Scotland still doesn’t want a second referendum or independence
Reuters
It has been two years since the first Scottish independence referendum and the latest poll shows that Scots still want to stay part of the UK.
According to a YouGov poll for The Times newspaper, out of the 1,039 Scottish adults surveyed between August 29 and 31, 54% of Scots are for country staying within the UK while 46% back independence.
General opinion seems to have barely changed since Scots voted to keep Scotland within the more than 300-year-old union back on September 18, 2014.
Other key findings from the poll shows that 49% of Scots think “Scotland benefits economically from being part of the UK.”
The latest poll will come as a blow to the first leader of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon, who has been pushing for Scottish independence with her Scottish National Party for years.
The SNP has pushed for Scottish independence for years and Sturgeon was an instrumental figure during the last referendum campaign and vote, when she was deputy first minister of Scotland under Alex Salmond’s leadership.
Russell Cheyne / Reuters
While Scots opted to stay within the UK, Sturgeon has repeatedly pushed for a second referendum because the last vote was so close.
While much of Scotland voted to remain in the European Union, leave voters won the EU referendum in June, bolstering Sturgeon’s calls for another vote on Scottish independence.
The threat went unheeded though as anti-EU campaigner, and at one point one of the front-runners for prime minister position, Andrea Leadsom said:
“We’re hearing from Nicola Sturgeon, ‘We should remain in the European Union because as this country elected a Conservative government we need to stay in the EU so that it can overrule a democratically elected government and then do what she wants it to do – that is absolutely outrageous.”
After Britons voted for a Brexit, Sturgeon immediately said the SNP “will begin to prepare the legislation to allow a new referendum to take place” before the UK leaves the European Union, so a second referendum is “highly likely.”
However, considering how the latest poll shows how it is unlikely to yield the result Sturgeon and her party wants, it is likely that if a second referendum were to take place, it would be a long time after Britain has negotiated its way out of the EU.
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