Marking my ten years at Common Weal

April 28, 2026April 28, 2026 / Dr Craig Dalzell / 1 Comment

“Everything in politics seems impossible until the moment it becomes inevitable” – Craig Dalȝell

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(I think this is the first photo of me at a Common Weal event – IdeaSpace, October 2016)

Time certainly does fly. Last week marked ten years since I published my first policy paper through Common Weal. By 2016, I had gone through a bit of a journey from my political radicalisation during the independence referendum, to losing my job and, as it turned out, my career as a laser engineer at the tail end of 2015.

In that intervening time I had kept up my political writing through my personal blog and it was an article there about GERS that caught the eye of Robin (who already knew me via previous campaigning together) and led him to asking me if I could help on a project about Fracking.

At that time, the political winds (including within the Scottish Government) were pushing very much in favour of fracking the hell out of Scotland and while the anti-fracking campaign had (and still has) a very strong case in terms of climate change, local environmental impact and in terms of long term energy security, the pro-fracking side were talking mostly about economics and when it comes to a campaign based on environmental principles vs a campaign based on making the GDP line go up, politicians are often much more easily swayed by the latter than by the former.

Hence the need for something different. I was asked to investigate the Economics of Shale Gas Extraction with a critical eye to see just how they actually held up. The result: They didn’t. Fracking does well to boost the profits of the owner of the well but the industry would create few jobs (especially in comparison to renewables or even the legacy oil industry), would produce even fewer local jobs and would do absolutely nothing in terms of energy security or the price of energy bills.

Even the profits made would only be made if gas prices are pushed anomalously high (thus, as we’ve most recently seen, the industry is sensitive to geopolitics) and if the companies involved are allowed to not pay the costs created by the pollution of the extraction and the burning of the gas.

I’m proud to say that that paper had a significant impact. It was widely read and adopted throughout the anti-fracking campaign in Scotland and that campaign would go on to win a moratorium against extraction that persists to this day (although there are still those seeking power who would reverse that ban).

Not bad for a first attempt at a policy paper!

Ten years later, I’ve published probably more than twenty more, plus co-authored half a dozen books, produced hundreds of hours of audio and video interviews and more. And don’t worry, this isn’t a retirement message quite yet – I still have at least a few more in me (you’ll very much want to keep an eye on the one I’m just finishing up at the moment!).

I’m always a bit embarrassed to self-promote but this seems like a moment that I shouldn’t pass up. I’d like to present the five policy papers written by myself that I look back on most fondly, either because of their sheer impact in the political scene or because they meant a lot to me in terms of subject matter.

Beyond GERS – 2016

If my fracking paper was the one that kicked off my time at Common Weal, Beyond GERS was the one that made my mark on the Scottish political scene. Beyond GERS sought to recontextualise the way we, as a nation, talked about the annual Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland report as it was increasingly being used as a stick to beat the independence movement when it was, in fact, showing something rather different – that Scotland’s accounts were being grossly distorted by the fact that we were not independent in ways that made it very difficult to even talk about the finances of what lay beyond that horizon.

For example, just the fact of independence would cause a lot of civil servant jobs in London who are doing work ‘for’ Scotland to move to Scotland – along with the economic impact they would have when they live their lives in and around Edinburgh instead of in London.

The negotiations around debt and asset splits would cause significant changes which could very well lead to Scotland paying much less in debt interest each year (and almost certainly not more in interest even in a ‘worst case’ scenario). And then actual policy changes like choices to be made over how and where military budgets are spent or where and how large Scotland’s embassies would be could have significant impacts on our annual budgets.

The actual numbers in that paper are now out of date as is much of the methodology that went into calculating them. This was because, in additional to changes to devolution in 2017, one of the impacts this paper had was to change (and in my view improve) how GERS itself was presented. Other impacts were an increased focus on GERS in the context of independence which led to similar papers being produced looking at Wales and at Northern Ireland, which both reached similar conclusions to my own paper. It also led to multiple Scottish Government Ministers promising to produce their own version of a set of “post-indy accounts” for Scotland, though none have actually materialised yet.

