2014 Scottish Cup Final, Pre-match
For the first time in its history, the Scottish Cup Final was played on a Sunday in 2013. This was done to comply with UEFA regulations which prohibit televised matches being played on the same day as the UEFA Champions League Final. As the 2014 UEFA Champions League Final was being played on a different weekend, this meant that the Scottish Cup Final could again be played on a Saturday.


2014 Scottish Cup Final, Pre-match
The redevelopment of Hampden Park for use as the main athletics stadium in the 2014 Commonwealth Games meant that the traditional home of the Scottish Cup Final was not available. As with the 2014 Scottish League Cup Final, the Scottish Football Association opted to use Celtic Park instead. 26,000 tickets were sold on the first full day of sales. St Johnstone received an initial allocation of 11,300 tickets, but almost all of these were sold after the first day of public sale. Dundee United had sold about 16,000 tickets before commencing their public sale of tickets. A JustGiving appeal to fund tickets for poorer fans raised over £14,000 within 12 hours of it being launched.


2014 Scottish Cup Final, Pre-match
A day before the final Dundee United announced they had broken their own record of ticket sales for a final by selling over 28,000 tickets. St Johnstone, meanwhile, sold over 15,000 tickets.


2014 Scottish Cup Final, Pre-match
The match was shown live on BBC Scotland and on Sky Sports.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election
The 2014 Scottish Labour Party leadership election was an internal party election to choose a new leader and deputy leader of the Scottish Labour Party, following the resignations of Johann Lamont as leader and Anas Sarwar as deputy. Lamont announced her decision in an interview with the Daily Record on 24 October, saying that she was stepping down effective immediately because the UK Labour Party treated the Scottish party as a "branch office of London".


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election
Lamont, who had won the 2011 leadership contest, thus becoming the first Scottish leader to have authority over Labour's Scottish MPs in the House of Commons as well as in the Scottish Parliament, was the second leader of a Scottish political party to resign in the wake of the 2014 independence referendum. Before her resignation, Alex Salmond announced his intention to relinquish the role of Scottish National Party (SNP) leader and First Minister. Sarwar announced his own resignation on 30 October, saying he felt it was right for the party to elect a new leadership team.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election
Sarwar became interim leader following Lamont's resignation, and announced plans for the party to hold a leadership contest, with the winner to be announced on 13 December. Sarah Boyack became the first person to confirm that she would be standing as a candidate for party leader; she was subsequently joined by Neil Findlay and Jim Murphy. Katy Clark and Kezia Dugdale entered the deputy leadership race. Findlay was among those to call on former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to enter the contest, but he ruled out doing so. Other senior Labour figures who decided not to put their names forward included Sarwar, Jackie Baillie, and Jenny Marra.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election
Voting took place between 17 November and 10 December using the three-tier electoral college system, which gives parliamentarians, individual members, and affiliated bodies such as trade unions an equal say in the outcome. During this time, the candidates toured Scotland for a number of hustings meetings, at which they set out their direction for the party if elected. Policy options raised were centred on issues such as health, education, employment, and the prospect of further devolution to Scotland.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election
The three leadership candidates were from different wings of the party–Murphy from the Labour right, Boyack from the centre, and Findlay from the left. Controversy ensued when the Unite trade union issued a mock ballot paper instructing members on which candidates to elect, and when two prominent Labour figures engaged in an argument about the contest on social media. On 13 December, Murphy was elected to lead the party, while Dugdale was chosen to become his deputy. In his victory speech, Murphy said that his election was a "fresh start" for Scottish Labour.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election
The 2014 referendum had seen a 55 per cent vote in favour of keeping Scotland in the United Kingdom. However, opinion polls in the weeks following the referendum suggested an increased support for the SNP at Labour's expense, while SNP membership quadrupled. After his election as its leader, Murphy led Labour into the 2015 UK general election, which saw the party's worst-ever election result in Scotland and a landslide victory for the SNP.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election
Labour lost all but one of its 41 Scottish Westminster seats, including Murphy's own East Renfrewshire constituency, while the SNP won 56 of the 59 seats in Scotland. Although Murphy subsequently said that he wished to remain as Scottish Labour leader, the poor result prompted senior party figures and trade unionists to question the viability of his future in the post. After narrowly surviving a vote of no confidence on 16 May, Murphy announced his intention to relinquish the role, triggering a fresh leadership contest. Dugdale was elected to succeed Murphy on 15 August.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Background
Lamont was elected to lead the Scottish Labour Party in December 2011 following the resignation of Iain Gray, who stepped down in the wake of the party's second consecutive defeat by Alex Salmond's Scottish National Party in the 2011 Scottish Parliament election. She was the first leader to take charge of the entire Scottish Labour Party, previous leaders having only had responsibility for Labour's MSPs at Holyrood, and she initiated a review of Labour policy on issues such as devolution and the party's commitment to free universal public services.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Background
The Scotsman's Euan McColm wrote that although Lamont was given greater autonomy over Labour in Scotland, her Westminster colleagues "restrained" her attempts to develop a devolution policy, and her debate on universal benefits resulted in the SNP portraying her as "a politician dedicated to seizing from the people that which was rightfully theirs". Her leadership was further harmed by a controversy over the 2013 Falkirk candidate selection, in which the trade union Unite allegedly tried to engineer the selection process in the Falkirk constituency; an investigation into the matter was led from London rather than Edinburgh.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Background
Lamont also led the party through the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, during which Labour joined the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in the Better Together campaign, an alliance of parties that campaigned for a "No" vote. Lamont herself had a relatively low profile during the period prior to the poll, while Labour's association with the Conservatives was viewed as a betrayal among its traditional supporters.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Background
The referendum was held on 18 September 2014, and saw a turnout of 3,619,915, or 85 per cent of those eligible to vote. Scotland rejected independence, with a 55 per cent vote in favour of staying part of the United Kingdom. Salmond announced his resignation as SNP leader and First Minister the day after the referendum. In the subsequent leadership election, the SNP selected Nicola Sturgeon as its leader. Also on 19 September, UK Prime Minister David Cameron established the Smith Commission to look at the prospect of devolving further powers to Scotland.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Background
Chaired by Lord Smith of Kelvin, the cross-party Commission published its findings on 27 November. Among its recommendations were proposals to give the Scottish Parliament responsibility for some welfare payments and for setting income tax levels. Although it had previously been opposed to giving Holyrood greater tax powers amid concerns it could diminish the role of Scottish MPs at Westminster and lead to "independence by the back door", Labour confirmed its intention to support income tax devolution shortly before details of the Commission's report were made public.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Background
Although Scotland had voted to remain part of the UK, the independence referendum had returned "Yes" votes in some traditional Labour strongholds, particularly Glasgow and North Lanarkshire, prompting media speculation about Lamont's future as the party's leader. Shortly after the referendum, Shadow International Development Secretary Jim Murphy put himself forward as a candidate for the party leadership; The Herald reported that party delegates concerned about the referendum results had started to view Murphy as a possible successor.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Background
Lamont had attempted to quash rumours of a leadership challenge at the 25 September 2014 session of First Minister's Questions, the first of the post-referendum era: "When the First Minister is long gone I will still be doing my job on behalf of the people of Scotland." Her position remained uncertain. The Daily Telegraph's Alan Cochrane wrote that many Labour MPs in Scotland feared losing their seats in the 2015 UK general election without a change of leadership. In the weeks following the referendum, SNP membership increased fourfold, reaching more than 100,000 by mid-December.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Background
Labour's membership over the same period was less clear. Paul Hutcheon noted in the 9 November edition of the Sunday Herald that Labour had "consistently declined" to confirm the number of its members in Scotland, but quoted an "informed source" suggesting the figure was slightly short of 13,500.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Background
However, Peter Jones of The Scotsman subsequently quoted a less favourable figure of fewer than 10,000, with "most of the existing constituency membership [comprising] the relatives and friends of councillors/MSPs/MPs [who] would not welcome ... an influx of new members who might try to oust second-rate post-holders in favour of somebody new and better".


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Background
In October, two former first ministers voiced their concern about the direction of the party. Jack McConnell expressed fears that Labour would experience increased difficulty in regaining the confidence of Scottish voters following the election of Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader, and described Labour as "a political machine that is angry about what has happened in Scotland in the recent past". Shortly afterwards, his predecessor, Henry McLeish suggested Labour had ceded "enormous ground to the SNP unnecessarily" because its supporters no longer understood "what the party stands for".


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Background
Margaret Curran, the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, said that although the party was changing, it needed to reconnect with its "socialist principles". Lamont's deputy, Anas Sarwar, later suggested that during the referendum campaign, Labour "had stopped being a movement for change and fell into a trap of being defenders of the past and defenders of the establishment". The New Statesman claimed that Labour had spent "decades treating Scotland as little more than a one-party state" and needed to "[make] itself  relevant again for the people whom it was established to represent". Stephen Daisley, political editor of STV News, suggested that Labour had "responded to the Nationalist advance by electing a succession of decent but ineffectual Holyrood leaders who were dominated by the Westminster party machine".


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Resignations
Lamont announced her resignation in an interview with the Daily Record on 24 October 2014, saying that it was her intention to step down immediately. She told the newspaper that she was resigning because Labour's Westminster leadership had undermined her attempts to reform the party in Scotland, and had treated Scottish Labour "like a branch office of London".


