Scots' support for the Union solidifies

When unionist parties vote down Alex Salmond’s proposed independence referendum he hopes to encourage the idea that democracy is being denied. A new poll demonstrates that Scots might not be so receptive to this argument after all. According to You Gov, backing for independence has fallen to 29%, whilst support for the Union is up four points, to 57%.

Anthony King set the question, in line with the SNP’s proposed ‘softly softly’ approach. Rather than seeking honestly the Scottish people’s assent to break up the United Kingdom, the party will propose a mealy mouthed formulation about ‘negotiating a settlement with Westminster‘. King observes that in rejecting this proposition,

“most Scots regard the idea of a referendum on Scottish independence as an irrelevant bore and that, if any such referendum were held in the near future, it would be overwhelmingly defeated".


Indeed only one in eight Scots named a referendum as one of the top two priorities on which Holyrood should concentrate.

Salmond is well aware that his Referendum Bill will not gain the assent of the Scottish Parliament. His strategy is to use its defeat as a springboard for the general election, during which he will portray the SNP as the party prepared to give the electorate its say on Scotland’s constitutional future.

This survey indicates that there may be less leverage in these tactics than Salmond hopes. It also demonstrates that a referendum would kill stone dead, for a generation, the notion of Scottish independence.

Perhaps the brave response from unionists would be to grant Mr Salmond his separatist poll, on the understanding that it poses an honest question to the electorate and that the answers are restricted, simply, to ’Yes’ or ’No’.

Comments

Hernandez said…
It's amazing how many similarities there are between the SNP and DUP. Both elected on the basis of their main rivals' perceived weakness together with a charismatic leader. And both parties have made a complete balls up of being in power, demonstrating how unfit and incompetent they are.
24 November 2009 at 17:24
fair_deal said…
The shift is welcome but the negativity of the underlying reasoning should be a source of concern.
25 November 2009 at 18:35
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football fever in Russia

Russia Blog is getting excited about Euro 2008. Indeed it is drawing parallels between Guus Hiddink and Peter the Great in terms of successful Russo-Dutch exchanges of expertise. Meanwhile, in Moscow, fans have been taking to the streets in order to celebrate the national team’s achievements.
Read more

Stormont might not collapse but paramilitaries continue to disfigure Northern Ireland

Image
The devolved institutions in Northern Ireland are supposedly ‘teetering on the brink’ of collapse yet again.  After repeated failures to agree a balanced budget or implement welfare reform created months of uncertainty, the Executive’s future is now in doubt because the PSNI believes members of the IRA were involved in murdering a republican hit man.  Despite its apparent seriousness, this particular predicament is unlikely to bring the shaky edifice at Stormont crashing down. The IRA was supposed to have disbanded its military ‘structures’ and decommissioned its entire arsenal of weapons back in 2005.  It was on the basis of this understanding that power-sharing resumed in 2007 and the DUP entered government with Sinn Féin.  From the outset it was a fairly flimsy pretext.   Less than a year after John de Chastelain, the retired Canadian general, oversaw decommissioning, the Independent Monitoring Commission reported that the IRA retained a substantial haul of arms.
Read more

Walker loada rubbish

Former BBC employee Brian Walker has overrun Slugger O’Toole lately with countless poorly structured, poorly written posts. It is possible quickly to recognize and avoid these by subjecting each Slugger piece to a cursory inspection and identifying those which feature characteristic lack of paragraphing and a tenuous grasp on the technicalities of linking source articles. Although I generally evade Walker’s posts by this method, occasionally (and unfortunately) I have persevered and found that their content is as unrewarding as the style in which they are written. Today, for instance, I inflicted upon myself Brian’s thoughts on a mooted Fianna Fail / SDLP merger . In actual fact, he is right to welcome news that the Southern Irish party has dropped this proposal from its agenda; however, the logic by which he arrives at this conclusion is parochial nonsense. To summarise, Walker believes that pursuing realignment with larger parties, whether they are from the rest of the UK or fro
Read more