8th March 2019
Not so long ago, what happened in Scotland appeared immaterial to the outcome of a UK general election. The country was full of safe Labour seats that seemed unlikely to change hands, while the Conservatives appeared unable to do much more than secure the odd crumb. The prospects for a change in the tenancy of […]
22nd February 2019
In truth, until the events of this week at Westminster, the opening salvo of this spring’s Scottish party conferences – the Liberal Democrat gathering this weekend in Hamilton – looked as though it would be a rather uninteresting affair. However, the formation of the new Independent Group of MPs has given the occasion some unexpected […]
8th October 2018
Almost inevitably, the SNP conference has occasioned something of a flurry of polling. After nearly three months without any polls of voting intentions in an election or any future independence referendum, yesterday two polls commissioned by newspapers were published, one by Panebase for Sunday Times Scotland, and one by Survation for the Sunday Post In […]
7th June 2018
When the outcome of the EU referendum was announced, it looked at first glance as though it represented a golden opportunity for the nationalist movement. The divergence between the majority Remain vote in Scotland and the majority Leave vote across the UK as a whole provided what must have seemed to nationalists like a perfect […]
6th June 2018
The SNP seems set to start its conference in Aberdeen on Friday in a somewhat uncertain mood. Now just over two years into its third term in office, the party has to decide what to do with the three years that it has left before it has to face the voters again. Should it try […]
19th April 2018
Back in 1999, the creation of the Scottish Parliament seemed like a heaven-sent opportunity for the Scottish Liberal Democrats. Given that the new body was to be elected using proportional representation (the result of successful bargaining with Labour in the Scottish Constitutional Convention), it was unlikely that any single party would ever win an overall […]
8th March 2018
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
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 […]
9th October 2017
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
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 […]
Explore the What UK Thinks website. Non-partisan information on UK attitudes to the EU before and since the EU Referendum.