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Resignations
In her letter of resignation, submitted to Scottish Labour Party Chairman Jamie Glackin, Lamont accused "senior members of the party" of questioning her role and said that she was taking herself "out of the equation" to allow Scottish Labour to have a discussion about the best way forward. Anas Sarwar became Labour's acting leader. On 26 October, following a meeting of the party's executive committee, he outlined the details of the leadership election. It was confirmed the next day that Jackie Baillie would represent Labour in the Scottish Parliament at the following session of First Minister's Questions.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Resignations
On 30 October, an IPSOS/Mori poll conducted for STV indicated that the SNP had much greater support among Scottish voters than Labour, putting the SNP at 52 per cent, compared to 23 per cent for Labour. On the same day, a YouGov poll conducted for The Times gave the two parties 43 and 27 per cent respectively.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Resignations
The BBC's Mark Mardell later noted that a total of four polls in October and November gave the SNP an average 20-percentage-point lead over Labour, which he suggested could allow the SNP to win as many as 30 Westminster seats from Labour in the next election. Also on 30 October, Anas Sarwar announced his resignation as deputy leader at a Scottish Labour fundraising dinner in Glasgow, triggering a deputy leadership election.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Resignations
Sarwar said that he disagreed with Lamont's assessment of UK Labour, and that he was stepping down because he felt that it was "right that we have a concurrent leadership and deputy leadership election. This will allow a Scottish Labour party, its members and affiliates the opportunity to not only elect a leader, but a new leadership team focused on winning in 2016."


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Election details
Anas Sarwar announced details of the timetable for the contest on 26 October 2014, following a meeting of Scottish Labour's executive committee. Potential candidates would be invited to declare their interest from the following day, with nominations open from 31 October to 4 November. Balloting would begin on 17 November, and the announcement of the new leader would occur on 13 December. Sarwar said that voting would be held using the three-tier electoral college, in which three groups – individual party members, parliamentarians, and affiliated bodies such as trade unions – each make up a third of the electorate.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Election details
Plans to change Scottish Labour's electoral system to a one-person, one-vote ballot like that of the UK Labour Party were under review at the time of the leadership contest, but as forging ahead with these changes before the election of a new Scottish leader would delay the process, the decision was taken to use the existing method instead.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Election details
Explaining this decision on the day the contest was announced, Sarwar told BBC News, "We have had unanimous agreement to get the balance right between moving quickly to elect a new leader and also allowing a period of time to have an open, frank and honest debate about the future direction of the Scottish Labour party." The deputy leadership contest followed the same timetable after Sarwar relinquished that role.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Election details
After nominations closed on 4 November, the candidates took part in a series of hustings meetings at locations around Scotland. Venues for the events were announced on 13 November, with the first set to take place in Dundee on 20 November. This would be followed by meetings in Glasgow, Dumfries, Edinburgh, Inverness, Aberdeen, and Cumbernauld. In addition, the candidates would also address the Scottish Women's Conference, the Youth and Student Conference, and the Councillors' Conference. The candidates also took part in a televised debate on a special edition of BBC Two Scotland's political programme, Scotland 2014, on 18 November. Voting closed at midday on 10 December.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Declarations
On 28 October, MSP and Shadow Local Government Minister Sarah Boyack became the first person to announce her candidacy for party leader. MSP and Shadow Health Minister Neil Findlay, and then MP and Shadow Secretary of State for International Development Jim Murphy, were the second and third candidates to declare their candidacies, on 29 October. On 1 November, Katy Clark, the MP for North Ayrshire and Arran, became the first person to join the deputy leadership race.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Declarations
Kezia Dugdale, an MSP for Lothian and Labour's Shadow Education Secretary at Holyrood, announced on 2 November that she would also be a deputy leadership candidate. Each candidate was required to secure ten nominations from among the 80 Scottish Labour members of the House of Commons, Scottish Parliament, and European Parliament. Of those standing in the contest, Murphy received the support of 43 parliamentarians, and Findlay and Boyack secured 12 and 10 nominations, respectively. Dugdale was backed by 51 of her colleagues and Clark had 11 nominations.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Declarations
Several other prominent Labour figures declined to stand. Neil Findlay and Michael Connarty, the MP for Linlithgow and East Falkirk, both urged former Prime Minister Gordon Brown to enter the race, but he declined. Other potential candidates who decided not to run were Sarwar, who wished to concentrate on plans for the next general election, and Baillie, Holyrood's Shadow Health Secretary, who said she wanted a "supporting role" rather than to be Labour leader. Jenny Marra, Labour's deputy finance and youth employment spokeswoman, also decided not to stand. Marra was subsequently appointed to lead Murphy's campaign alongside James Kelly, MSP for Rutherglen.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Jim Murphy
Murphy, a former President of the National Union of Students, was first elected to the House of Commons as the MP for Eastwood in the 1997 general election. Having spent nine years at university without graduating, he worked for the Labour Party before becoming an MP. After serving in junior roles in the post-1997 Labour government, he was appointed as Secretary of State for Scotland in 2008, where he led a Scottish business mission to Shanghai and played a key role in organising the Scotland leg of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United Kingdom.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Jim Murphy
He took charge of Labour's Scottish campaign for the 2010 general election, securing a three per cent swing to Labour in Scotland amid a defeat for the party at UK level. He became Shadow Defence Secretary after the election before moving to the post of Shadow International Development Secretary in 2013. In 2011, he co-chaired the Murphy–Boyack review of the structure of the Scottish Labour Party, and was a prominent figure in the Better Together campaign during the 2014 referendum, touring 100 towns in 100 days to campaign for a "No" vote.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Jim Murphy
Commentators, such as the BBC's Aiden James and The Guardian's Severin Carrell, have described Murphy as being from the Blairite right wing of the party. Murphy launched his leadership campaign in Edinburgh on 1 November, and subsequently stepped down from the role of Shadow International Development Secretary in order to concentrate on his campaign. His bid to lead the party was backed by the Community and USDAW trade unions. He was also endorsed by Neil Kinnock, a former leader of the UK Labour Party, who donated an undisclosed sum of money to Murphy's campaign, and by Shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Jim Murphy
Murphy spoke of uniting Scottish Labour – and Scotland – after the referendum, and said that, if chosen to lead the party, he would stand for election to the Scottish Parliament at the 2016 election, "if not before". He claimed that a "lack of vision" and a failure to listen to Scottish voters had led to voters' deserting Labour. He suggested that it was "compulsory" that an MSP should be his deputy, and expressed support for greater devolution for Scotland.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Jim Murphy
Murphy said that Scottish Labour should take greater responsibility in areas such as policy making, fundraising, and campaigning, and that funds paid to UK Labour by Scottish Labour councillors should be used exclusively for Scotland. Murphy also wanted to spend £5,000 on campaigns in every Labour-held Scottish constituency at Holyrood and Westminster, as well as seats the party planned to target at future elections, and pledged a "radical change" in Labour's campaign strategy.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Jim Murphy
He promised to introduce gender-equality legislation requiring an equal male/female representation in the Scottish Cabinet and on the boards of Scottish-based companies, and planned to appoint a Cabinet Minister for Women. He announced plans to invite the leaders of Scotland's other political parties to talks aimed at developing a strategy for the provision of services for the elderly, services which were coming under increasing pressure from an aging population.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Jim Murphy
He urged Scottish Labour to support the full devolution of tax-raising powers, stating it was "as important a change for the Scottish Labour Party as the rewriting of Clause Four was for the UK Labour Party". He further said that he would introduce a 50 per cent top income tax rate for earners above £150,000 and devolve some welfare responsibilities handed to Holyrood by the Smith Commission, such as the Work Programme, to local authorities. On education, he pledged to create a facility to promote good teaching practice, introduce chartered status for teachers, and identify and provide support to secondary schools that were deemed to be failing. Unlike his two opponents, Murphy supported the continuation of the UK Trident programme, due for renewal in 2016.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Sarah Boyack
Boyack, a former planning officer and lecturer who served as chair of Scottish Labour Students and its UK-wide counterpart, Labour Students, was elected as the MSP for Edinburgh Central at the Scottish Parliament's inaugural election of 1999. She served in both the Dewar and McLeish governments, where she was Environment Minister and later Transport Minister. When McConnell succeeded McLeish in 2001, Boyack lost the Transport brief in a cabinet reshuffle and became a backbencher. After subsequently chairing the Parliament's Environmental and Rural Affairs Committee, she briefly returned to government prior to Labour's defeat in the 2007 election.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Sarah Boyack
She lost her Edinburgh seat in 2011 but was elected as a list MSP for the Lothian region in the same election. As well as co-chairing the Murphy–Boyack review, she served as a member of Labour's Devolution Commission in 2013. The Guardian reported that she would stand as a centrist candidate; Lesley Riddoch of The Scotsman suggested that Boyack had "an instinct for co-operation and consensus building". Boyack describes herself as a socialist. Her campaign was launched in Edinburgh on 7 November, supported by the Scottish Co-Operative Party.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Sarah Boyack
Boyack said that she would be a "listening leader" who would tackle funding shortfalls in the National Health Service (NHS) and local government. She also said that she would publish 100 new ideas aimed at improving lives after meeting people during her campaign. Positioning herself as a unifying candidate who would make the party "fit for purpose", she called for "bold and radical" new approaches to policy, which would require Labour to be honest about funding crises in local government and health. She pledged that, if elected, she would work with the SNP government when she felt it was in the best interest of Scotland to do so, but said Labour would also be an effective opposition, holding the government to account when necessary.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Sarah Boyack
Boyack said that as leader, she would campaign on better funding for healthcare, improvements to childcare, education and youth employment opportunities, and the devolvement of power to local government. She backed the scrapping of the Trident programme. She wanted to reform Council tax, which had been frozen since the SNP came to power in 2007, and suggested the existing eight tax bands should be redrawn. She would allow local authorities to raise a tourism tax, while environmentally friendly power firms and bus companies would be created to raise public funds.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Sarah Boyack
She supported establishing a consensus on whether or not to have full tax devolution, but had "reservations" about the prospect of devolving further taxes to Holyrood. She favoured devolving welfare benefits to Scotland. She told STV's Stephen Daisley that she wished "to make Scottish Labour a force in Scottish politics again". After publishing a list of social justice-themed policies, she announced plans to establish a commission similar to the Social Justice Commission created by UK Labour leader John Smith in 1994, which had helped shape Labour policy in areas such as employment and welfare.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Neil Findlay
Findlay, a former bricklayer and teacher, was elected to Holyrood as a list MSP for Lothian in 2011, having previously been a councillor in West Lothian. Subsequently, appointed as Shadow Health Minister, he was also a member of the Red Paper Collective, a group of politicians who called on Labour to support the full devolution of income tax powers to Scotland. A BBC profile said that Findlay was "widely described as being on the left wing of his party [and] happy to describe himself as a socialist". His campaign was launched on 8 November at the Miners' Welfare Club in Fauldhouse, West Lothian, his home village, and endorsed by the trade unions ASLEF, CWU, GMB, Musicians' Union, NUM, RMT, TSSA, UCATT, UNISON, and Unite.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Neil Findlay
Policy options raised by Findlay included increasing the minimum wage, reintroduction of council house building, reduction in the use of the private sector in NHS Scotland, and allowing councils to set their own taxes to help reverse job losses within local government. He described himself as "no machine politician", and called for a return to the "timeless Labour values of community, solidarity, fairness and justice". He said that if elected as leader, his 2016 election campaign would focus on tackling youth unemployment, the introduction of a living wage, and improvements to health and social care.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Neil Findlay
He said that he wanted to make the party more "autonomous" by involving its members and trade unions to create a party that was "more collective and co-operative in nature". He also expressed the desire to establish a public inquiry into the practice of trade union blacklisting. Among his plans for devolution was for Holyrood to have power over employment regulations to enable the creation of a Scottish Health and Safety Executive and the introduction of corporate culpable homicide legislation.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Neil Findlay
On gender equality, Findlay announced plans for legislation to address the gender pay gap, as well as increasing the number of women MSPs and the number of women on "the bodies that take decisions for our country". He said that he would lobby the UK government to scrap the UK Trident programme if UK Labour leader Ed Miliband became prime minister in the next election and that he wanted to renationalise the railways in Scotland, bring an end to public-private partnerships, and commit the party to full employment.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Leadership, Neil Findlay
He supported introducing a 50 per cent tax band "to tackle poverty and youth unemployment", but urged caution on tax devolvement to ensure Scotland did not end up "worse off". He said there would be "no privatisation of the NHS under my leadership". If elected he promised to "hit the ground running", and said he would be ready to take on SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon at the next session of First Minister's Questions.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Deputy leadership, Kezia Dugdale
Dugdale, who had joined the Labour Party in 2004 after graduating from the University of Aberdeen, was elected as an MSP for the Lothian region in 2011 and later appointed to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Health Minister. She quickly ruled herself out of running for the leadership, but told the Edinburgh Evening News that she would consider entering a deputy leadership contest, describing herself as a "sidekick, not a superhero". She also spoke of her intention to serve no more than three terms in Parliament. Like Murphy, she secured the backing of the Community trade union. She was also endorsed by the Scottish Co-Operative Party.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Deputy leadership, Kezia Dugdale
Dugdale talked of improving employment, wages, education, and childcare, saying that she stood for "tomorrow's Scotland – a country free from poverty and injustice, with opportunity for everyone". Many of the parliamentarians who nominated Dugdale for deputy leader also endorsed Murphy's leadership bid, but she ruled out standing with Murphy on a joint ticket. She suggested taxing bankers in order to pay for jobs.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Deputy leadership, Katy Clark
Clark, a former solicitor with UNISON, joined the Labour Party at the age of 17. She was elected to the House of Commons as the MP for North Ayrshire and Arran in the 2005 general election. The Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald reported that as a parliamentarian, she developed a reputation as a party rebel who, at the time of the leadership contest, had most recently voted against British participation in the 2014 military intervention against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. She won the support of UNISON after announcing her intention to enter the deputy leadership contest, and was also backed by the Communication Workers' Union, Unite, the GMB, and the Musicians' Union.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Deputy leadership, Katy Clark
Clark spoke of a need to recognise "that Scottish politics has changed and it can't be business as usual." Policy areas she intended to focus on included improvements in employment, housing, and public services, which she said were "prevented for too many by wealth being held in the hands of a minority." She also spoke of reaching out to people she claimed had "abandoned hope in Labour" or voted for independence, and said that the party needed to "take a new path" because people wanted social and economic change, which previous Labour governments had not delivered.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Deputy leadership, Katy Clark
Among the policies she supported were renationalisation of the railways, introducing free childcare for children over the age of twelve months, introducing a living wage, and the abolition of both the Trident programme and student tuition fees. She also claimed that Labour in Scotland had "been taken to the political abyss" by "New Labour and its architects". She claimed that Labour would find it harder to be re-elected unless she was chosen as its deputy leader.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Controversy
While Labour distributed ballot packs to its members, the trade unions were responsible for sending out literature relating to the contest to their members, leading to concerns from each side about the content of the other's election material. After Labour included only the endorsements of parliamentarians in an information booklet sent to individual members, the Unite union wrote to Iain McNicol, the party's general secretary, to ask why details of support from organisations, such as trade unions, was omitted.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Controversy
Unite said that the decision unfairly favoured Murphy, and the union suggested that it and other unions would make a formal complaint, if necessary. Pat Rafferty, secretary of Unite's Scottish branch, described the incident as "a gross error of judgment". On 30 November, Sunday Herald journalist Paul Hutcheon reported that along with voting packs, Unite had also sent its members a "mock ballot paper" instructing them to vote for Findlay and Clark, while the GMB union had also included material endorsing Findlay and Clark as their preferred candidates. Hutcheon quoted an unnamed senior Labour Party source, who described the actions as "absolutely desperate stuff from Unite".


