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 […]
26th November 2021 Comment Elections, parties & leaders How Scotland should be governed The Scottish independence referendum
The SNP meet (virtually) again this weekend for their second conference in three months. But have the polls changed significantly since the party’s previous conference in September, just before the seventh anniversary of the 2014 independence referendum? There is little sign of any erosion of the party’s dominance of vote intentions. Three polls of vote […]
21st October 2021 Comment Cross border attitudes How England should be governed How Scotland should be governed National identity and cultural issues
Today’s British Social Attitudes report contains two chapters of particular relevance to the subjects covered by this website. The first is a chapter by Chris Deeming of Strathclyde University that compares attitudes in Scotland towards aspects of social justice and inequality with those in England on the one hand and those in the three Nordic […]
7th October 2021 Comment Elections, parties & leaders Expectations of constitutional change How Scotland should be governed The Scottish independence referendum
Last month marked the seventh anniversary of the independence referendum held on 18 September 2014. Earlier in the month there was an online SNP conference – though the party is planning another one at the end of November! – while just before the month began the SNP and the Greens concluded a deal that saw […]
8th September 2021 Comment The Scottish independence referendum
Now that the summer is over, Scottish politics is kicking back into life. Last week witnessed the sealing of the agreement between the SNP and the Greens as a result of which the two Green co-leaders, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, have joined the government. The SNP are now assured of the Greens’ backing on […]
19th May 2021 Comment Elections, parties & leaders How Scotland should be governed
The constitutional question now dominates Scottish politics. And on the answer to that question the country is both evenly divided and sharply polarised. This is the key lesson of the 2021 Scottish parliament election. For once the polls had a good election. The average standing of the parties in the final polls were all nearly […]
6th May 2021 Comment
The campaign is over and voters are now heading to the polling stations. The secrets of the ballot box will be unveiled tomorrow and on Saturday. In the meantime, what do the polls suggest we should anticipate when the results are revealed? Five polls have been published in the last 48 hours. In each instance […]
28th April 2021 Comment
We are now just over a week away from a Scottish Parliament election that could be considered the most important since the advent of devolution in 1999. Should the pro-independence parties be as successful as the polls predict, they have pledged to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence that could have major constitutional implications […]
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