According to Politics Home:
A majority of Scots are now in favour of independence and want a second referendum by 2021, according to a new poll.
The new study conducted by Lord Ashcroft Polls for PoliticsHome's sister title Holyrood puts support for independence at 46 per cent for and 43 per cent against.
Once those who said they didn't know how they would vote, or said they would not vote, are removed, support for independence rises to 52 per cent for, 48 per cent against.
What's surprising to me is that the margin is so low.
As the Guardian (and others) reported yesterday:
The Tory candidate for one of the party's target parliamentary seats has sought to distance himself from a column he wrote accusing Scotland of “fleecing” English taxpayers and claiming that Scotland remaining in the UK would be a “catastrophe” for England.
Ryan Henson was selected last year as the Conservative candidate for Bedford and Kempston. In a 2014 article for Conservative Home, Henson wrote that, except for its contribution to Britain's armed forces, “Scotland's single biggest offering to the union over the past 50 years has been to provide the Labour party with parliamentary lobby fodder.
Much more of the same type of diatribe followed. And no one should be shocked. This is what people in Tory constituencies in the south of England think of Scotland. I know. I live in one.
Ask them more as to why they think this and you discover Henson is a moderate. Many think Scots should be grateful and wonder why they are allowed to sit in parliament at all.
Henson knew his audience. Like Trump he's playing the cards in his hand, distasteful as it is. There is no interest in Scotland in much of England and no desire to know about it, let alone ever visit.
I'd suggest that if I was north of the order I'd be thinking it's time to start a new country.
What baffles me is why some do not agree in the face of all the evidence that now exists that the United Kingdom is anything but what it claims to be on its tin, and is heading fast towards national collapse.
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I traveled from Ireland to the UK twice during Cameron’s last election campaign and saw billboards everywhere on both trips showing Alex Salmond picking an Englishman’s wallet from his pocket.
The message was clear: the Scots are scroungers who should not treated equally and should be denied influence. The SNP should put the same billboards up in Scotland when the next referendum happens.
The lack of scruple in using such contemptuous and divisive messaging should be astonishing in a supposedly united Kingdom. It is not because the kingdom is united only to suit the purposes of the dominant partner. We won’t see any Conservative billboards showing wallets with £100m each being shoved into the pockets of DUP MP’s next time around.
That the Scots haven’t told the Tories where to get off long ago is hard to fathom. They are not equals and will be betrayed, mocked, stolen from and used every bit as casually as the DUP were when Tories, including the current PM, broke their word and voted for May’s EU withdrawal agreement. It has always been Tory party and England first, and lip service to the “precious union”.
Compare Ireland, ahead not just of Scotland but of every UK nation on just about every metric that matters to civil society: income, equality, social mobility, education, longevity etc. Principally, it’s a result of PR and the relative absence of a parasitic rentier capitalist establishment.
93% of the Irish favour EU membership. Wild horses, or hot tongs as Ken Clarke would say, wouldn’t persuade them to rejoin the UK. 46 years into a union with England that the people didn’t vote for the country was ruined, millions of its people dead or scattered abroad. 46 into the EU and Ireland has never been so well off or so peaceful.
It’s inconceivable that Scotland would not be at least as successful as Ireland if only it would summon the resolve and the confidence.
Scotland have rejected the Tories for over sixty years. 1955 was the last time they had a majority.
The point was Scotland not being independent, or at a minimum being an actually equal not a subordinate partner, not Scottish affection for Tories. Ireland’s been a Tory-free zone for a lot longer.
I dunno, maybe 300 years of brainwashing? I’m still dismayed that I see so many people out and about clutching the Daily Fail et al under their arms. Propaganda is so rife at every turn. Don’t get me started on telly and radio. We badly need our own broadcasting service but guess wot? we are not allowed one. The positive about the poll is that we are not officially in the run up to a second indyref. I gather last time, before the ‘push’ , we started from ‘yes’ = 23% in 2012. The final vote was 45%. So to start from a base of 46% now is indeed encouraging.
