Bloody hell, that was some decade eh? In some ways it’s hard to believe it’s been 10 whole years since the Independence Referendum on the 18th of September 2014. In others, it’s absolutely mind-boggling how we managed to fit so much sheer drama and chaos into that time, both domestically and internationally.
On that day there were lots of things I couldn’t see coming, whether politically or personally. The result of the referendum itself. Trump becoming US President (the first time?) in 2016. The COVID pandemic. A significant change in career path. How often men have to trim their nose hair starting in their 30’s (sorry, but it’s true). The fact I’d be running this project and that, not to toot my own horn, but it’d be pretty successful and respected!
Like everyone and their dog, I’ve been spending a lot of time recently reflecting on the referendum, how it changed Scotland, and how it didn’t. Scotland feels like a very different place politically today to where it was two years ago, never mind ten. But although the results of July’s UK General Election may seem like a familiar auld sang, under the surface they reflected a very different reality to what came before the referendum. Our politics changed forever in 2014, and the fundamental constitutional question remains unsettled.
I tried to resist writing a big wall of text long read for the anniversary, but here’s the thing: when you’re running a non-partisan project, you need to speak to both sides. You could put it in two articles, but then some people won’t read one or the other and will complain and it just gets messy. So grab a drink and a wee snack and join me on a run through how public opinion has shifted over the past decade, what each side may have to do to get ahead, and what pitfalls they’ll have to dodge.
Independence Polling Since 2014 Referendum
Notes: These charts track support using a simple 5-poll average, taking the most recent point in that average on the first of each month. As Scottish polling can be infrequent, some months had no polling at all, so not every month is represented in the tracker. This only counts fully comparable Yes/No polling, not alternative framings. It also largely excludes Redfield & Wilton polling, which I felt was rather dubious on the Holyrood front and stopped covering entirely a while back. It does not include any of the anniversary polling, because by its very nature that popped up when I had already written most of this piece due for anniversary publication!
Headline (Including Don't Knows)
Excluding Don't Knows
The story since the referendum has been for a fluctuating but largely still Pro-Union picture. Perhaps unsurprisingly, support for the Union peaked in the latter half of 2017, after the SNP had experienced their big setback in Theresa May’s snap election. That period was the only time where by this measure, support for the Union was ahead of where it had been in 2014.
Despite that general lead, it has been punctuated by the occasional spike in Independence support. Sometimes that could come just from what pollsters were in the average (Ipsos for example are weel-kent for their above-average Independence figures), but at other points there was a clear trigger. The narrow lead in summer 2016 follows the Brexit referendum, whilst the spike in January 2023 came after the Supreme Court decision that Holyrood couldn’t call another vote.
The biggest disruption to the Union’s leading position came following Brexit itself. Although people often associate the 2020 surge in support with COVID, it didn’t start there. Ironically enough in fact, the point at which my tracker (pre-2021) tipped over from a Pro-Union to Pro-Independence lead on average was Valentine’s Day, at which point COVID was a growing global concern but not yet an all-consuming, life altering pandemic. When it did reach that point, with Nicola Sturgeon then fronting the Scottish response, that led to around a year of a lead for Independence.
Where we’ve ended up as we entered this anniversary month is only a little bit away from an even split. As the spirit of the Brexit referendum continues to haunt everyone, No was averaging 52% of decided voters, and Yes 48%. Independence is still a losing prospect, but it’s still generally doing better than it did in 2014. That might seem like something of a surprise when you consider how much party support has changed.
Constitutional vs Party Polling
Notes: This chart uses the List vote as a reference, being the more proportional vote with a wider variety of options available to voters. Only major parties or those with an extremely obvious constitutional position (e.g. “Abolish the Scottish Parliament”) are counted towards the party total in 2021. The 2021 IndyRef figures are from the point in the average just after the election. The 2024 figures for both measures are taking from the relevant averages pages.
If we compare the support for parties across blocs with direct constitutional polling, it becomes clear that a significant shift in party support since 2021 has not been matched by any change in constitutional persuasion. At the 2021 election, support for the most obviously Pro-Independence parties (i.e. not counting micro-parties people were unlikely to know the position of) was a hair over half of the List vote, outstripping support for Independence itself by about 5%. Obviously Pro-Union parties matched their IndyRef polling shares exactly, with the difference made up in the Don’t Knows.
