Some new data from the long-running Scottish Social Attitudes Survey was released tonight, and it makes for fascinating reading.

The headline stat is that for only the second year in the 18 years the study has been running, independence is the most popular option for the governance of Scotland:

This doesn’t, however, mean that it’s the majority view, because while independence is backed by 45% the “No” option is split into two – support for devolution (41%) and those ultra-Yoons who want Holyrood abolished (8%).

Now, considering that as recently as 2012 those figures were independence on 23%, devolution 61% and no Parliament 13%, that’s still a remarkable shift in Scottish public opinion in a very short space of time – support for indy has DOUBLED in five years while devolution has dropped by a third.

And indeed, when the survey asked a straight Yes/No question the results came out even closer, at 48% Yes to 52% No – a 3% swing to Yes from the 2016 figures.

No wonder the Unionists are extra-twitchy lately.

The survey also found that rather than being based on public anger at the prospect of a second independence referendum, the vote shift in the 2017 UK general election correlated extremely strongly with people’s EU referendum vote.

And there’s been another, perhaps more significant change.

Because for the first time, and as a direct result of Brexit (as other data in the survey makes clear), most Scots now think that independence will make Scotland’s economy BETTER than it would be in the Union. A 17-point negative margin before the indyref has now become a six-point positive one, a 23-point move. (Or in election terms, a huge 11.5% swing.)

Even more dramatically, there’s been a 28-point shift in voters’ perception of whether independence would give Scotland a stronger voice in the world, from a net (and baffling) -4 in the months leading to the indyref to a crushing 24-point positive now.

So in one sense these figures tell us nothing that we didn’t already know – namely that the Yes movement’s biggest problem is its Leave voters. And while Scotland voted overwhelmingly Remain and overall EU support is up noticeably since 2016 (an 8% swing), the nation certainly isn’t entirely and unequivocally in love with Europe.

Indeed, when they’re questioned on Scotland’s relationship with the trading bloc, the most popular option with Scottish voters isn’t “keep things as they are” but – just as it’s always been – “stay in while reducing the EU’s powers”.

But there’s also one other fly in the optimism ointment for Yes supporters. Because while backing for independence has remained resolute, the same can’t be said of the SNP. Among would-be Yessers in particular, the study suggests that a significant slice of the SNP’s vote turned to Labour at the 2017 election.

(Though we must be honest, we’re having some difficulty correlating that 12% rise in Labour support from Yes voters, which would be 5.4% across all of Scotland, with the pathetic 1.4% actual increase in the Labour vote, especially as Labour support among Unionists barely moved.)

And if SNP MPs are replaced by Labour ones at Westminster (along with Eurosceptic Tories), then the level of support in Scotland for independence becomes irrelevant, because the UK government will be able to block a second referendum indefinitely.

The only practical route to another vote – apart from a legal challenge in the Supreme Court that the SNP have shown no signs as yet of having the stomach for – is through a UK government that’s dependent on SNP MPs’ votes, and if Yes voters back Labour in Scotland that just won’t be happening.

(On the other hand, the Tories and Labour are currently so neck-and-neck in England that a hung Parliament dependent on the SNP is almost a certainty IF the SNP return 40+ MPs to Westminster again.)

So there are plenty of reasons in this year’s SSAS for Yes supporters to be in very good spirits indeed, but also plenty of things for Nicola Sturgeon to worry about.

She needs to win back only a small fraction of the Yes voters who also voted Leave to take an outright Yes lead, but at the same time she risks winning the polls but being unable to actually carry out a vote as Yes voters snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by madly turning to Scottish Labour in the hope of a brief period of Jeremy Corbyn rule before the Tories reassert themselves for another decade or two.

That also makes the perceived shift to the right of the Growth Commission report even more of a gamble, and will – we would imagine – influence delegates’ feelings at the SNP conference this weekend. Or it could be that the survey shows Peak Corbyn has already passed in Scotland. The First Minister remains on a tricky tightrope.

But whichever way things go, it seems a safe bet that Ruth Davidson’s demands for everyone to stop talking about the constitution aren’t being met any time soon.

.

[EDIT 11.15pm – the Times has just bust a gut to put a negative spin on a YouGov poll on the eve of the SNP conference, highlighting a small 2% drop in Nicola Sturgeon’s personal popularity from a net 0 to -2. However, the poll also finds a 3% increase in SNP support for Holyrood, a 4% increase for Westminster, and a 5% drop for Labour, along with a stunning 27% drop in Jeremy Corbyn’s approval ratings to -30. The gap between the SNP and Labour has more than doubled, from eight points to 17, with the Tories just four points closer. We suspect conference will be in a pretty cheery mood despite this terrible “blow”.]