Scottish independence, latest poll suggests rising support January 21, 2022
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Thanks to JH for this:
With calls for Prime Minister Boris Johnson to resign amid the scandal ongoing, Savanta ComRes put support for Scotland leaving the Union up two points since October.
The new poll says 46% of Scots would back independence at a future indyref, with the same percentage indicating support for staying in the Union. Some 8% were undecided.
With those don’t knows excluded, the two campaigns sit on 50/50.
In December, polling by another firm, Ipsos MORI, found support for independence was at 55%. However, more general trends have put the support for the No and Yes campaigns closer to the 50/50 split over the last year.
A majority of Savanta ComRes respondents also believed that the Downing Street gatherings have damaged the Union, with 54% agreeing with this statement. Around a third said the scandal hasn’t really hurt the Union, or that it had not hurt it at all.
Still, that parity is intriguing. Clearly any referendum will be a close fought thing.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Speaking of referenda, I know that some people on social media have been wondering over the past few years as to whether the Tories might import US-style dirty tricks to ‘fix’ a referendum in NI, by excluding people exercising their rights to Irish nationality under the GFA and such.
In this regard, interesting to see that the awful Priti Patel’s Borders Bill allows the UK Govt to now strip British subjects who are entitled to multiple passports of their British one, and without prior notice.
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“strip British subjects who are entitled to multiple passports of their British one”
There’d be a lot of people in the north very upset if they went ahead with that.
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There’d be a lot of people in the north very upset if they went ahead with that.
If it was just done to Themmuns, I doubt it.
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The law will probably be amended to “strip Catholic British subjects who are entitled to multiple passports of their British one”
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Speaking as one of those (entitled to Irish and shortly NZ) that seems very unlikely.
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Westminster Govt will not agree to another Scottish Referendum. First because Conservatives and Labour are both pro-Union.
Second, Salmond only managed to extract IndyRef1 because with independence support then running about 23-25%, Westminster figured there was no way he could win. But it was a close run thing!After a long campaign!
With Independence support at 46-50% before any campaign even starts, now will never be the time for a Westminster sanctioned Indyref2.
Sturgeon’s Gold Standard for Independence is receding over the horizon to a “once in a very, very, long generation”
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I think you are right re the Tories at the moment. But you can never predict precise conjunctures or the interplay of different events.
Regardless of slight movements either way, you’ve got two solid blocks of around 45% with a swing group of around 10% and it’s been like that for ages. The interesting thing is that only a major crisis will break that deadlock and only a major crisis will open the chances of a referendum being held.
Since we live in such unstable times, one thing you can garuanteed of is instability will happen. That’s why we need some sort of coherent radical left in Scotland, else when the opportunity arises we will have no impact on the outcome.
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+1
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Pity the RIC has been mainly silent since IndyRef1 and finally disbanded about a year ago. it really did make an impact during the campaign
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I see an ultimate inevitability about all of this. Eventually, some day, it’s bound to happen that Westminster is hung with either Labour or Tories about, say, 30 seats short of a majority and the SNP sitting happily on about 50 seats.
Like FF and the PDs back in the day, numbers trump politics and if a deal can be done it will be done. SNP support for government in return for Indyref 2 about two years through a parliamentary term.
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Yeah, that sounds very plausible. Of course how long will it take?
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Completely unpredictable. Some day the numbers will align and the only workable outcome will be an SNP + (one of the big two). Could be Labour but I suspect it’s more likely to be Tories. Despite all their rhetoric about their Precious Union, when it comes to exercising power, they’ll happily jettison Scotland for a majority in England.
I also think we will see revised constitutional arrangements between North and South here that fall someway short of a UI but go well beyond the GFA. And I think it’ll happen before Scotland goes. (Indyref 2 isn’t a surefire winner by any means)
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I also think we will see revised constitutional arrangements between North and South here that fall someway short of a UI but go well beyond the GFA.
I am not antagonistic, but I don’t think we’ll see anything of the sort. Unionism’s entire raison d’etre is to preserve that community as top dog, and we’ve seen a lot of unravelling and even outright refusal to let the cross-Border stuff from the GFA function.
It’ll be resisted tooth and nail up until a UI vote – as laid out under the GFA – and then people will wonder what all the fuss was about.
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I think they’d happily jettison the North but not Scotland. The UK as a state can survive the loss of NI, but the loss of Scotland would signal end game for that state. The British ruling class will happily do a Catalonia or worse to hold on to Scotland. Doesn’t mean they would succeed but I think we’re in for a rougher ride than parliamentary numbers game.
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