5th October 2018
Doubtless the question that delegates gathering at the SNP conference in Glasgow this weekend will have uppermost in their minds is whether Nicola Sturgeon will fire the starting gun for a second independence referendum. When in June of last year she announced that she was putting on hold the Scottish Parliament’s request to Westminster that […]
24th May 2018
One of the most widely discussed and debated issues in the Scottish independence referendum campaign was whether leaving the UK would be good or bad for Scotland’s economy. Those on the Yes side argued that public policy could be tailored more effectively to Scotland’s distinctive economic needs, while those advocating a No vote claimed that […]
9th January 2018
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
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 […]
21st September 2017
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
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, […]
30th March 2017
Scotland voted very differently from the rest of Britain in the EU referendum. It backed the view of the SNP and the Scottish Government that the UK should remain in the EU by no less than 62% to 38%, whereas the UK as a whole voted by 52% to 48% in favour of leaving. In […]
17th March 2017
One indication of the dominance of the SNP in the Scottish political firmament these days is that, in what currently is otherwise a climate of relatively infrequent political polling north of the border, no less than four polls have been published during the run-up to the nationalists’ spring conference in Aberdeen this weekend. Two of […]
15th March 2017
The focus of much opinion polling is on the short-term. Has support for this party or that party gone up or down since last month? Which leader’s popularity is increasing, whose is on the wane? Is there any evidence of swing towards or away from independence since the last time the question was asked? As […]
29th January 2017
The last fortnight has seemingly seen Nicola Sturgeon’s options narrow significantly. The Prime Minister has set out a vision of Brexit that is the very opposite of the Scottish Government’s stated preference to stay in the single market and continue to accept freedom of movement. The Supreme Court has ruled that the UK government is […]
Explore the What UK Thinks website. Non-partisan information on UK attitudes to the EU before and since the EU Referendum.
