Ageing For Indy?

Craig DalzellI’m writing this on the 18th of September 2024. Ten years on from the independence referendum is a day of sober reflection. I certainly have a lot of memories of that day in particular as I spent it under a warm blue sky (much like today, though not quite as warm) going door-to-door to get out the vote amongst folk our campaign group, Yes Clydesdale, had identified as likely to vote Yes. The shattering of my hope was still several hours away, the grief of the following days and the determination to get back on my feet again was a little further away again. I remember many of my conversations that day but two stick out in particular right now.One was an older gentleman who was leaving the polling place and came over to our stall for a chat. He said, “I voted No. I think you’re going to win and I think you’re going to make a good shot of it, but I couldn’t, in my heart, vote to break up Britain. I’m sorry, but good luck.”The other was with a young lass who hadn’t long turned 16. She hadn’t paid much attention to the campaign until the later part of it but was now really excited...except she wasn’t registered to vote, didn’t know she needed to register and it was far too late to do anything about it (the UK really needs to implement automatic registration or, at the very least, on-the-day registration instead of doing everything it can to prevent people from voting). I had to crush her hope early by breaking that news to her.A lot has changed in Scotland since then, both positive and negative, though one of the things cited as being stubbornly static is the country’s attitude towards independence. In the last ten years, pro-independence sentiment has polled at around 46%, to the pro-union’s 48% with about 6% undecided and a 3% margin of uncertainty – statistically, a dead heat with no clear outcome either way. Independence didn’t win in 2014 but, really, neither did the Union.Another thing that has changed profoundly – and almost without notice – has been what has happened underneath the headline independence polls. I’m currently in the middle of updating my long running “Demographics of Independence” study which has tracked the movement of the population’s sentiment towards independence and will share those results shortly. In short, while the overall level of pro- and anti- independence support in Scotland hasn’t changed much in the last ten years the patterns of WHO are voting in either direction has shifted, sometimes dramatically, it’s just that for every person who has moved from anti- to pro- independence in the last ten years, there has been someone else who has moved in the other direction. We’ve seen big shifts towards pro-independence sentiment amongst Scotland’s migrant population, for instance – perhaps as the prospect of independence changed from a threat to our EU membership to perhaps the only way to rejoin the EU.While those demographic shifts have remained largely unreported beyond my own study, there is one aspect that has appeared in the press and it’s one I’m neither comfortable with nor – as it turns out – does it appear to have any basis in the data. In recent polls, folk aged 16-35 poll at around 60% pro-independence whereas folk aged 65+ poll at about 35% pro-independence and so, the idea goes, that Scottish independence is inevitable – we just need to wait for the older No voters to die off and be replaced by younger Yes voters. This is a claim that was made explicitly by Angus Robertson a few years ago and somewhat more implicitly this week by FM John Swinney in an interview with Lesley Riddoch this week. Bill Johnston and I tackled this argument in our book on ageing and ageism in Scotland saying that it essentially writes off “the old” as incapable of changing their minds and is extremely disrespectful of those who have or those who have supported independence for their entire lives. More critically though, it writes off any chance of asking why older folk tend to be more pro-union. It seems to assume that the older generation are lost to fear of change, nostalgia, British Nationalism and dreams of “Remember the Empire” when their reasons for support for the union may be much more rooted in present circumstances. We know from focus groups that the spectrum of Yes-No support has a very particular pattern to it. Strip out the flag-waving nationalists on both sides – they’ll always support their side no matter what. Look at the more fluid middle and you find that strong, but not ideological nationalist, pro-independence supporters (like myself) and more moderately supportive Yes voters have a lot in common in terms of their hopes, dreams and fears for the future. The thing is, they share a lot of those views with “Soft-No” voters on the other side (more than those voters share with the stronger and more ideological voters on their side). The primary difference appears to be that while “soft-Yes” voters think that independence may solve their fear of the future, “soft-No” voters think that either independence will not solve that fear or may make it worse. Think again of a pro-EU campaigner in 2014 who is convinced that independence would lead to Scotland losing its EU membership – why would they vote Yes to make it happen then? But why might they vote Yes now, post-Brexit?Now think of the shifting priorities someone might have both as they age and as time has passed in the UK since 2014. Think about the 50 year old in 2014 who eventually voted Yes after some persuasion and who did so seeing that Conservative Austerity had been a real drag on their business, despite the promises of greater support from the Government if they voted No.Think about that same 50 year old now ten years on, now in their 60s. The pandemic nearly killed their business but they’re doing OK despite that, however their savings took a hit and they know that if they hit trouble now then there won’t be time enough to rebuild before they retire in a few years. The UK doesn’t do pensions well but they can be sure of getting it (unlike the wooly promises they’re hearing from the Scottish Government now). Not only isn’t the Scottish Government promising anything better, they’re copying the same bad policies like the cut to the Winter Fuel Allowance. So the choice isn’t now one of “independence will lead to better or worse business opportunities” but independence will lead to the “same or worse pension”.You’ll see the full data on the demographics of independence in my report but what we actually see in the data is not older voters becoming more pro-independence as younger voters age but actually a steady decline in support for independence on the order of approximately 0.75 percentage points per year across the ten years since 2014. Younger voters are still overwhelmingly pro-indy but the increase in their support has plateaued in recent years and may be starting to decline.The lesson is clear. It is simply not sufficient to wait for independence to “age in” to fashion. People need something to vote for if they are going to support it. I think of folk like that older gentleman I met ten years ago and wonder what his thoughts are now and how they’ve shifted. If thought we would have made a good shot of independence even though he couldn’t vote for it but if I had had the chance I would have liked to ask him what vision of an independent Scotland was one that he could vote for and what we needed to do to make that achievable. This is how we reach our goal and how we create an independent Scotland that is worth winning. Not by writing people off and hoping they’ll die before the next vote but by recruiting them and welcoming them as campaigners by our sides.