Re: Is anyone bothering with the election?
Scotlands voting should be interesting...
Firstly, the weather could be a factor on turnout because it gets darker a lot quicker up there compared to England, plus the weather is a lot worse in the winter than what we are used to here.
Then, thinking about it.... the Conservatives are the only party that wants to keep the Union together of the UK, so the Indyref "no" vote will have to go somewhere... labour is tanking in the polls in Scotland so its going to be interesting to see what happens (the SNP lost about 13 seats in the last GE to the tories).
The other part of this that I'm very curious as to how its all going to play out, is just how many of the Scottish independence votes will move over to conservative votes. My reasoning is that in the late 80s the SNP switched from being an anti-EU party to a pro-EU party, when they realised that people would be reluctant to vote for an independence vote for Scotland if they were isolated from the EU and the UK.
If Scotland did vote to leave the UK, Scotland would need time (years and years) to ascend to the EU and there would be no guarantee they would be able to join because of the currency issue and their deficit (the biggest in the EU). Also bear in mind that 38% of Scots voted to leave the EU and 55% of Scots voted to remain in the UK (how's that for a split vote).
Furthermore, all the arguments that Sturgeon has given for the "disaster" that would happen in the case of Brexit (trade friction, tarrifs, non-regulatory alignment, borders etc etc), this would also work the other way if the UK was outside the EU and Scotland left the UK and joined the EU (trade friction, tarrifs, non-regulatory alignment, borders etc etc) ... the same situation.... So, will the Scots see through Nicola's Sturgeons indyref 2 pitch and realise that being in the UK is way more preferable to being outside the UK and inside the EU, especially when 65% of Scotlands trade is with the UK and only about 25% with the EU.
I hope that makes sense