Will Johnson’s record-breaking vaccination campaign impair Scottish nationalism?

Analysis of historian Domenico Maria Bruni, extracted from A. Ethics Brief Description Louis school of government

Today is an important date for British politics. On the same day, there will be, among others, elections for the Scottish Parliament, by-elections in a major and symbolic constituency, and local elections in dozens of municipalities and cities. Some variables can be seen for the overall evaluation of this election round.

Over the past two years, most analysts have cited the emergence of a new flare-up of Scottish independence as a reaction to Britain’s divorce from the European Union, a move – mostly disliked by Scottish voters. The election to the Scottish Parliament on 6 May, will allow the first concrete verification of this hypothesis. It is certain that the Scottish National Party (SNP), a Scottish independence party, will come out of the election as the first local party in terms of consensus and seats. This is a confirmation of what has happened in recent years. More important would be the SNP’s assessment of the extent of victory. To be reached to speak of “victory” coincides with an absolute majority of seats in the Scottish Parliament. If such a border was crossed and crossed, it would become more difficult to resist the call for a new referendum on the independence of Scotland from Britain.

So far, the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has confirmed the position of his conservative predecessors: the referendum on Scottish independence was already held in 2014, defeating the proposal for secularism in the election, hence another referendum Talking again is the far future, measured in terms of generations, that is the argument. Labor, although they are also “unionists” like conservatives and therefore opposed to Scottish independence, maintain a longer waiting position without explicitly excluding any hypothesis.

Then what to expect on this front? For a moment, the pro-election forces the separatists closer to the seats of absolute majority. With some caveats:

– How fragmented will the front of independence be? There are three independence parties: the SNP, the Greens, and Alba, recently founded by former SNP leader Alex Salmond, who was in dispute with the current SNP leadership. According to the latest surveys, the SNP may miss an absolute majority by an integer (two or three seats). Regardless, thanks to the complex voting mechanism, the objective of a complete “independence” majority must still be attained. From a political point of view, however, there may be a definite difference in the probable timing of the request for a second referendum, depending on whether the majority is made up of the SNP and the Greens, or the SNP and the Alba.

– How long will conservatives keep? The Tories in Scotland have been losing voters since the 1970s with a pronounced acceleration over the Margaret Thatcher years. However, in the 2015 Scottish Parliament elections, the Tories managed to establish themselves as the second party behind the SNP, bypassing Labor. If they manage to play this role again, perhaps by strengthening their position relative to other parties, they will increase their resistance to SNP and allied projects.

– Above all: Is libertarianism still the majority? In recent weeks, looking at the elections, we are seeing a definite new phenomenon in the Scottish electorate: for the first time since Brexit, in fact, the desire for an independent Scotland seems to be to split the Scottish electorate in half, as opposed to some elections. Even with it estimated by a mustache below 50%. A change that can perhaps be explained in two ways. First, the successful management of the vaccination campaign by the London government, especially when compared to the lethargy and inefficiencies of continental Europe, may change the minds of some Scottish voters over the relevance of the “Brexit” issue. Secondly, a possible separation of Scotland from the United Kingdom would be related to the creation of a rigid boundary between the two new entities, with costs and associated barriers to the exchange of goods and relations to the economy in general. The European Union still has to imagine and build.