the lack of a clear majority in the EU referendum and this Scottish Independence poll suggests opinions generally are at a teetering point,
the logic that created the English Union with Scotland and Northern Ireland is the same logic that later created the Union between the UK and the EU,
if the UK breaks from the EU then it seems equally logical that Scotland should then retake their independence and Ireland should re-unify,
I never thought leaving the EU was a particularily sensible idea but if it comes to pass then I have to reluctantly admit and accept the logic of the breaking up of the UK,
this is my teeter point, it may well be many peoples teeter point,
I only have 1/46,000,000th of a say in this matter, it’s really in the hands of Westminster now,
Westminster is currently (just about) in the hands of the Tories,
the Tories seem to want to leave the EU yet keep the UK intact, not so much teetering… it seems more like schizophrenia to me?
excessive teetering leads to toppling, whichever way we eventually topple I will just have to accept and cope with,
the Tories don’t seem to be very good at accepting or coping with anything,
they seem doomed to be deeply unhappy whatever the outcome, but hey.. I’m sure they’ll find some other stupid project to vent their unhappiness upon.
“Compare Ireland, ahead not just of Scotland but of every UK nation on just about every metric that matters to civil society: income…”
Income stats are distorted by the effect of transactions shoved through the country by multi-nationals for tax purposes – a subject about which you as much about as anyone.
Consumption figures are more relevant and are rather different:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/File:T1_Volume_indices_per_capita,_2013-2016_(EU-28%3D100).png
This issue has been subject to new research of late
The supposed economic supremacy of the south east just looks like a statistical trick
Do you have a link please?
Sorry – for what?
As so often Ireland’s success is quibbled with on the grounds of distortions caused by a handful of profit-shifting US MNCs
http://economic-incentives.blogspot.com/2018/06/who-shifts-profits-to-ireland.html
The fact remains that its a fairer, more equal, better educated society with higher social mobility. And its productivity is streets ahead
http://www.progressivepulse.org/scotland/westminster-most-similar-country-ireland-a-new-eu-regional-productivity-analysis
Consumption is a poor measure of overall wellbeing. In any case, Ireland has moved and is continuing to move up this tableb
UN Human Development Index
Ireland 4th
UK 16th
There is no reason at all that Scotland can’t do at least as well. The UK’s current governance arrangements and electoral system are not fit for purpose (I recommend this podcast discussion of it https://cakewatch.fireside.fm/8).
Interesting. So you would support a country’s claim for independence based upon a 52%/48% voter majority ?
Not necessarily
But I would support the call for a referendum
Do you think 52/48 is enough?
52/48 is a majority, plain and simple..
if the scottish independence vote produced the same result in favour of leaving but “was deemed” by the British Government to not be decisive enough then how would you and the pro independence camp feel?
I don’t think you need a majority vote on whether to hold a referendum. But would I respect the result, and the implementation, based upon a 52% /48% split in favour ?
Of course I would. I believe in democracy, a concept many people seem to struggle with.
I’d also support a referendum for the rest of the UK on whether they wished Scotland to remain a part of the union. I suspect that might have an interesting outcome !
That depends on how the referendum result was obtained. If, as in the case of the 2016 Eu referendum, the result was a narrow margin of vistory obtained through lies and the breaking of electoral law then the result shouldn’t be respected.
There’s also the factor to consider whether such major changes to a country’s constitutional position should be decided by a simple majority, or something larger such as as 60:40 result, or 67:33 result – a ‘supermajority’ .
As for your last paragraph, it seems your one of those English voters that Richard notes who actively hold the Scots in contempt.
I do not think it is understood in rUK just how much the “Union” (and the Empire) was a Scottish project; nor have Scots ever been excessively troubled by the poor understanding of the Union in rUK, or the poor understanding of the significance of Scotland to the Union; nor is it appreciated in England that Scotland is socio-politically very, very (small ‘c’) conservative. Scotland is now changing, but only slowly; the Union is destroying itself and that brings with it a calculating recalibration of Scottish perceptions of where their interests reside.
There are of course both Scottish and British nationalists in Scotland, but it requires a little reflection on the history of Scotland to see that Scottish ‘nationalism’ has played a smaller role in Scotland than British nationalism has played in England. The Scots arrived in the Union as an expression of religious and dynastic necessity, combined with economic-imperial opportunity. It remained committed to the Union because it embraced the project of Empire.
The Scots expect multiple affinities, but the glue that held the Union together has softened, lost its resilience or disintegrated altogether. The Scots didn’t sign up for sharing sovereignty with something quite so solipsistic and trite as Brexit Britain. Now there is only calculation left, and the anachronistic British nationalism of Anglocentric-nostalgia in a Singapore-on-the-Channel is not very likely to cut the calculation mustard.
