Union supporters and those in favour of independence are almost ‘eeksie peeksie’ in polls but the Scottish National Party appears to have put its breakaway dream on ice for now
‘We need to inject some passion’: Young Scottish independence activists think the movement has lost verve
‘Inadequate’: One-word school ratings abolished in England after tragedy involving distraught headteacher“I had never been interested in politics and suddenly people were interested in what we wanted to say. I remember the Big, Big Debate in Glasgow,” says Campbell, recalling a one-off BBC political event that was aimed at young voters and held one week before the referendum.
After its failure to secure a new independence referendum from the British government and the hammering it took in July’s UK general election, when it lost 39 of its 48 Westminster seats under a Labour surge, the SNP’s independence dream appears to be slipping away. “I used to be a Tory,” says a smiling James Grant, an older SNP activist from its Nairnshire branch in Moray. “So there is always a chance. There could still be a referendum in my lifetime. Maybe even in the next two or three years.”
Support for independence, however, has stayed constant throughout the turmoil that rocked the SNP over the past year, as it grappled with financial scandal, leadership tussles, electoral defeat and now a looming fiscal crisis – the SNP-led devolved Scottish government may have to make £600 million of cuts to balance its next budget.
That would have significant knock-on effects for Scotland’s budget, although the SNP’s critics also accuse it of overspending – Scottish healthcare workers, for example, are the best paid in the UK.
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