17th January 2016 Comment
Policy issues The Scottish independence referendum
One of the points of contention between the two sides of the EU referendum debate is whether a vote to leave the UK would potentially constitute a threat to the future of the Union. The former Conservative leader, Lord Hague, was accused by those in the Leave camp of peddling a scare story when over […]
15th January 2016 Comment
Elections, parties & leaders How Scotland should be governed
The Daily Record chose to headline its new Scottish poll from Survation this morning – the first of 2016, and the first of what we are told will be a regular series between now and May – as indicating that the SNP were heading for an even larger majority at Holyrood than the nationalists won […]
18th December 2015 Comment
Elections, parties & leaders
This time five years ago we were wondering whether the SNP could possibly win a second Holyrood term. Three polls published in the autumn of 2010 (and there were only three) all put Labour ahead of the SNP – by between three and ten points. Far from anticipating the possibility of a SNP overall majority, […]
31st October 2015 Comment
Elections, parties & leaders Policy issues
Scottish Labour are gathered this weekend in Perth in the hope of kick-starting a revival. The party certainly badly needs to do so. The hole in which it finds itself now is as every bit as deep as the one into which it fell in May when it was all but wiped out in the […]
16th October 2015 Comment
Elections, parties & leaders Policy issues The Scottish independence referendum
One of the key lessons of Scottish politics in the last 12 months is that referendums and parliamentary elections can present a political movement that is capable of garnering around half the vote with very different challenges. In a referendum that movement may well fail to win, as happened to Yes in September last year. […]
18th September 2015 Comment
Elections, parties & leaders National identity and cultural issues The Scottish independence referendum
Today is the day to take stock of where Scotland stands exactly a year on from an independence referendum that the UK government at least hoped would be ‘decisive’. It hardly looks that way now. For Scotland appears to be divided straight down the middle on the constitutional question on which it voted exactly a […]
14th September 2015 Comment
Elections, parties & leaders Policy issues The Scottish independence referendum
As referendum first anniversary fever grows, today sees the publication of yet another poll on how Scots now view the constitutional question. Like the two polls published over the weekend, today’s poll, conducted by Survation for the Daily Mail, asked people how they actually voted in the referendum and the data have been weighted so […]
13th September 2015 Comment
Expectations of constitutional change The Scottish independence referendum
Regular readers will be aware that recent polls from Ipsos MORI and TNS BMRB have suggested that there has been an increase in support for independence during the course of the summer – and that contrary to all previous polling since March a majority would now vote Yes in a second referendum. However, neither of […]
9th September 2015 Comment
Elections, parties & leaders The Scottish independence referendum
Another poll released in anticipation of the first anniversary of the independence referendum, and another poll that suggests that the result would be different if the ballot were to be held now. Last week Ipsos MORI released a poll showing that once Don’t Knows are excluded, 55% now say they would now vote Yes to […]
4th September 2015 Comment
Cross border attitudes How England should be governed
Last year’s independence referendum might have settled – for the time being at least – the question of whether Scotland should be an independent country. But it left a legacy of two further debates and controversies. The first, instigated by Gordon Brown’s ‘vow’ in the final days of the referendum campaign, was about how much […]