Union mandate !

3 Unionist parties 1 364 656
2 Nat parties 1 326 194

That is not a ref2 mandate, that is a Union mandate! Unionism won the popular vote. Our voting system of Additional Member may be PR but it's still not 1-2-3- preferential. Split votes on the same side can't be undone by the voters' second preferences. Hence, the side that is more split across parties can win the popular vote yet lose the election in seats.

Sturgeon of course knows those numbers. As popular vote, direct number of votes, determines a ref, we know quite safely tnat she does not want one now. Neither side can afford to risk one, as it does not take professorship for John Curtice to tell us. Sturgeon can't hold the SNP together without a nominal show of confrontation for one, but has just kicked safely imto next year any parliamentary action on it. Most of her followers understand that first she will try to whip up more support by grievancemongering, and see if they can climb out of thus 50-50 divide of the voters.

The Alba Party's failure suggests that nat voters are mostly on their movement's cautious side, not the emotionally raving militants' side. They are not bursting to force a ref2 when they know its result would be a complete gamble. This election was the first time that has been actually tested, between 2 nat parties with different views on speed of action.

Notable that Tommy Sheridan, who since 2017 has made speeches at indy rallies demandihg tnat ref2 be called unilaterally, joined the Alba Party.

Curious that both the Alba Party, and its Unionist counterpart George Galloway's All For Unity Party, both led apparently from the left, both chose to blow it with progresssive voters in the same socially reactionary way! Both supported the anti-transgender reaction against the self-identification law. Alba did it in a trans-excluding feminist way, you could find it on Youtube, women demanding a biological reality definition of women. All For Unity did it by arguing a family values line like the 1990s Major government, you could find it on its own site and Facebook, including a nasty sinister oppressive line for parents to have power to decide what to allow their kids to know. There was leafers' hubris in doing that. For Salmond, a recent survivor of the unjust witch'hunting of men, it ws surprising and seems illogical to side with the angrier more excluding type of feminism! Exactly the type that sides with the witch-hunting more fervently.

Labour comes out of the election best. Quite unlike the concerns of an unsure position that afflicted it in the Corbyn period, Labour stood on a definite manifesto line against a ref in this term of govt, and held its candidates to that line, with strong pre-election purging of candidates who haf aberrated from it.