This is the first of two blogs that will examine if Scottish independence is still a live political issue in the wake of the 2024 UK general election. The Pearson Edexcel and AQA specifications require you to cover this topic as part of devolution in UK politics. In September 2014, the Scottish electorate rejected independence by 55 per cent to 45 per cent in a national referendum on the issue. More than 10 years later, Scotland remains divided on the question of independence with up to half of Scottish voters indicating in the polls undertaken since then that they would vote yes in a second referendum. For example, according to a Find Out Now poll, conducted in early April 2025, 52 per cent of Scottish adults would vote yes if a second Scottish independence referendum was held now. When the ‘don’t knows’ were taken out of the results, the yes vote stood at 56 per cent with those opposed to independence at 44 per cent, a double-figure point lead in favour of Scotland breaking away from the UK. The poll data indicated that every Scottish region apart from the south would back independence, with Glasgow and the Highlands and Islands recording the strongest levels of support. Younger people were more likely to opt for independence, with 67 per cent of 16-29 year-olds saying yes, whereas the corresponding figure for the over-75s was just 33 per cent. Over the same period, however, However, the political landscape for the Scottish National Party (SNP) - the leading advocates for independence - has taken a significant downturn. In the 2024 UK general election, the SNP only managed to secure 9 seats, a sharp decline from the 48 seats they obtained in 2019. Acknowledging this setback, SNP leader and Scottish First Minister John Swinney admitted that his party had not been successful in persuading the public of the ‘urgency of independence’. Furthermore, the SNP faced a defeat in a 2022 Supreme Court case regarding the legality of the Scottish Parliament's authority to call for a second referendum on independence. This raises questions about the prospects for Scottish independence in the post-2024 election political landscape.

Scottish independence: party lines and parliamentary strength

Currently, the 129-seat Scottish Parliament has a pro-independence majority comprising the SNP (61 MSPs), the Scottish Greens (7 MSPs) and Alba (1 MSP). Between August 2021 and April 2024, the SNP and Scottish Greens also entered into an agreement committing both parties to work for ‘Scotland’s future as an independent nation in its own right’ but Humza Yousaf, then First Minister, terminated the arrangement, turning the SNP into a minority Scottish government. The other main Scottish parties – Labour, Conservative and the Liberal Democrats – reaffirmed their opposition to a second independence referendum during the 2021 Holyrood election campaign. At the 2024 UK general election, the SNP pledged to begin referendum negotiations with the UK government if they obtained a majority of the Westminster Scottish seats but Scottish Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats all rejected the independence platform. As it turned out, the 2024 UK general election outcome was a bitter blow for the SNP not simply because it was reduced to just 9 MPs but also because, for the first time since 2010, anti-independence parties won a majority of the Scottish seats (37 Scottish Labour, 5 Scottish Conservative, and 6 Scottish Liberal Democrat MPs out of a total of 57). Following the election results, Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, conceded that the case for Scottish independence was a ‘hard sell right now’. Thus, at present, the pro-union majority of MPs at Westminster presents a significant obstacle to Scottish independence but, if the pro-independence parties achieve a majority at the next Holyrood elections (expected in May 2026), as some polls are already suggesting, then the political momentum for a second referendum will start to build again.

Is Independence popular with the Scottish public?

Since the 2014 referendum, over 300 opinion polls have been conducted on Scottish independence and these have revealed that adults in Scotland are more or less evenly divided on the issue. Neither side has been able to establish a significant lead in the polls and support for independence has shifted up and down in the post-referendum period. Based on poll averages, backing for independence reached a high point of 53 per cent in August 2020 and, in January 2018, support for the maintenance of the union peaked at 57 per cent. Most of the polls undertaken have been modelled on the yes-no question that appeared in the first referendum but a small number have posed a remain-leave question reminiscent of the 2016 EU referendum. The latter have generally recorded lower support for Scottish independence. The YouGov polls on Scottish independence, conducted between 2020 and 2025 (see below) illustrate the recent fluctuations in public support. To increase pressure on the UK government and the Westminster parliament to reconsider the independence issue, it is likely that the opinion polls would need to record a sustained run of yes outcomes with a clear majority of respondents calling for Scotland to break with the union. We’re not at that stage yet.

Does Holyrood have the authority to hold another independence referendum?

In short, the answer is no because the UK parliament has to pass legislation to allow a second referendum to take place. According to the Scotland Act 1998, which sets out Holyrood’s legislative powers, the Scottish Parliament cannot pass laws on so-called ‘reserved’ matters, a category which includes the union between Scotland and England. After the UK and Scottish governments had agreed on the details of the first referendum vote, the UK parliament transferred the authority to conduct the 2014 referendum to the Scottish parliament through a legal measure known as a section 30 order. This order only temporarily devolved the power to hold the referendum to Holyrood since it stipulated that the vote had to take place before 31 December 2014, after which the granted authority would end. When Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, revealed her plan (in June 2022) to hold a second independence referendum in October 2023, she consulted the Lord Advocate, Scotland's most senior legal officer, to ascertain if this could be conducted within Holyrood’s devolved legislative competence. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled on the matter in November 2022, concluding that the Scottish government’s proposed independence referendum bill exceeded the Scottish parliament’s powers because such a proposal had a significant connection to the union and was therefore invalid. Consequently, much to the Scottish nationalists’ frustration, the devolved legislative framework and the Supreme Court’s ruling continue to place formal obstacles in the way of independence.