[SA Chris]

Alba should have no impact on the constituency vote (unless people shy away from voting SNP due to seeming division or whatever other reason).

This, in a general election.

[Fultonius]

I'm not sure about that logic. Alba are supporting SNP and encouraging people to vote SNP in the constituency vote.

In my opinion, the SNP have been a bit too long in power with a bit too little genuine opposition. The whole Salmond Sturgeon affair has been a shit show, but I think Scotland came come out the other side better off because of it.

Stu Campbell is an arse, but he's usually got a good point when it comes to polls & election predictions.

https://wingsoverscotland.com/panic-attacks/

Having a quick glance through the constituency results, I would think there is far more to be gained on the list side, than is likely to be lost on the consistency side.

Salmond may* be a sleazy prick, but he's pretty astute and dead focussed on independence, so I doubt he'd have jumped in unless he thinks it is likely to work.

*or may not, depending on who you chose to believe

[chris j]

The whole Salmond Sturgeon affair has been a shit show, but I think Scotland came come out the other side better off because of it.

I held off writing this after Salmond announced his Alba party to see what effect that might have, but I really can't see how anything has changed for the better.

Sturgeon was exonerated by the Hamilton inquiry with the ringing endorsement that "it's not impossible she was telling the truth". At the same time Hamilton insisted on publishing a memo alongside his report complaining that it had been redacted to the point of being misleading. The MSP committee that found that the parliament was mislead, among many other failings, has been kicked into the long grass, being partly sunk by the Scottish Tories badly judged and hopeless motion of no confidence that they could never win. Some on here dismissed the report as partisan, as the block of 4 SNP members voted against the conclusions while the Labour, Tory and Green members voted for it. It should be noted that the Green party has been in an unofficial coalition to support the SNP and was bidding to formalize it and have ministerial representation after the next election, so for their member to vote to condemn the SNP and executive must have been pretty damning.

The head of the Scottish Civil Service was condemned by the inquiry for creating and overseeing the whole flawed process, yet has Sturgeon's confidence and remains in post with no sanction. The inquiry exposed a culture of secrecy, obfuscation, covering up and turning a blind eye within the SNP, Executive and Scottish Civil Service to an astonishing degree. The Lord Advocate feels able to threaten MSPs on the committee with contempt of court, while declining to comment on or take action over whether an office in the Scottish government not obeying a search warrant might be committing an offence. His office feels free to act as censors, threatening prosecution and fines over publication of Salmond's evidence, which had already been cleared for publication following the court action by the Spectator. This has been criticised by a large group of lawyers and other legal types from within the Scottish establishment.

Outside this, the SNP has, for the last 14 years overseen the decline of the NHS and education systems, failure of, for example their drug policy resulting in by far the highest proportion of drug-related deaths in Europe, and an increase in child poverty. The difference in education achievement between rich and poor, which is suddenly such a focus, was a priority that Nicola said she should be judged on at the last election, yet the level is barely changed since the SNP came to power, after improving markedly under the previous Labour administration. Since Alex Salmond handed over to Nicola, support for business has been limited to a few spectacularly ill-judged high profile interventions, which have then typically been starved of the funding needed to make a success and cost the Scottish taxpayer tens of millions in redundancies or other costs.

On top of all this, you can bring the personal behaviour and attitudes of the SNP ministers into the mix - the Scottish Civil Service has a level of complaints of bullying from ministers that is higher than in all the other national parliaments and assemblies combined, and there has been a steady drip feed of resignations within Holyrood and Westminster that shows a pattern of poor judgement at best, Derek Mackay being possibly the highest profile recently. Given Blackford's campaign against Charles Kennedy shortly before his unfortunate death, there is a very strong justification to give the SNP the Tories' old moniker of the Nasty Party. 

Yet despite all this, the SNP are on course for a possible majority, in an electoral system designed to make it difficult for any one party to achieve a majority. Nothing will change, the same characters will continue in power, and Scotland will probably have another vote on whether to start an independence process that, if Scotland rejoins the EU, will result in a hard border with England.

Is this really better?

(Sorry for the rant...)

[mrjonathanr]

Why do you think the SNP has such strong support if their performance is poor? (Asking from an English perspective where the same could be said of the Tories.)

Do you think, as some suggest, that Boris is their best recruiter?

[TobyD]

Why do you think the SNP has such strong support if their performance is poor? (Asking from an English perspective where the same could be said of the Tories.)

Do you think, as some suggest, that Boris is their best recruiter?

I could venture a guess, also from an English perspective, it boils down to one word, independence.
The SNP have very effectively made their campaign for independence a proxy fix for everything that many Scots are dissatisfied with in their country and lives. The Brexit campaign essentially did the same thing, to make a political / idealogical campaign which was initially a niche interest for a few into something that seems to enough people will change things.

I have no set opinion on whether this is truer in Scotland or not, or really how I feel about the whole thing. It just strikes me that Sturgeon is very good at presentation. It helps her that no-one is presenting any positive case for the union, mostly just dire warnings about economy, borders and currency, which is more or less how the remain campaign rolled, and look how that went.

[chris j]

Nicola Sturgeon is an excellent communicator, though she along with PHS have been picked up by the Office for Statistics Regulation (Scottish ONS) for quoting downright false numbers a couple of times over the last year (for example last summer claiming that the virus level was 5x higher in England than Scotland). The SNP are also in the wonderful position of being in power without responsibility - anything bad is blamed on Westminster 'not giving us what we need'. Conversely, anything good coming from Westminster seems to be attributed to Holyrood - for example there were polls last year suggesting a majority of Scots believed the furlough scheme was devised and funded from within Scotland.

And all she really has to do is not be Boris...

[SA Chris]

And all she really has to do is not be Boris...

Sadly this. Scottish Labour hold no power so tactically holding your nose and voting SNP is the best thing to do to keep Tories at bay.

Sadly not enough for us locally, we are lumped in with the Deeside wealthy, so we are stuck with that twat Bowie again.