Could Reform's Scottish surge provoke indyref2?
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 30 July 2025
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Scotland's First Minister John Swinney unveiled his strategy for pursuing a second independence referendum this week, arguing that an SNP majority at next year's Holyrood elections is the only way to guarantee it. This is seen as an attempt to put Scottish independence back on the table as well as combat the rising popularity of Reform.
Pollster Mark Diffley of Diffley Partnership joins Lucy Dunn to unpack the SNP's independence strategy. Mark points out that while Reform are consistently outperforming expectations, their support still primarily comes from ex-Conservatives. This, plus the unpopularity of the current UK Labour government, could provide the SNP with an opening to exploit and shore up nationalist support. Could next year's Holyrood election be the most consequential election of the devolution era so far?
Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Natasha Feroze.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | One of the many perks of being a spectator subscriber is that you can now register to listen to our podcasts without adverts. |
| 0:05.8 | We know that it all sounds incredibly complicated, so we've made it easy as possible. |
| 0:09.0 | Go to spectator.com.D.K. forward slash ad free, your step-by-step guide. |
| 0:18.4 | Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm Lucy Dunn and today I'm joined by Mark Diffley, |
| 0:23.0 | polling expert from Scotland. Today, Mark, we're going to have a discussion about the new |
| 0:27.4 | independent strategy that First Minister John Swinney has introduced this week. Ultimately, what |
| 0:32.3 | this involves is the SNP would say securing a clear majority of seats at the next election in |
| 0:39.6 | 2026 would get the ball rolling for a second independent referendum. |
| 0:45.0 | So when he says that a precedent was set in 2011, which is when former First Minister |
| 0:49.7 | Alex Salmon secured 69 seats. That was a majority and on 45.4% of the vote, I think. And then |
| 0:57.5 | that led to this 2012 Edinburgh agreement with David Cameron. And then two years later, we had |
| 1:02.3 | that independence referendum, which saw Scotland vote to stay in the UK by 55 votes to 45%. I think before we launch into this, |
| 1:12.1 | I think it's sort of important to say |
| 1:13.1 | that there have been a number of different strategies |
| 1:15.1 | when it comes to trying to get a second independence referendum |
| 1:18.4 | after 2014. |
| 1:20.0 | At the time it was talked about a once in a generation vote. |
| 1:24.4 | And I think that since then there have been a number of parts of the party in the |
| 1:28.6 | SNP that have wanted to try and have a second vote, particularly given we're now a decade on |
| 1:35.0 | from that first one. Nicola Surgeon had a number of methods for this. I think initially she |
| 1:40.1 | wanted to go to the Supreme Court and ask if Hollywood was able to have the powers itself to overrule Westminster when it comes to having that second vote. |
| 1:48.8 | And then she also suggested a de facto referendum, which essentially would be if the SNP got a majority of the general election. |
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