Polling shows immigration is a growing concern to Scots voters - Sue Webber
A few weeks ago, pro-independence newspaper The National ran a story headlined “Immigration becoming growing concern among Scots, poll claims.”
The Times carried the same story. “Immigration now one of Scottish voters’ top concerns,” said its headline.
Both were covering results from The Understanding Scotland Economy Tracker conducted by Edinburgh University’s David Hume Institute and leading Scottish polling company the Diffley Partnership, which found that 21 per cent of a sample of 2190 Scottish adults said immigration was now a top three issue, up from just four per cent in 2023.
Then last month Sarah Kyambi, the founder and director of Migration Policy Scotland, which has coordinated analysis of attitudes in Scotland for three years, including a survey of 2300 people last February, told a BBC documentary that attitudes towards immigration were "cooling", adding that, "The idea that there is an inherent greater positivity amongst the Scottish policy towards immigration is likely to be mistaken.”
Concerns about immigration are not imaginary and when out canvassing I have come across many, many more people raising the issue than ever before. My column two weeks ago reflected what I was finding. “I must admit it has come as something of a shock to me,” I wrote, “This is not the Edinburgh I grew up in, where new permanent arrivals from abroad was never raised as a problem.”
I also argued it wasn’t good enough just to tell people they were wrong when they can see their communities changing rapidly in ways they feel uncomfortable with, and it is undeniable that local services, particularly housing, are under severe pressure at a time when the UK Government can’t cope with illegal immigration.
This is all obviously too much for the SNP leader on Edinburgh Council, Simita Kumar, barely a year in the job, but judging by her Evening News article this week feels qualified to tell Edinburgh people what they think.
I have lived in Edinburgh all my life and I can feel the change in attitudes, and it just proves my point that as uncomfortable as it might be, dismissing a fifth of the population as a “small and vocal minority” will do nothing to change their minds.
And let’s not forget the SNP has tried to change a lot of things to fit in with the views of far, far fewer than around a million people.
It’s all very well for Cllr Kumar to attack me for what she described as “poisonous rhetoric” (I doubt she read past the headline) but what she fails to understand is it’s not really me she’s insulting but those thousands of Scots with real concerns.
Rather than address the issue, Cllr Kumar is trying to close me down for raising it, but if that number of people say immigration is a problem, it’s a problem.
And if this is part of the case for ripping Scotland out of the United Kingdom against the wishes of the majority, as she seemed to argue, no wonder voter after voter I’ve spoken to is heartily sick of it.
Solve all our problems by saddling Scotland with billions of pounds of debt, higher taxes and poorer services, at the behest of a party led by people who clearly struggle with the concept of freedom of expression? That’s not a country I want to live in.