Any Scottish users on board yet? I’m curious to discuss Scottish issues but maybe setting out my stall on a UK instance and community already poisons the conversation!
Anyway my question is whether the link between left leaning and progressive politics and Scottish independence can persist. My YES voting friends and relatives see indy as a way to see meaningful policy change because Westminster has failed to deliver progressive governments (not clear exactly how they square away the Corbyn near miss but assume here they view Blair/Starmer as “red tory”). But elsewhere in the west nationalism is closely tied to right wing economics and regressive social policy. With the rise of the Alba party are we seeing cracks in this leftist perception of indy or will it die down?
Scottish here, and I’d say that leftists are still going to be entwined with independence until it happens. SNP has had a lot of mess lately, so I’ll likely be voting Green instead, and I think that that’ll be a common thread in this sort of space, though not very representative of the population as a whole.
Holyrood elections use a better voting system than Westminster, and that will inevitably slowly generate discontent (which starts on the left), on top of the heaps that’s already there, so even if the main independence party fucks up, there’ll always be an political niche for independence. If Labour actually implemented UK-wide PR, that might change how I think, but I don’t see it happening soon.
Really interesting to see PR as a key motivator for you and one other commenter below. The AV referendum defeat was probably the most disappointing democratic event of my life, even worse than brexit or tory GE wins. I also see the system as the root of the problem.