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Controversy
Following a Sunday Herald article in which the Labour MP Tom Watson suggested Murphy's election would be "disastrous" for the party, he and Ivan Lewis, the Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, engaged in a heated exchange on Twitter during which Lewis accused Watson of manipulating past UK Labour leadership contests and of wanting to influence the election of the party's next Scottish leader. Watson, who had resigned as a defence minister in 2006 after suggesting that Tony Blair should step down as Prime Minister, rejected claims that he had sought to manipulate previous Labour leadership contests.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Candidates and campaigns, Controversy
On 10 December, David Robertson, the moderator-elect of the Free Church of Scotland, expressed concerns that Murphy had been subject to religious discrimination after Gary Otton, leader of the Scottish Secular Society, posted several threads on Facebook commenting on the leadership candidate's Roman Catholic faith and his support for denominational schools. The posts described Murphy as a "Catholic fanatic" and a "Pope Benedict fan". Robertson said that Murphy "should be judged on his political views and abilities, not what church he belongs to". Otton rejected claims of sectarianism, but said that the Society was concerned that Murphy's beliefs would "influence his political decisions". Murphy described the practice of religious intolerance as "stupid" and "sickening".


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Results, Deputy leadership
The result of the election was announced on 13 December 2014 at Glasgow's Emirates Arena; Murphy secured an overall majority with 55.8 per cent of the vote in the first round. His closest rival was Findlay with 35.0 per cent, while Boyack was third with 9.2 per cent. Murphy also won majorities in two groups of Labour's three-tier electoral college system, securing the support of parliamentarians and individual members. Findlay was backed by the majority of party affiliates.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Results, Deputy leadership
In the first round of the deputy leadership race, Dugdale secured 62.9 per cent of the vote compared to 37.1 per cent for Clark. Dugdale was also backed by parliamentarians and individual party members, while affiliates gave their majority support to Clark. In his victory speech, Murphy said that his election marked a "fresh start" for Scottish Labour: "Scotland is changing and so too is Scottish Labour. I'm ambitious for our party because I'm ambitious for our country".


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Results, Deputy leadership
He also said that he planned to defeat the SNP in 2016, and that he would use the increased powers being devolved to Holyrood to end poverty and inequality. Urging Labour voters who had backed independence to support his vision for the party, he claimed Labour had "so much more in common with [those who] voted 'Yes' in the referendum than we do with many of the political leaders who campaigned for 'No' on the 18th of September". In her speech, Dugdale said that the party's "focus has to be on the future – a Scottish Labour party that's fighting fit and fighting for our future".