Since then, support for the Pro-Union parties has jumped by around 9%, whilst the Pro-Independence bloc has lost about 10% of its overall support; or more accurately, the SNP has lost more than that, with small bumps on average for the Greens and Alba. Yet constitutional support was (somewhat coincidentally) exactly the same at the start of September as it was at the Holyrood election. Voters may be switching between parties – or thinking about staying at home – but they aren’t necessarily switching between camps.
The clear and simple message from this is that the constitutional debate is far from over. Whilst we may be entering a less intense period, and that may itself shift the dial one way or another, there is still all to play for. Yet there are plenty of challenges for both sides, and I thought it might be worth reflecting on just some of those.
Challenges for the Pro-Independence Camp
As the SNP continue to digest their thorough gubbing at July’s general election, the wider Pro-Independence camp should be thinking about their next steps. The decade since the referendum may have brought great success for the SNP, but with hindsight, was that always going to end up coming at the expense of support for Independence? Supporters won’t thank me for the comparison, but somewhat like Brexit, a lot of the support for Independence relied on the fact it was impossible to fully describe, instead being pure potential with a wide variety of futures on offer.
Tying that so tightly to one party with, theoretically, one vision, in the much less flexible world of day-to-day politics, may not be sustainable in the longer term. Opposition may actually offer opportunities, but will Labour make the necessary mistakes, and can the SNP capitalise on them? In seeking to rekindle some of the spirit of 2014, will the SNP be able to loosen their grip just a bit, and can a new campaign offer an exciting platform for engagement without attracting cranks and conspiracists?
Too much SNP success at the wrong time?
On the 19th of September, you could have been forgiven for assuming the SNP would be completely shattered. That they instead went on to win one of the most astonishing landslides in global democratic history in May 2015 was mind-boggling. After the SNP’s first defeat in over a decade, I find myself reflecting on how their electoral success may have proven oddly counterproductive for Independence.
I know a lot of people – not least a few dozen former MPs – will bristle at that suggestion, but look: what realistic prospect was there of another Independence referendum so soon after the first? Very little. There was no reason for the UK Government to assent to one in such a short space of time. The enthusiasm and energy of the Yes campaign ended up catapulting the SNP to great success, but it also attempted to contain that boundless energy within the very tightly bounded spaces of parliament and government.
Of course that energy was eventually going to peter out in the absence of another vote, that most generally feel it’s reasonable for the UK Government to refuse. Instead of giving Independence a shot in the arm, it left huge numbers of supporters completely disillusioned as vote after vote after vote for the SNP couldn’t really do anything. Barring a rare few exceptions (which I wondered in March 2023 if the SNP might emulate: answer very much no), governing parties grow tired and voters grow tired of them. Dissatisfaction mounts, they lose… and some years down the line, they usually come back.
Had the SNP lost in 2015 and then again in 2016, a solid 9 years of government under it’s belt, it could have entered a period of renewal with a more immediate but perhaps less long-lived loss of Independence energy. Instead of being a big Labour revival over the SNP, 2024 could possibly been the start of a big SNP revival sweeping them back into power in 2026, with their decade out of office granting a stronger mandate for a second referendum come 2030. That’d be 16 years on from the first, which when you consider the voting age here is 16, could be said to be a whole “generation” of young voters.
Of course, we’ll never actually know that for sure, but my point is this: it’s a lot easier to play the insurgent, radical, reforming force from opposition than it is from government. Just ask Keir Starmer…
Opposition Equals Opportunity
We’ve already seen that the SNP clearly scent blood on some of the new UK Government’s decisions, especially around the Two-Child Limit and the Winter Fuel Payment. The challenge for them going forward is to take opportunities like that to draw a distinction with the UK Government and what they believe could be done with Independence, almost a big “we told you so” campaign.
This will carry over if, as I’d currently expect, the SNP are ejected from the Scottish Government in 2026. If things don’t start to improve pretty quickly, then the narratives about the SNP simply being incompetent in government will fall apart too. If a Scottish Labour government also finds itself wrangling with the inherent and definitional limits of devolution, that may very well be felt to prove the point about Independence.
The more of those opportunities that Labour hands the SNP, the more convincing Independence may become. Part of the challenge here though is that isn’t in the SNP’s gift, and Labour should be trying very hard to avoid doing so. Certainly the SNP can try and capitalise on anything that comes up, but there’s also the very real prospect that after their shaky start, things begin to look up under Labour. If so, remaining supporters may struggle to attach the same urgency to Independence as they felt during the years of Conservative UK Government.
If playing a longer game though, a future Conservative (… or Reform UK?) UK Government is nigh-on inevitable, for exactly the same reasons they and the SNP have taken a drubbing recently: Labour will inevitably run out of steam, and voters will want a change. All of that said, there’s another huge risk here, and that’s hitching the Independence wagon exclusively to the SNP.
