I was fascinated by this report in The National - the newspaper for which I write in Scotland - this morning:
INDEPENDENCE support would rise to 59% from 54% if it meant Scotland would be a republic, a new poll shows.
Support for independence was found to have risen to 54% when undecided voters are excluded earlier this month in poll commissioned by The Times following the Scottish Budget.
Campaign group Believe in Scotland (BiS) commissioned pollsters Norstat to ask the same panel if Scotland removing the King as head of state would affect how they would vote.
Support went from 54% in the same poll to 59%.
Support for independence for Scotland has been back over the 50% mark in recent months, but many in the movement supporting that cause have often sought the mysterious 'X' factor that would finally deliver the result they want.
And now, it has been found. Ditch the dysfunctional royal family and the whole infrastructure of eugenic aristocratic power that it represents, and the chance of success increases significantly.
I sincerely hope no one now forgets this.
The SNP should be taking note.
It is time we had a serious republican party in the UK as a whole. They might represent Scotland, but it would be very useful if they would take on this role in Westminster. By paving the way, they could trailblaze this for the UK as a whole and the remaining countries in what is now a union would be in their debt.
Instead, we are going to get maybe forty new peers today from Labour, who say it is committed to ridding us of the place - but whose words and actions never appear to align.
At least people in Scotland see sense.
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The green king, Chas3, removes many peoples’ emotional attachment to the hereditary principle of instituted God-Fathers (which his mother imbued in many).
Every time I visit Scotland, I withdraw as much cash from my current account as I can afford – just to have paper money that doesn’t have his smug, patronising face on it. I feel no fondness for him and see the monarchy he embodies as foreign to my aspiration of a democratic society.
Scots wha hae… Respect!
Good to see the results of the opinion poll, but exactly where does it get us? I don’t see any sign of a radical movement in my country, firstly, to achieve Independence, which I believe we must first obtain in order to become a Republic. While I’m a member of the S.N.P, I don’t see any plan from my party as to how to go about something that most of us joined the party hoping to achieve. In fairness, maybe they have a plan, and just don’t want the opposition to know about it. We’ll find out in 2026 if we win a majority, if they are really serious, because frankly, they have had enough opportunities in the past.
I do wonder occasions if the SNP leadership have any real commitment to the independence cause now. Is devolution just too comfortable for them? My old friend Angus Brendan McNeil would say so.
No Richard the SNP don’t have any commitment to independence however watch Salvo/ Liberation from January. A people’s liberation movement will be taking Scotlands plight to the UN. No political parties are involved. We’ve approved the constitution & are preparing our case to the UN.
I agree with your analysis of the SNP and their lack of movement – in addition as we have seen recently the lack of separation between the legal and the executive raises serious questions that i believe Alex Salmond was hoping to get answered and along with serious issues with the civil service.
we also have the mucky fingerprints of the Civil Service (Liz Lloyd (not the Stormer one in the news)
however in addition to the Royals -there is a pressing need to reform land ownership in Scotland which the SNP have also dodged – Andy Wightman’s works as worth reading on how the land was stolen
Don’t hold your breath Alex. They talked for years about Nicola’s ‘cunning plan’ that never materialised. The SNP are far too timid to challenge the UK Government in any meaningful way. Ash Regan of Alba looks the most likely candidate to declare UDI if the next Scottish election delivers an independence supporting majority, unfortunately she won’t have access to the levers of power.
I read elsewhere that while it’s an interesting notion that support for independence increases with the prospect of ditching the monarchy, it’s difficult to put into a referendum question and would probably need to be addressed with a further question to the electorate post-independence.
I suggest that the future of the Monarchy is looking less clear.
The challenge of course is what we replace it with
The Firm is falling apart, pretty rapidly.
Agreed.
In my opinion, Plaid Cymru is the most radical party in Britain – and it does have a Welsh republic as a goal for an independent Wales (Wales has had a ‘prince’ imposed on it since its annexation by England in the 1530s).
