Are Scots tiring of devolution?

As Scottish devolution celebrates its 25th anniversary, are voters losing faith in Holyrood? A quarter of the country believes devolution has been bad for Scotland, with almost half of ‘No’ voters in the independence referendum now disillusioned. New polling for the Sunday Times finds that over a fifth of voters didn’t know if devolving powers to Scotland had been positive or negative, while 50 per cent still believe that overall devolution had been good. 

There was a clear split on the devolution question based on how a person voted in the 2014 referendum, while age provided another dividing line: devolution was unpopular with half of those over 75 years old compared to only 14 per cent of 16-24 year olds. Party politics was relevant too: almost two-thirds of Conservative voters believe that the policy has been negative. This is compared to only 8 per cent of SNP voters, which nonetheless indicates there remains a small group within the independence movement which has always had its doubts about devolution.

Ailsa Henderson, a political science professor at Edinburgh University, says that the polling shows that support for devolution is ‘in a very healthy place’. Those who oppose it tend to be older voters of a similar political persuasion (pro-Brexit and Conservative), while three-quarters of pro-independence supporters and nearly two-thirds of Remainers believed the devolved parliament had been good for Scotland. And there was no notable variation in support of the Scottish parliament’s powers between those who were born in Scotland versus those who were born elsewhere. Henderson added:

It would be a worrying sign if those born in Scotland felt devolution was going well but those born outside Scotland thought it was a bad development. There’s no sign of that here.

But the figures mark a notable fall in support for the policy of devolution since polling was last conducted in 2009: back then, 70 per cent thought devolution was working, with only 18 per cent unconvinced. More recently, a 2016 Social Attitudes Survey found that 71 per cent of people agreed that Scotland had a stronger voice in the UK because of Holyrood. 

So what’s changed? It’s difficult to forget the chaos of the last 12 months in Scottish politics, though it would be hard to remember every single development given there have been so many. Nearly a year has passed since Nicola Sturgeon shocked the UK with her impromptu resignation. But after a fiery leadership race saw party feuds spill onto live television, it wasn’t long before the party’s chief executive and its head of communications resigned over membership figures and Operation Branchform (the police probe into SNP finances) dominated the news. It quickly became clear that the party was in more trouble than it had let on – and suspicions rose about the real reasons behind Sturgeon’s departure.

While Sturgeon was one of the few politicians to leave office with positive approval ratings (46 per cent of Scots viewed her favourably), public trust in the former first minister has now fallen dramatically. The scandals associated with the ongoing Covid Inquiry, including deleted WhatsApp messages and widespread confusion over the Scottish government’s message deletion policy, won’t have helped either. But critically, though Sturgeon has had a year that few would envy, her successor Humza Yousaf’s net trust rating is even lower. Sturgeon sits at -19, with 32 per cent of Scots saying they trust her versus 51 per cent who don’t. In comparison, only 25 per cent trust Yousaf, whose net trust rating is -25.

Months into his premiership, YouGov polling found that twice as many people think Yousaf is doing badly as First Minister (44 per cent) than good (19 per cent). At the end of last year, not much had changed: Ipsos polling showed that 48 per cent of voters were dissatisfied with Yousaf as First Minister, with a net satisfaction rating of -13.

Policy decisions made by the SNP over the last few years have also contributed to a feeling that devolution is not benefiting Scotland. The first decade of devolving powers to the nation saw the introduction of free tuition fees, free prescriptions and the smoking ban in pubs and restaurants. In recent years, however, policy proposals put forward by the Scottish government have become more controversial and received less public support. The plans to replace Scotland’s aging ferry fleet have been mired in scandal over the assigning of contracts; bills of over £360 million have been racked up. More recently, the SNP-Green government has seen its deposit return scheme delayed until at least next year, their Highly Protected Marine Area proposals halted and their gender reforms blocked – with the UK government looking to bill Holyrood £150,000 in legal costs after Yousaf took the case to the courts.

Revelations from the UK Covid Inquiry suggest that both the UK and the Scottish government politicised the pandemic, taking slightly different decisions to better their own constitutional arguments. There are also serious concerns about how the Scottish government was run and the role of senior civil servants, raised in The Spectator’s recent cover article, in which Fraser Nelson wrote:

The clique that now runs Scotland is unable to distinguish between the objectives of political party and the proper conduct of government.

While it tries to fend off allegations about its ‘culture of secrecy’, the SNP is struggling to win back the electorate. As Labour continues to gain support north of the border – Survation polling released on Friday for True North found that 34 per cent of Scottish voters would vote Labour, only two points behind those who would vote SNP – there is a growing realisation inside the Scottish National Party that Scotland wants change. Yousaf has spent most of his premiership talking about how he will put independence ‘page one, line one’ of the SNP’s Westminster manifesto, but endless surveys point to how healthcare, the economy, education and cost of living remain the main concerns of the Scottish people, higher on the list than the constitution. 

Perhaps then it is no surprise that there is a growing discontent with how devolution has been handled under the SNP. The party’s focus on independence during a cost-of-living crisis is pushing Scots to place their votes elsewhere while more question the value of Scotland's devolved powers as public services continue to fail. Scotland’s A&E waiting times are well off target, drug deaths remain high and the poverty-related attainment gap widened after Covid. ‘For the past 17 years, the SNP has continuously ignored the view of the Scottish public and put their obsession with independence before everything else,' Craig Hoy, chairman of the Scottish Tories, said. 'It’s no wonder Scots are currently feeling this way.'

As Fraser Nelson wrote in The Spectator last week, there is an increasingly popular view that 'the SNP only made centralisation worse’. Scottish papers have highlighted how rural communities have been ignored by politicians, scandal after scandal has chipped away at public trust in the Scottish government while party infighting has worsened the perception of government incompetence. There is a growing frustration shared by Scots that their own government doesn’t know how to deal with the many problems facing the country. Critics of Yousaf say that he has no guiding philosophy or vision, and polls demonstrate a feeling best summed up by Kate Forbes’s assertion that ‘continuity won’t cut it’.

If Yousaf doesn’t change tack, the future of his leadership, his party, and even the Scottish parliament, may be at stake.