Social Security for All of Us – 2017

It was Common Weal’s paper in 2013, In Place of Anxiety that was a major early developer of my political viewpoints, particularly its case for a Universal Basic Income. The concept had been around before then, of course, but that was my own introduction to it. In 2017, I had the opportunity to revisit the topic as part of a broader work on how an independent Scotland could redesign its welfare state.

As part of this I produced one of Scotland’s first fully costed Universal Basic Income schemes. It is meagre by today’s standards (equivalent to Universal Credit, but truly Universal) and I would now advocate for a UBI that meets some kind of adequacy standard of being able to actually prevent poverty rather than merely allow someone to live in poverty.

This paper had multiple impacts on the Scottish political world – not least, it played a role in pushing the major parties to make pledges around the idea of a UBI in the 2021 Scottish elections. The SNP, Greens and Lib Dems all came out in favour of a UBI and Scottish Labour presented a counter-plan around a Minimum Income Guarantee.

Sadly, none came to pass. The UBI pilot scheme proposed by the Scottish Government was blocked by the UK Government and their report into Minimum Income was all-but buried by the Government who had by then changed First Minister twice and were evidently no longer interested.

Ambitions for the next Parliament have also been scaled back with Labour and the Lib Dems dropping their pledges entirely, the SNP promising only pilot study of a Minimum Income study for artists and the Greens proposing a similar pilot for a UBI for care leavers. Both pilots are welcome, of course, but it’s still a step back from the loftier promises of 2021.

However, that journey from 2017 to now has been a remarkable one. Back then UBI was still a radically utopian idea in Scotland, fit only for academics and weird policy wonks. By 2021, Scotland had a Parliamentary majority in favour of UBI even if it lacked the power to implement one and that majority went across the constitutional divide – a rare thing these days.

It also led me to being picked up this year by Basic Income Network Scotland and joining them as a Trustee, so you can believe that I’ll be keeping the issue live as we go into the next Parliament to make sure those pilot schemes happen and then we eventually get a Basic Income rolled out to All of Us.

A Silver Chain – 2018

The Sustainable Growth Commission was the first major push by the SNP to produce a body of work on Scottish independence since the publication of its Scotland’s Future White Paper in 2014. It was widely anticipated but at Common Weal we had heard whispers and rumours that we weren’t going to like what was in it. Sure enough, when it was published we were, quite frankly, appalled. I received an ‘advance’ copy of the report just two hours before its midnight embargo and stayed up till 3am reading it – I was then on the radio at 8am the following morning being interviewed about it which made the late night rather worth it.

Over the course of that publication day, I hammered out this policy paper which was published a few days later. The biggest difficulty we had with the report was the ‘six tests’ it laid out that were put in place to block the launch of an independent Scottish currency in the event of independence. Tests that we still maintain would have been impossible to meet and that the act of adhering to the tests would have made it harder, not easier, to launch a new currency.

This wasn’t the only objection we had but it was the one that gained the most traction. The party had to put substantial effort into railroading an adoption motion through their conference that year – the rebellion amongst members was almost as great as the one they saw during the debate to become a pro-NATO party. It also led to the formation of what would become the Scottish Currency Group who have taken our work on an independent Scottish currency and have pushed on far beyond it. Keep an eye out for their next sets of work in the coming months.

Good Houses For All – 2020

There is no logical reason that I can fathom for building houses that leak unnecessary amounts of heat when the technology to build them better doesn’t just exist but now costs virtually the same as building them badly. At the same time, incentives to improve existing houses don’t exist because why should landlords bother to properly retrofit when it’s the tenant who pays less on their bills and instead you could just jack up their rent because they have nowhere better to go.

