Alister Jack's direct lie that "Scotland does not want to be part of the European Union" is so brazenly at odds with every available piece of polling evidence that it's almost comicalI see that Alister Jack has claimed that "Scotland does not want to be part of the European Union" and "there's no desire in Scotland to have membership of the EU". This made my ears prick up, because a couple of years ago I decided to use one of the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase polls to ask an incredibly simple question.
Should Scotland rejoin the European Union? (Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, 1st-5th June 2020)
Yes 60%
No 40%
I don't know how else to put this, other than that Scotland clearly does want to be part of the European Union, there plainly is a desire in Scotland to have membership of the EU, and that therefore it is beyond dispute that Alister Jack has told a direct lie. What makes it more incredible is that Jack was responding to a question from Philippa Whitford in which she cited even more recent polling evidence that support for rejoining the EU is close to 70% in Scotland.
Remember a few weeks ago Adam "IT'S THE LAW!!!!" Tomkins panicked a bit at the implications of the Supreme Court verdict and his own knee-jerk triumphalist response to it, and rowed back by insisting that there was still a democratic route to independence in the form of opinion polls? We didn't need all these new-fangled referendums and elections, he assured us, because we could be sure that if opinion poll evidence showed consistent support for independence, the UK Government would out of Sheer Plain Good Old British Decency acknowledge that reality and act accordingly. Well, to be blunt, Adam, that theory is not really reconcilable with your own party's Secretary of State for Scotland making "black is white" claims when opinion polls in fact show sustained and overwhelming majority support for Scotland's return to the EU. The figures are not even close to being within the margin of error.
The only caveat Jack put on his lie was that Scots oppose the EU "when they stop and look at the detail" - which perhaps implies that inconvenient opinion poll results can always be discounted because respondents haven't stopped to look at the detail. The antidote to hasty responses to opinion polls is of course to allow voters to make considered decisions via referendums or elections. But if the UK Government isn't going to allow referendums because now is not the time and never will be, and isn't going to recognise election results as valid because opinion polls will suffice, and isn't going to accept the results of opinion polls because poll respondents don't think about things properly like they would if they were voting in an election or referendum, then the Scottish people are trapped in a Kafkaesque world in which democracy no longer exists.
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Source: Alister Jack's direct lie that "Scotland does not want to be part of the European Union" is so brazenly at odds with every available piece of polling evidence that it's almost comical (//)