To the extent that the SNP’s current electoral popularity is due to pro-SNP (rather than anti-Labour) effects, it must be remembered that there is much more than independence at play. Does an SNP success in an election mean that Scotland has suddenly converted to the cause of independence? Of course not.

Firstly, support for independence is pretty low at the moment. According to the 2007 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey (which I believe asks a question about independence every year), support for independence (PDF link) was lower than it had been since May 1997. Asked to choose between independence, devolution or getting rid of the Scottish Parliament altogether, just 23% plumped for independence.

The peak of support for independence was actually in September 1997 — ironically, also roughly when Labour were also at the height of their powers. Then, independence was favoured over devolution for, as far as I can tell, the only time in history. Over the preceding decade support for independence has flitted up and down but has been in a pronounced decline since 2005.

Another point to note is that this, the SNP’s most successful period ever, has come at a time when the SNP has played down its support for independence. Take the slogan it has used since last year’s election campaign. Instead of things like “Michty me, we’ll soon be free” and all that sort of thing, their slogan was: “It’s time.” Time for what? Time for bed? The SNP don’t say.

You have to admit, it is a fiendishly clever slogan. Classic dog whistle stuff. So SNP activists and hardened advocates for independence think it’s time for independence. Anti-Labour voters see it and think it’s time for a change, time to kick Labour out. In fact, it can mean whatever you want it to mean.

Crucially, the independence issue was not rammed down people’s throats by the SNP. Given the closeness of last year’s election, that could well have been what swung it for them.

You should also bear in mind that the SNP are very far away from being a single-issue party. A vote for the SNP is not necessarily a vote for independence, and often an SNP activist will be the first person to tell you this. For instance, Richard Leyton got this line from no less a person than Nicola Sturgeon.

Don’t want an independent Scotland? It doesn’t matter. The SNP have made it very clear that independence will only come after a referendum victory. In the meantime, there is a “national conversation” about independence where you can express your views if you so wish. In effect, the SNP have tried as hard as possible to divorce the independence issue from Scottish Parliament and Westminster elections. The debate over independence now runs separately.

So what explains the SNP’s success? It’s the policies stupid. It is conceivable that Fifers who voted for the SNP did so because they were enticed by their promise to abolish the bridge tolls. Students may have been attracted to their promise to “dump student debt”. And of course, the people who felt that there should be a change in government were always likely to vote SNP because they are the second largest party in Scotland, and the only party in a position to stand up to Labour.

It must also be said that Alex Salmond’s leadership has a lot to do with the SNP’s current success. Yes, he splits opinion. But like him or loathe him, you have to admit that he is a great politician. He is good orator and has the charisma and leadership qualities necessary. The only other Scottish leader that can compare to him in my book is Annabel Goldie, and even she is pretty colourless compared to Alex Salmond.

Particularly when you compare him to the likes of Nicol Stephen and Jack McConnell, who both look permanently nervous, Alex Salmond towers above everyone else in the Scottish Parliament. Wendy Alexander was no match for him either, particularly given the state of disarray Labour are in at the moment. With Alex Salmond at the helm, the SNP should expect an upswing in fortunes, especially since their leader at the 2003 Scottish Parliamentary election was the dull and ineffective John Swinney.

Back in Glasgow East, from what I gather, the issue of independence was not completely ignored, but it certainly did not form a major part of the campaign. Instead, it was presented as a contest where the electorate would pass judgement on the records of the Labour Government in Westminster and the SNP Government in Holyrood.

The SNP were also hugely advantaged by the fact that they were already in 2nd place in the constituency. If my theory about whichever party being in a position to beat Labour will win is correct, then it is no wonder the SNP did well while the Lib Dems tanked.

Most votes are wasted anyway, especially under the FPTP system. But a sure-fire way to waste your vote in Glasgow East was to vote for the Conservatives or the Lib Dems. Only hardened Tories and Lib Dems who despise Labour and the SNP equally will have voted for them (or, indeed, any of the other smaller parties).

In summary, I think that the SNP’s victory in Glasgow East means almost nothing for the union.

That is not to say that I think that the status quo will prevail. I think I am right when I say that all of the parties currently represented in the Scottish Parliament, and the largest parties that are not represented in the Scottish Parliament, all support some kind of increased devolution to varying degrees. That includes the Conservatives, who appear pretty open to the idea of the Scottish Parliament having some leverage over fiscal policy.

