To think that the new SNP leader just pledged to ignore the will of the majority of Scottish people?

[RudeBarbandCustard]

Forgive me if I'm being naive - I may well be.

But Nicola Sturgeon pledging to continue to fight for Scottish independence is essentially a pledge to fight against the majority of the Scottish people's democratically expressed wishes?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-30011423

I mean, it couldn't be clearer. The majority of Scottish people voted No. So she's essentially saying "Hey, majority of Scotland - I'm going to ignore what you voted for in a democratic process, and fight for the opposite!".

It smacks of arrogance, and a complete disregard for what people voted for!

I may be missing something though, but it's intriguing and bugging me so I'd be interested to hear what others think.

'they were effectively forced into a corner from the moment that we got our Parliament, but that's democracy.'

I didn't follow it in too much detail, but I read some amazing analysis from the pro-independence Revolutionary Collective or whatever it was called. They seemed to imply that Cameron and the Establishment may have thought they could win it fairly easily and wanted to put it to bed and lance the boil. But they miscalculated, just as they are miscalculating against UKIP now. They never foresaw how much the people of Scotland couldn't stand them. They thought their Labour mates could be relied on, but they underestimated how much the people of Scotland couldn't stand them either.

Cameron miscalculated on the World Cup Bid, he miscalculated on opposing Juncker, he nearly lost Scotland after 300 years in the Union. He miscalculated Clacton and he miscalculated Rochester. It is just one disaster after another.

Frequent referenda always sounds like a good idea and kind of fun, but it won't work.

If you can vote on everything then you can vote for lower taxes and more spent on public services. You can vote for more teachers, but lower wages for them and to cut back on teacher training. It's easy to tick a box when you don't have to find a way to make the decision work.

A referendum should be for a major change in direction. Something that can't be taken back easily and which will have profound effects.

The Revolutionary Whatever implied that? You do surprise me. UKIP are nowhere near makings inroads up here for the reasons I gave upthread - it's a very different landscape.

SirC - what fascinates me is that, even with a cursory analysis of the poll results, it's clear that a great many 'no' voters must have previously voted for the SNP.

So, given that Independence is a key policy for the SNP, and that's been emphasised by NS - will that lead to a drop in support for people who like their other policies but don't want independence?

My theory is they are gambling that it won't - because the other parties are so unpopular.

UKIP are unlikely to make significant inroads up here because the political gap they fill in England is currently occupied by the SNP.

UKIP can't out national the SNP because UKIP are for the Union.
But UKIP can challenge the SNP on socialism. The Tories can't because they are useless and are a party of big business and elites and aren't a people's party.

At the moment, Scotland is socialist, but I don't think they will always be.
UKIP is a populist, libertarian party and the SNP is a progressive party. Labour have lost credibility, there is no going back to them. There has to be an opposition and I don't think it will Labour in the coming decades and it can't be the Eton gang of Conservatives.

I agree - although I really think they believed that they support they had would translate into a Yes vote. They made the mistake of confusing support for their party with support for independence, when in fact they are very separate. If Labour manages to regroup I can see support for the SNP waning - although those words may very well come back to bite me on the bum

The SSP will challenge the SNP on socialism Claig, not UKIP

Mind you, at least the Scottish electorate does seem to have woken up. For decades it was pretty much a one party state up here - Labour. You could guarantee that if you asked 10 people in some places what party they supported, not only would they say Labour, but they would give as the reason for that one of either two answers - "its the party of the working man" or my "faither voted Labour, my faither's faither voted Labour, and his faither before him".

No matter how badly they did, a huge sector of Scotland would be guaranteed to vote Labour.

Its also noticeable how certain things the SNP does seem to backfire against them. I don't know how accurate the voting figures were on demographical trends in the Referendum but every single 16 and 17 year old I spoke to was strongly against independence. I can see their Scottish biased educational curriculum working against them in a similarly unpredictable way. Some trends are just surprising and unpredictable.

UKIP are far too much seen as an English party to make significant inroads in Scotland. Scotland also stands to lose far too much from losing EU membership.

Chelsy I think the key to that one is to do with the dreaded spectre of sectarianism.

Many working class catholics (of which there are lot in the central belt, especially the west coast and Glasgow) who traditionally would have voted for the Labour party, have gone over to the SNP.

Very true flip. I work in Lanarkshire, and the referendum definitely went along the sectarian lines there.

Much of that is a mystery to me (sectarian voting). Would anyone explain how it works?

Have you seen the Scottish UKIP MEP, David Coburn?

He is amazing, even better than Farage. He is fearless. He will challenge, he is not polite or politically correct.

