Political parties' use of sentiment in their position on Scottish independence.
it is clear that the contrasting constitutional and ideological positions of the three largest parties in Scottish politics demonstrate some stark and some more nuanced positions. Whilst the distinction between the pro-independence SNP and the pro-union Labour and Conservative parties is unsurprising, ... the SNP’s overarching emphasis on the pre-modern existence of an independent Scottish nation, and the concurrent resonance with ethnosymbolist rhetoric, acted as a central tenet of their attempts to normalise their ‘imaginary’ of a future independent Scottish state and assuage the potential fears of the Scottish electorate regarding this prospect. In contrast, the pro-union parties emphasised the modern history of the Scottish nation and its success as part of the British state in the post-Union period, aligning with modernist analyses of nationalism and thus downplaying or ignoring the pre-Union existence of an independent Scottish state; however, the positions of Labour and the Conservatives demonstrated contrasting and nuanced stances on the nature of the Union, and the benefits imbued in their respective ‘best of both worlds’ portrayals of the Union. This article has thus contributed to the study of contemporary Scottish nationalism through its explicit consideration of each party’s manifesto discourse vis-a-vis the seminal theoretical approaches employed in the academic analysis of nationalism.