No shots fired

Politics Notebook #25: Independence bags a huge lead in a new poll.

Image by M W from Pixabay.

A new poll from Find Out Now puts support for Scottish secession at 56 per cent, compared to 44 per cent for remaining part of the United Kingdom.

This represents the biggest poll lead for independence since December 2022. It might prove to be an outlier but, if not, it could be a very significant piece of research. The nationalist movement has struggled to establish an edge over the status quo position, a task made all the more difficult by a turbulent two years within the SNP.

If Scots have suddenly swung behind independence, an obvious question arises: why? Might it be that the replacement of Humza Yousaf with John Swinney and Kate Forbes, the centrist dream team, has soothed the anxieties of undecideds and convinced some soft No voters that, with the grown-ups now in charge, independence is a more viable prospect?

Or could it be that the public is so heartily scunnered with Keir Starmer and the Labour government that they are willing to give separation another hearing?

There is probably an element of both, but I suspect more so the latter. Starmer’s popularity plunge, and the speed with which it took place, has upended many of the current political dynamics. English voters feeling betrayed by Labour can seek refuge in either Reform or the Greens, but in Scotland there is another avenue for these frustrations to travel and that is the constitutional path.

If you thole 14 years of the Tories, waiting for a Labour government that will end austerity and sweep away the sleaze, and instead you get this Labour government, you might well turn to independence in despair. It’s a leap in the dark, for sure, but it’s got to be better than this.

We can be confident of one thing: no one has changed their mind because of anything the SNP has done in the independence cause. Because the party has done exactly nothing since the unanimous Supreme Court ruling that Holyrood’s proposed Bill for a unilateral referendum, without Westminster’s approval, went beyond the powers of the devolved parliament.

The case for independence is no further forward. None of the outstanding questions from 2014 have been answered. If anything, there are more unknowns today, not least how a separate Scotland would defend itself in a new world order in which sovereign European states can have their territory invaded and annexed with little prospect of recovery and an ever-piling death toll.

The one change that ought to benefit any future Yes campaign — the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union — actually raises some difficult questions for nationalists. How would a separate Scotland maintain strong trading relationships with both the UK and the EU with such extensive regulatory divergence?

These, however, are practical questions, and referendums tend to be at least as much about heart as about head. And while it’s true that the Supreme Court ruling was extremely unhelpful for Yes, demographics continue to be absolutely brutal for No.

The most recent YouGov poll, consistent with most previous polling, confirms that you have to look to the over-50s before you find an age group opposed to independence. Unionism is becoming steadily older, a bad position for any political cause to find itself in. There’s a similar story with national identity: 44 per cent of Scots aged 16 to 34 describe themselves as ‘Scottish, not British’, while only 17 per cent say they feel equally Scottish and British.

This leaves Scotland’s constitutional politics at an impasse. The problem for unionists is that majority support for independence is probably the future. The problem for nationalists is that, even when support for independence is in the majority, the SNP fails to move the cause forward.

It’s an old west shoot-out, only one gunslinger is out of bullets and the other doesn’t know how to fire his pistol.