‘Poll shows support for UK split has dropped,’ proclaims the Scotsman today . Looking at the actual poll , the headline may be over-reaching slightly: YouGov’s latest figures are within the margin of error of the ones from January, and anyway the question is worded differently. But it should certainly be worrying for Alex Salmond and the Yes campaign that they don’t appear to have made any headway at all.
Indeed, as Marcus Roberts of the Fabian Society (who commissioned the poll) says, Salmond’s halo seems to have slipped a little this year. The Spectator’s Politician of the Year in 2011 has struggled to shrug off the critics who say he’s fuzzy on what an independent Scotland would look like. John Lamont — Chief Whip of the Tories in Holyrood — quipped at the weekend that the SNP ‘have gone from making it up as they go along, to not even being able to do that’.
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