This paper sought to solve both problems. It laid out the finances of building passive energy efficiency grade houses (though not necessarily the PassivHaus standard as there are other ways to achieve similar levels of efficiency) for social rented stock. I found that doing this could deliver houses cheaper than the private sector would while still being profitable for Local Authorities. This would mean Councils could build essentially unlimited social houses and outcompete the private sector in both price and in quality.

In 2022, I was asked at a fairly high profile public event if I could win just one policy in my political career, which would it be? I chose this one. It has the potential to not just reduce but to eliminate fuel poverty in Scotland and would leave a legacy lasting potentially centuries.

So imagine my shock and surprise that just a few weeks later, MSP Alex Rowley got in touch and took us up on that challenge, introducing a Members Bill to make passive energy efficiency the minimum standard for new homes in Scotland. The Government, facing a massive defeat if they opposed the Bill, did the smart thing instead by simply adopting it as Government policy. There’s still a long road to go in making it all happen but there’s an excellent chance that it will. I hope that I don’t only win one Government policy in my entire career, but if I do I’ll be happy if I only win this one.

ScotWind: Privatising Scotland’s Future Again – 2022

In January 2022, the Scottish Government announced that the Crown Estate Scotland (an arms-length org, but one owned by and accountable to Scottish Ministers since 2017) had completed its auction of options to develop what was then the world’s largest offshore wind project – ScotWind.

Basically, companies bid to buy the right to come up with a plan to develop a particular patch of seas and then they can choose to either return the right to the Estate or “exercise their option” and start the process of developing it. The Government PR machine went into overdrive to talk up the benefits of selling these options. Headlines touted the hundreds of millions of pounds that would flow into the Scottish Treasury and what could be done with it as well as promises around the ‘supply chain’ that would bring hundreds of jobs to Scotland.

But I was looking at the actual reports and things didn’t seem right. As it turned out, the auction was badly flawed. Rather than a traditional option where the highest bid wins or one where a lowest reserve price was set, this one had a maximum bid ceiling set on it. Every winning bid won their option at exactly the bid ceiling (suggesting they might have paid more). Other problems became evident, such as absolutely minimal protections that in many cases would make it cheaper to break those supply chain promises and to pay the fines than to actually fulfil them.

I very quickly put together a report of these findings and we published just a few days after the initial announcement. Instantly, the news coverage flipped from repeating the party line of the success of the auction to taking a more critical eye. The newspaper article covering my report ended up being the most read article in the Herald’s history of publishing online. My follow up report a year later revealed that Scotland has potentially lost out on billions or maybe even tens of billions of pounds by botching the auction the way it did and an investigation into what happened is now underway.

The Next Ten(?) Years

Obviously, my actual job at Common Weal has changed substantially over the decade. I spend more time now managing our Working Groups and the various other people working on policies than I do writing myself. I also keep up with contributions to our Daily Briefing and weekly Magazine (you are subscribed to both, aren’t you?) and I do a lot of outreach, networking and public engagements (want me to speak at your local campaign group about any of my work? Get in touch!). But, I’m still heavily involved in developing my own policies too and, as I say, I think you’re going to like the one I’ve got coming up next.

And so, where for the next ten years? Honestly, the unemployed laser engineer I was ten years ago couldn’t have predicted where I’d be today so who knows? I do know that I couldn’t have done it without you. It’s folk who support Common Weal with their £10/month that have let me do everything I’ve done and can support me and the rest of the team to keep doing it. So, as proud as I am to have done it all, I’m so grateful to have been allowed to do so. Thank you.

And here’s to the next decade, where ever it takes us.

Process over policy was never a route to Indy

March 11, 2026March 11, 2026 / Dr Craig Dalzell / 1 Comment

“Il nous faut de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace!” – Georges Jacques Danton

This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly magazine. Sign up to our Daily Briefing and Weekly Magazine newsletters here.

If you’d like to support my work for Common Weal or support me and this blog directly, see my donation policy page here.