Even Labour, painted into a unionist corner by their opposition to the SNP, have toyed with the idea of fiscal autonomy. Mind you, that was under the leadership of Wendy Alexander, who seemed to be a bit of a loose cannon when it came to trying to tackle the issue of the constitution. Who knows what direction Labour will take under their new leader, but I suspect that they will find it difficult to maintain support unless the take the majority view that the Scottish Parliament should have a greater degree of fiscal autonomy.

All of this, though, is almost incidental to the success or otherwise of the SNP. Increased powers for the Scottish Parliament will not come about as a result of SNP success. It can come about as a result of the success of any party.

Thanks to a deal the Scottish Executive has made with Cosla, local authorities will now have to freeze Council Tax — or else.

The SNP’s long-term proposal is to get rid of Council Tax altogether and replace it with a Local Income Tax. Seems like a good idea. Except that the SNP version of Local Income Tax gives local authorities absolutely no power to set the rate. I still don’t understand what’s “local” about Local Income Tax version SNP. Local rates where the rates are set by the centre? Don’t get it. It seems to be “local” in name only.

For a party that is supposed to be in favour of removing power from the centre, the SNP seems awfy keen on reducing the autonomy of local authorities and putting the power all back to the centre. I guess as long as the centre is in Edinburgh rather than London, it must be okay.

When the SNP say so with their new £100,000 vanity project — to rename the Scottish Executive to The Scottish Government. A few have been noticing the creeping use of the phrase ‘Scottish Government’ over the past few months, but I did not foresee the full-scale name change (despite what SNP supporter Scottish Politics says).

Nationalists are dead chuffed. According to them, it is monumental. Not from my perspective. This is just the Executive deciding it wants a fancy new name just as arbitrarily as a ned gets a personalised number plate for his car.

I’m not sure what the point of the name change is (beyond making the SNP feel more important than they actually are). For a start, officially changing the name would require a change in the law in a reserved area. The change is cosmetic. Mind you, that is probably enough for nationalists. But beyond that, Alex Salmond’s justifications do not quite add up to me.

Normally supporters of independence line up to criticise unionists of claiming that Scots are too stupid and incapable of making an independent Scotland work. But today ask a nationalist and all of a sudden Scots are just too stupid to understand what “Scottish Executive” means. This is despite the fact that the phrase has been a part of everyday language for almost a decade.

Perhaps I am being a bit harsh. Maybe this “Scottish Executive” business is too taxing for those little voters. So what do they do to alleviate the confusion? They change the name. Because that won’t muddy the waters one bit!

It’s a tweak to the political lexicon that is not needed. Since the inception of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 there has been a need to differentiate between the bodies that govern us.

So the legislature in Holyrood is the Scottish Parliament (or sometimes just Parliament, if there is enough context to allow you to ditch the ‘Scottish’). There the Scottish Executive is formed and is led by the First Minister.

Meanwhile, the legislature in London is called Westminster (to differentiate it from the (Scottish) Parliament). That is where the government, led by the Prime Minister, does its business.

I didn’t think that was too confusing, but there you go. Obviously I, unlike Alex Salmond, am not in the sort of position to say when and when not Scottish voters are too stupid to know what’s what.

I was used to saying “Executive” for things that the Scottish Executive did and “government” for things that, er, the Government did. Now we have a homonym. So what do I say now? I suppose it will all be “Scottish Government” and “UK Government” from now on.

Except, that is, in bills. These will still contain the phrase “Scottish Executive” even though it was the Scottish Government that put forward the bill. The whole situation is crystal clear now. I really am glad that helpful Mr Salmond has cleared things up for us!

Of course, the Scottish Executive hasn’t given itself a new name because the voters are just too, too confused (although that is the SNP spin on it). Bellgrove Belle lets slip the real reason behind the name change:

[O]nce we are called a Government, act like a Government, people will begin to demand the powers of a Government.

So there you have it. Not only is this name change a piece of spin to the n^th degree deliberately designed to make voters more likely to vote in favour of independence. But also the Executive is not a real government with “the powers of a Government”. It wasn’t me who said that; it was Bellgrove Belle.

So just what is the justification for the name change?

