Scotland’s disappearing golden eagles have same wind energy story

AKA: Dodgy data used to lie about wind turbines and denigrate eagle research.

I stumbled across a link to the following blog post the other day ( http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/scotland-s-disappearing-golden-eagles-have-same-wind-energy-story ). It purports to be the truth about Scottish Golden Eagle numbers but in reality just appears to be a bit of anti wind turbine propaganda. The author (a Mr Jim Wiegand) was so rude about the research he quoted and his post made so little sense from what I know about golden eagles in Scotland that I decided to dig a bit deeper. Unlike the author I’m not claiming ‘eagle expert’ status but I know a bit about them, particularly in Scotland and I certainly know how to read and evaluate some scientific papers.

Since the writer seems keen to promote his bit of ‘investigative research’ around the web along with childishly calling much more accurate analysis ‘rigged’, ‘fraudulent’ and ‘ridiculous’, (among other things) I decided that it would be useful to point out the massive flaw in his claim just in case anyone was thinking of taking him seriously.

So, what’s the problem? Well, his main argument is that 80% of Scotland’s golden eagles have disappeared from the regions with wind turbine developments. Now if you live in Scotland and know much about eagles, or indeed wind farm locations then you’ll immediately be wondering exactly what does he mean.

Well this self declared “eagle expert” has apparently read a 2014 report that claims 2-5 eagle pairs are present in Southern Scotland and he handily provides a map from the report to show the area in question (delineated as pretty much everything on the mainland south of a line from Greenock to Clydebank, through Glasgow to Falkirk and then along the south coast of the Firth of Forth). So far so good, anyone who knows Scotland and eagles will be aware that there are, or have been, at best only handful of eagles living in that area on and off in recent times, So what’s the problem? Well, he then claims that in 1992 there were 68 pairs of nesting eagles there thus his claim of a massive decline (WTF?), anyone who knows about Scotland and eagles will be aware that this is nonsense; so the question is how does he come to this conclusion?

Well first things first, he’s fairly cagey about referencing the 2014 report, he provides a link to a 2016 RSPB news report, but that is now a dead link. So a bit of googling reveals that the report is actually Fielding and Haworth (2014) and is an SNH commissioned report available here: http://www.snh.org.uk/pdfs/publications/commissioned_reports/626.pdf

So how has he come to the conclusion that this report is misrepresenting/hiding a massive collapse in eagle numbers? Well surprisingly his blog actually shows why his conclusion/claim is wrong even if he either hasn’t noticed or is deliberately ignoring it.

It seems to arise from a comparison he makes with a figure taken from an older paper. This is a paper published by Rhys Green in Bird Study on the 1992 golden eagle survey (Green 1996). The blog post shows a map from the 2014 Fielding and Haworth report of the area in question (Southern Scotland), it then shows a map from Green’s 1996 paper and refers to ‘area G’ which Mr Wiegand has taken to be the same area of South Scotland. HOWEVER (and this is the important bit). It is clear from both maps that the areas are not the same: I.e. while the 1996 paper includes all of the ’Southern Scotland’ area in the recent 2014 RSPB report it also includes Fife, Argyll, all of the area right up to Glen Coe taking in Rannoch Moor and all the associated mountains in between and around, it also covers Arran, Islay and Jura and a few smaller islands. Forget Fife as there are no golden eagles in Fife, but if you know anything about eagles and Scotland then you will be well aware that Argyll, Islay, Jura and the mountains around Glen Coe, Loch Etive, Rannoch Moor, Crianlarich and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs contain quite a few golden eagles, easily 60+ ‘missing’ pairs.

It's almost as if he knows absolutely nothing about Scotland and its eagle distribution and has not a clue about the importance of that bit of missing land in the second report. There are almost certainly more golden eagles breeding on Jura alone than in the entire South of Scotland area, same for Islay, but Mr Wiegand appears oblivious to this and then goes on to blame wind farms for this non-existent collapse in Southern Scotland’s eagles, drawing comparisons with a similar collapse in Californian golden eagles that he then blames the Audubon society for ‘covering up’ and claims the RSPB is doing the same for Scottish data! I have no idea if California has suffered such a population collapse, but based on this sample of Mr Wiegand's ‘investigative research’ I’d recommend if you want to find out then use a different source of information!

