Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

You’re not going to get much cogent analysis from me on less than 6 hours sleep :D

The result is very bad for the SNP because it makes them stink of failure. Especially awkward for Honest John because last time he led the SNP they were not known for winning either. That puts them on the back foot when we get to the election that really matters for the independence campaign, which is Holyrood 2026. By that point, Labour might be showing either a few early triumphs or failure to improve much at all, and that will feed through to the Scottish general election. That said, two ferries are still not in service and the bill is going up. Access to GPs, dentists and operations on the NHS is dreadful (and it makes no odds if it’s slightly less awful than England … people understand that the service is devolved and they know who’s making the decisions that are failing to improve things). We still have no deposit return scheme, highly questionable performance of Scottish schools in international league tables … the list goes on.

Add to all that the fact that an intellectual belief in Scotland as an independent country is no longer coupled to any particular political party* and we might actually have arrived at where Sturgeon and Salmond said we would be if they lost in 2014: independence as a project parked for a generation.

*It’s worth noting that Alba got fewer votes in Scotland than Reform UK yesterday, though I don’t know how many Scottish seats each party ran in so it’s hard to know exactly how irrelevant Salmond still is.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Although Alba are clearly crackpots, I do think it’s been a bad look for the SNP being more keen to cuddle up to the Greens and trans activists. Not convinced it plays well in greater Glasgow and Lanarkshire. An area I’d previously identified as “soft” - not lifelong independence voters in areas previously held Labour since the extension of the franchise to working men (sight exaggeration).

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

The SNP’s problem was that the Yes movement tried to build a broad coalition in 2014, giving each client group a reason to vote for Indy without any overall convincing offer for how it would work without being eye-wateringly expensive and ball-breakingly difficult. They got arts and media luvvies, LGBTQWTAF activists, environmentalists, CND’ers, the hard Left and a whole lot else besides to come into the tent. Nicola’s bright idea was to try to make the SNP a similarly big tent post 2014. That was fatal and always liable to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions eventually. Even if the bulk of the socially progressive cranks are still on-board, the single biggest group, Scunnered of Shettleston, (who believed Yes, and then the SNP, when they were told ‘vote for us and you’ll be better off’) have finally woken up and smelled the Buckfast. Meanwhile the Tartan Tories who were appalled by the SNP’s lurch to the left have by no means all returned to the fold, as seats in and around the SNP’s traditional heartland in the northeast attest.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

If that's true, the average voter has a lot more common sense in Scotland than they do in Wales. The average voter in my area look blank if you explain that the devolved government have been responsible for the past 25 years and not Westminster.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Devolution in Wales was always a bonkers idea. England and Wales have had the same legal system and the same body of primary legislation since the 16th century. It works in Scotland because the union of 1707 deliberately preserved the concept of Scotland as a distinct legal entity within the united parliament of Great Britain. There has always been a political dimension to Scottishness that I never detected when I lived and worked in Wales, where Welshness was an entirely cultural/linguistic thing.

There was a whole raft of things devolved government could immediately take control of in Scotland and which people could immediately understand were now Holyrood’s domain because while they had previously been delivered by the Scottish Office, which was a Westminster government department led by UK government ministers, it was empowered by distinctly Scottish legislation.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

going buy the fact the amount of scotts that deserted the SNP, I believe that the independence vote is dead and buried.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

They did not turn to Alba either.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Thank the Lord the SNP lost almost all their votes, We have had enough,

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Well just have to wait and see what happens in the next local and Scottish government elections in two years. Will people still vote out the SNP, we can only hope.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

While they lost the vast majority of their MPs they got 30% of the vote. The PR system for electing the Scottish Parliament would, if the result was replicated, translate to something like 40 seats. Labour would have something like 46.

Tactical voting won't be the same, that's not to say it can't happen. The move in Glasgow and Lanarkshire would be Labour with the first vote Lib Dem with the second. Very 1999. The first loser, for which I'm sure everyone has a special tiny violin, would probably be the Greens on the independence leaning side.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Welshness from the Cardiff Bay and Plaid's perspective is the sheer joy at every penny from Westminster that you can pour down the drain.

It will be interesting times for Wales, Gething should never have been put in the post when the scandal came to light but the unions are the ones responsible for him being there. I don't think it will be long before Westminster and Welsh Labour cracks start to show.

One thing we can thank Scotland for is the talk of Welsh independence going almost silent.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Might be twice as loud, Plaid Cymru have doubled their MPs.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

I doubt the SNP with nine are going to make much of a difference, so Plaid with four are irrelevant.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

So, not far off two years later, one of these (MV Glen Sannox) is cruising the Firth of Clyde on sea trials and due to enter service next month. CMAL - the Scottish ferry procurement business which is wholly state owned, with Scottish Ministers as its shareholders - has produced an environmental assessment at the request of said ministers, who are desperate for a good headline for when the ship enters service (six years late and four times over budget).

The problem is, CMAL has produced an assessment so optimistic it would make Eric Idle blush. It doesn’t account for known quirks in the new fuel system (such as the fact they periodically belch pure unburned methane into the atmosphere) nor the fact that LNG has to be shipped to the UK from Qatar at significant environmental cost.

These new ferries, Wee Nippy Sturgeon once boasted, were emblems of Scotland’s bold, world-leading green future. They are late and over-budget in part because of the green technology installed in them. Yet now, to the surprise of absolutely nobody outside the fanatical ‘wheesht for Indy’ cult, yet another one of Nicola’s boasts turns out to have no more substance than Brig’o’Doon.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy87e72yg3o