{"id":45758,"date":"2019-08-05T08:22:28","date_gmt":"2019-08-05T07:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=45758"},"modified":"2019-08-05T09:01:10","modified_gmt":"2019-08-05T08:01:10","slug":"a-majority-in-scotland-want-independence-and-all-that-surprises-me-is-how-small-the-majority-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2019\/08\/05\/a-majority-in-scotland-want-independence-and-all-that-surprises-me-is-how-small-the-majority-is\/","title":{"rendered":"A majority in Scotland want independence – and all that surprises me is how small the majority is"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to Politics Home<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

A majority of Scots are now in favour of independence and want a second referendum by 2021, according to a new poll.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The new study conducted by Lord Ashcroft Polls for PoliticsHome's\u00a0sister title Holyrood<\/a>\u00a0puts support for independence at 46 per cent for and 43 per cent against.<\/p>\n

Once those who said they didn\u2019t 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What's surprising to me is that the margin is so low.<\/p>\n

As the Guardian<\/a> (and others) reported yesterday:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Tory candidate for one of the party\u2019s target parliamentary seats has sought to distance himself from a column he wrote accusing Scotland of \u201cfleecing\u201d English taxpayers and claiming that\u00a0Scotland<\/a>\u00a0remaining in the UK would be a \u201ccatastrophe\u201d for England.<\/p>\n

Ryan Henson was selected last year as the Conservative candidate for Bedford and Kempston.\u00a0In a 2014 article for\u00a0Conservative Home<\/em>,\u00a0Henson wrote that<\/a>, except for its contribution to Britain\u2019s armed forces, \u201cScotland\u2019s single biggest offering to the union over the past 50 years has been to provide the Labour party with parliamentary lobby fodder.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Henson knew his audience. Like Trump he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

I'd suggest that if I was north of the order I'd be thinking it's time to start a new country<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-scotland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45758\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}