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Nicola Sturgeon’s independence plans could be threatened as polls suggest support is waning in Scotland. A Panelbase poll in June found just 48 percent of people – excluding the don’t knows – would support independence if a referendum were held, down from 52 percent in April. Earlier this month, Dennis Canavan, chairman of the Yes campaign in 2014, told the Daily Record that Scots faced a choice between the Westminster “straightjacket” or independence.
But he admitted there is “certainly cause for concern” as “recent opinion polls should act as a wake-up call”.
He added: “We should never take people’s support for granted. To paraphrase Keir Hardie about the need for continuous campaigning: ‘We are either going forward or we are being driven back. There is no such thing as standing still'”.
Independence has split opinion in the country since 2014 but also appeared to spark debate in countries around Europe.
In January 2014, just months before the Scottish referendum, various experts explained how independence was being viewed in different countries.
Swedish Activist Gunnar Wetterberg said at the time: “If the Scots phoned we’d be overjoyed!”
Mr Wetterberg is a backer of a Nordic union in which Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland abandon their own independence and lock themselves together to form a single federal state.
However, as political scientist Oivind Bratberg told the Guardian, there was less enthusiasm for independence in Scotland in Norway.
He said: “Norwegians are very fond of the idea of Britain. They look back at the war with loyalty towards London, where our government and our royal family were located. It’s very difficult to conceive of Scotland as detached from the UK.”
While Scotland has previously been rebuffed by many figures in the EU, primarily from Spain, there seems to be more enthusiasm for Scottish accession now.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon’s IndyRef2 argument ‘legally irrelevant’
“Now Scotland is leaving a smaller union to join a bigger union.”
In an interview with Express.co.uk last week, Irish MEP Billy Kelleher was more cautious but said Scottish accession into the EU would be welcomed.
He said: “In the event of Scottish independence happening in the short term, I don’t believe there would be huge barriers to Scotland joining the EU. It would be very similar in terms of compliance, in terms of meeting standards.
“In the event of it happening, I can certainly see there will be goodwill towards Scotland joining.”
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