I generally don’t much trust political opinion polling.
But it is all we have between elections, so we are forced to pay attention. But
that doesn’t mean we have an excuse to stop thinking.
There were two polls on Scottish independence each with
the usual question, the same as in 2014, that would not be asked if there were
a second referendum.
In one Yes had a four-point lead. In the other No had
a one-point lead.
But there must be a distinction between polling about
a theoretical referendum that everybody knows is unlikely to happen anytime
soon and polling for an actual General Election that everybody knows must happen
in the next twelve months.
There is a mismatch.
Labour is on 36% in Scotland.
The SNP is on 33%.
Labour is predicted to win 28 seats, while the SNP
would lose 30 seats and win only 18. The Conservatives would then retain their 6
seats and the Lib Dems would win 5.
Now let’s say that it is true that support for Scottish
independence is really on 49% and its true that support for the SNP is on 33%. Well,
that would mean either that 16% of Scottish nationalists are stupid or that
they don’t really want independence.
How is Scotland to achieve independence? There is only
route. It is not by saying Yes in an opinion poll. It is by voting for the SNP
or another party that puts in its manifesto that it wants Scottish independence.
It may not be sufficient for the SNP to win large
numbers of seats in Scotland. We have seen it do so on a number of occasions since
2014. The British government has to agree to a referendum. But it is clearly
necessary for the SNP to demonstrate something near majority support in order
to have a chance of persuading the British government to grant a referendum.
If the SNP wins only 18 seats, then independence can
be ruled out for decades if not forever.
So, if you say Yes in the poll and you believe that
you want Scottish independence what are you doing voting Labour? It may be that
there are some independence supporters in Scottish Labour, but a Labour
government will probably depend for its majority on Scottish MPs. To grant a
referendum on the basis of opinion polling for Yes, while only 33% of Scots vote
for the SNP would be for Labour to risk losing its majority. Why would Keir Starmer
agree to that?
It is also possible that the SNP could persuade a
British government to grant a second referendum by holding the balance of power
at Westminster or by winning an absolute majority at Holyrood as Alex Salmond
did in 2011. But again, the likelihood of the SNP holding the balance of power
becomes highly unlikely if it goes from 48 seats to 18. A Labour government
would be able to form a coalition with the Lib Dems rather than turn to the SNP.
Likewise, the chances of the SNP winning an absolute majority in Holyrood
becomes highly unlikely if it can only win 33% at a General Election two years earlier.
So, we have to ask these independence supporters, all
16% of them, how do they want to achieve their goal? It’s as if their goal is
to drive to Inverness from Glasgow, but instead they go in the direction of
Carlisle.
Supporting independence for some Scots has become almost a cultural thing. It’s part of their identity. But they don’t actually really want it. People who really want independence like the Baltic States during the fall of the Soviet Union don’t worry about issues like currency or borders or joining the EU, they just declare themselves to be independent, set up their new state and work things out as they go along.
But Scotland isn’t remotely in that situation. If you offered Scots, the Lithuanian model of becoming independent we would reject it overwhelmingly. Scots only want independence if everything stays the same as it is now and we get all that we want in the negotiations both with the former UK and the EU and also, we get free iPads and £10,000 so we can be like Denmark.
There may be 33% who will vote for the SNP come what
may, but that is close to the core 25% of Scots who supported independence in
2011. What the SNP has gained since 2014 is soft support that theoretically
wants independence, but actually doesn’t if it means losing the pound or the
Barnett Formula or having to deal with a hard border between Gretna and
Berwick.
These soft independence supporters were willing to go
along with the SNP as it felt a bit like cheering on Scotland at the football,
but as soon as the SNP began to look a bit dishonest last year and still more so
this past week, we discover the nature of their softness. It’s rather like Sturgeon’s crude
analogy. They were made of marzipan.
There is no real history of Scottish nationalism until
the 1980s, with Margaret Thatcher and the poll tax and closing Ravenscraig and
those awful Tories being wicked to Scotland. It therefore is not really an
independence movement it is an anti-Tory movement. Thatcher has become like Cromwell
to the Irish. An almost mythical figure to scare the weans at bedtime.
The SNP is an anti-Tory party rather than an independence
party, but this means that it is now hoist by its own petard. The bomb [petard]
is blowing up in Humza Yousaf’s face.
When the SNP won nearly all of the Scottish seats in
2015 the consequence was a Conservative government and people wondered how on
earth could Labour ever win a majority again without its Scottish MPs. In this
situation if you were anti-Tory, it made sense to vote for the SNP and independence
as this was the only way to escape a Tory government. But this logic now works
against the SNP. In order to escape a Tory government, you don’t need to go to
the trouble and risk of Scottish independence. You just need to give Labour its
Scottish seats back.
The reason people who theoretically want Scottish
independence are voting Labour then is that this funnily enough gets them what
they always wanted. A Labour government. This leaves the SNP with no argument.
It is self-evident that the one thing that might
deprive Labour of a majority is if the SNP wins all the seats in Scotland. It will
matter little if the Conservatives retain their six seats. So, the anti-Tory contest
becomes a battle between Labour and the SNP in the Central Belt. With more revelations
to come this week and perhaps this year, guess who loses that battle. The SNP’s
anti-Tory strategy now works against it.
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