The Scottish Parliament’s Constitution Committee has recently concluded a short investigation into legal mechanisms for triggering a second independence referendum. The final report and the reports of the evidence sessions are worth reading, but the conclusions are fairly simple albeit in a direction that probably won’t please anyone who has an especially vested interest in the process for Scottish independence.

Essentially, the principle of becoming independent is itself legal (as opposed to many states which have constitutions that explicitly prohibit the secession of components of the state) but there is currently no legal mechanism in place that would allow for Scotland either to unilaterally declare independence nor to unilaterally hold a public referendum (even an “advisory” one) on the question of Scottish independence. This stands in contrast with various other states which explicitly legislate to allow components to secede either unilaterally or provide a mechanism to translate the democratic will of their residents into the legislative process of independence.

Instead, the processes which would allow for independence cannot be enacted unilaterally and may only be enacted via the UK Government or UK Parliament. This includes a mechanism similar to the one in place for Northern Ireland which would allow for a poll on leaving the UK and reunifying with Ireland if public sentiment makes it seem likely to the UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland that such a poll would return a result for reunification. That’s a slightly technical wording but the crucial point is that public polls in favour of reunification are only a mandate for a referendum if the UK Government chooses to not be wilfully blind to them – the veto is still in their hands.

As is the legislative process of becoming independent – that can’t be done by the Scottish Parliament passing a ‘Divorce Act’, but instead by Westminster passing legislation to enact independence. The obvious route to my mind is that they would amend the Scotland Act to delete Schedule 5 and so remove the list of reserved powers – essentially devolving everything not already devolved.

Then it might add Scotland to the Statute of Westminster 1931 which essentially says that new UK laws won’t apply to Dominions and the Commonwealth nations unless they explicitly request or consent to it. Only then could this be followed by a Scottish Act or Constitution Article to make it unlawful to request or consent to such laws plus further laws to remove the role of the UK Supreme Court and other state apparatus that may remain plus something to clarify questions around Crown succession or to remove the Magic Hat entirely and become a Republic.

Another crucial conclusion is that there is no international law that can be applied to legislatively compel Westminster to act on public sentiment or on the calls for a referendum. The UN isn’t going to send in blue-helmeted peacekeepers to enforce some hypothetical ‘Decolonialisation Mandate’ or something like that.

Instead, the Committee concludes, that the question of independence was less a legislative question but more a diplomatic and democratic one. Essentially, that independence could be legislated for should it need to be, but this is only going to happen in practice when the UK Government decides that it needs to be.

Here’s the thing – This was also pretty much exactly the thought process that went in to us writing our books Direction in 2023 and our policy paper Within Our Grasp in 2019. It’s important to note that the latter paper was written before the Supreme Court ruled that a unilateral advisory referendum would be unlawful – a decision that at the time seemed likely but far from assured and therefore until that moment was ambiguous.

“Our goal should be to set up the situation where Westminster has absolutely no choice but to come to the negotiating table to enable independence because not doing so would be worse for them.”

We recognised long before this Committee was even conceived that the question of independence was going to be more about democracy and diplomacy than sheer legislation and we’ve taken quite some flak over the years from trying to push back against elements of the independence campaign who tried to magic independence into being by finding ‘one weird trick the lawyers won’t tell you about’ that would somehow invalidate the Act of Union and prove that Scotland had, in fact, been independent all along. I remember with wry fondness one person who reacted to my explainer of the legislative process above by calling me a “Colonialist Westminster Shill”.

Wishing independence into being isn’t going to make it happen, but the lack of a clear legislative process with goalposts and milestones isn’t a weakness either. Goodhart’s Law very much applies here in that some process that demands that, for example, public polls show 60%+ support for a sustained period of six months before a referendum can be considered could always be knocked into the long grass by a single 59% poll or – perhaps worse – could bounce us into campaign mode without a plan for the day after (like Brexit). Even the SNP’s foolish target of calling for a referendum if there’s an SNP majority in May grants the UK Government the ability to decline that offer even if every single MSP in Holyrood is openly pro-indy, but only 63 of them are SNP.

