Care is needed on immigration poll
MAXIMUM respect to Sir Geoff Palmer, our first black professor in Scotland and a botanist who developed a parallel career in the field of human rights. The Jamaican-born emeritus professor at Heriot Watt University insists the perception that Scots are more tolerant of immigrants than our counterparts south of the Border is a myth.
Jock Tamson’s bairns will be beelin’ at this slight, no doubt, but we do need to rein in our self-mythologising if we are to have a rational political discourse.
Myths tend to have some basis in fact and the facts of the BBC poll that prompted this judgment do point to a difference, even if Sir Geoff fails to detect it.
First of all,the Scottish-English comparison is somewhat flawed because the polls were conducted more than one year apart and a UK poll conducted in the more turbid atmosphere just a couple of months out from a General Election might not produce the same result as the one 13 months ago.
Even if we take the polls as strictly comparable, what is clear is that crossborder attitudes are different. The percentage wishing to maintain the current level of immigration was 26 per cent in Scotland but 20 per cent across Britain.
True, the number wishing to see immigration reduced was the same at 49 per cent in both, but there was also a significant difference in the number demanding a complete halt to immigration: 15 per cent in Scotland compared to 21 per cent across Britain a year previously.
Women were significantly more likely to want immigration cut (69 per cent) than men (60 per cent) and, among the over-60s, 76 per cent opposed immigration, in contrast to 43 per cent of those aged 18-24.
The cross-border comparison of views on immigration is not unlike that on attitudes to European Union membership: broadly comparable but with enough of a difference to be statistically significant.
Where there is a real difference is at the level of government language and policy, with the Scottish Government markedly different in approach to Westminster as ministers in this country recognise the need for fresh incoming blood to counter an ageing population.
It should come as no surprise that people in Ukip and on the right of the Scottish Conservatives seized on the poll findings. Tory MSP Alex Johnstone said: “Survey after survey shows there are no real differences between Scotland and England when it comes to attitudes on immigration.” But that is not true. Surveys show there are small but significant differences in opinion.
Ukip’s Scottish chairman, Arthur Misty Thackeray, insisted: “Ukip has always known ordinary Scots feel equally concerned about immigration as the rest of Britain.
“Labour and the SNP can no longer bury their heads in the sand of ideological denial. The Scottish people know there is a problem and Ukip is the only party taking it seriously.”
But with the sole exception of the last European election campaign where Ukip received substantial media coverage from UK national broadcasters, the party has not as much as held a deposit in Scotland.
That alone gives the lie to the claim there are no cross-Border differences in attitudes. It is as wrong to over-egg these differences as to deny they exist.