ON a daily basis, the Tories say to the SNP: drop the constitutional obsession, and get back to the people’s real priorities. That’s a pretty brazen attack line from a party that has only just dragged this country out of the EU single market and customs union against its will in the middle of a pandemic.
Brexit will, after all, have a big impact on people’s life chances in the real world – they no longer have the automatic right to live, work and study in other European countries. And of course a big part of the reason for the SNP’s so-called “obsession” with independence is to return to the EU and win those opportunities back for people. So are the Tories really correct to claim that such a goal forms no part of voters’ real priorities? I decided to use the new Scot Goes Pop/Survation poll to find out.
By a resounding margin of 52% to 29%, respondents say it should be a priority for the Scottish Government to regain access for Scottish students to the Erasmus study exchange programme. Significantly, the age groups most directly affected by the departure from Erasmus are also most eager for a return. In the age range of 16 to 24-year-olds, 57% think Nicola Sturgeon’s administration should prioritise it, and a massive 66% of 25 to 34-year-olds agree. Unsurprisingly, Conservative voters are hostile to the idea, but that’s not the case among Leave voters as a whole, who are close to being evenly split. Strong majorities of SNP voters (64%), Labour voters (56%) and LibDem voters (54%) – and naturally Remain voters (60%) – are in favour.
READ MORE: Scottish voters want to regain EU rights lost to Brexit as priority, poll shows
It’s much the same story on arguably the most important of EU citizenship rights, namely being able to live and work in other countries. By a margin of 52% to 30%, respondents think getting those rights back should also be a priority for the Scottish Government. The breakdown among different demographic and political groups is very similar to the Erasmus question, with one peculiar exception – LibDem voters, who you might expect to be the most passionate Europeans of all, apparently no longer want their EU citizenship rights back. That may be a freakish finding caused by the very small number of LibDem voters in the sample. The only other explanation I can think of is that a significant number of the party’s voters may in fact be Tory supporters voting tactically in constituencies like East Dunbartonshire and North East Fife.
Both the LibDems and Labour are now in the deeply uncomfortable position of urging Scotland to accept Brexit, even though they’ve been telling us for years that it would be a disaster, and even though we voted against it in huge numbers, and even though we have a perfectly viable escape route via independence.
I used another question in the poll to discover the extent to which the two parties are detaching themselves from the political centre of gravity with this seemingly unpalatable stance.
When asked if they think Labour and the LibDems should accept Brexit on the basis that the UK voted to leave the EU, 41% said they should, but 44% think they should do the opposite and seek to regain EU citizenship rights for the people of Scotland – on the basis that Scotland voted to remain. The parties may draw some comfort from the fact that their own voters think Brexit should be accepted – but for Labour in particular, merely holding onto their current voters isn’t really enough. If they want to recover to anything approaching their former glories, they’d have to win back a significant number of SNP voters. And 70% of SNP voters want Labour to reverse course and get our EU citizenship back.
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