8th March 2018 Comment Elections, parties & leaders
When Scottish Labour gathered for its spring conference in Perth twelve months ago, the party seemed to be heading for disaster. Its standing in polls of vote intentions for Scottish Parliament elections averaged just 16%, while its reading on vote intentions for a Westminster election were, at 14%, even slightly worse. The party was seemingly […]
1st March 2018 Comment Elections, parties & leaders Policy issues
Scottish Conservatives are due to meet in Aberdeen this weekend against the backdrop of sustained electoral success after having spent nearly twenty years in the doldrums. As a result, the party is now firmly ensconced as Scotland’s principal opposition party. However, it now faces the challenge of whether it can build on that progress, and […]
31st January 2018 Comment National identity and cultural issues
Scotland voted very differently from the rest of Britain in the EU referendum: 62% of Scottish voters supported Remain compared with 48% across the UK as a whole. The result north of the border chimed with the avowedly pro-European stance adopted by the Scottish government throughout the referendum campaign, and suggested that the Scottish electorate […]
9th January 2018 Comment How Scotland should be governed
Brexit has added some new twists to the debate about Scotland’s constitutional status. The most obvious of these is that it led the Scottish Parliament in March 2017 to request the authority needed to hold another independence referendum, only for the First Minister to put the idea back on hold in June after losing 21 […]
9th October 2017 Comment Elections, parties & leaders How Scotland should be governed
So just how much difficulty are the SNP in as they gather in Glasgow for their autumn conference? Are they, as some reporting seems to suggest, fatally wounded in the wake of the setback that the party suffered in the UK general election in June? Or does the party simply need to bide its time […]
1st October 2017 Comment Elections, parties & leaders
The revival of the Conservative party in Scotland during the last two years has been regarded by many as remarkable. This, perhaps, is hardly surprising. After all, in the nine UK and Scottish Parliamentary elections held between 1997 and 2015, the party had consistently flatlined at around 16-17% – and indeed in 2011 and 2015 […]
21st September 2017 Comment Elections, parties & leaders How Scotland should be governed Perceptions of government & the Union The Scottish independence referendum
How should a poll be reported when it finds that around half agree with something while half do not? Does it mean the glass is half full or half empty? Does the answer, perhaps, simply depend on your political perspective? Last week marked the twentieth anniversary of the 1997 devolution referendum in which voters in […]
6th June 2017 Comment Elections, parties & leaders How Scotland should be governed
North of the border the election was meant to be a battle between a nationalist movement that was on the defensive and a Conservative party that was seeking to cement its newly acquired position as the principal voice of unionism in Scotland. Labour, meanwhile, was to be consigned to the margins of Scottish politics. However, […]
22nd May 2017 Comment Elections, parties & leaders The Scottish independence referendum
A poll from YouGov for The Times, whose results first started to emerge on Friday and the final instalment of which is published today, is the first Scottish poll to have been conducted since the week the UK general election was announced. It suggests that, so far at least, the sound and fury of the […]
1st May 2017 Comment Elections, parties & leaders Policy issues The Scottish independence referendum
There have been various bits and pieces of polling published during the first full week of campaigning since Theresa May announced a snap general election to take place on June 8. Most important was a new poll from YouGov for The Times which provided us with another reading of Westminster vote intentions. in Scotland. Most […]
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