As for wind farms, well Southern Scotland has quite a few, but then so does a lot of Western Scotland and there's plenty of eagles there . But for anyone who is puzzling why there are so few eagles (regardless of year) in some parts of Scotland the answer is much more likely to involve illegal use of pesticides by people with other management priorities, rather than wind turbines.

It’s tempting to give Mr Wiegand the benefit of the doubt and assume it is a genuine mistake, However given his rather rude comments on the research of others and his somewhat dubious claim to be an “eagle expert” (if the quality and accuracy of his blog post is any guide) I conclude that on balance he probably deserves being called out on this. As far as I can see, there only a few explanations for such a huge innacuracy. He is either spectacularly ill-informed and too lazy to improve his level of understanding about Scotland and its golden eagles even though he clearly has the information to hand, or he is unable to understand the information right in front of him; or maybe he’s just a biased liar deliberately misrepresenting the data, who knows!. He can choose which is the most accurate explanation of his conclusion, I suppose a cynic might suggest he could be all three! And if you think that’s unfair, well he has been just as rude about the dedicated people undertaking and reporting on Scottish golden eagle surveys so frankly he deserves it.

You may well ask, who is this Wiegand chap anyway? Well he seems to be a blogger with a real anti wind farm stance, He’s very keen on childish name calling directed at people and organisations involved in wind power or who conduct research that conflict with his views (http://www.windtaskforce.org/profile/JimWiegand). Now I have no strong opinion on wind power, I’m neither pro nor anti. However I am very much anti bad science and anti biased reporting of science and anti manipulating of scientific data so that’s why I’m calling him out. Oh, and if you look at his webpage you may get a hint as to why he might not understand what is going on with Scottish eagle populations or the relevance of the missing area on the map… he lives in California, not that that is any excuse because one would hope he could still read a map and take the time to do some proper research before drawing his conclusion.


References:

Fielding, A.H. and Haworth, P.F. (2014) Golden eagles in the south of Scotland: an overview. Scottish Natural Heritage Commissioned Report No. 626.

Green R.E. (1996) The status of the Golden Eagle in Britain in 1992. Bird Study 43, 20-27

Wiegand J. (2017) Scotland’s disappearing golden eagles have California's same fraudulent wind energy story. Blog post from Citizens’ Task Force on Wind Power-Maine.

General Election Result

After the local elections back in May it was clear that there was a small but significant upswelling of anti-snp votes that were favouring the Conservatives, but local elections have a very different dynamic to national ones, and that, combined with the typically abysmal turnout and the alternative vote system means that trying to extrapolate the results to a Holyrood or UK general election is pretty difficult.

As much as I hoped that this general election would see SNP votes and seats significantly reduced Neither I nor anyone else seriously expected to see more than a handful of seats change hands. Mind you, a number of predictions based on opinion polls had suggested that a fair number of SNP seats were at risk, but hey opinion polls are all nonsense these days right?

At 10pm on election night the exit poll rolled in, indicating a Tory result just short of total disaster for them and a Labour result way in excess of what almost everyone expected. However for many Scots it was the size of that yellow column on the graph that generated the most interest, 'SNP down 22 seats' the presenter declared. At that point I knew the poll was nonsense, no way they'd lose that many. But by 6am the following morning it was clear just how accurate the exit poll had been when 21 of Sturgeon's stooges were missing from the line up. For the Tories a difficult night in England and Wales was tempered by an astounding result in Scotland. Labour also impressively clawing their way back from that single MP, with fewer seats than the Tories but not really so far behind in vote share, and even the Lib Dems recovering to a degree that Scottish MPs now make up one third of their Westminster contingent (not much admittedly, but good to see).

Frankly, no matter what your politics you should be glad that Scotland is now represented by a much more varied group of MPs reflecting a range of political opinion rather than having 96% of MPs representing just half the electorate, single-mindedly focused on one narrow aim and afraid to disagree with head office on almost any issue. The SNP still have the majority of seats, but no longer do they have anywhere near approaching the majority of votes, and that has to be healthy.
Of course this also has the pleasant upside of skewering Sturgeon's second independence referendum demands, after all she was the one who claimed that it was her opponents who were putting independence (i.e. opposition to it) at the heart of their campaigns, and you know what... those three parties took 62% of the vote compared to SNP's 37%. If the SNP's claims that the others were campaigning on an anti-independence ticket was accurate then it's pretty clear how voters view 'indyref2'.

