Projecting the swings from 62 varied wards across Scotland I estimate the Scottish Tory vote share at a mere 23.3%. So the BBC narrative about huge Scottish Tory triumph is total nonsense. Any foreign observer would be stunned by a state media, the BBC, that hails Ruth Davidson’s 23% as a massive triumph and decries Jeremy Corbyn’s UK 28% as the greatest disaster in political history.
It is really hard for the media to explain away Ruth’s 23% in Scotland in terms of the narrative they have been spreading so assiduously about “Ruth more popular than Nicola” and “Massive Tory surge”. So they have adopted a fascinating tactic. Not one media outlet anywhere has to date given a figure for the Scottish vote share.
The BBC could give you the actual definitive Scottish vote share at the push of a button. But they won’t.
Because not only does the Tory performance make a nonsense of the propaganda they continue to pump out non-stop, but there is another interesting possibility. While the Tories won a few more seats than Labour, my projection has Labour ahead of the Tories in Scotland in vote share on 23.4% to 23.3%. My figures are only a projection and I would put a margin of error of about 1.5% on each of those figures, but it is an intriguing possibility.
The BBC Pacific Quay propaganda machine prefers just to work on seat gains, and is doing something absolutely astonishing – continually saying the SNP were net losers when in fact they were net gainers. There are no more seats in total than there were in 2012, and today the SNP have more seats than they had then. Yet the BBC are claiming that the SNP were net losers due to adjusting for boundary changes, an obvious nonsense. Even the Guardian, Times and Telegraph are all showing the SNP with net gains.
But that would not suit the relentless BBC propaganda, and they are sticking with a straight lie about SNP losses and that, as the presenter on BBC News said yet even again as I typed this sentence, “The SNP are now losing momentum and going backwards”. Iain Macwhirter is currently being interviewed and he has been asked six questions by the BBC presenter, every single one of which is about how fantastically the Tories are doing in Scotland. MacWhirter said that Ruth Davidson is doing “fantastically”, so he earned his BBC fee.
“Not one media outlet anywhere has to date given a figure for the Scottish vote share.”
Would the French now be looking to Brussels for their election night results?
Kudos to you for reporting Craig, but you managed to write the whole article without mentioning your party’s embarrassingly small aggregate percentage of vote, that is for a ‘country’ that you want to be independent at midnight.
Shouldn’t the BBC’s behaviour be exposed to the rest of the world? Many people around the world look to the BBC as a trusted source, at least so I’m told.
BBC tits? It has a ring to it… ?
23% isn’t much of a return then is it? The Loyalist vote, the anti EU vote, the anti Independence vote, the anti Immigrant vote? Their voters were highly motivated and the stars aligned perfectly for them and their vote reaches the dizzy heights of less than a quarter of the of the turnout. Not too concerned
“There are no more seats in total than there were in 2012, and today the SNP have more seats than they had then.”
Yes there are. There are 1227 now, there were 1223 then.
https://news.gov.scot/news/council-ward-boundaries-agreed
That’s not how you spell pedantic! ?
Not pedantic, ‘no more’ means exactly that.
Dreary me, I’ve got a twin! Flattery indeed!
Is that you, Fred?
When Jeremy is Prime Minister in June the BBC must be sorted out – we must have a BBC providing balanced reporting.
Gosh what alternative universe are you in? Have you seen https://twitter.com/hashtag/Tories4Corbyn ? Conservatives love Corbyn as he is singlehandedly destroying the Labour party!
How does that work then? A popular grass roots Tory movement? Bit unlikely, be honest. It looks like a bucket of jellyfish in there. You’d imagine any self respecting astroturferwould vomit blood rather than do that job. Still just doing their job.
From Today, the W@1 to PM, it’s been a continual Tory celebration observance on R4. Isn’t it true that Corbyn has personally ruined any chance of a proper opposition to the Tories? Is it not truly remarkable that May made an even better performance than Thatcher did after the Falklands
publicity stuntwas heroically recaptured? Is any more proof really required, now that the Tories have demolished the opposition in Scotland, that the last thing they want is another referendum? Aren’t the Lib Dems totally washed up now, and haven’t all Kippers seen the light and gone over to the Tories at last?Until I got in and read your posts, R4 was all I had to go on. (Been on the road all day.) I took it to be a wipe-out, and so would any other casual observer.
Oh yes, Laura Knessetburg on Today, about 8:20am, was positively aghast that someone like Corbyn could even exist. The utter contempt in her tone and words is so harsh, one would swear Corbyn must have deliberately ran over her cat.
