The demographic time bomb that will end Westminster rule in Scotland

We are now at the point which was predicted by a friend of mine in 2014 in the aftermath of that year’s independence referendum. After a careful study of the demographic breakdown of the referendum vote, in which voters belonging to the older generation were far more likely to break for No than younger age cohorts, who were much more inclined to vote Yes, he noted that given normal demographic turnover, as members of the oldest generation pass away and are replaced in the electorate by younger voters, by 2025 there would be a consistent and solid majority in favour of independence in Scotland. We now appear to have arrived at that Yes majority. Majority support for independence is the new normal in Scottish politics.

In the intervening years, other studies have found that the support of younger Scots for independence seems to be baked in. The most rigorous study was carried out by Mark McGeoghegan of Glasgow University and published in April this year. He found that the higher support for independence it is not an artefact of the well known political phenomenon which sees younger people espouse more radical political positions but shift to more conservative or centrist positions as they age. In other words, opponents of independence cannot count on younger people who support Scottish independence moving as they age to support for a Union which in the eleven years since the independence referendum which has increasingly been exposed as fictitious by the actions of successive Westminster governments. McGeoghegan warned that his study should be a “wake-up call” to the political heirs to Better Together. Westminster rule in Scotland is facing a demographic time bomb and Scotland will sooner rather than later arrive at the point where support for independence is, in that much used phrase, the settled will of the people of Scotland, by which time it will be far too late for any Westminster government to do anything to turn things around.

I would argue that we have already passed the point at which the anti-independence parties and the British Government could turn things around and halt or reverse the rising tide of pro-independence sentiment in Scotland. In post-Brexit Britain it is hard to see what any Westminster government could do in order to boost support for what is still being called a Union and reduce support for independence to the politically inconsequential levels of the last decades of the 20th century. Brexit, or more accurately Sasamach – a Gaelic portmanteau of Sasann, England, and amach – out, has changed everything. It has revealed the true nature of the UK as a cosmetic dressing for the reality of Greater England.

With rising support for aggressive English nationalism in England, there is no political appetite in Westminster for the steps that would be needed in order to make a real change to support for independence in Scotland. Those measures would include but not be limited to, substantial new powers for Holyrood, constitutional guarantees that British Governments would cease to interfere with the powers of Holyrood, rejoining the European Single Market and Customs Union and restoring freedom of movement, all of which are deeply unpalatable to the Westminster parties.

For Westminster, the only available political option is the current practice of delay and deny, stonewalling and blocking. This is not a well thought through political strategy, it’s a short term tactic born out of political necessity. Indeed Westminster has no strategy for combating the rise in support for Scottish independence, and given the current political climate in the UK, it’s politically impossible for it to have a long term strategy. It can only stall, delay, deny, and hope that some deus ex machina will appear to magic the entire problem away.

However this stalling tactic can only continue to succeed as long as it’s possible to claim that Scotland is evenly divided on the issue of independence and opinion polling regularly returns polls which report a majority opposed to independence. Time is rapidly running out on Westminster being able to do this. We are now in a place where even polls which employ the increasingly indefensible methodological practice of weighting results by the outcome of an eleven year old independence referendum, which artificially reduces the Yes result and boosts the No responses, is no longer reliably producing polls reporting a majority for No. The only poll which still reliably returns a No majority is the mickey mouse poll carried out for the anti-independence froth-tank Scotland in Union, which uses a non-standard question asking if Scotland should leave the UK or remain in it, a question which is meaningless without a definition of what ‘leave’ actually entails. It does not necessarily mean independence, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are not part of the UK.

In just the past few weeks we have seen evidence of Scotland’s new normal with two polls, both of which reported a majority for Yes, as we have now become accustomed to seeing. Of these the more interesting is last weekend’s Norstat (formerly Panelbase) poll for the Sunday Times. The headline figures for this poll were 50% Yes, 44% No, and 6% don’t know. With Don’t knows removed this gives an independence referendum result of 53% Yes, 47% No.

Crucially, these are the results after the poll was weighted by the outcome of the 2014 referendum, which as has been previously pointed out in this blog, has the effect of artificially undoing all the demographic changes which have taken place in Scotland over the past eleven years. The result is a fiction which reports the level of support for independence in a Scotland which no longer exists. Yet even this fiction cannot produce a No majority, it can only reduce the real underlying Yes majority. The raw and unweighted figures for this poll actually report a Yes result of 61%. As far as I am aware this is the first time ever that the raw data for a standard independence poll has returned a Yes majority in excess of 60%.

However, before we get too excited, the raw data for polls must be weighted in order to ensure that the sample is representative demographically. When this is done with the 2025 demographics of Scotland, the poll gives a result of 54% Yes and 41% No. We are fast approaching the point at which Westminster’s delaying tactic becomes unsustainable. These results are without a high profile independence campaign focused on a referendum date. In that campaign, the No side has no arguments left to make, having shot their bolt in 2014 and their promises been proven to be lies. They have nothing left upon which to base a campaign. Yes support will only increase during a referendum campaign. 60% plus for Yes is now a realistic possibility. The higher that support for independence rises, the more that those who are undecided or unsure will recognise its inevitability and will embrace it, leaving only that 25% or so of the Scottish population which will never accept independence under any circumstances.

Scottish independence is a terrifying prospect for the British establishment. Over the past 19 years, Scotland has sent £19 billion worth of renewable energy to England. Scotland currently produces almost half of the UK’s renewable energy with only 8% of the UK’s population. When you see wind turbines majestically turning on Scottish moors, you’re seeing millions of kettles boiling in England. While our energy is exported, Scots suffer from some of the highest fuel bills in Europe. Scotland already produces a large surplus of energy, but we need independence for it to benefit ordinary Scots.

Support for independence in Scotland will continue to rise and sooner rather than later, Westminster’s tactic of deny and delay will break down. The dam will burst and independence will follow relatively quickly.

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