Project Salmond taking a knock?

By Allan Little
BBC News

The SNP has been on the rise under Alex Salmond

A BBC poll suggests two out of five Scots would be less likely to vote for independence as a result of the economic downturn - so how big a blow is it for the SNP?

For a small country, Scotland banks above its weight. It has done for centuries.

Take a walk in the old town and you find the iconography of a financial services tradition carved into the stones of the Scottish capital.

The handsome, domed headquarters of the Bank of Scotland dominates Edinburgh's lovely skyline.

But what has the banking crisis done to Scotland's sense of itself? What has it done to the SNP's ambition to lead Scotland to independence?

Our poll asked people whether the crisis had made them more or less likely to support independence.

While 24% said more likely, 34% said they were unsure and 42% said they were now less likely to vote for independence.

The SNP has often talked of Scotland joining an arc of prosperity of small rich countries across Northern Europe and - despite the high-profile collapse of Iceland's economy - it still is.

Deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon said: "If you look at other small countries, like Sweden, Norway and Finland, they enjoy better prosperity in the good times and they have far greater flexibility to handle the bad times.

"Ireland might well be in recession. But it goes into recession 40% more prosperous than Scotland and will no doubt come out of recession 40% more prosperous."

Changing Scotland

But will a public that is now insecure about its jobs, its mortgages, its pensions, buy it?

In a sense, time is on the SNP's side. They have been on the rise for 30 years.

In the old Scotland - the Scotland of steel works and coalfields and shipyards and car plants - the British state counted for a lot.

Most of that industry was nationalised, so if you worked for British Steel or the National Coal Board, and the British state paid your wages, you were unlikely to vote for its break-up.

When it comes to independence- people vote more out of gut feeling Professor John Curtis Strathclyde University

Loyalty to Labour and the Tories was the mark of that old industrial, very British Scotland.

The generations who remember the Britain in which the state dug coal, made steel, built ships, in which the government supplied your electricity, your gas and even your phone, remain for the most part loyal to the Union.

But go further down the age demographic - to the post-Thatcher generation which grew up in a Scotland in which the British state had been rolled back - and the picture is different.

The SNP - always marginal in the old Scotland - thrived in the post-industrial Scotland of looser traditional loyalties.

Winning minds

But has the banking crisis stopped the SNP in its tracks? Has it damaged project independence? Yes, say the polls, but not by much.

"When it comes to independence," says election expert Professor John Curtis of Strathclyde University, "people vote more out of gut feeling.

"If they feel really Scottish, they will declare themselves in favour, rather than weighing up the precise economic interests."

The banking crisis might not have changed people's voting intentions by much.

But to win a majority for independence, the SNP must persuade a sizeable chunk of the as yet un-decideds, and change the minds of some of those who are against.

The economic climate might well have put many of them beyond the reach of persuasion.

The old Scottish virtues built Scotland's banking pre-eminence: prudence, discretion, careful stewardship, and aversion to risk. The SNP know this is part of the character of the nation they govern.

They want an independence referendum in 2010. They know independence was a hard enough sell to cautious Scotland even when times were good. It will surely be harder still now.

• The survey of 1,000 people in Scotland was conducted by Progressive Scottish Opinion for the BBC.