Indeed
Nor with those in Northern Ireland
And I am rather inclined to think Wales too, although there the problem is harder to resolve, not least because of infrastructure issues
I suppose Scotland did have an interest in Union to give it membership of and wider access to the British Empire,
but now the British Empire is no more, Great Britain is only the British Isles now, where is the motivation to remain?
shared EU membership? well that’s disappearing over the hill now,
if England Brexit’s then it’s entirely reasonable to expect Scotland to break it’s Union with England and form a seperate union with Europe,
you can hardly blame them, I’d probably tease them for being ‘frit’ if they didn’t!
didn’t they always maintain good relations with France before the Union anyway?
There is an absurdly risible argument, much revered by apologists for our fragrantly decomposing Union, that Scotland’s trade with rUK will suffer extremely badly if an independent Scotland joined the EU.
The silent (never, ever admitted) premiss of that argument is that rUK will selectively choose to punish Scotland (through high tarriffs etc.,) for leaving the Union.The sound reason of rUK policy for such a self-harming, malign action remains notably absent. There is and was no sound precedent for such a penalty, in Ireland or anywhere else; it is frankly a crude exercise in threatening, jingoistic propaganda of the worst kind (nothing more than a malicious trope from the over-used and now pantomime armoury of ‘project fear’); it would also cost rUK significantly in lost trade (a gratuitous self-inflicted injury for precisely nothing), and will, in short never see the light of day.
Indeed, in the case of a ‘no-deal’ Brexit and the famous lunacy of rUK operating WTO rules; if rUK offers free trade to all the world, it can offer no less to Scotland; that is how the WTO works. In short, all this hyperbolic rhetoric of intimidation of Scotland is low-grade, vacuous Brexit twaddle; the kind of guff on which Boris Johnson built his over-ripe reputation as the leading political snake-oil salesman in Britain; able, however to charm a small group of gerontic Conservatives out of their Zimmer frames with a disarming, tousle-haystack shake, and Stan Laurel smile. You just know it is all going to end badly.
I strongly suspect rUK will be begging for trade with Scotland. The reason is that Scotland will have a lot more renewable energy than rUK will, and they’ll be buying it by the wireload sometime very soon.
Thanks for that John, a very interesting post. As for “The Scots didn’t sign up for sharing sovereignty with something quite so solipsistic and trite as Brexit Britain”, neither do a hell of a lot of English people, or EU citizens who live and work here.
The fallout from this is going to continue for a very long time. Scottish independence, and a united Ireland won’t be the end of it I suspect. Especially when the more intelligent Leave voters realise how much they’ve been conned.
Interestingly Ashcroft’s poll didn’t include either EU citizens or the 16-17 year olds, both groups that will have the opportunity at the ballot box…
Mr Rideout,
“I think an issue in Scotland is selective breeding.” What follows this statement is a development of the idea of selective breeding – followed by: “We don’t encourage (or even allow) that in humans, but it can still happen.” You then go on to propose population movement either South or elsewhere, by clear implication, as furthering a similar outcome (and you throw in some quantification). I suggest you re-read what you wrote. Sorry, but the defence fails. I am happy to leave the reader to judge our interpretations.
At the same time you appear to continue to defend the plausibility of the concept of eugenics. I suggest you actually read through the absurdities of Fisher, Galton et. al., more closely; and the utter, confused absurdity of their aspirations. Such models are always built on a critical area of ignorance falling out of partial and incomplete knowledge. Artificial selection was an important analogy in the development of the idea of Natural Selection, but they are not the same thing. Selection is not easily controllable. We do not understand the dynmaics sufficiently. Artificial selection worked well to produce certain simple, replicable traits; of size or other relatively easily identifiable and controllable factors (by breeders intuitively, then through the aplication of Mendelism). Even within these constraints there are complex, unintended, poorly understood and often adverse consequences from the varieties produced. In humans, and for the traits of human (so-called) ‘advancement’ the complexity of hidden factors and unknown consequences is not well understood, and beyond adequate management; even if it was morally acceptable.