Local Election Result Arithmetic

In the aftermath of the local elections I heard a fair bit of whining from SNP supporters about the media coverage of the result. Nothing new there I guess, the SNP have long employed the technique of 'working the refs', a tactic that has worked well for the right-wing in the US, (essentially if you keep accusing the media of being biased against you persistently enough, and for long enough they may start to cut you some slack even if there isn't a significant bias (See Eric Alterman's excellent book 'What Liberal media?' for details of how this works). So it hardly comes as any surprised that the SNP are dissapointed or angry with the reporting.That aside, what is the nationalist complaint? Well it seems they percieve, or rather, they would like you to percieve that the media was virtually portraying the local elections as a Tory victory when it was the SNP who actually won a huge victory and this was all but ignored, or even portrayed as them doing badly.

On the face of it there is an element of truth in there, the SNP did very well in the local elections especially when you consider that they've been in power in Holyrood for 10 years. But of course being in power at Holyrood is not quite the same as being in power at Westminster in the way it affects people's perception of you (especially if your number one strategy is blaming Westminster for almost anything bad), but all the same parties in power do perhaps tend to lose their luster after a term or two so the fact that the SNP has seemingly held its vote is impressive, or is it...?

I think we all know that in Scotland in recent years there is another dimension to all political voting, arguably it's the element that now dominates, and that is of course the issue of independence. The nearly two years of campaigning, associated propaganda and mud-slinging (from both sides) that preceded the 2014 referendum changed the Scottish political landscape dramatically and arguably reset all metrics and expectations associated with voting, the 2015 general election underlined how much things had changed, comparisons between pre and post 2014 voting patterns don't account for this.

When viewed through the lens of nationalist expectation the SNP's result in the 2017 local elections is dissapointing (for them). I know some who were indeed dissapointed, their own expectations were that SNP would be left with majorities in many of the local authorities, and as the largest party in almost all. They also hoped to recieve a share of the vote well into the forties, just like in 2014 (44.7%), 2015 (49.9%) and 2016 (46.5% of constituency votes) and show that the momentum is still strong...

In the event the SNP had no majorities and were the largest group in  around half of councils, they recieved 32.3% of the vote, giving them 35.1% of seats. A pretty good showing but well below the mid to high forties that would fit with other recent acheivements. However, local elections are quite diffrent in nature from Holyrood and Westminster votes, there tends to be more independent candidates and perhaps a greater tenedency for voters to choose the candidate over the party; these can muddy the waters further. Thus maybe the best comparison of how the SNP are doing is with previous council elections.

Undertaking a comparison with their previous performance in the 2012 local elections is a difficult business because there have been many ward boundary changes in between. This means that an direct comparison of seats is not possible, or at least it's possible but it could give an inaccurate picture of any changes (or lack of) in voting pattern. Trying to account for this has given ammunition to those SNP supporters who want to perpetuate the media bias meme. The word from the activists is that the SNP won 6 more seats than in 2012 and 107,000 more votes, i.e. that they are doing better (see David Hayman on Question Time recently for how this is the narrative the faithful have decided to pursue) . But quoting those figures out of their context doesn't really tell you much about how the population voted compared to 2012.

The BBC attempted to resolve this problem of significant boundary changes by using recalculated 'notional' figures for the 2012 elections that treated those votes as if they had been cast under the new 2017 boundaries, these figures were calculated by Prof David Denver at Lancaster University who has been studying UK elections for decades. However his figures are based on both direct electoral arithmetic and some educated assumtions about vote disdribution in some wards to fill in gaps, They perhaps offer a slightly more realistic comparison of the results, but by Denver's own admission, it's a bit rough. These results suggest that 'notionally' the SNP 'lost' seven seats on what they would have had in 2013 under current ward boundaries. Reporting this discrepancy is of course food for the nationalists cries of media bias but frankly it makes little difference, plus 6 or minus 7, it is a tiny shift and essentially suggests that not much changed. Similarly The claim that the SNP vote increased by 107k also reveals very little when scrutinised in context.

