Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Diverging Scotland

I didn't get a chance to post yesterday (!) breaking my long run of posting every day, which began back in May. I had an excuse though - Christmas shopping, and being called into work early. It does mean I'm not getting a great deal done though at the moment.

What I've been thinking about most over the last day or so is Scotland. Aside from not getting the scale right most of my gut feelings have been fairly close to the mark, but with Scotland I've been very wrong.

In my opinion Scotland, particularly the towns and cities of the lowlands are very similar to northern England. With similar people, similar characteristics and similar problems. So I was expecting that over time Scotland would start moving in a similar direction to the North of England and Wales. That absolutely doesn't seem to be happening though, and if anything Scotland seems to be diverging even more.

It stands to reason that people voting SNP want independence, but it doesn't always work like that in reality. People vote for many reasons. I get the feeling that the SNP are now entrenched as "our party" in Scotland. So is it just a case of voting for a party that people feel will represent them better than the others, with the actual nationalism being a lesser issue?

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