The BBC news bias is just so obvious now, their supposed impartiality is as genuine as Fox News’ “Fair and Balanced” slogan.
Glenn-UK
“Oh yes, Laura Knessetburg on Today, about 8:20am..”
_____________________
Presumably you are referring to Laura Kuenssberg.
The Knesset is the Israeli parliament.
So you appear to be making a connection between her and Israel.
Can you spell out in more detail what you’re getting at?
If you dare, that is 🙂
Apologies for the bad language but…. the unionist vote moving between unionist parties means bugger all. ? Unfortunately, the right wing press will try and make out something significant has happened. It hasn’t.
I think you will find it will make a difference in the General Election when the unionist vote isn’t split so evenly between two parties.
Yes, Fred, but I wasn’t talking about the GE. The more polarised the elections become, the more it will be like a referendum every time. I’m quite happy with that, particularly as UK politics seems similarly distorted.
I make it 605 council seats for unionist parties, 450 for nationalist.
Looks to me if it were a referendum you’d lose.
?
Not all unionist party voters are against independence as the statistics for the 2014 referendum showed. And with the dual prospect of hard brexit and scary ultra right Tory government there should be an even greater proportion of regular unionist party voters who’ll vote Yes.
It was a stupendous result for the SNP, they’re way way ahead of the rest.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/winning-and-losing/#more-94420
It’s little wonder then the unionist press are lying their arses off over the mediocre Tories in Scotland.
You would come to that conclusion. Every single one of those Slab/Ruth/Libdumb voters is a unionist, in your alcohol befuddled arithmetic.
Lets not mention those 172 independents, or 19 Greens eh ?
I keep telling you the games a bogey. Scotland will be an Independent country, and far sooner than most think.
Devo is a one way street.
Saddle up, or move on out cowboy 😉
So not every unionist party voter is against independence but every SNP voter is for.
Love your logic.
Clue’s in the name Freddo. Apparently 3% of SNP voters are No’s ! The squidgy, soft kind..
It isn’t the SNP who have stalled. They were the dominant party in Scotland before the council elections and they’re the dominant party still. You don’t have to make huge gains if you’re in prime position. At 23% it’s the Tories who have stalled. Little movement from their 22% ‘triumph’ in the Holyrood elections in 2016.
Reel guid, there’s a limit to the knuckle-dragging, George Square unionists, that Ruth can attract, so I agree with your “stalled” thoughts. Also, these same knuckle-draggers will be a real turn off for traditional Scottish Tories, who I believe are different to Ruth too.
Yes JOML. There must be some rank and file Tories who seriously want to remain the EU and who don’t care for the hard right turn their party has taken.
Similarly, the genuine left wingers in Scottish Labour can’t be relishing the prospect of fighting for a union they know will ruin Scottish communities.
We also know there are Lib Dems in Scotland favouring independence.
See that the SNP won their first ever council seat in Shetland. That’s going to worry Carmichael.
Is the professional liar standing again rg ?
Obviously there wasn’t a team captain vacancy on ‘Would I Lie To You?’.
Fab. We’ve got a ‘were you up for Carmichael’ to look forwards to.
Murray should be a good one too, but Fluffy is the real prize. 🙂
No more will we have to watch him fondly picking and savouring last nights smeg out of that silly excuse of a beard at PMQ’s.
How about this from Sky News for Tory propaganda?
Top of their front page.
‘Projection: PM could win Commons majority of 48
(Table graphic)
Commons projection
Con 349
Lab 215
LD 9
UKIP 0
SNP 54
Other 23
The Tories appear on course for a comfortable General Election win, as Jeremy Corbyn admits Labour faces a “historic” challenge.’
http://news.sky.com/story/sky-news-projection-pm-would-win-commons-majority-of-48-based-on-local-election-analysis-10864261
But hey, nevermind, the MSM hacks will be moved on tomorrow to the French election.
Good catch. A majority of 48 is hardly the landslide being predicted yesterday is it? 215 for Labour compared with their current 229 is hardly the wipeout Tory trolls are expecting. But hey, why would the media let facts like real votes that come in 10% below the opinion poll tallies get in the way of a bit of Tory propaganda.
Oh, and, Lib Dems still on 9? Really? I would be surprised if they don’t take 10 off the Tories, and 15-20 is not impossible.
Is it any wonder then that independence is a must for Scots. The Ministry of Truth has pumped out lies and deceptions to Scottish audiences since the days of Lord Reith.
Each year as Scots become more and more politically aware, the lies and deception becomes greater and more pronounced.
Yet there still remains a large section of Scottish society that believe the BBC bollocks or are determined diehard loyalists, who by wanting to remain in the onesided union are damaging Scotland’s future.
Don’t get me started on those treacherous b*stards at Pacific Quay.
And there was no Scottish opt out – at least not that I’m aware of – in the BBC News Channel coverage of the council results.
Was not Lord Reith a Scot?
And?
So it was a Scot – the first director general of the BBC – who started it all off (“The Ministry of Truth has pumped out lies and deceptions to Scottish audiences since the days of Lord Reith.”).
All clear now?
Crystal. Has been for a good while. Even the dugs in the street Know what Aunties a’ aboot post referendums. They’re slipping, desperation will be the end of the old dear. Must be pretty short on talent, when all they’ve got is the likes of Andrew Neil to do the shilling
The Beeb’s central to the Establishments remarkable longevity, with the Firm as the nexus. All functionaries are driven by narcissistic self interest, and the keeping of dirty little secrets.
Nicolas Witchell !
I rest my case 🙂
H, sorry for being so intrusive, and fair do’s you’ve a job to do, but when the topics have eff all to do with that unhappy little strip of land… Why?
Genuinely curious, I occasionally admire your style. Professional.
Unlike many here. Ba’al, Clark and one or two others yes, but most of us are pretty amateurish really.
And some are obviously just pure dead mentalists.
Last night, I detected a strange phenomenon. Across all sorts of media outlets, stories were appearing to tell us that the results of the local elections were not necessarily indicative of the way the general election would go. Now, I knew Labour was bound to lose seats, given the state of play last time these seats were contested. So changes in seats/councils did not interest me much. I was more interested in projected national vote shares. When I started seeing those articles last night, I thought something odd was going on. I thought that somebody knew the Tories had underperformed badly and was ensuring that the narrative today would still be about how badly Labour has done.
In recent polls, Tories have been on 47-48%, consistently. In my wildest dreams, the Tory vote share turned out to be only 40%, leaving them too close to the 2015 result for comfort. So you can imagine my astonishment – and delight – when the projected vote share for the Tories across the UK was only 38% – a whopping 10% below their polling results from earlier this week.
In any sane world, given that Labour losses were a cast iron certainty, the Tories underperforming the polls by 10% and barely exceeding their 2015 total despite the collapse of UKIP, would be the subject of major headlines and extensive analytical articles.
Now, this is still a bad result for Labour. I had hoped that they would be on 30% or more. But given how poor a performer May is, and how good Corbyn seems to be at winning people over when they see the real him rather than the caricature, and factoring in the Lib Dems and the failure to make the expected gains in Scotland and Wales, it remains entirely possible that May will not get the increased majority she is looking for. I still have an outside hope that she might lose her overall majority, but I am not banking on that.
I should be interested to hear Craig’s take on the outcome of the local elections in England and whether he thinks that something similar will happen at the general election on 6 June.
D-Day is the 8 June this time Habba.
yes, a typo – sorry.
Sure you’re not just having a Diane Abbott day?
No, I’m fine thanks.
It’s good to have a conversation, isn’t it.
Another twin? Fanny! ?
Craig, I have just totalled up the numbers of votes cast for the SNP in Edinburgh (49,150) and Tories (51,212) in the 17 Wards. There were 187,157 votes cast overall.
This gives the SNP 26.26% of the total votes cast, and Tories 27.36. Which gave the SNP 19 of the 63 seats and the Tories 18.
Even in a place like No-voting Edinburgh where there are places which do record a 33% Tory vote, the vote share was more like you suggest, and this has got to be one of the most Tory parts of Scotland.
http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/9292/ward_17_portobello_craigmillar_-_results_2017
Sorry to spoil that though, but Craigmillar is the remnant of Niddrie, and if they heard you calling them Tories down the sadly no longer with us Tavern, I guarantee a Begbie moment would erupt.
Quoi?
Francis Begbie. Niddrie/Craigmillar has more than it’s fair share of violent psychopaths. Not the Tory variety either.
Yeah I get Begbie. I don’t get the Tory link to Niddrie…
Sorry MBC, I should have made it clearer. You could probably count the number of Tory voters in Craigmillar/Niddrie on one hand. Porty however, has some very des res areas, and that’s where they got their 2032 votes from. Only 7% first pref is encouraging though.
Plaid Cymru made gains of a few dozen council seats yet the BBC virtually ignored that and more or less tried to give the impression that the party was just treading water.
They also glossed over the fact that one of Labour’s council losses was to independents because of local issues, rather than to the Tories.
Commission President J.-C. Juncker has just made speech which he preceded by saying that he would speak in French because “English is slowly but surely losing its importance in Europe”.
What a silly man he is.
And what an arrogant tosser if he thinks anyone really cares whether he speaks in English or French.
(Cue the usual suspects – overwhelmingly monoglot – to cheer 🙂 )
amadán
?
Vous est une triste personage H.
Vive le France
Fuck the UK
La reine le veult
toi non plus
“Fuck the UK”
______________________
Thank you for that thoughtful and substantive contribution, Galt.
A Wee update from Yew Choob…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tRrtklSAJmQ
Enjoy! ??
Masterpiece!
Brilliant lyrics and brilliant graphics.
Funny but sadly true.
Strange time. Parliament was prorogued on 27th April and will not resume until June 19th.
That’s over seven weeks without an accountable government. Who is actually in charge in the interim?
Craig?
and then I read this ref RIPA. Are we heading for totalitarianism?
Brussels, May 5, 2017–The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by news reports that the U.K. government wants to push telecommunication companies to introduce real-time surveillance and the removal of encryption. On Thursday, The Register published leaked draft regulations detailing how telecommunications operators would be required to grant real-time access to individuals under warrant within 24 hours and hand over “secondary data.”
“If enacted, these regulatory powers could increase the capacity of the U.K. authorities to spy on journalists and seriously hamper their work, including protection of source confidentiality,” said Tom Gibson, CPJ’s European Union Representative.
According to news reports, companies would also be obliged to “remove electronic protection” for individuals, essentially introducing a back door to end-to-end encryption, and provide “the content of communications or secondary data in an intelligible form.” The regulations also ask companies to put in place systems that would allow them to intercept communications of 1 in 10,000 of their customers.
/..
https://cpj.org/2017/05/expanded-surveillance-powers-could-threaten-work-o.php
Yes, that is totalitarian.
It is also pointless for surveillance purposes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography
Some possible and some likely implications:
Industrial espionage carried out by the state and associated private contractors.
An explosion of insider trading carried out by elements of the state and associated private contractors.
Serious erosion of what little press freedom remains.
Serious general economic consequences to doing business in the UK
Serious consequences for UK internet based dissent of any kind.
The desertion of any serious creative industry.
Melodramatic? I don’t think so. And I don’t think they’ve thought this through at all clearly. Expect resistance.
Sometimes stasis and decay is the objective.
Otherwise everyone would become wealthy over time and threaten elite differentials.
I mean, look at Diocletian’s reforms.
Or Franco.
The key thing about Franco is that he put elite wealth beyond the reach of any potential claim by labour, until such time as the Spanish elite could renegotiate their place in the world.
He created stasis.
Fine for those of wealth but disastrous for peeps.
“But what the nine-page document does is provide the government with the legal authority to monitor anyone in the UK in real time, as well as effectively make strong and unbreakable encryption illegal. This act of stripping away safeguards on people’s private data is also fantastic news for hackers, criminals, and anyone else who wants to snoop on Brits…”
UK is likely to become a magnet for hackers judging by the details, with major possible implications.
Clearly friends of government would be offered exemptions, how would you sell it to them otherwise? A protection racket?
State could pick and choose who succeeds or fails in virtually any arena, a lot more than now.
The entire UK population totally wide open to blackmail and coercion from state, private contractors of the state, and presumably the global population of hackers.
The end of the net based economy in the UK?
There seems to be a fight going on between, at one level, let’s say the new technology people and the old technology people.
It’s not that easy to see the demarcation lines because often they intersect.
Old content providers both benefit from and are destroyed by the new methods of communication, for example.
But the old guys still dominate terra firma.
Then you’ve got a fight between a poor collector of data at Langley and excellent collectors of data at govt-run NSA.
In response to this the Langley guys created their own mass collection agencies in new media.
Which was more specific than your NSA kinda mass context free data gathering bollocks that was required by the Constitution of the US.
William Binney who designed their system said something about this.
But yeah, the Langley guys, they’re smart.
They got the so called public sector to create the systems they needed. Chomsky points out that the technology was created at public expense in universities like his MIT, or at Stanford etc, and then passed out to the private sector.
So yeah, it seems yer more creative types at Langley are winning out over the time-server buggins turn bureaucratic plodders at NSA.
Who’da thunk it, eh.
“Masters of the Universe, STILL Run the World!!”
Shock.
This is insane. Unfortunately the vast majority of us won’t turn into steganographers.
Big Sister is Watching You.
“and then I read this ref RIPA. Are we heading for totalitarianism?”
____________________
The short answer is : no.
The government.
“Who is actually in charge in the interim?”
The Civil Service.
Same as the rest of the year.
I think they have to be able to trace your family the whole way back to Norway to achieve a mid-level position.
Constantinople for a higher position.
Venice and Babylon for the highest of positions.
The Lib Dems did astoundingly well in west Edinburgh. But in the rest of the city the LD gains were marginal. The Greens made modest but solid gains and in one ward they came first.
The turn out was higher than in 2012. The Cons seem to have increased their vote share by about 10% but that’s from a very low base. I noticed the same phenomenon in the 2016 Holyrood election though none of the pundits commented on it at the time. But in almost every constituency in Scotland the Tories had rallied between 5 and 10 percent.
Hey, he talks about propaganda put out by the BBC while simultaneously denying he is English, born in England, to an English mother and a Scot who saw fit to impregnate an Englishwoman. The master of propaganda speaks; behold the wonder of it all.
Smashing it up !
Good evening Mr. Straw.
Racists. Always obsessed about who breeds with whom. Weird and creepy.
Very weird indeed, in that this particular racist seems intent on discovering genetic differences between the Scots and English- a task which, if seriously engaged in would prove to be quite impossible. Racism is a very bad joke.
It’s tribal though, rather than race.
Race is immensely problematic. Probably doesn’t actually exist in other than superficial form. Re-invented by the likes of elitists like Darwin, for example.
But tribalism is real.
I expect that most of what we call racial problems are in fact tribal problems.
One of the reasons these persist of course is because our rulers have had much past and recent use for such divisions.
And then sometimes they become a nuisance as for example with NI when policy changed.
Herbie,
I cannot allow that post to go unchallenged. How exactly was Darwin an elitist?
He argued that some races were more important of preservation than others.
There’s a clue in the title:
“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. by Charles Darwin”
That’s pretty much the elite view today, though their presentation is arguably better.
all the torys are low life shit and lieing COWS all the BBC is tory lap-Dogs
Now, Philip, just because you have retired yesterday, doesn’t mean you can use pseudonyms to make cutting comments online, even if they are true! ?
We may (do) have our disagreements, but thank you for exposing the lying b*****ds.
“Now, this is still a bad result for Labour. ”
Is it? Losing Glasgow, and places like it, after generations in control, is not a bad thing. Firstly because the policies of the local councils and the councillors often contradict and discredit party policy. It is hard to believe that the notorious corruption-intellectual as much as financial- to be found in many Labour councils, in both Scotand and Wales as well as the North does not weaken the party and its cause.
In the case of Corbyn large numbers of now defeated councillors have campaigned not only against his election but against his authority after having been elected-they, together with the majority of the PLP constituted a Fifth Column which works hard to prevent a Labour victory. And in particular works hard to prevent a simple, clear political message from being communicated to the electorate.
I doubt if there is a Socialist in Scotland who really regrets the loss of Glasgow. Just as it would have been hard to find any who lamented the defeats of the Blairite imperialist bullies who got turfed out in the last General Election.
Michael Martin used to say that Glasgow politics was like Mario Puzo’s The Godfather.
Thing is, it’s like that everywhere.
A thicker or thinner veneer.
Look at US cities for example.
Hard to see Glasgow any worse than these corrupt horrors.
Detroit used to be one of the more attractive cities in the US.
Scotland lost some good socialist MPs at the last election. Katy Clark who is currently working as Corbyn’s political secretary being the prime example.
On the whole you are correct, mainly Blairites and sectarian careerists but it’s worthwhile acknowledging that there were some good people amongst them.
Great comment craig thanks for the truth
Any thoughts on your mate Julian’s support for a real fascist?
Blair and his cohorts were Tory infiltrators as was Cleg and his lot the whole system has been infiltrated by the neoliberal money organisation all three major political parties, the whole of the media, the civil service, the military and the police. Just to give more power to a bunch of power hungry individuals that want to run the whole world for their own benefit and make the rest of us slaves 1984 is a bit late coming but if people don’t wake up and smell the coffee it’ll be with us very soon.
SO PEOPLE GET OUT AND VOTE IN THE GENERAL ELECTION.
JC4PM?
Keep pounding out your message. We deserve a state broadcaster that is as free from bias as possible, and that counts for all political directions. For a start Jackie Bird should be restricted to reading the news, instead of acting it out, and, further, BBC Scotland should stop using school work-experience kids as reporters.
There are slightly more seats in Scotland than there were in 2012, 1227 now, 1224 in 2012.
Otherwise, great article !
I’d love to do the sums that substantiate this. The raw data must be available from sources other than the BBC. If someone can tell me where, I’ll crunch the numbers.