Instead we should recognise that the precise legislative formulation for independence is ultimately irrelevant. If Westminster has the ultimate veto over whether or not it goes ahead, then we must recognise that they will always enact that veto if doing so causes them fewer problems than not doing so. This is why Sturgeon’s 2017 demand for a referendum was dismissed with a curt “now is not the time” and every other attempt with even less.

This was the purpose of our book and policy paper. Our goal should be to set up the situation where Westminster has absolutely no choice but to come to the negotiating table to enable independence because not doing so would be worse for them. I’ll leave the details of that strategy behind the links to the book and paper (please go read them and buy the book) other than to say that only one component of it is building the public support for independence to undeniable levels.

We also need to consider building an escalating pressure campaign whereby Westminster essentially realises that governing a Scotland that no longer wants to be governed is more hassle than it’s worth (which, if the propaganda is true, is already not worth much because we’re such a money sink).

We weren’t invited to give evidence to the Committee, despite the detailed work we’ve done on the topic, but if we had been we may have questioned the reason for the inquiry being called. Its conclusion was obvious to us long before it was even started and so should have been obvious to the people who called it. I fear that the inquiry was never designed to be part of a coordinated ladder of escalating pressure but was instead another attempt at substituting process for policy.

There’s a simple test of whether I’m right or not. One that will separate a checkbox exercise designed to let the parties tell potential voters they’re doing something from one where they are actually doing something to bring about independence.

The Committee’s final conclusion calls for the Scottish Government and UK Government to negotiate a pathway to exercising Scotland’s right to determine its constitutional future as a matter of urgency.

The test is this: What will you, the politicians, do when (not if) Westminster once again says ‘No’?

Use energy to win independence, rather than independence to win energy

December 11, 2025December 17, 2025 / Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“The problem with the idea of cause and effect is that what is deemed the cause is an effect.” – Mokokoma Mokhonoana

This blog post previously appeared in The National as part of Common Weal’s In Common newsletter.
If you’d like to support my work for Common Weal or support me and this blog directly, see my donation policy page here.

Scotland doesn’t need independence to start owning our own energy.

It feels like 2025 has come full circle for us at Common Weal. January started for us with an announcement from the Scottish Government that it was “not possible” to bring Scottish renewable energy into public ownership – an announcement made after the publication of a poll showing that more than 80% of people in Scotland favoured them doing so. We responded with a briefing paper called “How to own Scottish energy” which laid out the logic behind their announcement, why that logic was flawed and how they could bring energy into public ownership despite their own objections.

In short, the Government’s stance is based on an extremely narrow reading of the Scotland Act which actively prohibits the Scottish Government or Scottish Ministers from owning electricity generating, storage or transmission assets. Under this reading, there cannot be a “National Electricity Company” designed and owned in the same way as some public corporations in Scotland like CalMac or ScotRail.

However, we showed in our paper that various options were not blocked by this prohibition. For example, a Minister-owned “National Heat Company” could be designed to build and own district heat networks to keep us all warm (the prohibition is specifically about electricity, not other forms of energy). The Government could also build a National Energy Company and hand ownership over to a consortium of Scotland’s 32 Local Authorities. Or each Council could own their own energy companies. Or the Government could back the creation of a private energy company that is mutually owned by every adult resident of Scotland. Or, instead of complaining about the limits of devolution, they could be applying pressure on the UK Government to amend what is very clearly a completely obsolete prohibition in the Scotland Act (especially as a narrow reading of it also prohibits the Scottish Government from erecting solar panels on its own buildings).

Come forward now to December and the SNP have kicked off their 2026 election campaign with a new paper essentially saying the same thing as they did earlier this year except framing it around “we’ll do it, but only after independence”. On public ownership in particular, they aren’t advocating for the full-scale nationalisation of energy but their ambition appears to extend only to communities owning up to 20% of local renewable projects.

