What could this election mean for Scottish independence? – BBC News

After her sudden resignation as SNP leader and first minister in February 2023, Nicola Sturgeon told me she thought her plan could have worked and that she would not have bet against herself succeeding.

The reason the SNP got to this point was frustration. They kept winning elections and the UK government kept refusing another referendum.

The government at Westminster argued the democracy of the 2014 vote on independence should be allowed to stand.

The SNP Scottish government went to the UK Supreme Court to establish the legal position.

The judges boxed them in by clarifying that there could only be another referendum with UK government consent.

It remains unclear what it would take to secure that approval – except perhaps the SNP winning a majority of the seats at Holyrood, which was the trigger for the last vote.

So the party goes into this election with line one of their manifesto claiming that a vote for the SNP is a vote for independence without the faintest idea of how to turn that into reality.

They say winning a majority of Scottish seats at Westminster should be enough to open negotiations for a referendum.

They have won that level of support at the last three UK elections. Achieving the same success seems more in doubt this time if the trend in opinion polls is to be believed.

Independence still has substantial support among the Scottish public but achieving it remains somewhere over the rainbow.

It is not the predominant issue in this campaign, even though both nationalist and unionist politicians may, at times, use it to motivate their core supporters.

There are arguably far more pressing matters that voters want politicians of all parties to focus on – like the cost of living crisis, lengthy waiting times in the NHS, standards in education.

Many of these issues are under control at Holyrood, where the SNP has been in government for the last 17 years.

The SNP argues that it has not had enough resources from Conservative-led governments at Westminster over the last 14 years.

UK ministers would point out that the Scottish government has never had more cash from the UK treasury (albeit that sum has been devalued by the recent spike in inflation).

Ministers in Edinburgh have also used devolved taxes to top up their spending.

Is it possible that they could have done better with the resources and decision-making powers that they have?

Is it possible that they have dodged some tough decisions so as not to upset the coalition of support they have built for independence?

That coalition appears to be under pressure anyway.

There are multiple options for independence supporters at election time. There is Alex Salmond’s Alba party or the Scottish Greens, who until recently shared power with the SNP at Holyrood.

The SNP has been an election-winning machine since the 2014 referendum. It has won every national election by persuading much of the block of independence-minded voters to stick with them.

This is the first major election, where the trend in opinion polls suggests that strategy is no longer working.