The Gulf War
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 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 recovered. 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.
SNP? Not for me. (From a YES voter). Happy New Year.
Great analysis, Rev.
“The bond between party and goal is broken” is truly a reflection of the association between the SNP and Scotland’s Cause.
I’ve looked at the relationship between SNP and YES in Norstat (formerly Panelbase) opinion polls over the periods 2020-22, on the one hand, and 2023-25, on the other. I found the following:
2020-22: Strong and POSITIVE correlation (coefficient = +0.7)
2023-25: Weak and NEGATIVE correlation (coefficient= -0.2)
Furthermore, looking at the relationship between British Labour and YES support:
2020-22: Weak and NEGATIVE correlation (coefficient = -0.4)
2023-25: Strong and NEGATIVE correlation (coefficient= -0.8)
Conclusion:
YES sentiment is now negatively linked to the unpopular and inept UK Government/British Labour party rather than any (perceived) positive actions of Scottish Government/SNP in pursuit of Independence (as there haven’t been any).
Excellent analysis as always.
A wee typographical lapse in No. 8 perhaps…..
“even though their own support has only barely stabilised, let alone recover.”
[Yes, I, know…. I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN ]
Happy New Year to you and yours by the way!
Happy New Year tae all.
Surely even the most ardent SNP supporter must recognise that Swinney has tae go?
A guid New Year tae ane an aa / Bliadhna Mhath Ùr / Happy New Year
Indy for Scotland!
SNP Out!
How big does that margin need to be before it attracts someone to fill that vacuum? And who would it be? Or, more accurately, how can Reform be enticed to step in, to ensure their Make England Great Again project becomes are roaring success?
You don’t need The Union, but you do need some way of cooperating to everyone’s benefit – it’s a small, crowded island after all. Two independent nations, working together, along with Eire might be an attractive prospect, particularly if it stabilised Europe’s west coast (keeping the American’s happy) and provided a model on cooperation to offer European countries after the now near-certain implosion of the EU.
Suddenly, 2026 looks like the year of change.
The SNP has shown to the voters that they aren’t any good in government, they have no ideas and out source everything to privates companies here is where the SNP and its moronic leadership has failed and why Alex Salmond was a success. hence the leadership now portraying Salmond as a bully, when he’s wasn’t. Your leader isn’t a bully if he needs to tell you how to do your fucking job, its you who is the failure. Scotland doesn’t have a leader anymore we just have a caretaker in charge of a parliament full of tossers, taking orders from someone else down south.
The electorate do not like to be lied to. For those of us who are old enough to remember, this is why the SNP rose to power and the reason the voters fell out with the labour party. The SNP has taken over from the Labour party and have now become the labour party in all but name. Crying wolf in every single election on Independence or remaining in the EU, sooner or later this will of course turn the voters away from voting for the SNP and the poling suggest this is whats happened.
The SNP has nothing to offer any more. It doesn’t represent Scotland in any shape or form, it doesn’t even stand up for Scotland its people or its industry, our culture, or our history and it most certainly doesn’t stand up for woman or Scottish justice system.
For me I didn’t start voting for the SNP after the referendum I’ve always been SNP. I didn’t want to leave and to be honest I never did, the SNP left me hence the NUSNP. Now I all I want is for the SNP to be destroyed and this is exactly what the leader and membership wants as well.
The only thing I believe voters see in the SNP, is that they are Scottish and nothing more. The party doesn’t even want Scotland to exist any more and are happy for the English border to head all the way up to the Shetland Islands, this is what we who are still Scots need to fight against.
I don’t believe that the SNP will win a huge majority this year this is only thing me and Swinney agree on.
Happy New Year to you all from a pile of rocks off the West coast of the colony also known as Jockistan. My resolution for 2026 is to do anything I can to get rid of our MSP Ms Minto of the SNP. I was still a member when she was selected to stand and my last act before leaving was to try and get another candidate selected and no it was not Rhiannon Spear if any of you remember her. Sadly out here if you put a SNP rosette on a chimp it will likely get elected. During the hustings for the council elections held on zoom one of the SNP candidates kept sipping from a large mug and as the evening wore on his speech become slurred and he fell asleep and still got elected. At least this time round we have an ISP candidate standing under the Liberate banner so no need to spoil a ballot.
I remember back in about 1994 there was a similar gulf between support for independence (one poll had it at 50%) and the SNP in the mid-20s. I asked Alex Salmond about it but he didn’t seem to be concerned. He had various sociological/psychological explanations which were probably about right.
It’s a very different matter now though.
A happy new year to everyone,
The bond between party and goal is broken..
Or
The bond between politician and people is broken,
They all are hoping to reach the bibical Great Reset date of the Globalist in 2030.
When nations merge to become under one umbrella of one government,
Being aware of that bigger plan of union and further union might be considered during voting period.
Bottom rung local elections, next rung of ladder elections until there are no elections held at all like in England.
So amusing that unionists and globalist alike are trying to persuade Scotland where to place there X for the pretence of Scottish democracy,
While in England they are cancelling Elections, so millions cannot have democracy, it appears that the combination of unionist and globalist government can proxy vote for you.
But here they are using blindfold democracy to not telling the truth and the whole truth.
They decide the outcome results of an election regardless of whom put the X’s in the box or whare.
Managed voting.or prevent them voting. This is modern Britain,
The SNP do not represent Scotland any more than Nigal Farage does.
Both just turn their jackets inside out depending where the are Standing,
days of old they were called turncoats I think,
Or wolf in Sheeps’s clothing,
Nigel Farage is the NuSNP replacement for Scotland, as they morph into conservatives, and a union blend party,
However it will still be a union party.
Continental Drift will separate Scotland fae England, before the SNP does.
If your going to vote, do the Cross in box yourself, demand the votes are counted where they are and not transported, demand the results are made public, record it.
That way the votes can no longer be rigged, if you do not trust the politicians, why be so trusting to supply the results for you after they took those votes away from your sight like a fake majician.
Scotland is far to trusting.