In 2012 the SNP recieved 503,233 votes on a 39.6% turnout (you can see how popular voting for councillors is), and indeed they did get lots more votes this time around: the 2017 total was 610,454. And while that looks like an impressive increase in support, it isn't really, it's merely a reflection of a higher turnout in 2017; 46.9% in fact. In order to see if SNP support increased we really need to correct for that significant increase in turnout. Thus we must compare the percentage share of the vote,  in 2012 the SNP drew 32.33% of first pref votes, in 2017 they 32.3% which is a tiny reduction, close enough to say that essentially they stood still.

Therefore in terms of their share of the vote and in councillors elected the SNP have merely maintained their 2012 performance, the recent outcome was not significantly better or worse. As I've already said, this is pretty good going for a party that has 'been in power' for a while. But given that the 2012 elections took place long before the aforementioned impact of the independence referendum and the subsequent massive upswell in support for all things SNP then it is actually surprising that they didn't do significantly better than their 2012 results. If you took these council results and directly compared them with the previous three polls (Holyrood, Westminster and Independence) you might conclude that SNP support has significantly fallen from mid forties to low 30's. However I think council elections are different enough from other national votes to make this a dodgy comparison but all the same it might just be an indication that support, or at least enthusiasm for the nationalist message is falling back, especially when you consider that the nationalists were expected by many to be much better at mobilising their voters. Frankly if I was an SNP supporter I'd be dissapointed, but probably only mildly concerned.

On the other hand there are the Tories. Often written off as an irrelevance in Scotland in recent years and that is a theme that is doggedly promoted by many an SNP supporter and was at one time by Labour too, but amusingly Labour stopped making panda jokes sometime in early 2015! The tories came a distant second to the SNP with 25.3% of the vote (up from 13.27%) but that is getting on for an almost doubling of first preference support in 2012. They also increased their seats by either 161 or 164 depending on wether you make a notional comparison; either way they more than doubled their representation. They were left largest or joint largest group in around 20% of councils. They are now pushing ahead of Labour in votes and seats. It's definetly a more interesting story than" SNP vote stays steady", can you blame the media for highlighting it. For those tempted to still try and argue that the Tory 25.5% of the vote is irrelevant, then it's worth remembering that it's not that long ago since the SNP was polling in the mid twenties in some elections (Local Elections 2007: 27.9% and 2003 24.1%, Holyrood 2003: 23.7%, and 1999 28.7% or Westminster 2001: 20.1%, and 2005: 17.7% ) once a party loses or gains favour changes can be quick....ask Labour!

So what happened, why did the SNP's vote stay pretty much the same as 2012? did all those extra people energised by the 2014 referendum stay at home? Or did the Tories managed to persuade large numbers of residual Labour voters to switch to them? Certainly there seems to have been a fall in Labour votes nearly as impressive as the Tory increase. An SNP supporter I discussed this with was somewhat dismissive of the Tory performance and claimed that those extra votes came to them just because of their stance on independence, but I pointed out that is the same single issue that has given the SNP a big boost in other ballots in the last few years. I would agree that the Tory campaign was woefully dependent on the issue of independence when it should have focussed more on local services and governance, but if the SNP insist on continuing to dangle a sword of Damocles over Scotland and dominate both Scottish representation in Holyrood and Westminster it's only to be expected that significant numbers of people will begin to look for any other way to get their voice heard.

I could speculate further on the meaning of the local results but I guess in a few weeks we'll see for sure if 'peak nat' has passed or if the these local elections were just a mere blip on the SNP's journey.

Manufacturing discontent

So there we have it, another independence referendum is demanded, although let's be honest it's really still the same one because for many pro-independence activists, and most SNP politicians, the campaign never ended. No, they just took a couple of weeks/days/hours/minutes off (delete according to their degree of obsessivenes) to get over losing the first one then decided there was enough of them that they could get away with ignoring what the majority wanted and carrying on as if it didn't happen.
Thus after almost two years of agitating, grievance building and campaign propaganda prior to the referendum, until many Scots were sick to the back teeth of it and the divisons it caused, we were then subjected to another two years of agitating and banging on about it and refusing to accept the decision. Now with brexit having given them the boost of an alleged reason to demand a rerun we are going to be subjected to at least another couple of years of their divisive propaganda as they systematically attempt to demonise Westminster, the Tories (blue red and yellow), leave voters and frankly anyone who disagrees with their goal of independence.

