A survey of 200 people who changed from "no" to "yes" showed multiple reasons. The main ones were:
- The effect of Brexit
- UK government incompetence
- Better Together lied
- Had come to have more belief in Scotland
- Felt NHS was not safe as part of the Union
People have switched to Yes largely as they feel let down, disappointed in, or lied to by the UK and its government. As opposed to a “Towards Motivation” which would include answers such as ‘I think we can build a fairer, greener more successful nation through independence’. We can also see that trend in the 40% stating a negative opinion of the UK Government, most naming Boris Johnson himself but only 5% mentioning the positive leadership of Nicola Sturgeon. Feelings about the UK Government not performing must by their nature be comparative but the dominance of the ‘away from’ motivation is clear.
This is actually very good news for the Yes movement in strategic terms. In indyref1 the Yes side had very little negativity to play with, the UK didn’t seem broken to most people, David Cameron wasn’t seen as untrustworthy or completely incompetent and certainly not as a “clown” a word used by some of the switchers to describe the current PM.
So, the UK seemed to still be OK for those that couldn’t see either where the UK was headed or were frightened of or resistant to change. Now after Brexit and the health crises the balance of risk has switched to staying part of the UK.
As a result, but also partly as the Yes campaign started at around 27% in the polls in 2001, the Yes campaign was relentlessly positive. The problem was that the White Paper was dry, boring, and uninspiring – there was no truly positive vision for people to buy into. It offered a slightly left of centre version of what we had as part of the UK. It was aimed as much at destroying the Labour vote in Scotland if Yes lost, as it was winning the referendum. A clever secondary goal but starting at around 50% Yes means indyref2 is all about winning and to do that we need to keep the approximate current 5% increase in the Yes vote (polling had it as high as a 13% in Jan 2021) and add another 5-10% by promoting an inclusive, fairer, safer more resilient, greener, happier, and successful Scotland as the key message in indyref2. In other words, we need to make the wellbeing of our nation the shared goal of our newly independent nation. Nothing less than an inspiring vision of how to improve Scotland’s wellbeing as a nation will do the job.