Independence not ‘settled will of the Scottish people’, leading academic says
Independence is “not a priority” for some of those Scots who say they would vote for the country to leave the UK, a constitution expert said.
Professor Nicola McEwen, the director of Glasgow University’s Centre for Public Policy, said while polls show support for independence as being higher now than when the referendum was held in 2014, some of that was “a soft support”.
She was speaking at a fringe event staged by the Centre for Public Policy at the SNP conference in Edinburgh – where former Yes Scotland strategist Stephen Noon insisted that independence supporters were “probably at the beginning of a new wave forward”.
Prof McEwen’s comments came as the polls indicated support for Scottish independence is higher than support for SNP leader John Swinney’s party, and is only narrowly behind support for staying in the Union.
Opinion polls
Polls in both July and August put support for Scotland being independent on 48%, with 52% support for staying in the UK, when those who said they did not know how they would vote were removed, while a poll in June put support for independence at 51%.
Prof McEwen said: “Support for independence does remain high, higher than it was consistently in the 2014 referendum.”
While that is higher than the 45% who voted for independence in 2014, the expert insisted support for this was “not close to being, to borrow a phrase, the settled will of the Scottish people”.
She added that within that “50% or just below” proportion of people who back independence “there is a soft support there”, adding support was “not that solid up to that level and for many in that category it is not a priority”.
And with the SNP now having seen its support fall in July’s General Election, she said: “This last year has felt like the end of that process that started and led to the 2014 referendum.”
‘New Wave’
However Mr Noon, a former Scottish Government adviser who also served as chief strategist for the Yes Scotland campaign in the run-up to the referendum, argued that independence support was “probably at the beginning of a new wave forward”.
Mr Noon, who is now a research associate at the Centre for Public Policy, likened Scotland’s constitutional journey to a series of waves, referring to devolution referendums held in 1979 and then in 1997 – the latter of which led to the Scottish Parliament being established.
He told the audience: “There was the move to the ’79 referendum, which was lost, then a bit of retrenchment. Then there was the move to the ’97 referendum which was won, then a bit of retrenchment.
“Then the move which took us to the independence referendum and beyond and we are probably now, as Nicola suggests, at the end of that wave.
“So what I am trying to suggest is there is a degree of confidence that there is a movement which is not a linear one… but there is a process of forward movement and then retrenchment.
“And we are probably at the beginning of a new wave forward.”
While Mr Noon said this would “not be the same” as previous waves, he added: “The challenge for a party like the SNP is to be ready to ride the wave, no matter what it looks like or where it comes from.”
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Settled will of the people isn’t really an objective criterion and an academic should know better than use it as a measuring stick. You can argue things like whether 52% vs 48% is the settled will of the people.
It’s not, that is why we have opinion polls after opinion polls. An opinion poll merely shows the view of one day. I note the article does not mention margin of error – many polls have margins of error of 3% which would totally overturn the above reault to Yes 49% and No 51%.
While the SNP, not to mention the Scottish Government, was so confused about its policy on a currency and how the economy would function, the relative ambivalence of the people of Scotland towards independence has not been surprising.
Resolve that issue, as I have proposed we do in Cymru by adopting our own sovereign currency, and most objections will fall away.
Scotland has a great future if it focuses on its people and eschews the ‘military-industrial complex’ (Eisenhower). If it remains in the dysfunctional union with England, its resources will be sucked dry, its environment destroyed and its people disenfranchised.
And any future refendumit as now ben said will never happen, let alone in Wales, so all this talk is a waste of time.
48% and rising … and still unionists bury their heads in the sand, rambling on with tired apologetics for this tired, dysfunctional union or flinging pathetic insults around like school bullies who lost the ability to scare anyone long ago. What Unionists don’t understand is that the Union is breaking up under the stresses of its inconsistencies, inequalities and dysfunction. Plaid Cymru and the SNP are reactions to those, not the cause. I don’t think anything will stop the end of the UK now. The main question is will the England and Wales entity break?
Hardly surprising if the once considerable, albeit often tentative and cautious, support for independence among ordinary non-activist Scottish voters is wavering somewhat right now. First, there was the schism within the SNP focused on the personalities of Salmond and Sturgeon, and then there was the wholly unanticipated – and still, to me at least, wholly obscure – disintegration of that party in the immediate aftermath of Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation as party leader, with as yet unresolved rumours of financial malpractice.at the very top of the party. Most voters aren’t activists, politically speaking, and their support for a cause is much… Read more »
Except that the support for independence is now consistently higher than it was 10 years ago during the referendum …
So I read – or, at the least, that Scots voters’ inclination towards support for independence hasn’t diminished despite recent developments.
But it appears rather that it’s voter confidence in the SNP as a political party that has taken a dive.
Agree. I might want independence but I have higher priorities – lower fuel bills, lower rent / mortgage, better pay and so on. So I agree with the idea that a random poll does not show the settled will of the people. In othe words, independence might be nice but isn’t a priority.
It’s like election polls – those saying who you would vote for often have a further poll saying how determined you are to vote.
Looking at your contributions to this article, Jack, I note that you regard the prospect of (Welsh) independence as remote. You prioritise lower fuel bills, lower rent / mortgage, better pay and so on.
My question is how do you think the latter are going to be achieved anytime soon? A wise and beneficent Labour Government perhaps?
Who currently aren’t offering anything except Austerity 2.
Just a blip?
Good luck with that!
I have many Scottish friends who were undecided in 2014. Some voted for Indy, others voted to Remain in the UK, whilst a couple just abstained. All of them say they’d now vote for Indy after being deceived about the benefits of the Union by the likes of Gordon Brown.
The SNP was trounced at the general election, that in my book says Scottish independence is off the cards.