Support for Scottish Independence is Generational and Inexorable

There have been polls showing big leads for Yes before, but this one is different. As Adam Ramsay writes in Novara: “A new poll gives Scottish independence a lead of 11%. This isn’t the first time that the ‘Yes’ side has clocked up a double-digit lead. But it is the first time under a Labour government. And that’s significant.”

As Ramsay points out the very idea of a Labour government has long acted as a dam holding back a reservoir of Scottish voters from supporting independence, the prospect of ‘change’ that was held out by this idea was a powerful break on the thousands of Scots who still believed that Labour could create a progressive Britain.

This idea, the idea of Britain as a reformable progressive force has survived as a form of folklore for many, a lore sustained by the Unionist commentariat of a certain vintage who occupy almost all of the key editorial positions across the main newspapers and magazines such as: The Times (Magnus Linklater, Kenny Farquharson, Gillian Bowditch, Alex Massie); the Scotsman (Brian Wilson, Ewan McColm), The Spectator (Stephen Daisley, Iain Macwhirter, Alan Roden), the New Statesman (Chris Deerin), The Sun (Conor Matchett), The Telegraph (Alan Cochrane), Daily Mail (Andrew Neil); the Daily Record (Paul Hutcheon) and many more. Combined, these effectively manage public opinion in Scotland alongside the “revolving door” between politics, the media and lobbying.

But that carefully nurtured folklore, and that belief in Britain has run out of credibility, despite its overwhelming establishment support.

The polling is all the more incredible because it appears despite the fact that there is a distinct absence of leadership or vision or strategy from the SNP, and the alternative pro-independence parties have been riddled with infighting and uninspiring leadership.

Four factors can be seen to be driving this support for independence in the face of an overwhelmingly hostile media. The first is the death of Liberal England – the idea of an English polity which operates within the understood mainstream of British political ideas has gone, as the Brexit fiasco unfolds, and, with it a torrent of far-right politics has consumed English society. The second is the palpable failure of the Labour government to deliver any of the constitutional reforms that were predicted by the opinion formers, columnists and gatekeepers of the Unionist media, over many years. The idea of “reform of the House of Lords” has become a running joke, a sort of meme about the enduring failure of the British state to engage in meaningful reform. The third is the collapse of Britain and British identity as a coherent thing in itself. The very entity that we are supposed to believe in is itself corroding and withering away. As I wrote back in February British identity has effectively collapsed in Scotland (Gen Z and the Death of Britain). A poll by The Times revealed that:

• Only 41 per cent of young people today were proud to be British and just 15 per cent believed the country was united
• Almost half (48 per cent) of those aged 18 to 27 thought that Britain was a racist country, far more than the proportion who thought it was not
• 50 per cent believed that the UK was stuck in the past
• Only 11 per cent would fight for Britain — and 41 per cent said there were no circumstances at all in which they would take up arms for their country

This idea of Britain as a relic, an heirloom concept is reinforced by the archaic nature of its political structures and the narratives of hyper-nostalgia and Spitfire Nationalism which endure beyond the Brexit era. In fact, what’s telling is that the Brexit vote resolved nothing, UKIP/Reform/Faragism continues to rise and dominate English politics. If there is any Neverendum, it is this.

Further, the 2024 Scottish Census revealed: “The percentage of people who said Scottish was their only national identity increased since the previous census (from 62.4% to 65.5%). The percentage who said they felt Scottish and British decreased (from 18.3% to 8.2%).” This is a generational shift, and it’s not going away anywhere. Britain faces a demographic, generational decline that is now irreversible.

Iron Brew

The fourth driver of change is that the incoming Labour government has failed to live up to any of its, admittedly very low, expectations. The recent scurry to nationalise Scunthorpe steelworks has only highlighted the discrepancy that no such urgency was shown to save the refinery at Grangemouth, or the steelworks at Port Talbot. Scunthorpe is deemed essential to England’s industrial policy (and to Labour’s votes) but Grangemouth is surplus to requirements. Politically, Labour has no investment in saving a key part of Scotland’s industry. Grangemouth is simply expendable, despite embarrassing tv assurances by Anas Sarwar. The Labour government’s economic policies – and Rachel Reeves Spring Statement in particular – were the last straw for party stalwarts such as Neil Findlay and point to the deeper crisis that Scottish Labour find themselves in.

