't have to ballot their members, the Blairite machine politician Alun Michael was very narrowly declared the 'winner'.

The Welsh public were no happier than Welsh Labour members about having Michael imposed on them, and punished Blair by giving Labour an astoundingly poor result in the inaugural Assembly election in 1999.  Having fully expected to win a working majority, Labour ended up forming a minority government with just 28 seats out of 60.  The three opposition parties recognised that Michael was the Achilles heel, and after biding their time for the best part of a year, they followed the tactic Douglas Ross is currently attempting by tabling a motion of no confidence in Michael personally.

On the day the vote was scheduled to be held, Michael made a speech brimming with entitlement in which he declared that he was passing the decision on who leads Welsh Labour back from the Assembly to Welsh Labour itself.  He theatrically handed a resignation letter to the Presiding Officer, expecting that to mean the vote would be cancelled at the last gasp.  But the Presiding Officer was the former Plaid Cymru leader Dafydd Elis-Thomas, who took the view that he couldn't be expected to read letters while in the middle of chairing a session.  So he allowed the vote to go ahead, Michael lost, and then an hour later Michael's resignation was accepted anyway. In the blink of an eye, Rhodri Morgan was unveiled as the new leader. That might be a warning from history to Yousaf not to attempt any procedural tricks, especially with a Presiding Officer in the chair who was elected as a Green MSP.

It's true that it's for the SNP alone to decide their own leader, but it doesn't follow that if there is to be an SNP minority government, the parliament is then obliged to accept that leader as First Minister.  Unless something changes, exactly half of MSPs (64 out of 128, excluding the non-voting Presiding Officer) want Yousaf gone, so even if he survives the vote of no confidence on the Presiding Officer's casting vote, that position doesn't look sustainable for much longer.  The SNP have three basic options: a) change their leader so they can install the new leader as First Minister with the proper confidence of parliament, b) keep Yousaf as their leader but put forward someone else as First Minister (an unorthodox arrangement in a UK context but not uncommon abroad), or c) say that only Yousaf will do, and if he doesn't have the confidence of parliament, there'll have to be an early election to resolve the matter. 

What isn't a credible option is trying to carry on as if the will of parliament doesn't matter - and Alun Michael can tell you how that worked out for him.

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It's getting close to the last-chance saloon, but there's still time to help Scot Goes Pop continue through this general election year.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, although if you have a Paypal account, a better way to donate is by direct Paypal payment, because the funds are usually transferred instantly and fees can be eliminated altogether depending on the option you select from the menu.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Are we moving into the final days of Yousaf's leadership?

It was just over a year ago that I was struggling to work out how seriously to take the pronouncements of "Smitty", a commenter on Wings who seemed to be leaking inside information about the SNP leadership election, because there was no way of verifying what he was saying and there was always a chance it was an elaborate hoax.  In the end, that's what it seemed to be, because the basic thrust of his claims was that Humza Yousaf had lost.

So once again I'm not sure how seriously to take the claims by Wings himself today which are based on information from "trusted sources".  It's true that possibly the same sources turned out to be right yesterday about the scheduling of an emergency Cabinet meeting, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll be right about everything.  But just as a hypothetical, let's work through the potential implications of what they're saying.

Firstly, that Humza Yousaf will resign before the no confidence vote is held.  That's possible because arithmetically he seems to be in a right old pickle.  Due to the surprisingly strong stance of the Greens, 64 votes to remove him are assured as long as everyone turns up, which would mean to survive he'd need Ash Regan to actively vote for him and then the Presiding Officer to bail him out with her casting vote in line with convention.  I don't take remotely seriously the idea, being punted by Wings himself only yesterday, that Yousaf could lose the vote and carry on anyway.  So everything hinges on what Ms Regan does, and as we now know, it's a vote of no confidence in Yousaf personally rather than a collective vote of no-confidence in the government, which makes it much less unthinkable that she could vote him down if he doesn't yield to enough of her shopping list of demands.  Or she could abstain, which would probably have the same effect.

It's therefore at least semi-plausible that he could resign to avoid the humiliation of either being defeated or being seen to capitulate to Alba.  The continuity faction may have calculated that it's better to replace him with someone the Greens don't hate with a passion, and that way the government may be able to muddle through the next two years by means of ad hoc deals with the Greens rather than ad hoc deals with Alba.

The next part of the claim is that Neil Gray is the person that the continuity faction want to replace him with.  Again, that's perfectly plausible, Gray is massively overrated but he's been punted for years.  He would make the situation even worse because he appears to be even less serious about independence than Yousaf is, and has less charisma.

Where I become much more sceptical about the claim is the idea that the Forbes wing of the party will for some unspecified reason roll over and allow Gray to have an unopposed coronation.  Now, it's true that Kate Forbes has a strong mind of her own and it doesn't always tally with what people sympathetic to her think is sensible, so I can't rule out the possibility that she'll sit this one out, either for personal reasons or for what would probably be misconceived political reasons.  I hope to goodness she doesn't.  But even if she does, it doesn't follow that Gray will be unchallenged, because from what I recall of the SNP leadership rules, the threshold to stand as a candidate is not all that high.  Just a year after we saw an epochal battle between evenly matched continuity and change camps, it seems totally inconceivable that at least one person from the change camp will not put themselves forward - unless of course there's a unity candidate who everyone thinks is fab, but that candidate would not be Gray.  So I'm confident there would be a contested election if Yousaf stands down, although admittedly Gray would have a much better chance of winning it if Forbes is not his main opponent.  (Bear in mind, though, that even if the Wings source is correct about Forbes' intentions, there'll be massive pressure on her to change her mind.)

You'd think, incidentally, that journalists from The National would have SNP sources that are at least as reliable as any that Wings has, and it's interesting that Hamish Morrison is punting John Swinney rather than Gray.  But this paragraph made me laugh - 

"Kate Forbes has been touted by some, but given her views on LGBT issues and abortion proved so divisive in the SNP leadership contest, she may be a long shot."

Come on, Hamish, propaganda is one thing but you've got to at least make it sound plausible.  It remains to be seen if Kate Forbes would stand, but if she does, she will not be a "long shot", she will self-evidently be the strong favourite, having come within a whisker of winning last year in spite of the outgoing leadership chucking the kitchen sink at her, including just about every procedural dirty trick in the book.

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It's getting close to the last-chance saloon, but there's still time to help Scot Goes Pop continue through this general election year.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, although if you have a Paypal account, a better way to donate is by direct Paypal payment, because the funds are usually transferred instantly and fees can be eliminated altogether depending on the option you select from the menu.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk