[jfman]

Originally Posted by Chris

There is of course an independence-supporting echo chamber that assumes #BBCbias is a given amongst those of a similar constitutional mind and that ‘nobody’ watches it any more. They then get surprisingly uptight when it says something they don’t like, given that it’s supposedly talking to an empty room.

Oh it’s absolutely tangible if you name a unionist media platform viewership down, readership down, listenership down.

Believing the state broadcaster should be impartial is irrelevant as to whether those watching or listening are simply doing so in God’s waiting room.

There is some early polling that suggests the SNP’s fortunes are on the wane while support for independence remains in the mid-40s (excluding don’t knows). Being the party most associated with The Cause really isn’t going to save them, though it will be useful, for Labour in particular, if the SNP goes on assuming it will, right up to polling day when it will be too late.

Scandal after scandal has bruised both the Labour and Conservative parties over the years but never killed either off, there’s no real reason to expect an existential crisis for the SNP. If anything at Holyrood the D’Hondt formula will ensure in the absence of any upsurge in another pro-independence party (who?) they’ll remain the largest within that bloc, and so either the Government or largest opposition party.

It’s a long way to the next Scottish election although almost certainly Yousaf won’t make it that far.

In the long run, a broad yes movement permanently decoupled from one political party is more likely to produce a broader, more credible proposition, anyway. Yessers with an ounce of common sense ought to see that, and to be fair when I dip into their Twitter echo chambers, the thinking ones increasingly do.

You’re right, though, it is very, very funny. Have you seen the clip of the man from Govan trying to film the SNP Motorhome through the bars of the police pound, and getting righteously cross when challenged by two shady coppers who didn’t seem to want to identify themselves?

Although the man was clearly “a character” as they say it was very dystopian.