At the same time, your frankly simple-minded conclusion about the qualities of the different self-determining gatherings of populations in different parts of the UK also overplays the idea that this is a natural congregation of brilliance, rather than the powerful effect of principally (not exclusively) social and cultural networks and the desire or need (probably unconscious) to conform to a cultural norm; not necessarily a signal of special talent, but perhaps – in your terms, not mine – bland selected conformity. Indeed the conformity may be precisely what we do not need, and creates unintended consequences; neither recorded nor positive. Prevailing cultural norms and institutions rarely do more than ensure the replication of the existing norm; the begetter of stasis, not variety. Or even worse. Some of our institutions have an appalling history. I think this better fits the case you describe and which you appear to approve. Do you really think Brexit Britain represents a demonstrable triumph of natural or artificial selection?
Genius is different, difficult and rarely begets genius. I have not noticed that genius is typically either recognised, rewarded or consistently replicated in Britain (because it is too difficult). At the same time in the real world, and not the selective fantasy world you describe, bullies typically succeed and genius is discarded. The ‘buccaneer’ (pirate) admired in our entrepreneurial society may cut corners or cheat. Obscure brilliance is plagiarised by the talentless. It is quite likely the plagiarist or pirate will ultimately succeed. I do not claim everyone is a cheat, or mis-sells. Richard writes endlessly about the elaborate hidden tax-havens, the failure of auditing. We had a catastrophic financial crash in 2007; an endless problem of “mis-selling” (would someone please tell me what the word actually means?). So what is so special about this ‘selected’ (or rather self-selecting) population of doubtful adequacy?
You are misrepresenting what I said. I have said nothing about intelligence, genius, etc. What I am saying is that risk takers, and leaving your country of birth to head off to somewhere else is about the most risky thing most people would ever do, have been selectively taken out of the Scottish population for centuries. That has nothing to do with Eugenics or anything else that you refer to. It will simply tend to mean that those that remain become gradually more risk averse.
There is definitely something at work in Scotland that is making people (a significant proportion of them) incredibly reluctant to give up on the comfort blanket of the UK. That didn’t happen in the same way in Canada, NZ, Australia, South Africa, etc.
Dear Tim,
“I think an issue in Scotland is selective breeding.” Your words, followed by a proposition about selective breeding; quite clear and unambiguous – applied to man. Incidentally, Eugenics was not principally about selective, controlled breeding by the state; Fisher had a large family because he thought he was self-selectively breeding for his elite gene-pool. Like many Darwinists he was paradoxically confused about the actual effectiveness of natural selection, because he was deeply worried the elite were being outbred by inferior varieties. I am sure now you did not intend it, but you wrote that comment like an old-fashioned eugenicist. Your human capital/emigration point hangs on the selectivity proposition, and it is misplaced; Scotland’s universities produce a disproportionately large pool of graduates, and the demographics follow technological and economic adaptation; factors we should be able to manage and direct (a matter of political economy).
If you were simply talking about being ‘risk averse’ you could have discussed this as a matter of different approaches to risk. Selective breeding as an explanation is both unnecessary and irrelevant. In fact what you see as risk aversion in the Scots, has a long, long history in political Scotland. It is not a function of the Scottish diaspora; it pre-dates it. It is not about risk at all, but commitment. The Scottish late-medieval philospher John Mair first proposed Union in the early 16th century. It was a profoundly controversial issue, muddied by religious and dynastic complexities (including Jacobitism) until the 18th century, but I do not think you understand quite how committed to the Union Scotland became, or the force Scotland has been in making it work and prosper. James Craig’s 1767 New Town in Edinburgh, as originally planned (not executed only because the furthest corners provided unusable or unsaleable feus); would have provided central streets from the centre of George Street, viewed from a drone (in plan): as the perfect representation, in permanent cobbled grandeur, of a Union Jack. At the same time the Scottish Enlightenment articulated Scotland, conceptually as ‘North Britain’. The literati attempted to excise the name of Scotland. That did not work. The Scots retained the substance of a culture, but decisively discarded the institutions of politics; the Parliament. Hume and Robertson calculatedly demolished Scottish history. This was an extraordinary intellectual and political exercise, probably unmatched in Euope for its intended comprehensiveness; the Scots completely realigned their own history and the politics of Scotland; but cannily retained the institutions that mattered to them; Presbyterianism, the system of law, and the educational institutions and system. That should tell you something about the real nature of Scottish political purpose, whether in or out of any Union. The pale shadow of all these North British hotels provide some of the few remaining reminders of a major theme, now quite defunct.