In a scathing letter to Keir Starmer Findlay took no prisoners: “A party that gave assurances to voters that “change” was coming but failed to tell them that the “change” they meant was to impoverish pensioners through cuts to their winter fuel allowance, betray WASPI women by refusing to compensate them for the states’ failure, punish defenceless children by maintaining the horrific two-child cap, abandon the Grangemouth workers and now attack the long term sick and disabled by slashing social security payments (I refuse to call them benefits or welfare). All of this to fund increased spending on the UK war machine – weapons that will be used to kill and injure innocent men women and children in far-off lands”

He added: “At a time when more people are going hungry, fuel bills are soaring and the cost of living is leaving working class families unable to afford the basics, a Labour Government should be going after the billions lost in corporate tax fraud and avoidance, it should be making those companies that pollute our environment pay and it should be introducing a wealth tax on the super rich.

“But instead you choose to punish and stigmatise the weak, poor and the vulnerable.”

The letter concluded: “The reality is that Labour will be lucky to come third at the forthcoming Scottish election, will lose power in Wales for the first time and faces being routed at the next UK election and this will be down to your disastrous tenure as leader.”

These four factors have combined to mean that support for independence is now inexorable. For whole new generations of Scots, the idea of independence is normal. This is enough to overwhelm even the relentless and uniform media hostility, the chumocracy, the tightly controlled lobby class, and incumbent failures.

Aside from all of this, the Unionists have been terrible at defining the Union or articulating any forward-facing outline of what being part of it might mean. Despite the phalanx of scribes and supporters there is no clear message at all, and repeatedly there vision is comically poor, take, for example Labour’s recent graphic of their plans for ‘growth, growth, growth’ below. How do they think this looks if you are in Aberdeen, or Falkirk, or Stornoway?

The Question of Consent

A final factor that provides grist to the indy cause is the tricky question of consent. If this is a voluntary union there needs to be a plausible means by which you can leave.

There is not.

People don’t like being held against their will, and the last two Scottish parliament elections have both given the Scottish government a mandate to hold an independence referendum. This most recent polling suggests a huge pro-independence majority of 29 MSPs after next year’s elections, and the question once again will be asked. This is not a question that has ever been put to a Labour government before. They may well do as the Conservatives have before them, Just Say No. But this is a dangerous game that effectively abandons the pretence that this is a Union of consent.

There are cracks within Scottish Labour about this. Kezia Dugdale and Stephen Noon’s paper Scotland and the Constitution, Agreeing a Way Forward put it:

“…we recognise that the issue of Scotland’s future in or out of the Union was not resolved forever in 2014. If the Union is voluntary, upheld by consent and not just by law, there ought to be a recognised, legal and fair process to test, when appropriate, whether the people who live in Scotland can determine whether they want the country to remain in the Union or to transition to independence.”

“The existing mechanism for triggering a unification referendum in Northern Ireland should be the basis for agreeing a pathway to a future independence referendum in Scotland. This would mean that the key test becomes whether or not it is likely that a majority of people would vote for independence in such a referendum. Meeting this test should place a legal duty on the UK government to agree to a referendum.”

In other words, if Scotland were Northern Ireland, we would today be facing a legal duty to agree a referendum.

There is some absurdity to this position. It basically states that if Scotland was in favour of independence, and highly likely to win a Yes vote, the British state, through the person of the Secretary of State for Scotland, would be legally required to grant one. In other words, it would require him (currently Ian Murray) to commit political suicide.

But this idea also has its merits. It forces those who support the Union to either create a mechanism for withdrawal from it, or admit that it is not a union of consent.