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Aftermath
Murphy was congratulated on his leadership victory by Miliband, who said he would be "standing shoulder to shoulder with Jim in the campaign to get David Cameron out at the general election." Sturgeon also welcomed his election, and spoke of her hope that they could "find common ground and work together in the best interests of people in Scotland". Scottish Conservative Party leader Ruth Davidson also congratulated Murphy on his election, but claimed he would "have his hands full" when it came to getting Labour elected, and that it would "take more than a 100-town tour to persuade people in Scotland to put Ed Miliband in Downing Street."


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Aftermath
In what a Scottish Labour spokesman described as a bid to "encourage transparency", the party took the decision to publish details of how its parliamentarians had voted during the ballot, a process that had previously been kept private. Those results showed that the parliamentarians who chose Murphy as their first candidate included Baillie, Brown, Curran, Dugdale, Gray, Kelly, Marra, and Sarwar. The MSPs Claudia Beamish, Rhoda Grant, and Lewis Macdonald were among those to vote for Boyack, while Findlay was backed by Clark, Ian Davidson, and Lamont.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Aftermath
In the deputy leadership contest, Baillie, Boyack, Brown, Connarty, Curran, Gray, Kelly, Marra, Murphy, and Sarwar were among those to vote for Dugdale, while Clark's first preference voters included Connarty, Ian Davidson, Findlay, and Lamont. Having chosen Findlay and Boyack as first and second preferences, Lamont did not vote for a third, while Sarwar chose only first preferences in both elections. Murphy and Dugdale also chose no alternative preferences, Murphy voting for himself and Dugdale, and she doing likewise. The full results of the leadership contest were as follows:


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Aftermath, Party direction and shadow cabinet appointments
Speaking to BBC Radio Five Live following his election, Murphy said that while he disagreed with the "branch office" theory, he would not be consulting London on policy: "[t]he days in which anyone needed permission from the Labour Party anywhere else in the United Kingdom to make a decision about what happens in Scotland are gone and they're gone for good." On the 14 December edition of BBC One's Sunday Politics Scotland, he repeated his pledge to seek election to the Scottish Parliament, and said that he was "determined" to retain every Westminster seat held by Labour.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Aftermath, Party direction and shadow cabinet appointments
The following day, he announced plans to rewrite Scottish Labour's constitution to give the party greater autonomy over its affairs and bring it "closer to the centre of Scottish life." On 17 December, Murphy announced that he had been given a Holyrood security pass and would be establishing a presence in the Scottish Parliament Building.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Aftermath, Party direction and shadow cabinet appointments
On 16 December, Murphy announced the lineup of his Shadow Cabinet, which included posts for the two people who had stood against him in the leadership contest. Findlay was appointed to the Fair Work, Skills and Training portfolio, while Boyack became Shadow Minister for Rural Affairs, Food and Environment. Baillie was handed the post of Shadow Minister for Finance, Constitution and Economy, while Marra took on Health, Wellbeing and Sport.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Aftermath, Party direction and shadow cabinet appointments
Other appointments to Labour's frontbench team were Mary Fee (Infrastructure, Investment and Cities), Gray (Education and Lifelong Learning), Ken Macintosh (Social Justice, Communities and Pensioners' Rights), Hugh Henry (Justice), Claire Baker (Culture, Europe and External Affairs), Kelly (Parliamentary Business Manager), Neil Bibby (Chief Whip), and Graeme Pearson (Enterprise). It was also announced that Dugdale would speak for Labour at First Minister's Questions. Lamont did not have a place in the new cabinet, but Murphy stated that she had not wanted one: "Johann and I have been in touch with one another; she has wished me well. I'm looking forward to getting together with her, but Johann wasn't looking for a job in today's reshuffle. I think Johann will be a big part of the Scottish Labour Party for years to come".


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Aftermath, 2015 general election and resignation of Murphy
Murphy took the party into the 2015 United Kingdom general election, which saw a majority win for the Conservatives, and Labour's worst-ever election result in Scotland. There was a landslide shift towards the SNP, which took 56 of the 59 Scottish seats at Westminster, while Labour lost 40 of the 41 Westminster seats it was defending. Notable losses included Murphy's constituency of East Renfrewshire and Brown's former constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, previously Labour's safest seat in Scotland. Other high-profile figures such as Sarwar, Clark, Curran, Ian Davidson, and Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander also lost their seats.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Aftermath, 2015 general election and resignation of Murphy
Following his defeat, Murphy spoke of his intention to stand for a Holyrood seat in 2016. However, the result prompted Labour figures and those in the trade union movement to question the future of his leadership. Ian Davidson suggested that it would be difficult for Murphy to remain as Scottish Labour leader without a parliamentary seat and in the wake of such a heavy defeat. Rafferty, and Kevin Lindsay of ASLEF, called for his resignation, while Findlay, and Labour's local government spokesman Alex Rowley, expressed their concerns about the party's future under Murphy's leadership and resigned from his shadow cabinet.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Aftermath, 2015 general election and resignation of Murphy
After narrowly surviving a vote of no confidence by 17 votes to 14 at a meeting of the party's Executive Committee in Glasgow on 16 May 2015, Murphy announced that he would step down as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party in June. Stating that he wanted to have a successor in place by the summer, he confirmed that he would no longer be standing for a seat in the Scottish Parliament. Before relinquishing the leadership role, Murphy drew up proposals for a number of party reforms, including the adoption of a one-member, one-vote ballot for future leadership contests.


2014 Scottish Labour leadership election, Aftermath, 2015 general election and resignation of Murphy
His resignation took effect on 13 June after his reforms had been provisionally accepted by Labour's executive committee. A timetable was also set out that would see a new leader elected on 15 August, while Gray was appointed as acting leader. Dugdale and Macintosh stood in the contest to choose Murphy's successor; Dugdale was subsequently elected as Scottish Labour's new leader with a 72% share of the vote. At the same time, Rowley became her deputy.


2014 Scottish League Cup Final
The 2014 Scottish League Cup Final was the 68th final of the Scottish League Cup. The final took place on 16 March 2014 at Celtic Park, Glasgow. The clubs contesting the 2014 final were Scottish Premiership clubs, Aberdeen and Inverness CT. This was the first major final for Inverness CT.


2014 Scottish League Cup Final
Aberdeen won the final 4–2 against Inverness CT on penalties. It was their first trophy since the 1995 Scottish League Cup victory.


2014 Scottish League Cup Final, Route to the final
Aberdeen were one of the seven Scottish Premiership sides who entered the League Cup in the second round. Inverness CT entered in the third round.


2014 Scottish League Cup Final, Route to the final, Aberdeen
In the second round Aberdeen faced a home tie against Scottish Championship team Alloa Athletic. The Dons edged through by winning 6–5 on penalties.


2014 Scottish League Cup Final, Route to the final, Aberdeen
In the next round Aberdeen faced Scottish Championship team Falkirk at the Falkirk Stadium. A hat-trick from Scott Vernon and goals from Joe Shaughnessy and Cammy Smith sealed Aberdeen's passage into the quarter-final.


2014 Scottish League Cup Final, Route to the final, Aberdeen
Aberdeen drew Scottish Premiership opposition in the quarter-finals in the shape of Motherwell. Late goals from Andrew Considine and Jonny Hayes sent the Dons into the semi-finals.


2014 Scottish League Cup Final, Route to the final, Aberdeen
Aberdeen beat St Johnstone in the semi-final with a magnificent display. Jonny Hayes grabbed a double and Peter Pawlett and Adam Rooney also got themselves on the scoresheet to send Aberdeen to their first League Cup Final since 2000.


2014 Scottish League Cup Final, Route to the final, Inverness CT
In the third round Inverness CT faced an away tie against Scottish Championship team Dundee. An early goal from Billy McKay saw the Caley Jags through comfortably. In the next round Inverness CT faced fellow Scottish Premiership team Dundee United at the Caledonian Stadium. Keith Watson opened the scoring for Dundee United before Gary Warren equalised for the home side. Ross Draper sealed Caley's passage into the semi-finals with a header in the final minute of extra time.


2014 Scottish League Cup Final, Route to the final, Inverness CT
Inverness CT beat Hearts on penalties in the semi-final. Greg Tansey put the Highlanders ahead shortly after half time, but a double from Jamie Hamill swung the game in the favour of the Edinburgh side. Nick Ross scored a dramatic injury time equaliser despite Caley having Gary Warren and Josh Meekings sent off.


2014 Scottish League Cup Final, Route to the final, Build-Up
Aberdeen received and sold all of their 43,000 allocation for the final and also had a request for more tickets declined due to safety concerns. Inverness sold 7,000 tickets.


2014 Scottish National Party leadership election
There was a Scottish National Party leadership election to choose the new leader of the Scottish National Party at the SNP's conference on 14–15 November 2014. The election followed the announcement by SNP Leader and First Minister Alex Salmond, in the aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum, that he would not seek re-nomination as party leader and would resign as First Minister soon after the SNP elected a new leader. Given the SNP's absolute majority in the Scottish Parliament, the new leader was all but assured of becoming the next First Minister. Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP's deputy leader and the Deputy First Minister, was elected unopposed as his successor.


2014 Scottish National Party leadership election, Leadership election
SNP depute leader and Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was widely tipped as the favourite to succeed Salmond after the election. She was backed by a number of Scottish government ministers, including Alex Neil and Humza Yousaf, and former SNP leader Gordon Wilson.


