Quote:
Originally Posted by 1andrew1
I'm pretty sure this has been properly thought through. Will it win the SNP more votes by reminding voters that Scotland voted to remain in the EU and left due to votes taken outside Scotland? Probably yes but it certainly won't lose any. So decision taken.
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You have to factor in the nationalist assumption that deep down, all right-thinking people actually agree with them. Scottish ‘independence’ is basically a virtuous position in and of itself, and supporting arguments are secondary. “Independence within Europe” has been SNP policy since the very early 90s (not at all coincidentally, from the same time that a significant chunk of the Tory party became arch Eurosceptic) despite it being intellectually incoherent when viewed alongside the arguments they offer against absolutely anything being decided in Westminster.
Nevertheless, for various complex historical, cultural, and frankly religious reasons Scotland has a sense of itself that is European in a way that England does not. I don’t think that sense mandates the strong attachment the SNP has to the EU, which is entirely political and unquestionable because to do so automatically aligns one with Tories. But there is a convenient, if intellectually lazy, link between Scotland’s historic sense of European-ness and its present political attachment to the EU.
All of which is to say that no, I don’t think any strategising has been done around the flag-flying. The SNP is all about identity politics and flag-waving gestures like this fit the bill admirably. It will have been very easy for Sturgeon to convince herself, without any real effort, that flying the EU flag would be a popular thing to do.