Hello, you're very welcome to Longreads, a Jacoven podcast where we look in depth at political topics and thinkers.

My name's Daniel Finn, and the features editor here at Jacoven, and I'll be presenting this show.

Rip it up and start again was a 1983 single by the Scottish indie group Orange Juice.

The title now seems to capture the feeling of many scots about the United Kingdom.

Since Boris Johnson won the UK General Election at the end of 2019, support for independence has gone up in the polls.

The Scottish National Party won this year's Scottish Parliament election for the fourth consecutive time.

They've just agreed to pact with the Scottish Greens who also support independence.

The primary goal is to hold a second referendum after falling short in 2014, but Johnson's Tory government in London says it won't even consider the idea.

Rip it up and start again. Rip it up and start again.

Our guest today for a conversation about the possible breakup of Britain is Scottish journalist Jamie Maxwell.

What were the main implications of this year's Scottish Parliament election for the cause of Scottish independence?

When some ways the election result didn't change all that much. There was a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament during the last holiday term,

and that didn't automatically prompt the breakup of Britain.

This election result, although it was an emphatic victory for the SMP, didn't really change the fundamentals of the debate.

The SMP and the Scottish Greens who are accepted this party, a left-leaning party, won a second independence referendum.

It was in the Labour Party don't, and that sort of uneasy constitutional standoff between nationalists and unionists isn't going to go away anytime soon.

But I think what the election did do was confirm the electoral dominance of the SMP and the durability of support for independence.

So we're now at a point in which the baseline, there is a baseline of 45 to 50% of Scots who want to leave the UK.

Between, say, 1970 and 2010, support for independence rarely breach the 30 or 35% mark.

And it's that gradual but relentless increase in the SMP sentiment that I think sort of terrifies British political leaders,

because they have no answer to it.

And everything they've tried so far, increasing Scotland's legislative autonomy within the UK or attacking the economics of independence,

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