Empire, Union and North Britain had a deep and enduring philosophical hold on Scots, even through two world wars that bled the country almost to death, ruined its industry and exhausted its treasure. It tried to find a way to maintain the principle of Union, through Fulbright’s telling reminder that Britain had lost an Empire, but had not found a role; through the end of Empire, the farce of Suez, to the opportunity of European Union. This has been a long unravelling, but now even Humean Stoicism is no longer enough to endure the endless decay of point or purpose in the Union; the sheer arcane ineffectiveness of a burnt-out and dysfunctional constitution in Westminster; borrowed and now broken. A polity that has lost its mind, and will likely lose its shirt. Now there is nothing, save Boris Johnson and Brexit Britain: now that is the very definition of nothing at all.
Selective breeding? Don’t be daft.
I think an issue in Scotland is selective breeding. My Dad was a farmer and very proud of his pedigree heard of Dairy Shorthorn cattle, even winning the Grand Championship at the English Royal Agricultural Show in 1971 (the only Manx farmer ever to do so). He was very clear that you could change the appearance, etc of the cattle depending on which bull and cow you picked for each generation. We don’t encourage (or even allow) that in humans, but it can still happen. In Scotland for the last three hundred years the more adventurous and ambitious have tended to emigrate, whether to England or further afield. In fact there are around 30 million people of Scottish descent around the World and currently some 700,000 of Scottish birth in England. I think that does gradually have an effect on the population that is left in Scotland. They will tend to end up being slightly more cautious, less adventurous, more small c conservative, etc than would otherwise be the case. That, I think, contributes to the hesitancy over independence. However, it is also worth noting that in the Ashcroft poll all age groups under 50 were pro-independence and that this reaches 64% in the 18+ age group. That might also reflect the fact that there has been less emigration in the last 20 years since devolution.
Oh dear, eugenics.
The conservative nature of the Scots is not recent. I do not wish to be dismissive, however your argument appears both ill-founded (ropy, discredited Galtonism probably fairly classifies it), and ill-judged. I am surprised to see you commit such a comment to ‘print’.
I admit I agonised over allowing it in here
I think it was an excellent comment.
Dear John, I am absolutely not saying that it is a good thing, in fact it is a very bad thing. It is, though, simply a fact that Scotland has had a relatively very high level of out-migration for centuries. If emigrants are, on average, not the same as those who do not emigrate then you are selectively removing an element of the population at every generation. Just because we don’t like to think about it doesn’t make it go away. That was quite explicit in the late 18th century where the British State saw the Highland Regiments as a very good way of disposing of the more troublesome elements in the Highland population. While emigration was forced in the 19th century (which would tend to make emigrants more similar to those left behind) then for the last near 150 years it has generally been voluntary. That probably makes it more likely that emigrants are different. Whether you, I or anyone else likes it or not, then such selective removal of an element of the population carried on for long enough will have an effect. There is also a human capital / sociological effect in that those who leave (for the gold paved streets of London or wherever) are generally young and the best educated. That shows up in the disproportionate number of pensioners relative to working age / children in the current population. You can see that round Eskbank where most of our immediate neighbours are pensioners, mostly former accountants, lawyers, or similar, and all their children but one have left Scotland.
Put like that the trait is of course similar to one seen in Ireland where there is no doubt that those who left did take risks that those who left did not wish to partake of
I have also looked up Eugenics in the Chambers Dictionary. It is the ‘Science’ (my quotes) of racial improvement. What I have said about mass emigration being a form of selective impoverishment of a population is nothing to do with Eugenics. Firstly it has nothing to do with race and secondly it has nothing to do with improvement.
That said Tim, and I did not think it was eugenic, it’s a difficult argument to put forward
Other than that there is nothing scientific about your claim of eugenics, it is a lie that anyone with ambition or intelligence left Scotland. In fact, a large portion of the people who left Scotland were amongst the poorest who were in effect refugees forced off the land by the huge landowners. And the landowners such as the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland did not become ‘successful’ through intelligence but through inheritance.