2014 Scottish National Party leadership election, Leadership election
Sturgeon officially launched her campaign bid to succeed Salmond on 24 September 2014. On 15 October 2014, the SNP confirmed that Sturgeon was the only candidate for the leadership, and therefore de facto leader-in-waiting. It had been obvious even before then that no one else would garner enough nominations to make a viable bid for the post.


2014 Scottish National Party leadership election, Leadership election
She was formally acclaimed as the party's first female leader at the SNP Autumn Conference on 14 November 2014. This all but assured her formal election as First Minister on 19 November 2014.


2014 Scottish National Party leadership election, Depute Leadership
Three people, Angela Constance, Keith Brown and Stewart Hosie launched bids to succeed Sturgeon as SNP Depute Leader. Constance said that she would not seek to become Deputy First Minister to Sturgeon, even if she was elected Depute Leader. The results were announced at the conference, with Hosie polling 42.2%, Brown on 34.2% and Constance on 23.5% in the first round of the single transferable vote election. In the second round, Hosie was elected after getting 55.5% of votes following the elimination of Constance. The Depute Leadership election had a turnout of 55.7%. With Hosie serving in Westminster, John Swinney was tapped as Deputy First Minister when Sturgeon took office on 19 November.


2014 Scottish Open Grand Prix
The 2014 Scottish Open was the seventeenth grand prix badminton tournament of the 2014 BWF Grand Prix Gold and Grand Prix. The tournament was held in Emirates Arena, Glasgow, Scotland from 19 until 23 November 2014 and had a total purse of $50,000. This tournament supported by the Glasgow City Council, Event Scotland, and Yonex.


2014 Scottish Rally Championship
The Scottish Rally Championship was a rallying series run throughout Scotland over the course of a year, that comprised seven gravel rallies and one tarmac event. Points were awarded to the top placed drivers and the driver scoring the highest number of points over the season was declared Champion of the series. For the second season in a row the championship was sponsored by ARR Craib Transport Ltd, an Aberdeen based road haulage and logistics company. This was a one-year deal announced in December 2013.


2014 Scottish Rally Championship
The 2014 season began in the snow-covered forest tracks around Inverness on 22 February, with the season finale taking place around Castle Douglas on 26 October. David Bogie began the year as defending champion after winning four out of the eight events in 2013.


2014 Scottish Rally Championship
Following the Colin McRae Forest Stages Rally in October, Euan Thorburn and Paul Beaton were declared 2014 Scottish rally champions. In doing so, Thorburn ended the record streak of five consecutive titles for Bogie. Thorburn won the title by five points ahead of Bogie, having won four rallies and finished as runner-up in two others, to Bogie. He was also third in the Border Counties Rally but scored second place points – as Steve Petch was not registered to score SRC points – for the event. Jock Armstrong finished the season in third place, five points in arrears of Bogie, having won the final event of the season, the Galloway Hills Rally.


2014 Scottish Rally Championship, Jim Clark Reivers Rally
The fourth round of the season, the Jim Clark Reivers Rally was cancelled due to an accident during the preceding day's competition, the Jim Clark Rally, a round of the British Rally Championship. The incident involved a competing car, which left the road, resulting in the death of three spectators.


2014 Scottish Rally Championship, Jim Clark Reivers Rally
On 15 July 2014, the series organisers announced that the Galloway Hills Rally – a reserve event when the championship calendar was first announced – would be included as the championship finale.


2014 Scottish Rally Championship, 2014 calendar
For season 2014 there were eight events held on a variety of surfaces.


2014 Scottish Rally Championship, Drivers' championship standings (Top 10)
Points were awarded to the highest placed registered drivers on each event as follows: 30, 28, 27, 26, and so on down to 1 point. At the end of the Championship, competitors nominated their best 6 scores out of the 8 events as their final overall Championship score.


2014 Scottish Women's Cup
The 2014 SWF Scottish Cup is the national cup competition in Scottish women's football. All teams in the Scottish Women's Football League and Premier League are eligible to enter. 67 teams entered the cup, Premier League sides only enter the second round.


2014 Scottish Women's Cup, Preliminary round
Draw was between 55 teams, 30 teams drawn to play in the preliminary round, 25 teams drew a bye to the first round. Played 20 April 2014.


2014 Scottish Women's Cup, First round
15 winners from the preliminary round joined 25 teams with a bye. Played 18 May 2014, with Celtic 20s postponed to 28 May 14.


2014 Scottish Women's Cup, Second round
20 winners from the first round join the twelve Scottish Women's Premier League teams that enter this round. Played 22 June 2014.


2014 Scottish Women's Cup, Quarter-finals
Falkirk is the only non-Premier League team remaining. Played 28 September 2014.


2014 Scottish Women's Cup, Semi-finals
Only Premier League teams remain. Played on 19 October 2014.


2014 Scottish Women's Cup, Final
Holders Glasgow City won the third national treble in a row.


2014 Scottish Women's Premier League
The 2014 Scottish Women's Premier League was the thirteenth season of the Scottish Women's Premier League, the highest division of women's football in Scotland since its inception in 2002. The competition started on 16 March 2014.


2014 Scottish Women's Premier League
A total of twelve teams contested the league. Glasgow City were the reigning champions.


2014 Scottish Women's Premier League
Queen's Park and Inverness City were promoted from the SWFL First Division after finishing 1st and 3rd respectively, with Queen's Park appearing in the Premier League for the first time. Celtic Reserves who finished as First Division runners-up, were unable to be promoted as league rules stipulate each club may field only one team in the Premier League.


2014 Scottish Women's Premier League
The SWPL continued in the format applied since 2012. The 12 clubs faced each other once (11 games per club), after which the league split into top six and bottom six sections based on league position. Each club then played home and away against clubs in their respective sections to give a total of 21 games.


2014 Scottish Women's Premier League
Glasgow City confirmed their eighth consecutive championship title on 1 October 2014. City suffered their first league defeat since November 2008, when they lost 1–0 to Spartans in September 2014.


2014 Scottish Women's Premier League, Teams, Stadia and locations
The most regular home ground is shown though some clubs played matches at other venues throughout the season.


2014 Scottish Women's Premier League, Results, Matches 12–21
After 11 matches, the league splits into top six and bottom six sections. Clubs played every other club in their section twice (home and away).


2014 Scottish independence referendum
The 2014 Scottish independence referendum was an independence referendum held on 18 September 2014 concerning Scottish independence from the United Kingdom. The referendum question was, "Should Scotland be an independent country? ", which voters answered with "Yes" or "No". The "No" side won with 2,001,926 (55.3%) voting against independence and 1,617,989 (44.7%) voting in favour. The turnout of 84.6% was the highest recorded for an election or referendum in the United Kingdom since the January 1910 general election, which was held before the introduction of universal suffrage.


2014 Scottish independence referendum
The Scottish Independence Referendum Act 2013 set out the arrangements for the referendum and was passed by the Scottish Parliament in November 2013, following an agreement between the devolved Scottish government and the Government of the United Kingdom. The independence proposal required a simple majority to pass. All European Union (EU) or Commonwealth citizens residing in Scotland age 16 or over could vote, with some exceptions, which produced a total electorate of almost 4,300,000 people. This was the first time that the electoral franchise was extended to include 16- and 17-year-olds in Scotland.


