What the commentators said
“Oh Lord, not again,” said Chris Deerin on Capx. The thought of another independence referendum is too depressing. Memories are still fresh of the last one: the “shouting matches with friends and family”, the Twitter abuse, “the terrible, terrible songs. The poetry. My God, the poetry.” Once more, Scotland’s governance is set to “grind to a halt” as officials go into campaign mode. And who will fight for the “creaking old Union” this time? Labour is a spent force north of the border; Tory leader Ruth Davidson is popular but still heads a small, distrusted party. “Even David Bowie’s gone.”
Another referendum would be a massive gamble for Sturgeon, said Ewen Macaskill in The Observer. Were the SNP to lose for a second time, it really would kill off independence for a generation. But Sturgeon has good reason to fancy her chances. At the start of the last referendum campaign, support for independence was in the low 30s, yet the Yes camp went on to secure 45% of the vote. This time, the Yes camp would start from a support base as high as 50%. And it would be fighting in more favourable conditions, facing a weak local opposition and a Whitehall distracted by Brexit.
“It makes perfect sense for Sturgeon to strike now,” said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph, for the SNP may never get a better chance. Its record is catching up with it, after ten years in power. It lost its majority last year, and Sturgeon’s approval ratings have been “falling for months”. The collapse of the oil price (revenues for 2015/16 fell to just £130m, against SNP projections of £7.5bn) is undermining the case for independence. Time is running out for the SNP, agreed William Hague in the same paper. It knows its best hope is to strike “at a time of maximum confusion in voters’ minds”. Its opponents must show equal ruthlessness. For make no mistake: the battle to keep the United Kingdom together is “now going to be a very close run thing”.
January was the worst month on record for A&E waiting times in England. NHS England statistics show that 85% of patients were seen within four hours in January – far below the Government’s target of 95%, and the worst since reporting began in 2010. Nearly 80,000 seriously ill patients spent more than four hours waiting on trolleys in A&E after being admitted, and 988 of them waited on trolleys for longer than 12 hours – six times higher than the equivalent figure for January last year.