He says Cameron should have insisted that all Scots living outside of Scotland should have had the vote, but he blew it. He discusses the Edinburgh Tram System and SNP taxes, the named perosn stuff etc. He is not a bland Alastair Darling bureaucrat.

The analysis I read was not from the Revolutionary Collective, it was from the Radical Independence Campaign. Some amazing analysis on there.

I don't know a huge amount about it myself Chelsy, but I know it exists and it's an issue. Far more so in the West (Glasgow and the West Coast) than the East.

I'd like to think it's in decline but don't quote me on that.

Flip, my dad voted snp in the last election, was vehemently anti independence, but has said he will vote snp in the next election , because he believes they will fight Scotland's corner best at Westminster. I'm trying to talk him out of it!!

trixy - I think that's what they are counting on. They've positioned themselves as a left of centre party, so have picked up a lot of support from folk who are (understandably) disillusioned with the Labour party.

Chelsy, for my tuppence worth, I'm from a working class Glaswegian Catholic family and I definitely perceive sectarian divides in political allegiance still. Tbh, I think my mother's generation (she's 60) were the first generation of Scottish working class people for whom voting Tory was absolutely not an option, after Thatcher. My grandfather was a miner, which explains it all. Before that, the Conservatives were still considered to at least be a choice so IMO it's definitely not a 'faither's faither's faither' thing.

In some parts of Glasgow there is still a feeling that if you are Protestant, you support the Queen and British establishment. Ergo, you will not vote for independence. My DH is a Rangers fan and it's true that the Rangers message boards were very against independence in general. There was a lot of "ha ha, the Tims still have British passports" the next morning. See also my anecdote about DH's colleagues referring to "bead rattlers" upthread.

Though clearly not true anymore, there's still a sense that if you're working class or poor, you are probably Catholic. For many Catholic families like mine, poverty and discrimination after leaving Ireland were very real a few generations ago. So there is often a deep mistrust of the British establishment, which is often seen as being embodied by wealthy Tories who value the monarchy highly, the monarchy which hates Catholics.

Sorry, that was a big ramble - but it's the impression I've formed.

Claig you fascinate me - have you studied any of the referendum debate apart from stuff from Radical Independence or UKIP sources?

I have seen David Coburn speaking. Amazing is not the word I would use. Actually I struggle to think which word would be appropriate.

Thanks for explaining. I find it hard to grasp (tbh I've always struggled to remember which "side" supports which party, which colour and which football team). It sounds astonishing in this day and age, with unlimited media and internet access, that people are still voting along sectarian lines like something out of the middle east.

But then I've always found the faither's faither thing bizarre as well. My grandfather was actually born an Irish (immigrant) Catholic in Shettleston, but converted to Protestant as a young man to marry my grandmother and moved east to get a better paid job. He actually didn't talk about it that much. I guess that might have been very unusual in those days, and might go some way to explaining why I'm an awkward so and so!

I did see quite a lot of Rangers/Celtic slagging each other off on Facebook over it. And a lot being made of 'Rangers for Independence' etc. Hibs/Hearts in Edinburgh seems less sectarian although there is a bit of it. I'm from neither Edinburgh nor Glasgow and not interested in football, thankfully sectarianism isn't something I've experienced, but I know a few people who've had problems.

OOAOML - I've seen David Coburn speak too. I think they wheeled him out for comment during that count. He's quite a character.

That count? I mean "the" count.

I remember that - I was dipping in and out of a thread on here, and remember someone asking incredulously who on earth he was. He clearly appeals to some but I doubt he has wide appeal.

Latest EU poll I've seen was predicting 52% of Scots would vote to leave, which I was surprised by - when canvassing the feeling I got was that support for the EU wasn't as universal as Yes claimed, but I really got no feeling that the majority would vote to leave.

'have you studied any of the referendum debate apart from stuff from Radical Independence or UKIP sources?'

No I only bumped across the Radical Indepedence stuff while browsing for George Galloway and his tour of Scotland. I wanted to see what people thought of the phoney. But I was impressed with the analysis I read.

You don't like Coburn. Am I right in thinking you also don't like Farage?

You see I think they are both similar in their straight talk and non-politically correct direct talk. That is why Farage is so popular. And someone like Coburn could take Jim Murphy, for example, apart because Coburn and Farage don't play by the Queensbury rules. They are not polite or politically correct, they challenge. Cameron can't challenge but Coburn can and I think lots of people will see him as a breath of fresh air against all these politicians. That is the whole appeal of UKIP and that is what Labour and the Tories fear.

I remember that thread too - pulled an all-nighter to watch the results come in cos I was too nervous to sleep.