2014 Scottish independence referendum
Yes Scotland was the main campaign group for independence, while Better Together was the main campaign group in favour of maintaining the union. Many other campaign groups, political parties, businesses, newspapers, and prominent individuals were also involved. Prominent issues raised during the referendum included what currency an independent Scotland would use, public expenditure, EU membership, and North Sea oil. An exit poll revealed that retention of the pound sterling was the deciding factor for those who voted No, while "disaffection with Westminster politics" was the deciding factor for those who voted Yes.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, History, Formation of the United Kingdom
The Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England were established as independent countries during the Middle Ages. After fighting a series of wars during the 14th century, the two monarchies entered a personal union in 1603 (the Union of the Crowns) when James VI of Scotland also became James I of England. The two nations were temporarily united under one government when Oliver Cromwell was declared Lord Protector of a Commonwealth in 1653, but this was dissolved when the monarchy was restored in 1660. Scotland and England united to form the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, History, Formation of the United Kingdom
Factors in favour of union were, on the Scottish side, the economic problems caused by the failure of the Darien scheme and, on the English, securing the Hanoverian line of succession. Great Britain in turn united with the Kingdom of Ireland in 1801, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Most of Ireland left the Union in 1922 to form the Irish Free State; consequently, the full name of the United Kingdom since 1927 is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, History, Devolution
The Labour Party was committed to home rule for Scotland in the 1920s, but it slipped down its agenda in the following years. The Scottish National Party (SNP) was founded in 1934, but did not achieve significant electoral success until the 1960s. A document calling for home rule, the Scottish Covenant, was signed by 2,000,000 people (out of a population of 5,000,000) in the late-1940s. Scottish devolution, did not become a serious proposal until the late 1970s as the Labour Government of James Callaghan came under electoral pressure from the SNP.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, History, Devolution
A proposal for a devolved Scottish Assembly was put to a referendum in 1979. A narrow majority of votes were cast in favour of devolution, but this had no effect due to a requirement that the number voting 'Yes' had to exceed 40% of the total electorate.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, History, Devolution
No further constitutional reform was proposed until Labour returned to power in a landslide electoral victory in May 1997. A second Scottish devolution referendum was held later that year, as promised in the Labour election manifesto. Clear majorities expressed support for both a devolved Scottish Parliament (74.3% in favour) and that Parliament having the power to vary the basic rate of UK income tax (63.5% in favour). The Scotland Act 1998 established the new Scottish Parliament, first elected on 6 May 1999, with power to legislate on unreserved matters within Scotland.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, History, 2007 SNP administration
A commitment to hold an independence referendum in 2010 was part of the SNP's election manifesto when it contested the 2007 Scottish Parliament election. The press were largely hostile towards the SNP, with a headline for The Scottish Sun in May 2007 stating – along with an image of a hangman's noose – "Vote SNP today and you put Scotland's head in the noose". As a result of that election, the SNP became the largest party in the Scottish Parliament and formed a minority government led by the First Minister, Alex Salmond.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, History, 2007 SNP administration
The SNP administration launched a 'National Conversation' as a consultation exercise in August 2007, part of which included a draft referendum bill, the Referendum (Scotland) Bill. After this, a white paper for the proposed Referendum Bill was published, on 30 November 2009. It detailed 4 possible scenarios, with the text of the Bill and Referendum to be revealed later. The scenarios were: no change; devolution per the Calman Review; further devolution; and full independence.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, History, 2007 SNP administration
The Scottish government published a draft version of the bill on 25 February 2010 for public consultation; Scotland's Future: Draft Referendum (Scotland) Bill Consultation Paper contained a consultation document and a draft version of the bill. The consultation paper set out the proposed ballot papers, the mechanics of the proposed referendum, and how the proposed referendum was to be regulated. Public responses were invited.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, History, 2007 SNP administration
The bill outlined three proposals: the first was full devolution or 'devolution max', suggesting that the Scottish Parliament should be responsible for "all laws, taxes and duties in Scotland", except for "defence and foreign affairs; financial regulation, monetary policy and the currency", which would be retained by the UK government.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, History, 2007 SNP administration
The second proposal outlined Calman-type fiscal reform, gaining the additional powers and responsibilities of setting a Scottish rate of income tax that could vary by up to 10p in the pound compared with the rest of the UK, setting the rate of stamp duty land tax and "other minor taxes", and introducing new taxes in Scotland with the agreement of the UK Parliament, and finally, "limited power to borrow money". The third proposal was for full independence.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, History, 2007 SNP administration
In the 3rd Scottish Parliament only 50 of 129 MSPs (47 SNP, 2 Greens, and Margo MacDonald) supported a referendum. The Scottish government withdrew the bill in September 2010, after failing to secure opposition support.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, History, 2011 SNP administration
The SNP repeated its commitment to hold an independence referendum when it published its manifesto for the 2011 Scottish Parliament election. Days before the election, Salmond stated that legislation for a referendum would be proposed in the "second half of the parliament", as he wanted to secure more powers for the Scottish Parliament via the Scotland Bill first. In the election, the SNP won an overall majority. UK Prime Minister David Cameron congratulated Salmond on his "emphatic win", but pledged that he would campaign for the Union if the SNP carried out their pledge to hold a referendum.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, History, 2011 SNP administration
In January 2012, the UK government offered to legislate to provide the Scottish Parliament with the powers to hold a referendum, providing it was "fair, legal and decisive". This would set "terms of reference for the referendum", such as its question(s), elector eligibility and which body would organise the vote. As the UK government worked on legal details, including the timing of the vote, Salmond announced an intention to hold the referendum in the autumn of 2014. Negotiations continued between the two governments until October 2012, when the Edinburgh Agreement was reached.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, History, 2011 SNP administration
The Scottish Independence Referendum (Franchise) Act 2013 was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 27 June 2013 and received Royal Assent on 7 August 2013. On 15 November 2013, the Scottish government published Scotland's Future, a 670-page white paper laying out the case for independence and the means through which Scotland might become an independent country.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Date
The Scottish Government announced on 21 March 2013 that the referendum would be held on Thursday 18 September 2014. Some media reports mentioned that 2014 would be the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn and that Scotland would also host the 2014 Commonwealth Games and the 2014 Ryder Cup. Salmond agreed that the presence of these events made 2014 a "good year to hold a referendum".


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Eligibility to vote
Under the terms of the 2010 Draft Bill, the following people were entitled to vote in the referendum:


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Eligibility to vote
Convicted prisoners were not able to vote in the referendum. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had ruled that this restriction was unlawful, but Scottish judge Lord Glennie said that he believed the ECHR judgment would apply only to parliamentary elections. Appeals against his ruling were rejected by the Court of Session in Edinburgh and the UK Supreme Court.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Eligibility to vote
The normal voting age was reduced from 18 to 16 for the referendum, as it was a Scottish National Party policy to reduce the voting age for all elections in Scotland. The move was supported by Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Greens.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Eligibility to vote
In January 2012, Labour MSP Elaine Murray led a debate arguing that the franchise should be extended to Scots living outside Scotland, including the approximately 800,000 living in the other parts of the UK. This was opposed by the Scottish government, which argued that it would greatly increase the complexity of the referendum and stated that there was evidence from the United Nations Human Rights Committee that other nations "might question the legitimacy of a referendum if the franchise is not territorial".


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Eligibility to vote
In the House of Lords, Baroness Symons argued that the rest of the UK should be allowed to vote on Scottish independence because it would affect the whole country. This argument was rejected by the UK government, as the Advocate General for Scotland Lord Wallace said that "whether or not Scotland should leave the United Kingdom is a matter for Scotland". Wallace also pointed to the fact that only two of 11 referendums since 1973 had been across all of the United Kingdom. Professor John Curtice cited the precedent of the 1973 Northern Ireland sovereignty referendum (the "border poll"), which allowed only those resident in a part of the UK to vote on its sovereignty.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Legality of a referendum
There was debate as to whether the Scottish Parliament had the power to legislate for a referendum relating to the issue of Scottish independence, as the constitution is a matter reserved to the UK Parliament. The Scottish government insisted in 2010 that they could legislate for a referendum, as it would be an "advisory referendum on extending the powers of the Scottish Parliament", whose result would "have no legal effect on the Union". Lord Wallace, Advocate General for Scotland, said in January 2012 that holding a referendum concerning the constitution would be outside the legislative power of the Scottish Parliament and that private individuals could challenge a Scottish Parliament referendum bill.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Legality of a referendum
The two governments signed the Edinburgh Agreement, which allowed for the temporary transfer of legal authority. Per the Edinburgh Agreement, the UK government drafted an Order in Council granting the Scottish Parliament the necessary powers to hold, on or before 31 December 2014, an independence referendum. The draft Order was approved by resolutions of both Houses of Parliament, and the Order ("The Scotland Act 1998 (Modification of Schedule 5) Order 2013"), was approved by Queen Elizabeth II at a meeting of the Privy Council on 12 February 2013.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Legality of a referendum
Under the powers temporarily transferred from Westminster under the section 30 Order, the Scottish Parliament adopted the Scottish Independence Referendum Act 2013. The Act was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 14 November 2013 and received Royal Assent on 17 December 2013. Under section 36 of the Act, it came into force the day after Royal Assent.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Electoral supervision
The Electoral Commission was responsible for overseeing the referendum, "with the exception of the conduct of the poll and announcement of the result, and the giving of grants. In its role of regulating the campaign and campaign spending, the Electoral Commission will report to the Scottish Parliament. (...) The poll and count will be managed in the same way as [local] elections, by local returning officers (...) and directed by a Chief Counting Officer".


