For some time now, I’ve been documenting a growing devoscepticism in Scotland, only to be assured, variously, that voters are not sceptical of devolution, that some are but their number isn’t growing, and that some are and their number is growing but it’s all just boomers and so it doesn’t matter anyway.
It ought to trouble devolutionists that one in three Scots would shutter the Scottish parliament tomorrow
Eight years ago, I wrote about a poll showing one in five Scottish voters supported the abolition of the Scottish Parliament. Last year, it was a poll recording satisfaction with devolution at just 50 per cent, with 26 per cent of voters and 49 per cent of Unionist voters expressing disillusionment. I don’t suggest that the tide has turned against this constitutional experiment, merely that the waters are choppier than its ideologues are willing to admit.
Now comes another ominous wave, in the form of a poll conducted by Norstat for the pro-independence website Wings over Scotland. The survey posed the scenario of another referendum, only instead of secession versus the status quo, voters would be asked to choose between independence for Scotland and Scotland remaining in the UK without a devolved parliament (i.e. a return to the status quo ante 1999). More than six in ten (63 per cent) opted for independence, a very comfortable victory and one roughly comparable to the EU referendum results north of the border: Remain 62 per cent, Leave 38 per cent.
The flip side, of course, is the 37 per cent who said they would rather see a return to ‘direct rule’ from Westminster than have Scotland exit the UK to become a separate state. That is, as best as I can tell, the highest level of support for repealing the Scotland Act since the Holyrood parliament opened 26 years ago. A few health warnings. It’s only one poll. It’s a hypothetical proposition. It’s a forced, binary choice and that inevitably distorts the results.
Asking voters to choose between independence, abolition and the current Holyrood set up would almost certainly not have turned up 37 per cent for jacking the whole thing in. Even so, the survey has some impressionistic value. It tells us that the devolution settlement isn’t as settled as it appears. As for this being nothing more than crotchety boomers with nostalgia for the way things were pre-1999, note that while half of over-55s would rather ditch devolution in the given scenario, the figure is still four in ten among 35-to-54 year olds, with men slightly more likely to back abolition than women.
The Scottish Parliament might continue to enjoy clear majority support but it ought to trouble devolutionists that one in three Scots would shutter the damn thing tomorrow. That level of democratic discontentment is not healthy and nor is the refusal of the political class even to acknowledge the problem. It might seem odd that this poll was commissioned by Wings over Scotland but that only speaks to the fact that Unionists are not the only ones souring on devolution. Wings is the strongest Scottish nationalist voice to appear in the media in a generation, and since its main rival to that title is the National, it is also the sanest. Having sided with Alex Salmond against Nicola Sturgeon and biological reality against gender ideology, Wings is no longer in favour within the professional party. But it continues to speak to and for what are sometimes called ‘tattie peelings nationalists’, those so committed to the cause that they’d happily subsist on potato scraps as long as Scotland was independent.
For a quarter-century now, these nationalists have been asked to put their faith in the SNP and its ability to work the devolution settlement to further the movement for full sovereignty. Yet that sovereignty has seldom been so beyond their reach.
Nicola Sturgeon’s Supreme Court gambit confirmed that the only route to a legally binding referendum is via Westminster. Westminster would have to be suicidal to agree to another referendum at present. The SNP has won four Holyrood elections in a row and polls point to a fifth victory on the way, but the political momentum it has gathered has stalled, especially when it comes to constitutional affairs. It is beginning to look like the SNP has settled for being a devolutionist party in the short-to-medium term while hoping the circumstances are ripe for independence at some point in the future. The party tells voters that independence is needed urgently and that the SNP will get around to it at some point, circumstances permitting.
There is nothing wrong with thinking that Scotland is run better from Edinburgh than from Westminster, and that while independence would be ideal partial autonomy is preferable to no autonomy at all. In fact, it’s a thoroughly reasonable point of view – but it’s not nationalism. Nationalism means full sovereignty or it means nothing. If the best the Scottish Parliament offers is the chance to mitigate the worst of Westminster policy, it will be forever plugging leaks in the hull and will ever get to chart its own course. And if that is how it’s to be for the next quarter century and perhaps the one after that, why should Scottish nationalists be any less devosceptical than Scottish Unionists?
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