My foolishness?

I just spent a chunk of time writing the following response to the above comment posted as part of Alba Party’s election campaign. I do this a lot. I put a great deal of time and effort into this kind of rational analysis. I really don’t know why. It is unlikely that even the person I’m responding to will read anything that runs to more than fifty words. The number of people who might read the original post far exceeds the number likely to read my response. And exceeds by an even greater margin the number who take the trouble to try and understand the points I make.

That is not merely a whine. It is an entirely accurate observation on the social media phenomenon. The snappy but simplistic will always get a vastly bigger audience than any detailed analysis of the claims made in that snappy but simplistic post. No matter how vacuous or misleading the claim may be, it inevitably has more impact than a rationally argued refutation that is necessarily more wordy.

People complain that political issues are being dumbed down. Undoubtedly, this is happening. And just as surely, politicians and the media play a big part. But the social media experience seems to suggest that this dumbing down is, to a significant extent, just a case of discourse tending towards its ‘natural level’. The level at which people engage. (See this Gemini Advanced AI response.)

The realisation that social media is no place to conduct a mature political debate is hardly new. I’ve known this for a long time. So, why do I persist? Perhaps because I am reluctant to surrender the field to the forces of idiocy, dishonesty, and disinformation. Or maybe because I’m just a damned fool who clings to the hope that people might be better than the evidence suggests.

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It is simple only if you abstract it from real-world politics and treat it as nothing more than an arithmetic calculation. Real-world politics is a lot messier than you allow.

The key phrase is "IF enough can be persuaded to vote that way with 5 months to go." The question is, can we afford to rely on this happening? Can we afford to gamble Scotland's cause on the chance that a significant part of the electorate will suddenly develop a level of political awareness and acuity that has not previously in evidence?

Alba Party has been flogging this "super majority" idea since before the 2021 Scottish general election. They decline to discuss the level of participation that is required for their cunning plan to destroy proportionality to succeed. But if theywere having any success at all in persuading voters that destroying the proportionality of the Scottish Parliament is a brilliant idea, it seems reasonable to suppose that this success would be reflected in the party's polling numbers. Is there any evidence of this?

Look at the graph.

I don't do partisan loyalty. I learned a bruising lesson with the SNP. I don't do faith. Because I'm not stupid. I look at the evidence. And the evidence tells me that it would be a terrible idea to rely on Alba Party's cunning plan.

The likelihood of an "independence supermajority" seems extremely low. The latest seat projection from Professor John Curtice, based on a Find Out Now poll of 1000 Scots, run for The National from December 11-19, 2025, puts the nominally pro-independence parties on 72 seats. This is well short of the 87 seats needed for a safe supermajority.

It is far from easy to see where those additional 15 seats are going to come from. British Labour in Scotland and the British Tories must be close to the rock bottom of their vote. That leaves Reform UK. It would take something extraordinary to reverse Reform UK's upward trend and do so sufficiently in the next five months to take 15 of their projected 25 seats. As already noted, the offerings from the nominally pro-independence parties just aren't having that kind of impact.

And, of course, they are pro-independence parties in name only. None of them has a strategy for restoring independence. Votes for these parties cannot be votes for independence because there is no way for independence to be a consequence of that vote.

We might therefore wonder as to the purpose of this 'supermajority' even if it could be achieved. What would it do? What could it do? Alba Party makes a big deal of a 'supermajority' being able to force an extraordinary election. Which merely begs the question as to the purpose of this. It would only take us back to where we were before the 2026 election, but with a seriously pissed-off electorate. Rinse and repeat?

Based on the best information available to us and reasonable assumptions only, the safe assumption is that the 'supermajority' will not be achieved, and it would serve no purpose for Scotland's cause even if it could. Even if Alba Party manages to take as many as a handful of seats - which currently looks vanishingly unlikely - the parliament is going to be dominated by the SNP. Those Alba Party MSPs would be marginalised. Even supposing they had a plan for restoring independence, which they don't - they would have no way to implement that plan absent the active cooperation of the SNP. There is absolutely no reason to believe this would be forthcoming.

I know that Alba Party devotees detest rational analysis such as this, much as do the SNP loyalists. I don't care! I am persuaded that we need more rationality and pragmatism to counter the fantasy politics and magical thinking which presently pervades the independence movement.