20% is far better than the current level of a rounding error above 0%, but it’s clear that even within devolution, the Scottish Government could do far more than it’s currently doing to support communities by giving them grants and loans to purchase stakes in developments, to pressure developers to sell or grant those stakes to communities as a condition of planning permission or the renewal of licences and to actively use opportunities like the “repowering” of developments, the end of their licence periods and break-clauses in contracts that would allow poorly performing developers to have their licences withdrawn and transferred to public bodies (in much the same way as the Government took ScotRail back from Abelio in 2022)

This doesn’t get the UK Government off the hook though.

Their recent announcement that some £28 billion will be added to consumer energy bills to pay for vital energy grid upgrades is going to stick in the craw of people whose energy bills are already too high. Worse will be that most of the profits of that investment will flow into multinational companies – including foreign public energy companies – with none returning to the consumers themselves. These investments, too, should be made on a staked ownership basis so that the people paying for them – us – should become shareholders in the investments and see a return on our investment. To make things perfectly clear, if the UK Government had announced that it was going to fully publicly own the assets built via this spending, then the added costs on your bill would be the same. In other words, the choice to publicly own the UK’s new energy assets will cost you the same as the choice to leave them in private hands.

“Can’t we use our public owned energy to help win back our independence, rather than claiming more weakly that we can use independence to win back our energy?”

The same will be true of assets in an independent Scotland – but given the Scottish Government’s “all in” approach to “inward investment” (something their plan published this week mentions more often than public ownership), I can completely see them making the same mistake and forcing us to pay for assets that someone else will profit from.

I freely admit that there are aspects of Scotland’s energy transition that are not in Scotland’s hands and which are not likely to be easily negotiated away as part of an adjustment to devolution such as Scottish consumers being forced to pay for extremely expensive and risky nuclear projects that even NESO (formerly, the National Grid) now says are not needed to meet Green energy targets but this does not let the Scottish Government off from making the changes it can make now rather than using the dangling carrot of independence as a means of delaying action. If anything, independence will come less from making a promise that might be fulfilled afterwards but by taking tangible actions now that push devolution to the limit and then saying to voters “if you want more, you know what to do”.

If it truly is, as the Scottish Government says, Scotland’s Energy – then shouldn’t we take back as much as we can now as use that as leverage to win the rest? Can’t we use our public owned energy to help win back our independence, rather than claiming more weakly that we can use independence to win back our energy?

Undermining Our Principles

November 28, 2024February 8, 2025 / Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“The more expeditiously we can end this plague on earth caused by the landmine, the more readily can we set about the constructive tasks to which so many give their hand in the cause of humanity.” – Diana, Princess of Wales

This blog post previously appeared in The National as part of Common Weal’s In Common newsletter.
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In a year of countless and boundless horrors, where war crimes and crimes against humanity are now so routinely fed to us in real time on social media that we are seemingly utterly numb to those suffering them and indifferent to or even cheering on those who commit them, who had “Scottish First Minister apparently breaches international land mine ban treaty” on their list of things to watch out for?

As reported by LBC’s Gina Davidson, last week, outside a primary school where he was launching a new literacy programme, FM John Swinney was asked about the then breaking news that the USA was changing its policies and giving Ukraine anti-personnel land mines to deploy during its war against Russia. Swinney stated that territorial integrity must be defended and that he “supported the actions taken”.

There’s a problem with this – that statement looks very much like a breach of Article 1(c) of the 1997 Ottawa Treaty that banned the use of AP mines – and in particular banned any state signed up to the treaty from taking any action to “assist, encourage or induce” any other state (whether signed up to the treaty or not) from using such weapons. The UK – and thus Scotland – is a state party to the treaty and all aspects of government, including the devolved governments, are bound by it.

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Ageing For Indy?

