Scottish independence: Unionists wrong about new poll '“ Linda Fabiani

Scotland in Union's bid to secure an opinion poll to support their vision of Brexit Britain has badly backfired, writes Linda Fabiani.

By The Newsroom Tuesday, 20th November 2018, 4:29 pm Updated Tuesday, 20th November 2018, 5:18 pm

For all their self-confessed attempts to engineer a question which deliberately seeks to conflate independence with Brexit, the findings offer them little comfort.

Aside from confirming the SNP’s commanding lead for both Holyrood and Westminster, the poll also shows that Brexit is set to boost support for an independent Scotland.

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Linda Fabiani says it's laughable to suggest if Scotland was independent it would choose to join Brexit Britain (Picture: John Devlin)

And the headline finding is clearly an outlier from almost every other independence poll conducted since September 2014, most of which show support for independence at or above the 45 per cent the Yes vote achieved then.

The truth is that independence is the very opposite of Brexit.

Instead of the insular, parochial, backward-looking worldview offered by the Tories – and defended to the hilt by people like Pamela Nash of Scotland in Union, whatever the cost to Scotland – independence is about Scotland taking its place in the world as an equal partner.

That is what makes Ms Nash’s suggestion that if the UK didn’t exist it would have to be invented so risible.

To suggest that anyone would opt to join the chaotic, dysfunctional sinking ship that the UK has become under the Tories is stretching credulity beyond breaking point.

Does anyone believe, to indulge Ms Nash’s claim a bit further, that if Scotland was already independent then people would vote to be governed by the current shambles of a government at Westminster?

The fact is, as the poll also confirms, unionist scare stories about independence are crumbling one by one.

The poll shows that people in Scotland overwhelmingly think an independent Scotland would be granted EU membership – something the Spanish foreign minister has just confirmed his government would not oppose, thereby demolishing a favourite 2014 Project Fear scare story.

Then, Scotland was told that the only way to protect our future in Europe was to vote no to independence. That has now been exposed for the lie it always was.

And the only way Scotland can be sure that we are never again subjected to the democratic travesty that is Brexit is to become an independent country.