HERE’S a thought: far from demanding “both votes” in May, my party the SNP should not stand any candidates on the lists at all, and here’s why.

From constituency seats alone, the SNP is likely to take the parliament. ­Although opinion polls are only ­indicative for the time they are held, polling just ­announced by Savanta ComRes from ­January 8-16 projects 70 of such seats for the SNP, 5 more than needed for an ­absolute ­majority, plus only 1 regional seat in the whole country. Their control of the ­parliament would be assured with just the constituency seats, and the benefit of standing list candidates is virtually zero.

This is because the more constituency seats won, the more difficult the voting system makes it to pick up regional seats.

Take my region of Central as an example. From that recent poll (which finds that, excluding unknowns, 57% would vote for independence right now), projections give the SNP all nine constituency seats, so the Additional Member voting system decimates their 44% projected list vote to 4.4% for a start, and that prevents them from edging into any of the seven regional seats, which go three Lab, two Con, one LD and one Gr.

Only if the constituency SNP vote was up at 60% and the “both votes SNP” call was wildly successful and got all of those votes to go SNP on the list too, would the SNP pick up a single list seat, from Lab, whereas to take that Lab seat the Greens would need an uplift of only 1% on their projected share, ie: only 1/16 of those extra SNP votes.

And if the Greens got a 16% uplift from the SNP projected vote, taking their total share of list votes from 11% to 27%, then they would also take a seat from Con, ­giving Central three Indy members instead of one.

This shows how exorbitant is the voting cost of SNP list seats. Even if “both votes SNP” is complied with totally (which would never happen) and does gain the odd seat, such seats are many times the price of equivalent Green seats: in this case, 16 times.

But if a quarter to a half of those projected 44% SNP list votes went Green instead, the result would be 3 Gr, 2 Lab, 1 Con and 1 LD. And if all of the SNP list votes went that way, the Greens would pick up 5 of the 7 seats, leaving only 1 each for Con and Lab. By a crazy extrapolation throughout Scotland, you could have a parliament of about 110 Indy supporters (70 SNP and 40 Green) with a mere rump of about 20 seats among Con, Lab and LD. Just picture it; they would hardly even get a question in at FMQs!

Voter advice from the SNP could be very simple indeed: “We’re not standing on the regional lists, so please cast your regional vote for another independence party or candidate.”

But here’s the main prize from a large majority of Indy MSPs, which could turn out to be crucial. Under the rules of the Scottish Parliament, a vote of two-thirds (86 MSPs) can bring about a Holyrood election at any time. So if the Scottish Government was faced with continuing intransigence on a referendum from the PM (which cannot be unreservedly dismissed), with those votes it could arrange for a fresh election at the time of its choosing, which could be run as a direct plebiscite on independence, without waiting for the next scheduled election for the chance. Handcuffs off, in other words!

So wake up, SNP. Leave the list seats to be swept up by the Greens (and other Indy folk), to produce a parliament vastly weighted in favour of independence, and the game will really be on.

Alan Crocket
Motherwell

“COMPLETELY untethered from the observable reality.” So said a political commentator on one of the TV news feeds the other day. It was a phrase directed towards Trump but equally it could be directed towards the Unionists in Scotland.

With the fall of the House of Trump the Johnson administration and their backers, those shadows that reside out of view have lost their mentor, their demigod, their fulcrum. They will look around in the coming days and see a very changed world because it has changed for them and as all populist leaders and their supporters have found, once the bubble of their smoke screen is burst they are left with nothing.

The panic in them can be measured by the increase in sponsored fake news feeds on social media sites, the call to cancel the May General Election and the voice as one from those leaders in that foreign capital to deny us our legitimate, democratic desire.

Interesting days ahead as the bastion of populist politics collapses and their supporters scuttle under rocks.

Stay focused folks, our future is bright, Independence is right.

Cliff Purvis
Veterans for Scottish 2.0