Immediately after the Supreme Court verdict, I predicted that it would be unionist politicians who would try to resurrect the prospect of an independence referendum. That seems paradoxical, but in winning the court case they’ve killed something that was actually far more valuable to them than it was to us. They needed the bogeyman of a referendum to motivate their base through fear, and they also needed it because it gave them power – the power to say “no”, or “not yet”, or “we’ll set the conditions”. If the independence movement’s attention now shifts to a scheduled election, there’s nothing unionists can do to stop the vote taking place – all they can do is try to prevent us winning the vote, which understandably they find a much scarier task. Of course they can still refuse to recognise the outcome of any democratic vote (as Keir Starmer has threatened to do), but in that case they’re tacitly admitting that the UK is indeed a prison and Scotland has no democratic means of choosing to leave, which as we’ve seen in recent days is likely to thoroughly rile up the Scottish electorate.
As the dust starts to settle on the Supreme Court verdict, it’s incredibly important that Nationalist and Unionist alike understand there remains a lawful, constitutional and democratic path to independence for those who wish to pursue it 1/
— Adam Tomkins (@ProfTomkins) November 24, 2022
Yesterday’s ruling did nothing to change that. Ever since Margaret Thatcher was PM the UK state has been perfectly clear that it will not seek to obstruct the settled will of the Scottish people. Opinion polling will tell us what the people want 3/
— Adam Tomkins (@ProfTomkins) November 24, 2022
“Of course it’s a voluntary union! You can leave any time you want.”
“OK, so how do we leave?”
“We interpret your desires for you. It’s a job for experts, and the unique expertise required is only really found in Westminster.”
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 26, 2022
Adam, you have said some pretty ludicrous things in your time, but your attempt to turn YouGov into part of the British constitution takes the biscuit. You are *literally* saying that the result of polls of 1000 people carry more weight than an election in which millions voted.
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 24, 2022
Is there a single country in the world that has gone down the road you’re suggesting? And can you imagine the implications? There would have to be state regulation of polling methods – you can’t have the constitution decided by the whim of Peter Kellner or Martin Boon or whoever.
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 24, 2022
Interesting division opening up within the unionist camp. “This is still a voluntary union and the 2014 referendum is the proof of that” is not *really* consistent with “why the f*** did we even allow the Jocks to vote in 2014?”https://t.co/AWwGV9UQnU
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 25, 2022
Ipsos POLL SCANDAL DEEPENS: Page 39 tables show that (Base: All, weighted results, excluding those who didn’t vote) 479/(1065-157) = 52.8% of respondents voted YES in 2014. The actual percentage was 44.7%, a difference of 8.1 percentage points. @benatipsos @KellyIpsosUK 1/13 pic.twitter.com/p0ikR53QTe
— The Majority (@themajorityscot) December 8, 2022
The numbers are the numbers now as recalled by a representative sample – not the results from the last election. We aren’t weighting to past vote because of false memory problems (ie Labour had won in 1992 in all polls post 1993)
— Ben Page (@benatipsos) December 8, 2022
That response from Ipsos is incredibly important, by the way, because it explains why the real problem may not be Ipsos overestimating the Yes vote – it may be other pollsters overestimating the No vote due to the increasingly dubious practice of relying on respondents to accurately recall and report how they voted more than eight years ago.
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