September 21, 2024September 21, 2024 / Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.” – Robert Frost

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I’m writing this on the 18th of September 2024. Ten years on from the independence referendum is a day of sober reflection. I certainly have a lot of memories of that day in particular as I spent it under a warm blue sky (much like today, though not quite as warm) going door-to-door to get out the vote amongst folk our campaign group, Yes Clydesdale, had identified as likely to vote Yes. The shattering of my hope was still several hours away, the grief of the following days and the determination to get back on my feet again was a little further away again. I remember many of my conversations that day but two stick out in particular right now.

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Rolling Over Scotland

March 8, 2024March 11, 2024 / Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“As the tail on our back disappeared as we no longer had any use for it, nuclear weapons will also disappear once we realize, we no longer have any need for them. But no matter how much we daydream, it will never happen as some sort of grand geopolitical gesture of international collaboration – somebody has to take the first step – one nuclear-capable state has to take that first leap of bold faith and naive trust! The question is, who will it be? The first nuclear nation to abandon its nuclear weapons, will be the First Peacemaking Nation of Earth – and their head of state, the First Peacemaker.” – Abhijit Naskar

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

This week saw the publication of the 11th paper in the series of the Building A New Scotland Independence White Papers by the Scottish Government, this time looking at the defence and foreign affairs and the policies that the current SNP/Green Scottish Government would advocate should they form the Government of that independence Scotland.

The paper was recently described by Alyn Smith as a sign that the Government had “done its homework when it comes to foreign policy and security”. Unfortunately, he is very far from the mark on that. The paper instead shows a profound ignorance about the process of becoming an independent state and a serious contempt for the internal party democracies of the parties involved.

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The Welsh Way Forward

February 2, 2024February 17, 2024 / Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic”
– Ludwig Wittgenstein

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

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The only reasonable constitutional future for Wales that is not viable is the status quo. This was the ultimate conclusion of the final report from the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales which published last week after several years of patient, diligent and thorough work. While initially set up to examine the prospect of Welsh independence, it took a much broader view, pulling in thoughts and ideas from across the constitutional divide in a way that Scotland could and must learn from.

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Better For Who?

September 30, 2022October 3, 2022 / Dr Craig Dalzell / 1 Comment

“If politicians don’t care about the electorate and lie to them, they can’t expect the electorate to care back and vote them in. An election must be more than a search for honesty in a snake pit.” – Stewart Stafford

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

This month marked eight years since the Scottish Independence Referendum and it’s fair to say that they have not been a quiet eight years. Brexit, pandemic, economic turmoil and the grinding poverty caused by over a decade of Austerity are taking their toll on the wellbeing of the country. It’s certainly not the promised “sunlit uplands” or even the pre-2014 “status quo” that many thought they were voting for. As we move into a fresh independence campaign, it’s worth looking back at some of the things we were promised in 2014 by the pro-Union campaign and how those promises have panned out since.

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The Demographics of Independence: 2022 Mini-Update

July 15, 2022July 15, 2022 / Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“In most polls there are always about 5 percent of the people who ‘don’t know.’ What isn’t generally understood is that it’s the same people in every poll.” – George Carlin

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

Since 2017, I’ve been collecting and deeply diving into Scottish polling data around independence. The last full report was published a little under a year ago but with the re-launch of the independence campaign ahead of the independence referendum that the Scottish Government hopes to hold next October, now is a good time to revisit that study. While I keep an eye on all polling from all polling companies in Scotland I tend to restrict my deeper analysis to those published by Panelbase as they tend to break up their dataset into more varied subsets than others like YouGov and thus provide a richer story for those trying to find out not just how many people support independence but who they are. Since August last year, there have only been five Panelbase polls asking Scotland about independence, including the one just released this week, so there isn’t yet enough data to publish another full Demographics of Indy report. However, given that this latest poll is the first since the First Minster’s indyref announcement and it returned a majority for support for independence I felt it was worth giving a mini-update in this news column. Please read the full policy paper series – comprising the 2021, 2018 and 2017 editions – for my methodologies and all of the caveats involved in peering darkly through the lens of polling data.

OVERALL SUPPORT

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