By stewartb

Recall that Prime Minister, David Cameron announced on 23 January 2013 that if the Conservative Party was elected to power following the 2015 general election, it would hold a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU in the next Parliament. Cameron’s government published a draft European Union (Referendum) Bill in May 2013. The Tories won the 2015 GE: the European Union Referendum Bill 2015-16 was introduced in the House of Commons in May 2015 and it received Royal Assent on 17 December 2015.

In the 2015 general election, the Conservative Party won:

• 330 out of 650 UK seats, with a 36.8% share of the vote
• 330 out of 632 seats in Great Britain with a 37.7% share of the vote
• just 1 out of 59 seats in Scotland with a 14.9% share of the vote.

The referendum was held with the majority of Scotland’s electorate voting to remain in the EU to no avail. Leave majorities in England and Wales prevailed and a ‘hard’ Brexit as then implemented

Source: House of Commons Library on ‘General elections and governments’ (110 KB , Excel Spreadsheet) available at https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7529/  

The electoral statistics from 2015 help put the results of the recent Holyrood election into perspective. Overall, the SNP gained 58 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament. Fellow pro-indy party, the Scottish Greens gained 15 seats. The SNP’s share of the FPTP constituency vote – the close comparison with the UK GE system of voting – was 38.18%: the Scottish Greens achieved a 2.2% vote share, a total of 40.38% for pro-indy (pro-referendum) parties. Recall Cameron’s Tory Party in 2015 had less than 38% of the UK vote when it pressed on with holding an in-out EU referendum. 

The SNP gained a 27.18% share of the Regional votes: the Greens achieved a 13.98% share. So the total vote share for these  pro-indy (pro-referendum) parties was 41.16%. 

To another question: what might a political mandate to DENY the right to put a major constitutional question to the electorate look like in the UK? 

In the 2024 UK 2024 General Election, the Labour Party won:

• 411 out of 650 UK seats with a 33.70% share of the vote
• 411 out of 632 Great Britain seats with a 34.6% share of the vote

In the 2024 UK GE, Labour gained a 35.3% share of the vote in Scotland. (For completeness, in the recent Holyrood election, Labour gained a 19.18% share of constituency votes and a 16.01% share of the Regional votes.)

Source: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-10009/CBP-10009.pdf