Making plans for Nigel

I’ve been preoccupied with a family emergency involving my mother’s health, which has taken a sharp turn for the worse, so I’ve been too distracted to sit down and write a piece about recent political developments. However, on the basis that the best thing to do right now is find something else to focus on, as there is absolutely nothing I can do about my mum’s situation except to wait for news, I’m writing this now.

You may have heard that an opinion poll asking about Scottish independence was published over the weekend which showed 54% in favour of independence, a figure which rose to 58% when respondents were asked how they would vote on the independence question if Nigel Farage was the next Prime Minister. The poll, carried out by Norstat for the Sunday Times, is especially significant as Norstat is one of the polling companies which weights its Scottish samples by the outcome of the 2014 independence referendum eleven years ago. As I and others have previously explained, this increasingly unjustifiable methodological practice has the effect of artificially boosting the No responses and reducing those for yes.

With that in mind the Yes result would have been even more impressive if this methodological practice had not been used. It is quite likely that more than 60% would support independence if we are faced with the deeply unpalatable prospect of Prime Minister Farage. It’s also likely that without 2014 weighting, the result for the SNP in the poll’s question on Holyrood voting intention would have been even better.

This now leaves YouGov as the only polling company which consistently returns a No majority on the independence question. Independent Voices @indyvoices.bsky.social‬ on Blue Sky, has produced this very interesting graph and argues that we may now be at the point where Scotland’s demographic changes since 2014 are such that not even weighting a poll by the outcome of that year’s referendum will be sufficient to produce an artificial No majority. All that 2014 can do now is to reduce the size of the Yes majority which is the real underlying truth.

Graph courtesy of @indyvoices.bsky.social

We got a glimpse of the likely horrors of a Nigel Farage government on Monday when he appeared at a press conference in Aberdeen to introduce the latest Tory councillor who has defected to Reform. Farage then proceeded to lie in a manner that would make even Keir Starmer blush. He doubled down on the racist attack ad against Anas Sarwar that his party had published on social media, targeting people living in Hamilton and Larkhall. In Aberdeen, Farage out and out lied, asserting entirely baselessly that Anas Sarwar had made a speech in which he claimed the South Asian community are “going to take over the country and take over the world”.

As evidence of Sarwar’s supposed “obsession” with race, Farage referred to a speech made in Holyrood by Sarwar in 2020 in which he claimed that Sarwar had complained that all positions of power in Scotland are held by white people. Like in the speech made by Humza Yousaf during the same Holyrood debate, Sarwar was highlighting the paucity of minority ethnic representation in positions of authority in Scotland. The speech to which Farage was referring made no references to how the South Asian community are “going to take over the country and take over the world”. Farage made all that up. For once, BBC Scotland actually called out Farage’s lies, but he predictably continued to double down. Farage doesn’t let trivial matters like truth get in the way of his race-baiting, and it only shows he’s the real victim when he gets called out for it.

This isn’t a dog whistle to the racist far right. It’s a fog horn.

Without any evidence – because who needs evidence when you have a far right English nationalist victimhood complex – Farage then went on to blame The Herald newspaper for tipping off the anti-racism protestors who had greeted him outside the Aberdeen venue where he was speaking. That would be the same Herald newspaper which has recently published a couple of opinion pieces favourable to Reform.

Farage’s speech was the usual grade A bollocks peddled by the snake oil salesman. All that ails Britain is the fault of immigrants, wokeness, net-zero, and the elite that the millionaire privately educated Farage mysteriously doesn’t belong to.

After saying that the Barnett formula, which is how funding for the Scottish Parliament is calculated, needs to be “looked at,” Farage swept off to Hamilton supposedly for another press conference where he was due to introduce yet another defector to his party, this time a Labour councillor from East Renfrewshire. It speaks volumes about the current state of the Labour party that it contains councillors who are happy to defect to a party that is even more right wing than a Tory party which is itself now very far to the right of where it was under Boris Johnson and Theresa May. The Labour chancer who defected can see that the writing is on the wall for Labour under Starmer and Sarwar, but to leave a Labour party which has abandoned all its former left wing principles in favour of right wing British nationalist populism for a party which is even more right wing British nationalist smacks of desperate opportunism.

Farage’s planned Hamilton press conference descended into chaos and was hurriedly cancelled with Farage publishing a photo of himself with party workers hiding behind the back of the campaign office, out of sight of the protestors outside the front of the building. Farage then slunk away without answering any questions from the press.

Scotland needs to make its own plans for Nigel. No one should be under any illusions about Reform. A vote for Reform is not a vote for anything new, disruptive, or ground changing. It’s not a vote for working class representation. It’s a vote for Thatcherism on steroids and for Tories who left the Tory party because it wasn’t chaotic, cruel, and nasty enough. Farage may appeal to a minority in Scotland, but many more are repulsed by him and his far right grifting and racist politics. There is no future for devolution in Farage’s greater England. The good news is that the prospect of a Farage government might shift Scotland to the tipping point when support for independence becomes the settled will of the people of this country.

Update 7.15 pm

@indyvoices.bsky.social Has reweighted the Norstat poll with 2014 weighting removed.  Here is their graph

With no weighting, Yes has a stupendous majority of 21% which with don’t knows removed translates into a Yes vote of 61.3% in a referendum and a No vote of 38.7%. With 2025 weighting, the Yes vote (with don’t knows removed) is 57.4% and the No vote is 42.6%.

_________________________________________

A reminder that I am currently running the annual fundraiser for the blog. You can donate to my GoFundMe fundraiser, the link is here. Please consider making a donation.

I’ve added a new method to make donating easier, you can now donate via Ko-fi

Or click the following link https://ko-fi.com/weegingerdug

https://www.gofundme.com/f/wee-ginger-crowdfunder-2025

Alternatively you can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. I hope that you will consider making a regular monthly donation, there is an option on PayPal which permits that. It’s an immense help to me when it comes to budgeting. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address [email protected]. Or click the Pay Pal donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button. You can also donate by PayPal by using my PayPal.me link PayPal.Me/weegingerdug
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/weegingerdug

If you would like an alternative method of donation, please email me at [email protected] for details of how to donate by direct bank transfer or cheque.

Thank you all very much, whether you support this blog by donating, or by reading and sharing my work. It means more than you know.

Source