This year is more than just an election year. It also marks two major constitutional anniversaries in Scotland and, if trends continue, it may counterintuitively signify the start of a new, more patient phase of the journey towards Scotland becoming independent. That’s not a line you’ll hear coming from the SNP or the yes movement, but it is reflective of the considered thinking taking place away from the political frontline ahead of what everyone knows will be a difficult election.
In May it will be 25 years since the first Scottish parliament elections. In September it will be 10 years from the first referendum on Scotland’s independence. These events are part of a political continuum that has been decades, if not centuries, in the making and that has not yet reached its end. Yet current analysis, particularly outside Scotland, mistakenly suggests that the movement toward Scotland’s independence will somehow be over if one election is lost. Nothing could be less true. If we step back from short-term electoral calculations and take a long view of constitutional change in Scotland, it seems to be headed in only one direction: independence.
The first reality check is the level of independence support. In the 19 years I spent working for SNP politicians, from being a researcher when the party was still in opposition to chief of staff for the first minister, support has increased from around 30% in 2005 to an average of about 50% now.
The belief that Scotland should be independent is a sticky one. Continued high levels of support are not just a consequence of Brexit or Boris Johnson, but a mark of a longer-term evolution in the underlying thinking of the Scottish population. Importantly, that is not unique to those who voted 10 years ago. Two-thirds of under-25s, all of whom were too young to vote in 2014, support independence.
Equally, the enthusiastic young voters of 2014 have not become significantly more pro-union or conservative as they have entered their 30s. For them and many of the under-50s who consistently produce a polling majority in favour of independence, two ideas have been normalised: first, that Scotland should be independent; and second, that patience is a virtue.
For new young voters, the belief that Scotland should be independent is now the prevailing norm. The idea strikes a chord with a generation growing up in a political context that gives them more confidence in Scotland and less in the UK. A change of UK government may temper support for a while, but unlike previous generations of Scottish voters, this generation will always know there is an alternative.
Meanwhile, the electorate in Scotland, particularly those young voters, may be conditioned for disappointment in all areas of policy made by UK governments of all persuasions, but they are canny. Older Scottish voters waited a long time for a Scottish parliament. Younger ones know that as much as they want independence, it is not an immediate prospect. They are, after all, a generation used to not getting what they want. They know that an SNP win in this election does not mean there will be a referendum tomorrow, and it is knowing that independence isn’t on the cards right now that frees them up to consider shifting their vote to other parties where they think there may be a short-term gain. It is an electoral conundrum for the SNP: it would be a bold and brave SNP leader who fought to retain those voters by accepting that this journey is going to take a little while longer, yet the public know that to be true.
The 2014 referendum and indeed the Brexit referendum created a hope among avid independence campaigners that such opportunities for change would come often and easily. I speak from experience in saying that they don’t, and nor do most people expect them to. But if pro-independence voters do put their constitutional preferences temporarily to the side, such an electoral shift could offer new foundations for achieving independence.
The older pro-independence voters thinking of switching to Labour will have voted for Labour before the seismic shifts of 2014 and 2015. Starmer will no doubt rejoice if he wins them back, but he will not be winning back voters with the same mindset as those who left in 2015. Many of those people will return with a latent support for independence, or at least an openness to independence, now part of their political ideology.
The more Labour is reliant on latent pro-independence supporters for success, the harder it becomes for it to ignore the next step in Scotland’s journey. It will certainly take far more than an energy company headquartered in Aberdeen to placate or inspire pro-independence young Scots if Labour continues to tack towards Conservative voters in the south. The anti-independence rhetoric will need to be reined in, and if the status quo doesn’t deliver for Scots, Labour will have to answer for it – to voters who for the first time under a Labour government know there could be a better alternative.
The SNP can’t say this, and I don’t presume to speak for it. I sincerely hope the party is able to send a formidable set of MPs to Westminster to stop Labour taking Scotland for granted as it has done in the past. But if it doesn’t, the biggest mistake that those who favour the union could make would be to think it’s all over.
If Labour cannot satisfy these voters, and cannot win without them, then we could be heading towards the next step in Scotland’s constitutional journey.
Liz Lloyd is a specialist partner at Flint Global, focused on politics, devolution, Scotland and the transition to net zero. She served as chief of staff and strategic adviser to Nicola Sturgeon from 2015 to 2023