In response to Tim’s post of 12:16 on 5 Aug, I find his assertion misleading that emigration from Scotland largely involved the adventurous and the ambitious. Huge numbers left precisely because they had little hope of improving their lot in the UK of the 1950s – 70s. I know numerous people who lived in poor quality housing and were stuck in dead-end jobs who left simply because they could see no likelihood of self-advancement here, so why not take a punt on Canada, Australia, NZ, S Africa etc?
There was also the inducement of cut-price fares to emigrate, which told them the UK was glad to be rid of them, so they left because here they had nothing, not even prospects. One example sticks out of a couple I knew with a young family living in a council flat in Glasgow where the inside walls ran with water when it rained. He was a railway shunter with no prospects as British Rail contracted post-Beeching and she was a full-time housewife bringing up her young family. They went to Canada and decades later, by sheer chance, I bumped into him. He now owned and ran his own motel in a very attractive part of British Columbia, which was something he could never have imagined in the UK he knew. They left simply because some hope in the future was better than no hope at all.
Likewise I knew numerous intelligent people with Uni/professional degrees who got out because they and their parents had witnessed decades of being told tighten their belts. Indeed my own father, who had worked all over the world, advised me when I got my professional degree in the 1960s that if I was considering moving away from Scotland, I shouldn’t go to London or any other part of the UK, as I’d be better to go abroad where I’d probably make better money, pay less tax and live in a healthier climate. His view that UK was a busted flush was pretty widespread among his generation.
The mass exodus from Scotland is best seen as part of the “Union legacy” and it astonishes and disappoints me that it has taken so long for Scotland to realise it could do better by running its own affairs.
@ nicky garrett
52/48 is a slim majority,
The majority would be bigger except Ashcroft did not include 16 and 17 year olds who will be able to vote like last time or EU Citizens who this time around will have a vested interest in voting Yes to stay in the EU and any repeat of last time’s lie about a Yes vote meaning out of the EU will absolutely not wash.
There are around 200k adult EU citizens in Scotland. In absolute numbers the gap the last time was 245,000 people. So the Youngsters and EU Citizens together are roughly 4-5% of the Yes vote so we are 56-57% in reality.
This is not a proper criticism of Ashcroft since he is following British Polling Council best practice. The Youngster and EU Citizens are not including because they cannot be also asked about Westminster voting intentions to add to other polling and even in the modern computer world it seems not including them in those data is too hard.
I’m a hardcore Yes campaigner but despite the above I’m not getting too excited, it is only one poll.
BUT the above should be taken into account whenever an Independence poll is published unless the data specifically indicates those two groups have been included and properly weighted. Also voting intention in the youth should be taken with a grain of salt based on the turnout in that group last time.
I do however expect ScotGov to take the above into account, but La Sturgeon wants more than one poll over time as well.
So we wait and see if anyone else is going to fund one, I would expect the Rev Stu Campbell over on Wings to commission one soon as his fundraiser is now done. Perhaps he will instruct his pollsters to include these groups or perhaps they will refuse because BPC. We shall see.
I’f hope Stuart is on the case
Peter is correct that the lead would be at least one to two points more if 16 and 17 year-olds were included as they should be. As for it being only one poll, that is correct, but it is the way polls have been trending for some time. It also validates polls that said in the case of Johnson as PM or a no-deal (which looks more likely by the day) that independence would be a majority. So that it is only one poll is not quite correct. The caveat is that we need to see it stay at a majority and not slip back down.
Hopefully, as you say, WoS is on the case.
For those living outside Scotland and only seeing/hearing what the UK MSM has to say, have a look at this:
https://weegingerdug.wordpress.com/2019/08/05/the-wind-in-our-sails/
If you want to see the Ashcroft poll which underlies this, it’s at:
https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2019/08/my-scotland-poll-yes-to-independence-takes-the-lead/
Given that Ashcroft is an arch Tory, his analysis reflects a Tory perspective, with little discussion of other parties’ merits and strategies.
Wee Ginger Dug mentions the possibility of a General Election and a factor of relevance to the rUK is that recent polls have indicated that the Tories are likely to lose about a half of their current Scottish seats, with these going to other parties (mainly SNP). If this happens Boris’s current wafer-thin majority disappears and the Westminster game changes entirely.
I think Wee Ginger Dug is on the money
I’m reluctant to join-in but who is the risk-taker when leaving a country becomes a safer and more attractive option than remaining?