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Referendum question wording
The Edinburgh Agreement stated that the wording of the question would be decided by the Scottish Parliament and reviewed for intelligibility by the Electoral Commission. The Scottish government stated that its preferred question was "Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?" The Electoral Commission tested the proposed question along with three other possible versions. Their research found that the "Do you agree" preface made it a leading question, which would be more likely to garner a positive response. The question was amended to "Should Scotland be an independent country? ", which the Electoral Commission found was the most neutral and concise of the versions tested.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Campaign structures, Cost and funding
In the 2010 Draft Bill, the Scottish government proposed that there would be one designated campaign organisation for each outcome, both of which would be permitted to spend up to £750,000 on their campaign and to send one free mailshot to every household or voter in the referendum franchise. There was to be no public funding for campaigns. Registered political parties were each to be allowed to spend £100,000. This proposed limit on party spending was increased to £250,000 in 2012.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Campaign structures, Cost and funding
In 2013, new proposals by the Electoral Commission for the 16-week regulated period preceding the poll were accepted. They allowed the two designated campaign organisations to spend up to £1.5 million each and for the parties in Scotland to spend the following amounts: £1,344,000 (SNP); £834,000 (Labour); £396,000 (Conservatives); £201,000 (Liberal Democrats); £150,000 (Greens). An unlimited number of other organisations could register with the Electoral Commission, but their spending was limited to £150,000. Groups spending more than £250,000 were required to submit audited returns to the Commission by 18 March 2015.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Campaign structures, Cost and funding
According to the Scottish government's consultation paper published on 25 February 2010, the cost of the referendum was "likely to be around £9.5 million", mostly spent on running the poll and the count. Costs would also include the posting of one neutral information leaflet about the referendum to every Scottish household, and one free mailshot to every household or voter in the poll for the designated campaign organisations. In April 2013, the projected cost of the referendum was £13.3 million; the final administrative cost was £15.85 million.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Campaign structures, Campaigning organisations
The campaign in favour of Scottish independence, Yes Scotland, was launched on 25 May 2012. Its chief executive was Blair Jenkins, formerly the Director of Broadcasting at STV and Head of News and Current Affairs at both STV and BBC Scotland. The campaign was supported by the SNP, the Scottish Green Party (which also created "its own pro-independence campaign to run alongside Yes Scotland") and the Scottish Socialist Party.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Campaign structures, Campaigning organisations
At its launch, Salmond stated that he hoped one million people in Scotland would sign a declaration of support for independence. On 22 August 2014, Yes Scotland announced that the one million target had been surpassed.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Campaign structures, Campaigning organisations
The campaign in favour of Scotland remaining in the UK, Better Together, was launched on 25 June 2012. It was led by Alistair Darling, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and had support from the Conservative Party, Labour Party and Liberal Democrats.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Campaign structures, Advertising
Political advertising on television and radio in the UK was prohibited by the Communications Act 2003, with the exception of permitted party political broadcasts. Three major cinema chains stopped showing adverts by referendum campaign groups after receiving negative feedback from their customers.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Campaign structures, Donations
In December 2013, the Better Together campaign declared that it had received donations of £2,800,000. Six-figure contributions were made by businessmen Ian Taylor and Donald Houston, and by author C. J. Sansom. Almost 27,000 donations of under £7,500 had been received by the same date. A later donation came from writer J. K. Rowling, who announced in June 2014 that she had given £1,000,000 to the Better Together campaign. In the following month, whisky distiller William Grant & Sons announced a donation of approximately £100,000.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Campaign structures, Donations
On 12 August 2014, Better Together announced that it had raised enough money to cover the maximum spending permitted and was no longer accepting donations. This was attributed in part to a large number of small donations being received after the first televised debate between First Minister Alex Salmond and Labour MP Alistair Darling.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Campaign structures, Donations
As of May 2014, the Yes Scotland campaign had declared £4,500,000 in cash donations. EuroMillions lottery-winners Chris and Colin Weir gave £3,500,000. A six-figure donation was given by investment fund manager Angus Tulloch; approximately 18,000 donations of less than £7,500 had been made by the same date.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Voting process
Voting for the referendum commenced on 27 August 2014, with the receipt of ballots by postal voters. As of 15 August, 680,235 eligible voters had registered for postal voting, a 20% increase compared with March 2014. During the postal vote phase, Police Scotland arrested a man from Glasgow on suspicion of selling his vote on eBay.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Voting process
The registration deadline for referendum voters was 2 September 2014. Several councils reported the processing of "unprecedented" numbers of new registrations, while others received "tens of thousands" of applications in the final week.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Outcome of the vote
The UK Government stated that, if a simple majority of the votes cast were in favour of independence, then "Scotland would become an independent country after a process of negotiations". If the majority was against independence, Scotland would continue to be a part of the United Kingdom. Further powers would be devolved to the Scottish Parliament as a result of the Scotland Act 2012. The Electoral Commission prepared an information leaflet which confirmed that the UK and Scottish governments had reached agreement on these points.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Outcome of the vote
David Cameron said in May 2014 that he believed that the referendum would be "'irreversible and binding". In the week before the referendum, both sides said that they would abide by the result. Alex Salmond said that it was a "once in a generation" event, citing the precedent of the two devolution referendums in 1979 and 1997.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Administration, Outcome of the vote
In the event of a majority for Yes, the Scottish Government had proposed an independence date of 24 March 2016. It was suggested that, following the conclusion of negotiations, the UK Parliament would legislate for Scottish independence to take place on the date that had been negotiated. A report by a UK House of Lords committee, published in May 2014, said that the UK could opt to delay the independence date.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Agriculture
In 2013, as part of a European Union (EU) member state, Scottish farmers received £583 million in subsidy payments from the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Annual CAP payments are made to the UK, which then determines how much to allocate to each of the devolved administrations, including Scotland. In the last CAP agreement, farmers in the UK qualified for additional convergence payments because Scottish farmers received a lower average single farm payment per hectare, mainly due to the mountainous terrain in Scotland.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Agriculture
Supporters of independence therefore believed that an independent Scotland would receive greater agricultural subsidies as an independent state. Opponents of independence believed that Scottish farmers benefited from the Union because the UK was one of the larger EU member states, and therefore had a greater say in CAP negotiations. They also questioned whether an independent Scotland would immediately receive full subsidy payments from the EU, as recent new member states had their subsidies phased in.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Border controls and immigration
At the time of the independence referendum, the UK had some opt-outs from EU policies. One was the opt-out from the Schengen Area, meaning there were full passport checks for travellers from other EU countries except the Republic of Ireland, which was part of a Common Travel Area (CTA) with the UK. The Scottish government proposed that an independent Scotland would remain outside the Schengen Area and remain inside the CTA, ensuring that no passport controls would be needed at the Anglo-Scottish border. Nicola Sturgeon commented that an independent Scotland would negotiate with the EU to have the same visa arrangements as the UK has.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Border controls and immigration
Alistair Carmichael, the Secretary of State for Scotland, said in January 2014 that it would make sense for Scotland to be in the CTA, but it would have to operate similar immigration policies to the rest of the UK. This position was supported by Home Secretary Theresa May, who said in March 2014 that passport checks should be introduced if Scotland adopted a looser immigration policy. The Conservative MP Richard Bacon said there would be "no reason" for border controls to be implemented.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Childcare
In the white paper Scotland's Future, the Scottish government pledged to expand childcare provision in an independent Scotland. The paper stated that this policy would cost £700 million, but that this would be financed by increased tax revenue from an additional 100,000 women returning to work.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Childcare
Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont said that the policy should be implemented immediately if the Scottish government believed it would have a beneficial effect, but Alex Salmond responded that under devolution the costs of the policy would have to be financed by cuts elsewhere in public expenditure. In March 2014, the National Day Nurseries Association said that the plan could not be implemented unless greater funding was provided by local authorities to private nurseries.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Childcare
A report by the Scottish Parliament Information Centre questioned the economic benefit of the policy, pointing out that there were only 64,000 mothers of children aged between 1 and 5 who were economically inactive. A spokesman for Salmond said that the estimated total 104,000 women would enter the workforce over a longer period, as future generations of mothers would also be able to work, stating: "The key point about the policy is that it doesn't happen on one day or one year and then cease."


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Citizenship
The Scottish government proposed that all British citizens who had been born in Scotland would automatically become Scottish citizens on the date of independence, regardless of whether or not they were then living in Scotland. British citizens "habitually resident" in Scotland would also be considered Scottish citizens, even if they already held the citizenship of another country. Every person who would automatically be considered a Scottish citizen would be able to opt-out of Scottish citizenship provided they already held the citizenship of another country.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Citizenship
The Scottish government also proposed that anyone with a Scottish parent or grandparent would be able to apply for registration as a Scottish citizen, and any foreign national living in Scotland legally, or who had lived in Scotland for at least 10 years at any time and had an ongoing connection to Scotland, should be able to apply for naturalisation as a Scottish citizen. UK Home Secretary Theresa May said the future policies of an independent Scottish government would affect whether Scottish citizens would be allowed to retain British citizenship.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Citizenship
An analysis paper published by the UK government in January 2014 stated that it was likely that Scots would be able to hold dual citizenship; however, the duality was considered for all other countries, not specifically to the rest of the UK. The possibility of holding dual UK–Scotland citizenships could be subject to the "proof of affinity".


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Conspiracy theories
Conspiracy theories were proliferated by supporters of Scottish independence included the claim that MI5, the British government, and other intelligence agencies were pretending to be Scottish nationalists online, pretending to be "cybernats" (a derogatory term for supporters of Scottish nationalism online, especially trolls) or engaging in ballot tampering or other forms of vote fraud.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Conspiracy theories
A YouGov poll in early September showed 25 per cent of the electorate believed MI5 was working with the British government to block independence, with many voters so fearful the marks made by the pencils provided in polling stations would be tampered with, they brought their own pens (see: Voting pencil conspiracy theory).