One has to raise an eyebrow at their claims of representing democracy, Mike Russell was on tv last week claiming that it was a matter of democracy granting them yet another referendum, seemingly unaware or uncaring about the contradiction of the SNP demanding a referendum for the sole purpose of overturning the results of two other democratic referendums that didn't go the way they wanted (although let's be honest some of them were no doubt secretly pleased at the way the EU ref went).

However I don't really blame the SNP for doing this, it's in the Party's DNA, it will always use any situation to try and argue for independence so we shouldn't be surprised when they leap on an opportunity to keep it in the news, take steps towards it (demand more powers) or indeed wish to leap off a cliff towards it (demanding a referendum). However while understanding that this is what the party is all about it is surprising to note how reluctant they've been to commit. As I pointed out previously, they were very careful how they worded their manifesto, allowing plenty of wiggle room on what they'd do. Making demands of the UK government that you know will be unworkable and then crying foul when they are (inevitably) rejected or put to one side is a strategy that plays to their advantage. A cynic (i.e. me) would point out that this is the real intention of the SNP, they wish to engineer not independence but an option for independence. Sturgeon and others high up in the SNP know the shape of Scotland's finances, they know the unpalatable consequences of those for an independent Scotland, and they know the very serious consequences of an independent Scotland being in the EU while its biggest partner in trade, people movement and culture is outside of it. On that basis The SNP leaders know that it is probably better to wait, partly in the hope that finances improve and partly to ensure that Scotland winds up outside the EU along with the UK, whereupon it can maintain free trade with UK and work out how to deal with Brussels later, if at all.

I have no doubt that Sturgeon and some of her colleagues would aspire for an independent Scotland to be an EU member, but realistically in the event of a 'hard brexit' we'd be stuffed finding ourselves on the wrong side of a hard trade border with rUK. Thus while it would be arguably be better to wait and see how brexit pans out before deciding if Scotland should be in or out this sensible attitude doesn't really allow for the kind of opprobium and greivance building that they need to fire up support for independence (or to maintain it). The SNP must keep the dream alive but they run the risk of support withering away as events overtake it, thus they have to big up any differences with the UK and paint brexit as a huge disaster (which it may or may not be, but frankly that is almost irrelevant to their strategy) in order to maintain nationalist anger. Having created such a narrative it would appear contradictory to then admit that the most sensible approach is actually to go along with it for a while until we know the outcome, or worse to then have to admit that in the event of a 'hard brexit' (such as no significant trade deal and a lapse to WTO rules or similar) that Scotland's interests are better served outside the EU.  The SNP have to avoid the blame for any decision that goes wrong or for completely contradicting themselves, therefore what they must do is kick up a fuss and squeal as we are 'dragged out of the EU' along with the UK. That can then be used as both a reason to argue for independence and an excuse for why an independent Scotland finds itself outside of the EU (even if that situation is the best of the available otions). We've already seen Sturgeon and others such as Russell being less than committal regarding Scottish EU membership at times, you can bet that their enthusiasm for it will wither further if the UK cannot get a good trade deal.

I'm not idealogically opposed to independence, but on a practical level it has little to commend it on the economic front, and neither does Scottish EU membership if the rUK is outside, thus I conclude that independence is currently a bad idea, but independence in order to join a different trade bloc from the rUK is an even worse idea, pretty much the worst of all options. I believe that those at the top of the SNP heirarchy know this and would prefer to wait and see, but unfortunately for them they have a baying mob of supporters and they have painted themselves into a corner, how long can they spin it in the hope of Scotland being better placed without putting themselves in the frame for the blame?... I guess we'll see.

