No unionist should breathe easily after last night’s YouGov poll putting the ‘no’ team on a six-point lead. The race remains too close to call. And the poll also suggests a degree of volatility quite unlike that seen in general elections.
Michael Sauders from Citi has dug deeper into the figures (pdf). You need to treat all Scottish polls with caution, due to the sample size and the fact that the turnout may be high enough to include people who polling companies don’t know exist. But YouGov found that the under-25s (the ones more likely to vote on the day, rather than by post) have switched form a 20-point lead for ‘yes’ to a 6-point lead for ‘no’ in under a week.
Now, 20pc of people born in Scotland have concluded that their future lies outside of Scotland. Being fully plugged into the network of the rest of the UK is an advantage: as a Scot in London I feel (and am treated) like a fellow countryman, not an immigrant. I have to say: it’s a good feeling, and one I’d certainly want to protect if I were a teenager mulling my future options. When I went back to my old school in the Highlands, Nairn Academy, one of the kids asked if English employers would be any less likely to hire Scots after independence. It’s a real concern.
The second reason the ‘no’ lead is back is that non-Scottish-born voters are coming to the same conclusion: do they want to be categorised as immigrants in their own country? Even factoring in the young, ‘no’ lead only exists due to the increasing concerns of voters born outside of Scotland.
The YouGov poll talks about Scottish voters born in other parts of the UK (about a tenth of the electorate). The vast majority of these will be English. If they’re having second thoughts, as they stare down the precipice of separatism, I can understand why.
This is a very passionate campaign – dominated by optimism, but also with a unmistakable dash of fear. A dark side of nationalism is starting to present itself in Scotland: I was accused of being English by a ‘yes’ activist yesterday, his parting shot – and his ultimate insult. The Glaswegian pensioner I was talking to tells me that she hears that all the time (there are far worse examples), and she’s worried about it.
Salmond has done a good job keeping a lid on the xenophobic elements of nationalism. But his agenda – Scotland for the Scots, etc – is undeniably the politics of disunity. Is it any surprise that it also encourages the politics of intolerance? The vast majority of ‘yes’ supporters loathe this intolerance. But I’m not sure many of them would be bold enough to say that it doesn’t exist.
Right now, you can move from Aberystwyth to Aberdeen while moving from one part of your country to another. A Londoner can settle in Inverness and feel that they are amongst countrymen. It’s a good feeling, something precious – and something worth saving.
The benefits of staying united, of keeping our amazing country together, are worth more than all of the oil in the North Sea. The opportunities of the union, and the fraternity that it represents, are two of the most powerful arguments that the ‘no’ campaign can make. I do hope they make them in the next week.
UPDATE As you might expect, some nationalists are none too happy with the enemy within. Here’s one:-
It could well be that a majority of Scottish-born vote ‘yes’ but the decision is swung to ‘no’ by the English living in Scotland. Then you may hear moans about the perfidious English ‘preventing’ independence. But if the vote had been extended to Scots living in England (including yours truly) the ‘no’ lead would be much bigger.
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