Loosening the Reins
Although the SNP obviously draw much of the focus of Independence they aren’t the totality of the campaign. The Greens especially have been at Holyrood since day one, and have been a strong and growing presence since the referendum. There are also plenty of people who were drawn to Independence in 2014 beyond just party politics (or in some cases, beyond successful party politics…), particularly from the left of the political spectrum.
That has always been uncomfortable for the party and many of their supporters. The idea there isn’t, actually, an ideologically monolithic Independence campaign went from being something of a strength in 2014 to viewed with suspicion. On occasions where the Greens don’t vote with the SNP, or if some Pro-Independence voice outwith either party raises some criticism, this can be met with fury and a bit of entitlement, as if being on the same side of the constitution requires subordinating everything else to the SNP’s party objectives.
Green-bashing especially has been very much in vogue in the run up to and since the dissolution of the Bute House Agreement. Many in the SNP may instinctively want to close ranks and seize tighter control of any future Independence campaign as a result. At the risk of triggering screams of “bias!” from some quarters, that seems to me like it would be a pretty terrible mistake. Like it or not, the support base for Independence is primarily amongst the young and the left… which also describes the Green and Capital-L Left within Labour voter bases.
Especially given Scotland has a massive left-of-centre majority overall (nearly 80% of votes in July were for parties to the left of the Conservatives), that is obviously where the campaign is going to be won from. You can listen to the siren song of those on the right of the political spectrum – a perfectly legitimate place for people to be – if you want, but most of them have never and will never vote for you nor Independence.
If the SNP are serious about Independence, they need to loosen their grip. A single party will struggle to build a majority, and the more Independence is seen as an SNP pet project, the more vulnerable it is to their ups and downs. Just because support hasn’t yet suffered the way the SNP have doesn’t mean it won’t. If part of the point of Independence from its advocates’ point of view is for Scotland to choose its own future, then you need to be comfortable with there being a range of futures on offer rather than trying to find some impossible lowest common denominator.
Keeping the Lawn Tidy
That does not however necessarily mean any renewed Independence campaign should be some grassroots free-for-all. To be clear, I absolutely do not mean to denigrate grassroots organising. It’s a vital part of our political life, especially outwith parliament. Not everything can or should be run through staid and restrictive institutions. There are or have been fantastic grassroots organisations and campaigns across the country on a range of topics, from tenants rights to climate to railways, and there’s certainly scope for that in any constitutional campaign (for either side).
It needs to be done well however. In 2014, so many people were enthused and involved that almost any content produced within one camp was spread widely throughout, yet that content was of wildly varying quality. Certainly, some of it was very good, but there was also plenty of complete and utter rubbish. This itself was a mix of well intentioned but poorly executed, and embarrassing or even outright counterproductive and unpleasant.
That has continued up to the present day, with a motley collection of groups or pages from 2014 still just about limping on because somebody still has the login details. You’d have to be in complete denial to pretend this wasn’t an issue then or now, and denial doesn’t win campaigns. Nipping that in the bud should be a priority as any new campaign takes shape, even if accepting it can’t be eliminated entirely.
Getting the balance right between what has been a significant degree of SNP control-freakery since 2014 (see the fact the current “Yes” website is owned and run by them) and not lending any credence to dafties who believe MI5 dumped Yes ballots on Duke Street in 2014 could be tough. That’s especially true in an era in which social media has become a complete cesspit – and we thought it was bad a decade ago, what sweet, naïve babes we all were.
Yet if the Independence campaign wants to have any success, that’s what it’ll have to pull off. It needs enough distance from the SNP they don’t take it down with them if they keep tanking; it needs to feel genuinely reflective of and led by people; but it also needs to be slick and well managed; and it definitely needs to avoid indulging in conspiracy theorising or undermining democracy through silly (but unrealistic) schemes like trying to deny Pro-Union party voters their fair representation in parliament.
Challenges for the Pro-Union Camp
Trends in the Independence polling data aside, it’d be easy to think that since it’s the SNP and the Pro-Independence side that’s on the slide at the moment, that everything is rosy for the Pro-Union camp. Nothing could be further from the truth, and indeed that assumption could be extremely dangerous for the Union. As the SNP are finding out, being in government has its costs as well as its benefits. If the new Labour UK Government and its likely 2026 Scottish incarnation don’t deliver much-desired change and improvement in public services pretty sharpish, voters may begin to wonder whether Independence supporters were right all along in diagnosing the UK itself as the problem.