No doubt he will be tearing up his Labour membership card after reading this article: “Dennis Goldie, who is also known for his outspoken opposition to gay rights, is the frontrunner to become the Labour candidate in Falkirk West.” (Via)

This is the post about independence that I have been threatening to write for months.

I am seriously considering voting SNP at this year’s Scottish Parliament elections. But I will probably stand in the voting booth thinking long and hard about it, with my hand quivering. And it will definitely be only for the constituency vote — purely as an anti-Labour tactical vote. The SNP are in the second place in my constituency. I’ll see how the local campaign pans out, but for the time being, voting SNP is the only (slim) hope of booting Labour out of Kirkcaldy.

However, I normally wouldn’t vote SNP. Yes, they are probably in my eyes the second least-worst party, but that says more about the shoddy state of political parties than anything else.

There has been an awful lot of talk about independence in the past few months and I wouldn’t blame SNP supporters for getting carried away. I said a few weeks ago, though, that I thought there wasn’t really a proper debate on independence. For most people it has just been an issue that’s been there for decades. As such, it doesn’t get tackled properly by anybody on any side.

Take, for instance, the SNP’s astonishing reliance on oil. Unbelievably, this still sits at the heart of SNP ideology. It is an argument that might have been convincing in the 1970s. But it should have stayed in the 1970s.

Economic report after economic report rubbishes the SNP claims that oil would keep Scotland’s economy afloat. Surely even the most blinkered nationalist has to realise that the oil argument is in trouble when the SNP’s rebuttal to Professor Arthur Midwinter’s report is to cite the GERS report which said much the same thing!

I don’t know about you, but usually when two studies come to broadly similar conclusions — and conclusions that are supported by the majority of fiscal policy experts — I take that to usually mean that there might be something in those conclusions.

The joke normally goes that if you have two economists you get three different opinions. Here we have economist after economist lining up to give the same opinion — that the oil argument is a complete red herring.

The fact that the SNP are left pointing out differences in the size of estimated deficits is telling. The fact is that these estimates are both deficits. Whether it’s £11 billion or £4 billion, it’s a lot of money to be chucking down the chute.

Meanwhile, the reaction from the nationalist commenters on the Scotsman.com website speaks volumes about how much the average independence supporter actually cares about economic arguments, with such incisive gems as:

I got as far as paragraph three….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Putting aside arguments over balancing the books, for an independent Scotland’s economy to rely almost solely on oil would be incredibly dangerous. I say “almost solely”, although I’m sure most nationalists would soon be able to pull all sorts of other things out of the air that provide “evidence” of how much Scotland’s economy is superior to the UK’s. But why do we never hear as much about these?

The SNP acts as though oil is a panacea to all of Scotland’s economic ills. But you have to be burying your entire body in the sand to believe that it actually would be. An economy that relies upon one single industry — one single natural resource, indeed — is a very unhealthy economy indeed. It’s called putting all your eggs in one basket.

So what happens when the oil runs out, which is bound to happen within a matter of decades? North Sea oil production has already halved in just the past eight years. Since Scotland will have lost its biggest argument in favour of independence within a matter of a few decades, I suppose it will be time to sign a second Act of Union in 2050?

You want more? Let’s leave the economy completely out of the equation. How about the environmental effects? The SNP touts itself as a green party. Yet at the very core of its ideology sits a love of consuming oil. Exactly how environmentally friendly is that? Ryanair would have a more convincing claim to be an environmental group.

Below I have written two lists. The first list is of things we know about oil for a fact. The second list is of things that we just don’t know about oil.

List 1:

• Oil is a finite resource and is bound to run out sooner or later — we know this for a fact
• Oil markets are highly unstable and prices fluctuate wildly — we know this for a fact
• Oil extraction causes pollution and oil consumption is a major contributor to CO₂ emissions — we know this for a fact

List 2:

• Will North Sea oil be enough to plug an independent Scottish government’s budget deficit? — we just don’t know, although the evidence strongly suggests that it wouldn’t

I really don’t understand why the SNP isn’t picked up on this more often. This is a raging, gaping hole that sits at the very core of the SNP’s plans. Moreover, the fetishistic love of oil is at odds with the SNP’s desperation to present itself as environmentally-friendly. And here we sit considering the possibility that they might be in charge come May.

But oil is not my only beef with independence. The main reason why I don’t support nationalist movements of any form is that I just don’t believe that it matters where you are governed from. What matters is how you are governed.