A Question of Mandates

The SNP like to talk of a 'democratic deficit' within the UK. They often claim that Scotland's voice is not heard by, or is deliberately ignored by the UK government. That Scotland does not get what it wants or votes for. Of course what exactly 'Scotland's voice' means is never quite pinned down, although these days it seems to equate in their minds to being whatever the SNP want. The reality is that Scotland doesn't have one voice, it has many and the SNP do not speak for everyone. More of that in a future post though.
As discussion on round two of the neverendum starts to takeover the news Nicola Sturgeon has been talking of her "cast iron mandate" from the 2016 holyrood election and using that as justification for demanding round two. (Ref 1)

Democracy is often complex in practice, and there are many ways in which it can be applied and in which we can vote for something. Compare for example representative democracy with direct democracy for starters. The system of election also matters as many of them allow for majorities of representatives to elected by a minority. When you start to accuse others of having less of a democratic mandate, such claims may sometimes look less impressive when you scrutinise the data.

I'm not sure I would agree that the SNP  have a mandate to ask for a referendum on the basis of a promise in their 2015 manifesto or their 2016 one. If you actually read through their 2016 manifesto they make quite a lot of promises; they say "we will"...do x & y. However on the issue of another referendum they are considerably less comittal and in fact only give a statement of belief, not a promise (Ref 2). As usual the SNP were giving themselves wiggle room, they could have said "we will demand a second referendum if..." but instead they said "we believe...we should have the right to..." which is a quite different statement. It was arguably a smart thing to put in, after all you can't be held to breaking a manifesto statement of belief in the same way you can for breaking a clear promise to actually do something, but I suspect if someone points this bit of clever wording out in the debate they'll be accused of nit-picking. However ask yourself this: given the supposed disaster they claim that brexit will be is it not quite surprising they weren't being more definite about calling for a referendum?
However pointing out the slightly non-commital way in which they made the manifesto statement on a second referendum is perhaps a distraction. The real issue is that of mandates, so let's assume that as Sturgeon claims, those words in the SNP manifesto and the number of people who voted for it are her mandate. I think it would be fair to say that even though the words of the manifesto weren't super clear on what the SNP would actually do, I suspect most voters got the distinct impression that they would push for a second referendum if brexit happened (although most people assumed it wouldn't), because most voters don't read the subtle nuances of manifesto wording if indeed they read manifestos at all. All well and good, but it's not the only 'mandate' that could be argued to exist, after all other parties went into those election giving voters the distinct impression that they were against any second referendum... (Refs 3,4,5,6)

So let's have a look at some figures.

At the Holyrood elections in 2016 the SNP (and thus their manifesto) receieved 1.06 million votes in the constituency vote, which is quite a lot. Alternatively they recieved 0.95 million in the regional list vote.
If we add in the other major (i.e recieved over 1% of the vote) pro-independence party (i.e. the Greens) to the vote tallies we get to around 1.07 and 1.1 million respectively. Pretty good mandate for seeking idependence according to Nicola.
However if we total up the votes of the major parties that favoured the union (Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem and UKIP) the total number of votes in constituencies and regionally was 1.19 and 1.12 million respectively, ever so slightly larger on both counts. (Ref 7)

Thus if you want to argue about a mandate for independence on the basis of what people voted for at the time of the election then the case is perhaps not so clear. Should only the supposed wishes of the election winners count as a mandate? Should the losers be quiet and just accept? Well if you want the SNP's answer to that it's pretty clear from their behaviour post 2014 referendum that they certainly do think the losers in a vote should be listened to.....if it's them.
However the SNP won by virtue of being the largest party in terms of votes so they get to enact their manifesto, but I'm not so sure they get to hold any kind of moral highground regarding the level of support for their proposals on that single issue. One reason why it is not always a good idea to make assumtions on a single issue based on a multi-issue vote is that different people vote on how they feel about different issues, sometimes you have to accept a party doing things you don't like in order to get them elected to do something you do like. We don't really know how many people voted SNP because of their slightly vague manifesto statement or how many voted for them on the strength of other actual comittments they gave on other issues. This why referendums are occasionally held on single issues, to get that clarity. If only we had the results of a single issue referendum to help figure out what Scots want.....

Well funnily enough, about 30 months back we held a referendum on just this issue. It's much easier to compare the results here: There were 1.62 million votes for independence, but 2 million against it. That's almost twice as many people than voted for the SNP's 2016 manifesto.

