When Nicola Sturgeon resigned as Scotland’s first minister back in March, many commentators thought that was the end of Scottish independence. And the fortunes of the Scottish National Party have indeed declined since Humza Yousaf was elected as her successor. For the first time in more than a decade, the Scottish Labour Party has a chance of gaining several dozen seats from the SNP at next year’s UK general election. That could make the difference between a hung parliament and Keir Starmer having a stable majority.
But the SNP is not the independence movement. Opinion polls since the spring have also shown something that almost no one expected. Support for independence has remained strong, on average around 3.3 points higher than the 44.7 per cent achieved in the independence referendum of 2014.
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