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Defence, Budget
The SNP said that there was a defence underspend of "at least £7.4 billion" between 2002 and 2012 in Scotland and that independence would allow the Scottish government to correct this imbalance. In its white paper, the Scottish government planned that an independent Scotland would have a total of 15,000 regular and 5,000 reserve personnel across land, air and maritime forces by 2026. In July 2013, the SNP proposed that there would be a £2.5 billion annual military budget in an independent Scotland. The House of Commons Defence Select Committee said that the £2.5bn budget was too low. Andrew Murrison, UK Minister for International Security Strategy agreed and said it was "risible" for the SNP to suggest it could create an independent force by "salami-slicing" from current British armed forces units.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Defence, Budget
The House of Commons defence committee also stated that Scottish independence would have a negative effect on its industry, while the UK government said it would not be willing to build warships in a foreign country. Geoff Searle, the director of BAE Systems' Type 26 Global Combat Ship programme, said in June 2014 that the company had no alternative plan for shipbuilding, but this position was later revised by the Chairman of BAE, who stated that they could resume shipbuilding in the English city of Portsmouth if an independent Scotland was established. The chief executive of Thales, one of Britain's largest defence suppliers, said that if Scotland became independent that this might raise questions about continued investment from his firm.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Defence, Budget
The Royal United Services Institute said in 2012 that an independent Scotland could set up a Scottish Defence Force, comparable in size and strength to those of other small European states like Denmark, Norway and Ireland, at an annual cost of £1.8 billion. The authors acknowledged that an independent Scotland would "need to come to some arrangement with the rest of the UK" on intelligence-gathering, cyber-warfare and cyber-defence, that the future cost of purchasing and maintaining equipment of its forces might be higher due to smaller orders, and that recruitment and training "may prove problematic" in the early years.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Defence, Budget
Dorcha Lee, a former colonel in the Irish Army, said that Scotland could eschew forming an army based on inherited resources from the British Army and instead follow an Irish model of a limited self-defence force.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Defence, Nuclear weapons
At the time of the referendum, the Trident nuclear missile system was based at Coulport weapons depot and naval base of Faslane in the Firth of Clyde area. The SNP objected to having nuclear weapons on Scottish territory, but British military leaders said that there was no alternative site for the missiles. In April 2014, several British military leaders co-signed a letter stating that forcing Trident to leave Scottish waters would place the UK nuclear deterrent in jeopardy.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Defence, Nuclear weapons
Nowhere to Go, a report by Scottish CND, concluded that the removal of Trident from Scotland would force unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, as the weapons would have no viable alternative base. A report by the Royal United Services Institute said that relocating Trident would be "very difficult, but not impossible" and estimated that it would take about 10 years and create an additional cost of around £3 billion.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Defence, Nuclear weapons
A seminar hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace stated that the Royal Navy would have to consider a range of alternatives, including disarmament. A report in 2013 from the Scotland Institute think tank suggested a future Scottish government could be convinced to lease the Faslane nuclear base to the rest of the UK, in order to maintain good diplomatic relations and expedite NATO entry negotiations.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Defence, NATO membership
SNP policy had historically stated that an independent Scotland should not seek to obtain membership of NATO, until this was dropped after a vote by party members in 2012. MSPs John Finnie and Jean Urquhart resigned from the SNP over this policy change. The Scottish Green Party and Scottish Socialist Party continued their opposition to NATO membership.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Defence, NATO membership
The SNP position that Trident nuclear weapons should be removed from Scotland but that it should hold NATO membership was criticised by Willie Rennie, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, and Patrick Harvie, co-convenor of the Scottish Green Party. Alex Salmond said it would be "perfectly feasible" to join NATO while maintaining an anti-nuclear stance and that Scotland would pursue NATO membership only "subject to an agreement that Scotland will not host nuclear weapons and NATO continues to respect the right of members to only take part in UN sanctioned operations". In 2013, Professor Malcolm Chalmers of the Royal United Services Institute stated that "pragmatists" in the SNP accepted that NATO membership would be likely to involve a long-term basing deal, enabling the UK to keep Trident on the Clyde.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Defence, NATO membership
The former Secretary General of NATO and Scottish Labour peer Lord Robertson said in 2013 that "either the SNP accept the central nuclear role of NATO ... or they reject the nuclear role of NATO and ensure that a separate Scottish state stays out of the world's most successful defence alliance." General Richard Shirreff criticised SNP proposals for defence and questioned whether other NATO members would accept an independent Scotland that rejected the principle of nuclear deterrence. This was disputed by Mariot Leslie, a former UK permanent representative to NATO, who stated that NATO would not want to disrupt its arrangements by excluding Scotland.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Defence, Intelligence
A UK government paper on security stated that Police Scotland would lose access to the intelligence apparatus of the UK, including MI5, SIS and GCHQ. The paper also said that an independent Scottish state would need to build security infrastructure. Theresa May commented that an independent Scotland would have access to less security capability, but would not necessarily face a reduced threat.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Defence, Intelligence
In 2013, Allan Burnett, former head of intelligence with Strathclyde Police and Scotland's counter-terrorism co-ordinator until 2010, said that "an independent Scotland would face less of a threat, intelligence institutions will be readily created, and allies will remain allies". Peter Jackson, professor of security at the University of Glasgow, agreed that Special Branch could form a "suitable nucleus" of a Scottish equivalent of MI5 and that Scotland could forego creating an equivalent of MI6, instead "relying on pooled intelligence or diplomatic open sources" like Canada or the Nordic countries.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Defence, Intelligence
Baroness Ramsay, a Labour peer and former case officer with MI6, said that the Scottish government's standpoint on intelligence was "extremely naïve" and that it was "not going to be as simple as they think". Nicola Sturgeon stated that Scotland would create a security service like MI5 to work alongside police and tackle terrorism, cyber-attacks and serious organised crime. She also stated that creating an external intelligence agency would remain an option.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Democracy
The Scottish government and pro-independence campaigners said that a democratic deficit existed in Scotland because the UK was a unitary state that did not have a codified constitution. The SNP also described the unelected House of Lords as an "affront to democracy". The "democratic deficit" label has sometimes been used to refer to the period between the 1979 and 1997 UK general elections, during which the Labour Party held a majority of Scottish seats but the Conservative Party governed the whole of the UK.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Democracy
Alex Salmond said in September 2013 that instances such as this amounted to a lack of democracy, and that "the people who live and work in Scotland are the people most likely to make the right choices for Scotland". In January 2012, Patrick Harvie said: "Greens have a vision of a more radical democracy in Scotland, with far greater levels of discussion and decision making at community level." The Scottish Government intended that an independent Scotland should have a written constitution which "expresses our values, embeds the rights of our citizens and sets out clearly how our institutions of state interact with each other and serve the people".


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Democracy
Menzies Campbell wrote in April 2014 that any democratic deficit had been addressed by creating the devolved Scottish Parliament, and that "Scotland and the Scottish have enjoyed influence beyond our size or reasonable expectation" within the British government and the wider political system. Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski said in 2009 that the asymmetric devolution in place in the UK has created a democratic deficit for England.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Democracy
This was commonly known as the West Lothian question, which cited the anomaly where English MPs could not vote on affairs devolved to Scotland, but Scottish MPs could vote on the equivalent subjects in England. Kawczynski also pointed out that the average number of voters in a parliamentary constituency was larger in England than in Scotland.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Democracy
During the campaign each of the three main UK parties conducted reviews of the UK constitution, with each recommending that more powers should be devolved to the Scottish Parliament. On the morning prior to a televised debate between Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling, a joint statement was published by Better Together. Co -signed by the three main UK party leaders (David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg), it committed to granting Scotland increased power over domestic taxes and parts of the social security system.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Democracy
Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of London, said he was opposed to giving the Scottish Parliament greater fiscal powers. During the second televised debate, Salmond challenged Darling to specify which additional powers that could help create greater employment in Scotland would be granted if there was a "no" vote. During a visit to Scotland later that week, David Cameron promised more powers "soon".


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Democracy
On 8 September, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggested a timetable for the additional powers to be implemented in the event of a "no" vote. He proposed that work on a new Scotland Act would begin immediately after the referendum, resulting in the publication of a white paper by the end of November 2014. Two days before the referendum, the three main UK party leaders publicly pledged to introduce "extensive new powers" by the timetable suggested and that the Barnett formula of public funding would be continued.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Economy
A principal issue in the referendum was the economy. Weir Group, one of the largest private companies based in Scotland, commissioned a study by Oxford Economics into the potential economic effects of Scottish independence. It found that Weir would pay more corporation tax, despite the Scottish government's proposal to cut the rate of corporation tax, due to it no longer being able to offset losses in Scotland against profits in the rest of the UK. It also stated that independence would result in additional costs and complexity in the operation of business pension schemes.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Economy
The report found that 70% of all Scottish exports are sold to the rest of the UK, which it said would particularly affect the financial services sector. Standard Life, one of the largest businesses in the Scottish financial sector, said in February 2014 that it had started registering companies in England in case it had to relocate some of its operations there.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Economy
In February 2014, the Financial Times noted that Scotland's per capita GDP was bigger than that of France when a geographic share of oil and gas was taken into account, and still bigger than that of Italy when it was not. As of April 2014, Scotland had a similar rate of unemployment to the UK average (6.6%) and a lower fiscal deficit (including as a percentage of GDP) than the rest of the UK.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Economy
Scotland performed better than the UK average in securing new Foreign Direct Investment in 2012–13 (measured by the number of projects), although not as well as Wales or Northern Ireland. GDP growth during 2013 was lower in Scotland than in the rest of the UK, although this was partly due to an industrial dispute at the Grangemouth Refinery.


2014 Scottish independence referendum, Issues, Economy
Deutsche Bank issued a report in the week before the referendum in which David Folkerts-Landau, the bank's chief economist, concluded: "While it may sound simple and costless for a nation to exit a 300-year-old union, nothing could be further from the truth". Folkerts-Landau claimed that the economic prospects after a "yes" vote were "incomprehensible," and cited Winston Churchill's 1925 Gold Standard decision and the actions of America's Federal Reserve that triggered the Great Depression of the 1930s, as mistakes of a similar magnitude. The Swiss UBS financial services company supported the position of Deutsche Bank.