A MAJORITY of Scots believe a No-Deal Brexit will lead to Scottish independence, a new poll has revealed.
Research by YouGov found that 55% of voters believe independence will be more likely, while 6% believe it won’t make any difference as independence is going to happen anyway. Just 22% of all voters believe it won’t happen at all.
The startling figures were released yesterday as part of a dataset from a poll published last week suggesting that the Tories would lose all their Scottish seats to the SNP in a General Election.
The YouGov survey for the People’s Vote campaign was conducted exclusively in the Tory-held Westminster constituencies across Scotland.
It pointed to a 14% drop in the party’s vote share in these seats, down from 44% to 30%. In contrast, the vote share for the SNP would rise from 34% to 42%.
Despite their conversion to backing Nicola Sturgeon’s party, most of these voters remain steadfast in their Unionism.
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The poll shows a majority of voters in these constituencies would vote to keep the UK in the EU in a new referendum, by 63% to 37% excluding non-voters and don’t knows.
Other figures in the survey revealed that 52% of voters want a public vote on an EU referendum while only 37% want a General Election. Responses to one question illustrated the tricky position Tory MPs find themselves in. Asked what their MP should do if Boris Johnson secures a Brexit deal similar to Theresa May’s already rejected proposals, 33% of voters said they wanted them to support the deal, 30% said they wanted them to oppose the deal, and 37% said they didn’t know.
Voters told the pollsters that leaving the EU with or without a deal would make the economy weaker, and have a negative impact on the standard of living and the NHS.
Some 50% of those polled said they thought it would leave today’s children “worse off than their parents’ generation”. SNP MP Stephen Gethins told The National: “Boris Johnson is intent on dragging the UK off the Brexit cliff edge against our will, with all the damage that will do to jobs and our economy.
“Little wonder more and more people think this will lead to Scotland becoming an independent country – and are convinced that Scotland should have that right to choose our own future sooner rather than later.”
Lord Andrew Cooper, who previously worked as a pollster for former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson, said the poll should send “a very serious warning to the Conservative and Unionist Party in Scotland”.
He added: “Boris Johnson’s threat to them is not that he will be a bump in the road on a slow but continuing recovery, but that he will effectively eliminate them overnight as a major force in Scottish politics, and so reverse 10 years of patient hard work by Ruth Davidson and hundreds of hard-working volunteers, councillors, MPs and MSPs.
“In the last decade, Scottish Unionist voters have looked for a vehicle to back to halt the SNP juggernaut.
“After 2014 and the Labour Party’s internal meltdown the Conservatives benefited from that, but Boris Johnson would be making a huge mistake if he thought that rise was locked in.
“Asking Scottish voters to choose between their British and their European identities and forcing Scottish voters to back a nationalist agenda that might work in some parts of England looks as though it will spectacularly backfire.”
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Across the UK, however, voters are still putting their faith in Boris Johnson.
There were reports over the weekend that Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s strategy adviser, simply shrugged his shoulders when he was asked about the risk of the Tories losing 30 or 35 seats in London, Scotland and the south-west of England.
On Monday, Jason Stein, an aide to Amber Rudd, said private polling done for Downing Street suggested the Tories would end up with 295 to 300 seats, well short of the 326 required for a majority.
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