Now 30 months isn't really that long ago, yes I know that according to Harold Wilson a week is apparently a long time in politics but back in the real world we don't hold elections on a weekly basis do we? Sturgeon would love everyone to accept that brexit is such a big change that it invalidates the previous referendum, I don't buy that, but regardless of sceptics like me, her entire case hangs on trying to persuade enough people that is true. She also needs to persuade people that it matters (i.e. that maintaining our links to the EU is more important than maintaing those with the UK), and at the same time she needs to demonstrate that they've found solutions to the problems with the SNP's independence case the first time round. They also need to do all that while trying to hang on to somewhere between a quarter to a third of her own voters (depending on which opinion polls you believe...if any (Refs 8,9,10,11) who might actually prefer to stay out of the EU. This latter point is a pretty difficult circle to square, if she guarantees to march Scotland back into the EU she may loose some voters, but may gain some. The cynincs (e.g. me) would suggest that the SNP don't really care much about EU membership and would happily give it up in return for independence, but of course they can't admit that while trying to get us all outraged about brexit. Secretly I suspect Sturgeon is probably quite happy to let Scotland slide out of the EU along with the rest of the UK prior to any independence vote as there's a pretty good chance that with the rUK ouside of the EU Scotland might be better off staying outside too. That doesn't mean that I think that out of the EU is better than being in it, just that Scotland being in the EU while the UK is out is probably worse than both being out if there's a 'hard' brexit. The SNP may pretend otherwise but they know the importance of trade and free movement between Scotland and rUK is many times greater than that between Scotland and the EU, despite the size of the latter's market. My guess is that a referendum after brexit will suit the SNP fine as it will enable them to stay out of the EU If they want, AND blame it on the UK rather than admit that their outrage was merely opportunistic posturing.


References:

Ref 1: https://stv.tv/news/politics/1381869-sturgeon-i-have-a-cast-iron-mandate-for-indyref2/

Ref 2: SNP manifesto https:
//www.snp.org/manifesto For a summary see: https://www.snp.org/the_snp_2016_manifesto_explained
The summary shows20 "we will"'s but just one "we believe":
"We believe that the Scottish Parliament should have the right to hold another referendum if there is clear and sustained evidence that independence has become the preferred option of a majority of the Scottish people – or if there is a significant and material change in the circumstances that prevailed in 2014, such as Scotland being taken out of the EU against our will."

Ref 3: Labour party manifesto http://www.scottishlabour.org.uk/page/-/images/Manifesto%202016/Scottish%20Labour%20Manifesto%202016.pdf
" We rule out another referendum on independence during the lifetime of the next  Parliament."

Ref 4: Conservative party manifesto http://www.scottishconservatives.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Scottish-Conservative-Manifesto_2016-DIGITAL.pdf
"We will oppose any attempt by the SNP to hold a 2nd referendum during this parliament – no matter the result of  the EU referendum this June."

Ref 5: Liberal Democrat party manifesto http://www.scotlibdems.org.uk/manifesto
"We will not support a second referendum on independence in the next parliamentary term. Full stop"

Ref 6: Ukip party manifesto https://www.ukip.scot/manifesto
They do not specify their thoughts on another referendum but are clear about where they stand even on the issue of further devolution, nevermind independence: "UKIP
remains a Unionist party which understands the benefits of local decision making" and "UKIP are wary of ‘Independence by Accident’ and will draw a Red Line at the transfer of further powers from Westminster"

Ref 7: 2016 Scottish parliamentary election results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Parliament_election,_2016

Ref 8: http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how-the-united-kingdom-voted-and-why/
36% of SNP voters surveyed voted to leave the EU

Ref 9: http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/747938/Brexit-Scotland-independence-THIRD-SNP-supporters-voted-Brexit-Sturgeon-embarrassment
34.9% of SNP voters surveyed voted to leave the EU

Ref 10: http://blog.whatscotlandthinks.org/2016/06/so-just-how-united-are-the-snp-on-europe/
"The figures for those who said they voted for the SNP a year ago (that is, in the 2015 UK general election) are almost identical. Support for Remain stood at 66%, while 34% said they would vote to Leave"

Ref 11: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/scotland-blog/2016/may/12/eurosceptic-snp-voters-could-influence-eu-referendum-result-polling-data-shows
"In February, Ipsos Mori found 29% of SNP supporters would vote to leave while Survation for the Daily Mail put the SNP’s Brexit vote at 28%. On 2 May, the latest Survation poll, for the Daily Record, found 25% of pro-independence voters want to leave the EU "