31st October 2022 Comment
Perceptions of government & the Union Policy issues
The latest Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) report on attitudes to government is published today. Given the ongoing coronavirus restrictions in place when the 2021/22 survey was conducted (October 2021 to March 2022), it could not be conducted as previously by face-to-face interviews in participants’ homes. Instead all interviews were conducted over the telephone. This difference […]
17th October 2022 Comment
Economic issues
Today Nicola Sturgeon is releasing the latest and most important instalment in the Scottish Government’s series of white papers intended to make the case for independence. The latest publication will address the economy and currency. This is an important development in the independence debate. Attitudes towards the economy played a key role in voters’ decisions […]
10th October 2022 Comment
Elections, parties & leaders How Scotland should be governed
Nicola Sturgeon speaks to her party’s annual conference in Aberdeen today facing a rather different political landscape than the one in place a few weeks ago. Four polls conducted in the run up to the conference indicate that the sharp swing from Conservative to Labour recorded in the British polls following the ‘fiscal event’ of […]
22nd September 2022 Comment
How Scotland should be governed
Nicola Sturgeon has a fall-back plan. In her statement in June on how she proposed to set about trying to hold a second independence referendum in the face of opposition from Westminster, she indicated that, if she were unable to hold a legal referendum in October 2023, she would contest the next UK general election […]
12th September 2022 Comment
How Scotland should be governed National identity and cultural issues
Queen Elizabeth sadly passed away last Thursday at Balmoral. Because she died in Scotland, her body will be taken today to rest in St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, before being transported in London to lie in state at Westminster Hall, after which her funeral will take place next Monday. This choreography is a reminder that the […]
2nd May 2022 Comment
Elections, parties & leaders
Just twelve months after last year’s Holyrood election, Scotland goes to the polls again this week. This time the ballot is for all 1,226 seats on Scotland’s 32 councils. The electoral system, however, is very different. The local elections will be held using the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system of proportional representation that was first […]
18th March 2022 Comment
Elections, parties & leaders
It has not been an easy winter for the Scottish Conservatives, whose conference takes place in Aberdeen today and tomorrow. The spring might not prove any easier either. The party reacted nervously to the ‘partygate’ row that engulfed the Prime Minister before and after Christmas. Most immediately it led to a call from its leader, […]
11th March 2022 Comment
Elections, parties & leaders
Being a junior partner in government can be a painful and difficult experience. Just ask the Liberal Democrats, who still have to recover from the fallout from their decision in 2010 to enter into a coalition with the Conservatives at Westminster. Yet, so far at least, the decision of the Scottish Greens, who meet in […]
4th March 2022 Comment
Elections, parties & leaders How Scotland should be governed
One of the signs of spring north of the border is the advent of the Scottish party conference season. The pandemic, of course, disrupted all of that, but today sees the opening of the first of three in-person Scottish party conferences, the first such clutch of gatherings since lockdown restrictions were initially introduced almost exactly […]
14th February 2022 Comment
Expectations of constitutional change
Voters’ evaluations of the economic consequences of independence played a central role in the choice they made in the 2014 independence referendum. In their final poll conducted before polling day, YouGov found that no less than 98% of those who said the country would be worse off if Scotland became independent were backing No, while […]
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