The Pointless Pursuit of Scottish Independence

Two political parties have, since the last war, won half or more of the Scots electorate in a general election. One was the Scottish National Party, in 2015, with 50 per cent of the vote. The other—and this still occasions surprise—was the Conservative Party (which took in, then, the National Liberal-Unionists): in 1955 it won 50.1 per cent. The Conservatives lost support steadily until the late 1990s, when they seemed to settle at somewhere between 15 and 17 per cent of the vote.

Scotland became a Labour-dominated nation from the late 1950s to their last Westminster win in 2010. But Labour lost power quite suddenly: in 2010, the SNP had a mere six seats to Labour’s forty-one. In 2015, the SNP took fifty-six seats, to Labour’s one—a lonely figure, the result shared by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. It was as if a resurgent nationalism had said, “Here’s a fig leaf to cover your nakedness.”

Labour had never had a majority of Westminster votes in…