Yes Cymru are doing some great cross party stuff organising supporters of Welsh indy from the grass roots. Welsh Labour are ‘small n nationalists’, unlike Scottish Labour who are ‘big U unionists’. (The SNP who have a centralising tendency of: ‘Scottish independence our way or the highway’ – or so it seems from this East Anglian with some Scottish connections!!)
The SNP seem to be like Labour – timid and frightened of being bold, and of jumping into the space that popular leftwing policies will bring them rewards (at least the SNP talk (and sometimes act) more of social democracy).
Regarding Labour, see Owen Jones’ brilliant Guardian piece today: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/20/starmer-labour-failures-disaster-committee
I have a soft spot for PC, their cause, and all the areas where they are most popular.
The SNP is not radical; but it is in power, at least in Holyrood. Plaid Cymru is radical, but is not in power, or near it. It isn’t as easy a debate, as asserting how ‘radical’ you need to be.
Radicalism is appealing; but the Scottish people – particularly those who vote – are not radical. They look for incrementalism; progress on tiptoe, in slippers. Radicalism in Scotland only works when the opposition collapses under the weight of its own failure; and that takes time. The problem is not restricted to Scotland. The current failures in so many democracies, at the same time speaks to the same problem.
The triumph of neoliberalism in so many democracies has been followed by forty years of almost all the same democracies failing to achieve any solutions (radical or otherwise) to an expanding rate of bigger and bigger, and more and more frequent crises, that neoliberalism does not, and cannot solve. Democracies, however operate through a conventional politics of quite trivial adjustments in standard, orthodox consensus policies (the art of the politically possible in democracies consisting of powerful vested interests, and a rigid unspoken consensus disguised within a rhetorical agenda of controversial but empty slogans); oscillating around a central point on a very narrow political spectrum, incapable of meeting the far larger and more complex spectrum of challenges (external to the privileged vested interests) that face them – some of which challenges the democracies themselves have created, and have come back to devour them. In consequence of the British, European and American democracies largely providing only narrowly calibrated, and spectacularly failed policies that have led us into the biggest crisis for democracy and their failing economies since WWII; we are now reaching a political watershed moment; but let us be clear. Nobody knows how to handle this.
I am therefore not surprised by the lack of radicalism in politics; but I recognise the powerful force of inertia democracy exerts. Appealing to radicalism’s supposed virtues will not produce its democratic success. In democracies radicalism has proved a notably ineffective democratic tool at the ballot box. In Britain great radical turning points like 1690, 1832, 1945 were decided democratically only as the consequence of events beyond the ballot box (and their real consequences were not democratically either foreseen or planned; or the result of any policy)
“It is time we had a serious republican party in the UK as a whole.”
I second that (though not like the US one thanks) but don’t see the SNP as a contender. The rise of new independence parties and non-party political campaigns in Scotland show how little faith many activists have left in the main party (currently) representing us at Holyrood and Westminster… and living comfortable lives propping up an outdated, imperial system.
Something needs to give. @John S Warren mentioned great turning points in history. I hope the catalyst for the next will not be as devastating as the last, though history suggests otherwise. There’s a cheery thought for Xmas. Now I’m off to watch a good pantomime where politics and culture collide in a most uplifting way.
Have a happy Xmas, Richard and all your readers, and keep up the good work in 2025.
Thanks, Cathy
And to you.
I read about the poll and immediately got the kind of boost that comes with such news. Near 60% in favour of independence! But I always find that dazzlingly good polls are best subjected to analysis by James Kelly, who writes the Scot Goes Pop blog and knows a lot about polling and statistics. He says: “It’s actually well understood in the polling industry that hypothetical questions, asking how respondents would vote in response to a question if certain specific conditions apply, often produce wildly unreliable results”. Read his article in The National here: https://www.thenational.scot/news/24811080.analysis-snp-new-scottish-republic-poll/
Sadly I concur. I would love to see an Independent Republic of Scotland – maybe one day.
Without dreams we are nothing.