Wings Over Scotland

Yesterday we noted in passing that independence support now outstrips that of the SNP by more than 20 points, making the party a huge liability as the vehicle for enabling Scots to leave the UK. Put simply, even when voters want independence, they’re not willing to vote SNP to get it.

(Not, of course, that they WOULD get it if they voted SNP – the party having no coherent or credible strategy to achieve it – but more than 40% of would-be Yes voters are no longer prepared to even try giving them the benefit of yet another mandate.)

And since what everyone loves on New Year’s Day is a good wade in some political stats, we thought we’d take a little more detail on that.

In the two years leading up to the referendum, support for the independence and the SNP – logically enough – mirrored each other fairly closely, mostly bumping along between high 30s and mid-40s.

There have been a few significant events since then that break the last 11 years up into some handy sections:

(1) INDYREF TO BREXIT (Oct 2014 – June 2016)

A strong period for both Yes and the SNP, as Scots decided that having voted No, they wanted a distinctly Scottish party to look after their interests and try to secure the desperate promises made by the “Better Together” campaign before the vote.

(2) BREXIT TO COVID (June 2016 – Feb 2020)

Growth for indy as Scotland was dragged out of the EU despite voting 62-38 to stay in, but the SNP’s failure to weaponise the vote for independence, and to instead try to overturn the Brexit vote, saw a significant drop in their support.

(3) COVID TO HOLYROOD 2021 (Mar 2020 – May 2021)

Great times for the SNP, as calm daily broadcasts from Nicola Sturgeon contrasted sharply with the shambles presided over by Boris Johnson south of the border (even though in the end there was almost no difference in Scottish and English casualty rates). They recovered a lot of their lost vote, and indy support hit a sustained majority over a calendar year for the first time ever.

(4/5) REST OF 2021/2022

An unnecessary coalition with the Greens – whose only function was to save Nicola Sturgeon from potential embarrassment, and at the cost of pursuing some deeply unpopular and damaging fringe policies – and the start of Operation Branchform took a chunk out of SNP support and put No back ahead on the constitution.

(6) 2023

After the shameful railroading of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill a few days before Christmas 2022 (see “deeply unpopular and damaging fringe policies”), the Isla Bryson affair detonates under Nicola Sturgeon’s feet.

Hot on its heels, Sturgeon, Peter Murrell and Colin Beattie are arrested by Operation Branchform officers on suspicion of embezzling money raised to fight a second indyref. Sturgeon resigns a few days before her arrest and Humza Yousaf wins a leadership election very narrowly despite the overwhelming backing of the parliamentary party, taking less than half of the first-preference votes.

Indyref support holds firm but the SNP plunge into the mid-30s, their lowest ratings since before Alex Salmond’s historic landslide majority 12 years earlier.

(7) 2024

Yousaf’s administration implodes after he makes a hamfisted botch of sacking the Greens, and John Swinney is elected unopposed when nobody else puts themselves forward to lead the party of government in Scotland. He takes charge in time to see the party almost wiped out in the UK general election, losing all but nine of its 48 MPs. Indy support continues to hold but Swinney can’t arrest the SNP’s slide. Labour briefly take the lead in Scottish polling for almost the first time in nearly 20 years.

(8) 2025

Keir Starmer’s jaw-droppingly inept Labour UK government sees Labour support fall off a cliff, putting the SNP back at the top of the pile in Scotland even though their own support has only barely stabilised, let alone recover. The party is a shambles – membership has fallen by almost 60% since the heady days of 2021, the coffers are empty and almost half their MSPs decline to stand in the 2026 Holyrood election, leaving their seats to be contested by unknown novices and a handful of 2024 Westminster rejects.

With chaos at Westminster and Nigel Farage waiting in the wings, independence support climbs back to just over 50% (albeit in a year when there were far fewer polls than previous ones – just 19 in 2025, compared to 29 in 2024 and 37 in 2023).

Averaged over the full year, the gap between it and those still willing to vote for the SNP is now 19.1 points. And here’s all the above in a single image:

The precise reasons for that now-vast gulf are of course a matter of opinion and speculation. But what’s beyond a doubt is that for whatever reason, the SNP are no longer synonymous with independence for Scotland – still supposedly the party’s primary purpose but to which it now only pays vague lip service in much the same way Labour has been doing for the last 120 years over abolishing the House Of Lords.

The bond between party and goal is broken, and it’s extremely difficult to even begin to imagine what could possibly restore it. The SNP remain the least unpopular of a bundle of Scottish political parties that have never been more despised by the entire electorate, but voting for them now is more a matter of muscle memory and the (diminished) buzz of victory than a demonstration of faith in their ability to achieve anything. Only the paralysingly stupid and the infinitely gullible, their numbers shrinking every year, still actually believe.

The SNP richly deserves the fate of the Irish Parliamentary Party, but we must regretfully relate that as yet there is no sign of it on the horizon.

We hate to start 2026 as gloomily as 2025 ended, readers, and we hope we haven’t made your hangover worse. If you want to hold onto some small semblance of cheer between now and May, it might be an idea to just stay drunk.