Polls saying the nationalist cause is no priority among voters are misleading. The aspiration to once again be a sovereign European state has only been strengthened by devolution
...devolution, the return of a Scottish parliament and the 2014 independence referendum have laid out a new constitutional landscape. The “No” side narrowly won the 2014 referendum. But the “Yes” campaign, though it lost, turned out to have blown a transforming wind through Scotland’s grassroots; excited thousands gathered to hope, argue and demand (“Scotland Yes! But what sort of Scotland?”). One outcome was to lift independence from dream status to a practical, serious option for Scotland’s future.
Why wish for it, anyway? There’s an enduring pull and an enduring push. The pull is that only with full powers to make law, negotiate and borrow can Scotland do the heavy lifting needed to tackle the legacies of intractable ill-health and a century of staggering underinvestment in all kinds of infrastructure. Independence within the EU could nerve a Scottish state to block the haemorrhage of economic control to London or to US hedge funds. That government might even dare to dismantle the toppling stacks of flabby, often pointless quangos and “authorities” which now suffocate effective decision-making in Scotland.
And the push? It’s the steady veering away of the UK – Tory or Labour – from standards valued in Scotland. Above all, it’s the integrity of the public sector, whether that is health, care, water or transport, which matters to this “statist” nation. It’s the gathering damage of Brexit, punishing a country that voted against it and which desperately needs European immigration to help its labour shortage and ageing demography. There’s a democratic problem, too. Ironically, by introducing democracy into the antique 1707 union, devolution showed why it no longer works. “Partnership” in a democratised union where 85% of the citizens belong to one member, England, can only be a fiction.