Wings Over Scotland

It’s probably overdue that we start collecting these together. So here’s Sir John Major on the Andrew Marr show yesterday, explaining why a “once in a lifetime” referendum should in fact be held again because its outcome was determined by something that turned out to be untrue.

Which is, of course, totally different to Scotland being told to vote No in 2014 in order to stay in the European Union, because [REASONS TO FOLLOW AT SOME POINT]

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The entire Scottish media has today leapt like starving dogs at a tin of Chappie on a new “study” by right-wing flag-crazed imperialist nutjobs T***e I*****s, which claims to prove that an independent Scotland would have a BLACK HOLE!!! of infinity squillion pounds and all the crops would wither in the fields and stamps would be £5000 each and we’d be invaded by space monsters and all the usual stuff you’d expect.

(In all seriousness for a moment, it genuinely tries to flog the “fiscal transfer” myth and the “Scotland would have to join the Euro” myth and a bunch of other Better Together Greatest Hits that were utterly debunked old hat half a decade ago, and in order to make its economic case work it basically pretends that Brexit isn’t happening.)

But at the bottom of its article the New Statesman offers to link its readers to the full extent of the author’s professional economic expertise and well-argued case, and in fairness if you click the link they do exactly that.

Credit where due, it’s an uncanny likeness of the gloomy wee fella.

Labour MP Stella Creasy, explaining to Sarah Smith on today’s Sunday Politics why she backs a so-called “People’s Vote” on Brexit because voters should have the right to change their mind about a referendum if circumstances change.

Except, as always, for viewers in Scotland.

The Daily Record’s politics lead story today is a slightly underwhelming poll that shows 41% of Scots believe the Tories are carrying out a power grab against the Scottish Parliament, against 34% who think they aren’t (and 25% who have no idea).

Which seems a good time to round up the last results of our own most recent poll, and some slightly disturbing revelations about the Scottish public’s grasp of devolution.

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Scotia episode 2, because posting anything about the World Cup feels too mean.

So we stumbled, we thought, across a random Twitter idiot this morning.

Alert readers may have spotted a flaw or two in that claim.

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In the light of David Davis’ resignation last night and the continuing shambolic chaos that is UK politics, it seemed a pertinent time for these findings from our latest poll.

Readers probably won’t be too shocked that it’s Scotland Vs The Tories again.

Alert readers may recall that a few weeks ago we revealed how an independent Scotland could reduce its budget deficit by billions of pounds a year – by renting out the Faslane naval base to the rest of the UK to keep their nuclear weapons in.

Voters in England, we learned, were more than happy to pay Scotland £5bn annually – and perhaps even more – for a Trident submarine park during the decades that it would take to build a replacement base south of the border.

Of course, that plan is only any good if the people of Scotland would accept it too.

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From time to time in our Panelbase polls we like to test Scotland’s opinion of its media, since that’s the main focus of our website, and our newest poll was one such time. It found that Scotland’s preferred broadcaster for political coverage was… Channel 4.

The station scored a net +23 rating with respondents, higher than STV (+19), with BBC Scotland trailing in last but still on +16 overall.

The BBC was the only one which had a notable difference in perception between Yes and No voters. C4 got +25 from Nos and a very similar +21 from Yessers, STV was closer still at +20 vs +19, but the BBC had a sizeable gap: just +6 from independence supporters (which is still startlingly high), but a thumping +23 from Unionists.

All broadcasters in Scotland are required by Ofcom rules to be neutral and balanced. We suppose that two out of three more or less managing it isn’t bad.

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So this is an interesting one. The UK government currently finds itself in an appalling mess over the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with Ireland, due to the inconvenient fact of a small part of Ireland being in the UK, and has no idea what to do about it.

The closest thing Westminster has to a plan – and it has to be said that it’s not VERY close to a plan – is the so-called “backstop”, which isn’t a backstop at all and merely kicks everything down the road a couple of years, and which the EU has already said is a non-starter.

The fallback on the backstop, as announced last December, is “regulatory alignment” on the island of Ireland, which would effectively mean Northern Ireland staying in the EU and a border coming into existence in the Irish Sea (or to be more geographically accurate, the North Channel).

This would be, um, bitterly opposed by the DUP, on whom Theresa May’s government notionally depends, but given the absolute trainwreck of Labour’s position on Brexit it’s not at all clear that the DUP’s opposition would be enough to scupper any vote, so it could happen anyway, opening a simply massive can of worms.

That’s about the shortest rendition of the situation we can manage. But of course, in reality it’s much more complicated than that.

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We noticed a recurring theme in our latest Panelbase poll. In recent years Scottish politics has of course been defined mainly by the constitution, with all three major UK parties united in opposition to the SNP more or less reflexively. But if you strip out questions about the constitution, voters have largely reverted to the previous norm of a broadly centre-left consensus against the Conservatives.

For years now Lib Dem voters have shown up in polling as essentially Tories Lite, not because individual people’s opinions had changed but because most of the party’s traditional left-leaning voter base had abandoned it in disgust after the 2010 coalition which saw Lib Dem support plunge from 23% to 8% in a single Parliamentary term.

But now – although Lib Dem support has barely increased – things are changing.

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