Scotland and England aren’t drifting apart

Are Scotland and England drifting inexorably apart? To find out if that’s true, at Our Scottish Future, we carried out extensive polling of people across Scotland, Wales and England, asking if they feel negatively or positively about our governing system. Did they feel invisible to people in Westminster? Two thirds of those polled in Scotland said yes. Polling in Wales, and both the north west and north east of England, has produced similar figures.

We pressed Scots further: did they feel common bonds with people across the UK? When it came to Geordies, Liverpudlians and the Welsh, the answer was very frequently yes. It was only when it came to Londoners that this frayed – only 17 per cent of Scots say they feel common bonds with the capital. It is probably right to conclude that those who said ‘no’ were thinking of ‘Westminster’ and ‘Whitehall’ rather than actual Londoners.