I once read an SNP supporter say that a unionist criticising nationalism is a hypocrite because while a supporter of Scottish independence is a Scottish nationalist, unionists are British nationalists. But this is nonsense. I am not a nationalist of any sort. I don’t have to be “proud” of Britain to recognise that the Union works by and large.

I find it difficult to be proud of Scotland. Being proud of the country in which you are born is as bizarre to me as being proud of this week’s lottery numbers. I certainly have a love of and affinity with Scotland. But I recognise that this is only because I was born here and all of my memories are from here. If I was born in any other country I would love that country also. That is why I can’t be proud of my nationality.

Moreover, while there are many parts of my culture that are derived from Scotland, it is not difficult to find the influence of Britain. It is no inconsistency to say that I feel equal parts Scottish and British, and even European. I find the idea that I cannot be both, or that I somehow have to choose between them, offensive.

And I should make clear here that I am not in favour of London having all of the power. I am a federalist. I was in favour of devolution. To me, it makes common sense for national issues such as defence to be controlled at one level and for issues such as education and health to be controlled by a more local level, just as most people believe that the council is the right body to arrange rubbish collection.

I am also in favour of greater fiscal autonomy. Perhaps the biggest problem with the Scottish Parliament as things stand is that it does not have the responsibility to raise the tax money that it spends. I was struck by an article in The Economist which said:

Holyrood’s politicians… do not, however, suffer the discipline of having to raise their revenue themselves: they are like teenagers on an allowance. And they have no incentive to promote economic growth through taxation.

The Scottish Parliament has only a piddly power to vary tax levels by ±3%, and it is too scared to even use that. The Scottish Parliament needs to mature. Greater fiscal autonomy would allow this to happen.

But that does not mean that we should leave the United Kingdom. It is crazy that in an increasingly globalised world that we should consider building a barrier. And let’s face it, if drawing a boundary isn’t designed to build a barrier, what is the point?

By now some nationalists will be shrieking, saying things like, “Look at Ireland!”, or, “Imagine if Norway wasn’t independent!” Norway is a favourite example of everybody who wants to advocate a certain policy. I remember a few years back David Farrer praised the prosperity of Norway, suggesting that it might be because it was outside the EU. Though I doubt Farrer would be too quick to praise Norway’s generous welfare system.

Whatever the causes, Norway apparently does well for itself. Nationalists believe that this is because it is independent. The thing is though, we already live in an independent country. It’s called the UK. This brings me on to a point that I have never heard a supporter of independence adequately respond to:

The relevant question isn’t, “Why should Scotland be independent?” The relevant question is, “Why should Scotland be independent?”

What is so magical about Scotland that it should deserve to be independent? Scottish nationalists know full well that if Scotland were to become independent, that wouldn’t be the end of the debate. It would probably just mean that the Orcadian nationalist movement would stamp its feet more loudly.

Maybe Aberdonians would start an independence movement on the basis that “It’s Aberdeen’s oil”. And who would blame them? After all, surely even Newcastle has a stronger claim to North Sea oil than, say, Stranraer.

Latching on to words like independence and freedom tugs on people’s heartstrings and gets people heated. But it ignores one vital thing: we are not oppressed. And if we are oppressed, it isn’t because we are ruled from London.

And this brings be on to yet another bugbear of mine about the independence movement. Nationalists often make the claim that Westminster politics is corrupt and that the only solution to it is for Scotland to become independent. But we are talking about politicians here. It is every bit as conceivable that an Edinburgh-based administration would be just as bad (or good) as a London-based one. As I said before, what matters is not from where you are governed, but how well you are governed.

Just moving Scotland’s politicians from one building to another won’t make politics any rosier. And in case you need reminding, the shitbags that currently run Westminster enjoy their greatest concentration of support in Scotland. As we Scottish bloggers have been noting recently, that support is too unquestioningly loyal.

And while I believe that the claims that there is a “Scottish Raj” are overstated, it is difficult to ignore the fact that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer were both born in Scotland, and there are more Scottish cabinet ministers. It hardly fills me with a great amount of confidence that an independent Scotland would have inherently better politics.

I could actually go on, but for the good of my readership and my page load times I’m going to call it a day there. But to think that this is the party that I’m actually thinking of voting for. At the risk of sounding like Polly Toynbee (please, no!) I’ll have to get the nosepegs out.