renton

At the same time, do "Scottish" Labour really want to get into a Holyrood election now? Can imagine it'd screw up a lot of Starmer's planning and would prematurely expose Labour's GE positioning, as well as spending money they might need for Scottish seats in the GE later...

Yeah, Ross doesn't want to trigger an election that would see his party wiped out, so an interesting game of chicken foing on here, escalating from the notion that the Greens are shitehawks who'd take leaving government on the chin.

Having said that, the SNP haven't had much luck with parliamentary officers holding to convention of late....

SNP would only need Regan + one other to join to win, but assuming they didm't it's hard to see how the Tories or Labour could coalesce around each other in a GE year to kick the SNP out, and if they couldnt find one in the time required before an election were called? Would Labour necessarily want a Holyrood election now to be followed by the GE?

Yeah, for Yousaf it's a chance to reset and blame any amount of issues on the Greens laps. He probably thinks that he's mounted the kerb in terms of where Scotland lies socially and wants to avoid getting killed in a culture war with Labour. He'll wait a while then convince Forbes to come back in, try and bump his numbers up a few pc and see how it flies. Not a bad gamble assuming the GE is this side of the next Scottish budget.

I doubt Yousaf could have risked letting the Greens dump his government without having umpteen other column inches talking about weakness. Also, eaiser to reconcile the Forbes wing of the SNP now you'd imagine.

Assuming we stay in the championship, a shopping list for me would look like: New contracts for Easton, Byrne, Matthews New LB, new RB, 2 x CBs*, 1x winger, 1 x forward. *if I thought Watson had more in him I'd be happy to keep him around, but point is we need to be running with at least 3 specialist CBs. The winger should be a proper speed merchant.

Scored one and set up one against Ayr, scored the opener against Dundee United back in February. Set up one against ICT in the loss at home.

Nah, the Scottish Greens are socially liberal. They'd have chucked Bute if Forbes had gotten the gig over Yousaf in the first place. My guess is that the Greens would support a minority Labour government if they came out the biggest party, but it'd be a bit of a tightrope electorally to say that, given their principle vote comes from SNP constituency voters voting for them on the list. Mind you in a world where the SNP might need list votes for once, the Greens could well get squeezed anyway.

It might be the Greens who bin it.

Yousaf is looking increasingly time limited now. I suspect a lot of the Murrell damage is already priced in, but if polling does take a further kicking then the SNP will need to do something and the unfortunately styled "continuity" candidate will be in the firing line. Actually think the Greens reaction to recent events around Cass, Puberty blockers, the missed environmental targets and also CT reform will be interesting. Their grassroots are hopping mad and given how the SG party internal democracy works, if their disgruntled elements can push through an EGM it's not unthinkable that the Greens end up being the ones who break the Bute House agreement. I think that would end up being really damaging for Yousaf and he'd look for all the world like a lame duck. Then it'll be a case of how long until a GE and whether or not the SNP think it's still a recoverable situation. If it is, they'll coronate Forbes as a social conservative who can avoid a lot of the culture war issues and who will look like a decisive break with Bute House, the Greens and previous continuity. A lot on the progressive wing won't like it (and I sure as hell don't like social conservatism) but they'll swallow it if it gets them over the line. If it isn't they'll let Yousaf take the kicking and he'll take down the previous continuity with him. The party will then engage in some soul searching and I reckon it'll be one of the relative newbies that takes over.

Be interesting to see how much fresh damage this can do, and how much was already priced in for the SNP.

So, any fun shit from the Q+A?

Ah, so it was. We're gonna win the play offs some day.

Two epic failures dropping into, then failing to get out of league 1 between those.