Beyond the need to demonstrate success in day-to-day governance, the Pro-Union side also has to get to grips with an unhelpful tendency to potentially undermine its own future for the sake of short-term political point scoring over the SNP. It must also recognise the need to make a vigorous and positive case for the Union, rather than merely making the case against Independence, and understand why the two are not the same.
Devolution is Limited, and that's okay...
One thing that has become increasingly frustrating and unhelpful is the pretence that the Scottish Government has complete, unfettered control the Scottish economy and public finances. Any suggestion that blame for poor performance might lie even partly with Westminster is angrily dismissed as Nationalist grievance mongering. You can of course understand why the Conservatives might react that way, having just spent 14 years in the Downing Street hot seat. Yet Labour and the Lib Dems, the joint architects of Devolution, have far less justification for so enthusiastically joining in.
Ten years ago, those advocating a No vote in the referendum couldn’t have been clearer how important they felt Scotland’s integration with the rest of the UK was. It was vital for our national wellbeing, they told voters, to have access to one of the world’s largest economies and to the “broad shoulders” of its public finances. The central role of the UK economy and finances was explicitly sold as a benefit of the Union, even though they also all agreed that there was a role for a Scottish Parliament.
The whole point of Devolution is to offer limited self-governance within that Union – and as a result, to ensure that Scotland’s economy and finances are completely intertwined with the wider UK’s. If Devolution wasn’t limited, it would be Independence! It’s therefore just a basic statement of fact that when things have been going badly at UK-level the – ahem – effluent will flow downhill to the Scottish Government too. It shouldn’t be the case that acknowledging this basic reality is seen as capitulating to your constitutional opponents.
.. but pretending otherwise isn't
Apart from anything else, denying this is a pretty short-sighted approach from Labour. Even if the newly elected UK Government didn’t have a majority built on sand, with a relatively weak vote share and already polling lower than than at the election (a Rubicon it took Blair’s government three years to cross), the same political gravity that’s doing the SNP and Conservatives in now will eventually sweep them back out. Yet further down the line that means Scotland could end up in a Wales-style situation with Labour running the devolved administration, and the Conservatives (or another right wing formation?) running the UK-level.
Should that circumstance arise, do Labour really want to have rhetorically backed themselves into the corner of having claimed devolved governance is completely independent of Union governance? Do they seriously think it’s a good idea to have laid the groundwork for them to be held wholly and solely accountable for policies they oppose being forced upon them by another party? Surely not.
Beyond the impacts on Labour as a party, allowing this framing to take such deep roots is bad for Devolution as a concept. We already know that trust in Devolution has been eroded in recent years, as it seems it hasn’t delivered the benefits many hoped for. That lack of trust will only worsen if voters have been deliberately misled into unreasonably high expectations for what is possible under Devolution, all because some parties and politicians thought getting one over their hated opponents mattered more than integrity and good governance.
You may very well guffaw at that last line, and frankly I did too. Integrity often seems to be in vanishingly short supply in our politics these days. Yet if we just accept that as the reality and never push back against it, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We deserve better from our politicians, and we should say so. If you want the Union to last and a healthy political arena, you need to shore up trust in Devolution, and that means being honest about what can and can’t be done with it.
We know what you are AGAINST...
Part of the reason why support for Independence remains stubbornly higher than 2014 is perhaps because the Pro-Union side has overwhelmingly focused on making the case against Independence. Although the 2014 Pro-Union campaign was formally titled “Better Together”, its central vibe was perhaps better summed up by its campaign tagline: “No Thanks”. Independence was presented variously as a dangerous gamble, obvious foolhardiness, or embarrassing insularism.
Perhaps pigeon-holed by the Yes/No framing of the referendum itself, it seemed to be arguing against what the Yes campaign was putting forward rather than setting out its own stall and vision. With the SNP surging to complete dominance in the immediate aftermath of the referendum, their opponents were then trapped fighting a desperate rear guard action to oppose another referendum and Independence itself.
Even so, there have still been plenty of paeans to the uniquely wonderful nature of the UK from the ranks of Pro-Union politicians. Most elected representatives from that side of the aisle do appear to genuinely cherish the UK, to view it as a true family of nations, to value the bonds between the different parts. The end of the Union would not simply be economically and politically devastating for them, but emotionally and personally. Indeed, the economic and political benefits they espouse could even be said to be a bonus, mere icing on the cake of that social union.
