Momentum still building for Scottish independence

I have long believed that the union is a break on democracy in each of its component nations, so I was delighted by the poll in the Sunday Telegraph the other day:

A clear majority of people in both England and Scotland are in favour
of full independence for Scotland, an ICM opinion poll for The Sunday
Telegraph has found. Independence is backed by 52 per cent of Scots
while an astonishing 59 per cent of English voters want Scotland to go
it alone. (Sunday Telegraph)

There was more good news from the SNP in an ICM poll for today’s Scotsman:

If the results were carried through to next May, Mr Salmond would be
able to form an SNP-Liberal Democrat administration at Holyrood without
needing any help from the Greens.

And with Labour and the Liberal Democrats failing to get enough
seats between them to form a third Lab-Lib Dem government, Mr Salmond
would be the favourite to become First Minister. (Scotsman)

The poll was taken shortly before the Scottish Labour conference, so its too early to say whether the concerted attack on the SNP mounted by Blair, Brown, Reid, and Douglas Alexander has had any impact.
I have my doubts about the effect of this sort of thing though:

[The SNP] talk endlessly about

Iraq

as if either the vote in next year’s elections could change the decision or even more absurdly as if

Scotland

should decide its entire future as a nation on the basis of this one issue.

 

But if it weren’t

Iraq

, it would be something else…

Their defence policy – you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Scotland

will become a nuclear free zone. That’s fine, then. So if

England

‘s attacked, the fall-out will stop at Carter Bar. The SNP would leave NATO and turn away from all warlike things. I met Scots soldiers in

Afghanistan

on Monday. I
tell you something: there are no better soldiers in the world, but
soldiers is what they want to be, peacekeepers if they can be; but
fighters if they have to be and how proud we should be of them. (Scottish Labour)

American missiles and Middle Eastern adventures, the same old recipe for post-imperial greatness that Whitehall has been pursuing since the 1950s. Only now even the Americans can’t make the formula work. Perhaps it will fall to the Scots to send the message that the game is finally up:

The consequences of the Blair government’s determination to turn its
back on nuclear non-proliferation will last much longer than ministers
seem to understand. The ultimate irony is that Blair’s Iraq war and
Trident bequests to his Labour successors may now help set the scene
for the break-up of the UK. (John Palmer, Comment is Free)