3rd September 2024
Today marks the publication of the final chapter of the 2024 (41st) British Social Attitudes (BSA) report, the rest of which was published during the General Election campaign. The new chapter analyses the character of national identity and pride, looking both at long-term trends across Britain as a whole, and at similarities and differences between […]
4th May 2023
The coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla in Westminster Abbey on Saturday has unsurprisingly generated a considerable amount of polling on attitudes towards the monarchy in recent week. Much of that has been Britain-wide. However, there has also been some polling of Scotland alone that allows us to examine attitudes north of the […]
28th December 2022
Scotland is currently preparing to enjoy Hogmanay, one of the distinctive highlights of the country’s cultural and social calendar. We thought we would mark the occasion by reprising a piece of ScotCen research unveiled during the year that looked at attitudes towards another distinctive feature of Scottish life and culture – the Gaelic language. The […]
12th September 2022
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 […]
21st October 2021
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 […]
3rd November 2020
The rise in support for independence is now well established in the polls. The trend first became apparent last year, when the level of support for Yes increased from around the 45% mark at which it had appeared to be stuck ever since the 2014 independence referendum to an average of 49%. This figure then […]
2nd December 2019
So far, two Scotland-only polls of vote intentions in the Westminster election on December 12th have been published. One, by Panelbase for Sunday Times Scotland was released in two tranches over the last two weekends. The other, by Ipsos MORI, was published by STV News last Thursday – the first poll from this stable for […]
29th November 2018
One of the key features of the devolution settlement in the UK is that it has become increasingly asymmetric, as both the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly have gradually gained more powers. In contrast, only relatively minor changes have been introduced in England – (i) changing the procedures of the House of Commons so that […]
31st January 2018
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 […]
18th September 2015
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 […]
Explore the What UK Thinks website. Non-partisan information on UK attitudes to the EU before and since the EU Referendum.
