Last week’s election was a resounding victory for the Scottish National Party, gifting Nicola Sturgeon 48 seats out of 59 on 45 per cent of the vote. The first of these, according to the SNP, amounts to a mandate for a second referendum on Scottish independence. The second indicates that they almost certainly wouldn’t win it. Scottish politics is highly polarised between advocates and opponents of independence, to the extent that the separatist vote virtually is the SNP vote, and vice versa. The last opinion poll on independence, conducted by YouGov shortly before the election, put support at 44 per cent, a smidgen away from the result of the 2014 referendum itself.

Source: The Times December 20, 2019 00:00 UTC