That’s an entirely laudable and reasonable position to take, but it’s also a minority one. Most Scots, even those who support the Union, don’t think that way. Beyond those who outright support Independence, there are those who would back it if following their heart, but have followed their head to the Union on a largely transactional basis. Even some of the most hard line anti-Independence voices are exactly that: anti-Independence, or perhaps more accurately anti-SNP, rather than being particularly supportive of the Union on its own merits.
... but what are you FOR?
So far, I don’t think there has been a serious and credible attempt to move beyond making the case against Independence, flipping many of those arguments into a more positive framing, and grafting that appeal to the heart onto it to create a coherent case for the Union. Precious few people appear to be giving serious, deep thought to this topic, with even the breathlessly anticipated Brown Report at the end of 2022 being such an unparalleled damp squib that when someone mentioned it at an event I attended for my day job last week my jaw almost hit the floor.
At the same time I’m often bemused by my Twitter mentions, as people howl with glee when a poll shows any lead for the Union at all, even though all but a few of those show it in a weaker position than in 2014. There’s a real complacency here, and perhaps a sense that the SNP’s time at the top has been some sort of witches’ curse that the nation has now awoken from, permanently breaking the spell. In other cases, it may be less complacency, and more an exasperated desire for the debate to just… go away, so we can all stop talking about it and move on with our lives.
In the longer term, those attitudes could prove fatal for the Union. To preserve it into the future, people need to actively stand up and make the case for it. They need to get others to believe that it isn’t effectively a regrettable reality that Independence isn’t workable but instead a worthwhile and meaningful thing to be part of the UK, even if Independence would be beneficial in some way. They need to make people want to be part of the UK, not resigned to it.
If you aren’t willing to put in the work on that, you’re leaving the field wide open for a renewed and reinvigorated Independence campaign further down the line. If the extent of your ambition is to trundle along with almost half of the population backing Independence permanently, on the basis that hey, it’s at least not more than half, so they can’t win, then one of these days you’re going to wake up to find it suddenly has become a majority.
The delicate dance of Devolution
Making that positive case for the Union on its own merits is going to be complicated by the relative lack of enthusiasm for Devolution as an endpoint. As the BBS-commissioned poll ahead of the recent election found, Independence is by far the most supported individual constitutional arrangement, with fewer than half as many voters backing the current settlement, and an equal number to that group wanting to abolish Holyrood entirely. Barely more than a tenth of people say further Devolution is their preferred arrangement.
At the same time, given that almost everyone that supports Independence will in the interim want more powers, the status quo is likely unsustainable. Yet, given most people who support the Union don’t want more powers, steamrollering through with that is likely to drive voters away from Labour and back into the arms of the Conservatives or the growing Reform UK. Effectively, those who want to strengthen the Union on a permanent basis need to find a way to some attract those completely opposing blocs to further Devolution, and to make them happy to settle with that.
Easier said than done. As I noted in the piece linked above, another part of the problem for Scottish supporters of the Union is the fact that England could not care less about constitutional reform. Constitutional contemplation is a largely Scottish vice, and your average English voter couldn’t give a monkey’s about it. How do you build a sustainable majority for the Union in Scotland without further reform to the UK’s structures, and how do you get that reform without getting England on board? You don’t, so it’s an unenviably mammoth task to force movement on this front.
Where Next?
Well, who knows? Anyone who is speaking with any confidence about what happens next is a charlatan you can safely ignore. If you’ve paid them for the privilege of having them tell you that, you want to see about getting your money back! The last decade has been an absolute whirlwind, and I don’t see any evidence of the world as a whole beginning to chill out (that pun wasn’t intended but, you know, climate change is only getting more pressing…)
There’s plenty of time for politicians of all flavours to completely and utterly bungle things for their side, or indeed for members of various parties to make poor choices in terms of leadership. It remains to be seen whether the SNP’s losses will lead to meaningful introspection and a tolerance for other Pro-Independence views, or desperate self-indulgence and even more of a feeling they need to have complete control. We don’t yet know whether Pro-Union parties can turn an appeal to the head into one to the heart that secures the Union long into the future, or if the new or next UK Government will do everything it can to prove their opponents right.
Beyond waiting to see how each side addresses the challenges set out above, and others that I haven’t touched upon, something new and chaotic could emerge at Scottish, UK, or International level at any time and shake things up in ways we could never have imagined. I suppose the one thing you can be certain of is that much like the constitutional debate itself, Ballot Box Scotland isn’t going anywhere, and you can look forward to many more years of my colourful maps, charts and turns of phrase.
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