Political pressures and events will intervene much sooner than that if the sentiment seems long term. The vista of a Westminster government ignoring Scottish opinion stated in opinion polls and elected governments is one that would lead to crisis.
See my note regarding confidence and supply ands matters affecting Scotland.
Straw man again. You keep doing it. Unlike you I was fully informed about previous SNP voting practices and future plans as outlined by both Salmond and Sturgeon.
Currently most Scots do not want another referendum within the next 5 years and only barely would a majority vote for independence if one was held. You got a lot more work to do before this happens.
How, exactly, will it lead to crisis? What do you think will happen if there’s no new referendum? All sides agreed to be bound by the last one, so there’s no justification for a new one. What, exactly, do you think will happen if a new one isn’t called?
I’ll give you the answer - more whinging from the minority of Scots who want independence, and nothing at all else. Unless the SNP goes back on its pledge to respect the referendum, in which case it will be finished as a significant political entity, at least in UK elections.
The people of Scotland spoke, remember, and decisively rejected independence. No matter how much you pretend otherwise, the question is settled.
That maybe so, but it is curious why you would state that they are otherwise in this and other threads, then.
I am not sure if Steophan understands the complexities of minority government.
There are two possibilities- confidence and spay, or measure by measure support.
Entering in to a confidence and supply agreement would actually require the SNP to vote with the government on English only measures if it was a matter of confidence. Measure by measure agreement would not.
For instance, if Labour wished to return Academies to Local Authority control and could not raise enough votes from English MPs, then if the agreement was followed the SNP would abstain on earlier votes until the point where the Government made it a matter of confidence. At that point the SNP would have to decide whether to continue its understanding and vote for the measure, or continue to abstain and possibly bring the government down.
The same legislation without a confidence and supply agreement would require the government to negotiate with other parties on each contested measure including education.
I have never said otherwise. You may have assumed it. You do a lot of assuming which is why you so often erect straw men. As in this case.
Given the position being considered- that consistent opinion polls show support for independence and that the Scottish people continue to elect an SNP nationalist Government.
So it would be the MAJORITY ‘whining’.
What would happen? Either increased pressure as disaffection increases- which led to the previous referenda, or that there would be a locally called referendum as in Catalonia recently, or there would be low level insurrection.
You have just said it again in your previous post! That you think there’ll be an arrangement where the SNP have to vote on English issues or the government will fall. Do you even read your own posts??
No. False. The majority clearly and definitively stated that they do not want independence. What about that do you fail to understand? What do you not understand about the fact that a poll doesn’t overturn the result of a vote?
If pressure increases over the next couple of decades, a new referendum is reasonable. A “referendum” not called by the Government or binding on it is meaningless, as I’m sure the Catalans are realising. Insurrection - or terrorism, to use the proper term, is almost beyond plausibility in Scotland, but if it does happen it will destroy any backing for independence on either side.
Seriously. The question has been settled in a democratic vote, and you’re now suggesting that terrorism will be the response? I can’t believe you really think that.
That is what confidence and supply means. It is long established in British politics that voting on confidence is solely voting on allowing the government to govern, not about the substantive matter. The convention is that the previous selection resulted in parliament that elects a government, confirmed by the monarch. Once in government, to maintain stability, that government should be allowed to continue until it loses the confidence of the Parliament.
This allows a minority party to not vote against its conscience, but merely to support the continuation of the right of the appointed government to govern until a new election is held.
Do you have a problem with time and tenses. What was believed then may not be believed now and may change in future.
You choose to believe it requires a couple of decades. You have no support for that, and circumstances will almost certainly intervene earlier than that.
Congratulations on your new Straw Man. I said insurrection, not terrorism. Probably civil disobedience and demonstrations. Maybe road blocks, withholding taxes. NOT terrorism which requires physical threats or acts. Please use words correctly to avoid further straw men.
I think Pjen’s issue is that when you really care about something and surround yourself with it, immerse yourself, it is very difficult to see outside your bubble, meaning you begin to believe that everyone must feel the same as you as all you see is other people with the same view. My Tory Parents (yes, including my Mother from Scotland, it was only in the late 80s that Tory support dropped off in Scotland. I honestly don’t believe that Scots are any more left wing that much of England, they are just much more anti-Tory or, even more accurately, anti-Thatcher) have that problem, they happily read the Telegraph and make claims about how “everyone” is thinking, because the news they read tells them so. My Yes-voting relatives in Scotland definitely have that issue, they surround themselves in “Wings Over Scotland” and posts about being one of the “45”. I still, pretty much daily get stuff from them on Facebook regarding it.
We had a similar issue here in Sweden with the last election. Here in Stockholm everyone seemed to believe that F! (the Feminist Initiative, and yes they write it like that) would get the necessary 4% to get a seat in the Riksdag. Many of my friends were so excited about it, finally it would happen. The excitement spilled over into the international media, with many an article written about them in the run up to the election, but in the end they barely limped over 3%. This shocked many of my friends and acquaintances, they had been so sure that now was the time.
The problem was that in Stockholm, where the majority of the national media is based, F! got 7.18% of the vote, well over twice what they got nationally. The F! supporters seemed to forget, or just wilfully ignore, that the were vast areas of the country that were not swept up in the F! wave. These people got a wake up call.
I see people like Pjen as being like the F! supporters. Utterly convinced that everyone is on their side as everywhere they go there is more of them, forgetting that they don’t really hang out in the circles where people have other opinions. When everyone around you is agreeing with you it is hard to imagine that perhaps not everyone does - or even that maybe a majority of people doesn’t.
And before you go on about Polls, Pjen, may I remind you that according to polls we were supposed to have a Labour government in 1992. That’s why I do not get swept up by polls.
Yes, of course, which is why sufficiently far in the future another referendum may be appropriate. Say, in around 2035.
No support apart from the fact that the SNP agreed to be bound by the result for a generation, and the UK government considers the result binding full stop.
I am using the word correctly. What you are suggesting is that a minority group use criminal, and sometimes violent, measures to overturn the result of a democratic referendum and the wishes of the population, as expressed by their democratically elected representatives. Civil disobedience isn’t insurrection, insurrection is an attempt to overturn a government, not one or two laws. There is no acceptable reason for insurrection in a democracy, and any attempt at it is terrorism pure and simple.
The issue of independence was settled with a vote earlier this year, when the Scots decisively voted against it. Why do you refuse to respect them and their view?
It won’t come to that, I hope, because I don’t believe that enough Scots are foolish enough to do so. But if it does, they will be crushed, plain and simple, and their cause will be set back decades, probably a lifetime.
The likelihood of Scotland rising up in some kind of civil disobedience campaign is absurd. It would require support for independence to be overwhelming in its popularity and in the fervency of that popularity - people would need to want it in large, huge numbers and it be the number one priority for them. And for Westminster to fight such a strong feeling would have to cease being a democracy entirely - for England and Scotland.
The majority to Scots are law-abiding and respect the democratic process - not only that NO won in September, but that the only independent Scotland worth having is one steeped in the rule of law like the UK is. The number who would back any kind of civil disobedience, less still an armed rising, is tiny. The majority would sooner peace under the UK than a violent independence.
45% voted for independence, up from a base of 30% at the start of the campaign. There was a severe age gradient with NOs likely to be much older than YES voters.
Time is on the side of a YES vote. And that is without the recent polls and SNP membership results.
People change their voting habits as they get older. To assume that the 16 yr olds today are going to have thesame priorities and vote the same way when they are 30 is frankly foolish. Not in keeping with your supposed political savvy.