Have you noticed a change in the air since the referendum? It seems to me that people are pretty sour about the outcome, it's the second time in a row that Scotland has voted almost unanimously against the Tories and still ended up with a Tory government.
I'm seeing even staunch anti-independence voters start to reconsider their positions.
The rUK has swung decisively to the right (e.g. UKIP 12%), the Conservatives have a majority on their own without the moderating influence of the Lib Dems - which is fine as we are a democracy but the people of Scotland clearly have wildly different views (SNP 50%, UKIP 1.6%).
Then of course there is the prospect of BoJo as PM - which I think would pretty much guarantee a rapid dissolution of the UK.
For those who don't know what we're talking about: this map of the recent UK election results should illustrate the huge divide between Scotland and England:
https://flipchartfairytales.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/scre...
They are two very different cultures.
Being disenfranchised with Westminster is far from a Scottish phenomenon: the SNP's success one can easily argue comes in significant part from the fact they've managed to position themselves as a viable winner in a large number of constituencies, not least through leading the Scottish Government since 2007, as a large proportion of voters end up voting for one of the two largest parties in their constituency given a single-winner system. Convincing the electorate a vote for your minor party isn't a wasted vote is a major part of the challenge of making a small party a real challenge in a large number of constituencies.
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03297/2010-vs-20...
>They are two very different cultures. //
You might be able to show that but not with these election results - is Edinburgh a different culture to the rest of Scotland (well it is, but not any more than Glasgow is different to Aberdeen), is Orkney & Shetland a different culture (same thing applies)? Bradford and Bridlington [2 conurbations in the region of Yorkshire in the UK] are probably more culturally diverse than most random pairs of Scottish and rUK places.
Really? Having lived in Scotland, Wales and England this doesn't seem to be true.
The swing to the right I think is in part due to apparent immigration pressures and in part [much more speculatively] a selfish response to poverty (someone has to be poor make sure it's someone else and not me).
Scotland doesn't have the same immigration issues as other parts of the UK as far as I can tell in this [1] map you can see the areas with major cities are clearly home to more migrants - Glasgow, Edinburgh and I'm guessing that's Dundee and Perth and Aberdeen [which might be skewed by oil workers?]. Same in England and Wales except that some areas have seen a huge increase in migrant populations [2] indeed in 2012 the migrant population in Scotland was ~7% vs ~13% in the rest of the UK [3].
[Note I'm trusting the stats here, please provide corrections if they seem wrong.]
Personally I don't think that Scotland will react more gracefully with similar immigration patterns. Indeed if Scotland secedes from the UK and is successful in gaining entry to the EU then they will be outside the Schengen Area [4, it's been agreed that all new applicants will be accepted as outside the Schengen Area]. That would mean Scotland would likely get a big increase in immigrants too and I suspect the response would be similar.
>Then of course there is the prospect of BoJo as PM - which I think would pretty much guarantee a rapid dissolution of the UK. //
So there's not much difference between BoJo and SNP then? /s
- - -
[1] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ampp3d/immigration-map-britain-...
[2] http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/data-and-resources/...
[3] http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/global-in...
So why have 50% of Scots voted for a political party with notably different policies to UK-wide parties? Presumably if we thought the same way as everyone in the UL (excluding NI) we'd have picked Labour or Conservative like the good old days?
So, you can't use "voted SNP" to prove your point. SNP policies seem largely coterminous with the underlying politics of a mix of other parties? I'd be interested in a refutal of that if you have one.
Indeed there was a joke around the time of the election that many in England would have voted for Sturgeon if they could have; it seemed grounded in some reality, as most jokes are.
Suppose that most people voted selfishly this time around, whatever would net them the most cash at the end of the day. SNP worked for Scotland, Tory worked for England. The whole of the UK could just be equally selfish and not care a hoot about anything other than the cash in their pocket. This perhaps isn't the case but I think it helps to demonstrate that different voting doesn't necessarily bely a cultural schism.
Which clearly differ from other parts of the country.
Was it just a loss of face or pride thing?
There's also a weird strain of Protestant Unionism that is stuck in the 18th century but seems just below the surface (and on the surface when the Orange Order are marching)
Nonetheless I think in general, as a UK citizen myself, that the British (ie UK citizens, the nomenclature gets convoluted!) consider the Union to be central to UK strength as a nation in terms of society and business and much else (education, sport, language, identity, history, position on the world stage, defence, ...).
Dissent grows though - once the Pandora's Box of the West Lothian Question had been opened and it started to sink in, and we saw that many in Scotland wanted to ditch the rest of the UK and make a run with what they perceived to be vital resources, that I feel rather unsettled people. Why shouldn't the rUK have voted at the same time whether to kick Scotland out of the Union too - that would have only been fair.
Her Majesties government certainly made efforts to retain Scotland in the Union, that could well be key.
I can see that there is an impact in defence - Trident is based here and the Scots have always been over-represented in the UK military. The rest just sound like potentially damaged pride to me...
"consider the Union to be central to UK strength as a nation"
Really? Scotland is a small and relatively unimportant part of the UK. What possible direct impact could our gaining independence have on the rUK apart from damaged pride in that whoever is PM at the time would get made fun of at the next G8 summit for losing part of his/her country?
I'm British and have lived part of my life in Scotland, I don't consider it another country, it's part of our country and my relatives who live there are the same nationality as me.
It's a visceral, and probably illogical, thing to a certain extent - like feeling attached more to family members than to other people.
Also Scotland ain't that small, it's population is that of Yorkshire, it's geographic size is pretty big as a proportion of the UK (~1/3 I think).