After several weeks we finally have the first full-scale Scottish poll since Andy Burnham became Prime Minister. It's a Find Out Now poll for The National - and just like the majority of polls over the last eighteen months, it shows that Scotland wants to be an independent country.

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Has the world gone mad? It certainly appears that way, as Robin McAlpine's preposterous article suggesting that Scotland should not do a thing to try to win independence until there is a 75% supermajority in favour of it is followed up a few days later by an article from Gerry Hassan defending the UK government's denial of Scotland's right to self-determination, and bizarrely offering the 1979 devolution referendum (in which Scotland voted for devolution but didn't get it) as supposed proof that Scotland is in a "voluntary union". Let's try to make some sense of all this.

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Robin McAlpine penned one of the most dangerous articles of the year a few days ago - dangerous because, if the independence movement is foolish enough to pay heed to his advice, we would stop trying to win independence via the ballot box and try to do it via opinion polls. That's not merely a grotesque parody of the principle of democratic self-determination, it's also daft simply because opinion polls are largely conducted (and their methodology determined) by people who are caught up in the British establishment mindset that Scotland cannot possibly become independent and cannot possibly want to become independent.

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Eighty-one years to the day since the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare, it is still the establishment consensus in the UK that having nuclear weapons puts us at *less* risk of nuclear attack because of the supposed "deterrent" effect. But if the deterrence principle is sound, surely no country in the world needs nuclear weapons for its own safety more than the State of Palestine?

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An article in The Guardian yesterday spelt it out - the BBC put in a derisory bid for the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games, far lower than they bid four years ago for the Birmingham Games, knowing full well that this would leave the organisers with "no choice" but to go with a pay-channel. This was a clear attempt to sabotage the Glasgow Games by starving it of the publicity of free-to-air coverage for the first time in any Commonwealth Games since the 1950s. No such problems for Birmingham and their hosting of the European Athletics Championships later this month - that will, naturally, be receiving lavish coverage on the BBC.

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In recent days the former ambassador Craig Murray and the deputy editor of The National newspaper Xander Elliards have both published their own visions for how Scottish independence can be achieved. The strategies are on completely opposite ends of the spectrum, and in this podcast I explain why I think both are barking up the wrong tree in their own very different ways. I also offer what I believe to be the correct way forward.

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Some thoughts on John Swinney's clear statement that Andy Burnham's "off-limits" comment about a Scottish independence referendum is completely unacceptable.

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When the "Number 10 North" name started being used, I naturally assumed it was just a media nickname, because the building is located in Manchester, well inside the southern half of the UK. But now the logo has appeared and that's the OFFICIAL NAME - putting beyond doubt that the actual northern half of the UK is completely invisible to Andy Burnham and that he sees himself as the Prime Minister of England. By extension that means Scotland, which he insists on continuing to retain control of, irrespective of the wishes of its own people, must be regarded as some sort of external possession - a quasi-colony.

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I had some concerns that the optics (and they were probably very superficial optics) of Andy Burnham using his first day in office to pledge to end rough sleeping and ease the cost of living might make a dent in the SNP's Scottish poll lead. The early evidence suggests, in fact, that may not have happened at all.

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On Day 4 of his premiership, and ironically on the day that he visited Scotland for the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games, Andy Burnham stated unambiguously that an independence referendum is "off-limits". Unless he is offering some alternative democratic route by which independence can be achieved if the people want it, and he isn't, that makes it official that Scotland is now in a forced union, not a "voluntary" one. The UK is a prison and Scotland is incarcerated in it.

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