Kevin McKenna at the Herald is in SNP Overdrive these days. I keep ignoring it as best I can but something pees me off too much and here I am again.

I come from a ‘Rangers’ family going back decades. My dad, working in an American factory with no closed shops found out Catholics were not aliens and left with me for Falkirk FC. I married Bernadette, in the Chapel and signed things. With a useless Higher History (B) I taught myself about the Empire and it’s atrocities in Ireland.

Why is McKenna’s claim pure excrement of the male bovine?

Scottish Catholics (many of Irish descent) were long a strong base for Labour, linked to working-class communities and social justice priorities. In the 2010 general election, around 63% of Scottish Catholics voted Labour and only about 18% for the SNP (British Election Study data). Support for the Conservatives was very low (single digits). https://www.brin.ac.uk/9323/⁠

This shifted sharply around the 2014 independence referendum and 2015 general election. A YouGov poll for The Tablet found 48% of Scottish Catholics intending to vote SNP versus 38% for Labour. Post-election British Election Study figures showed roughly 55% of Catholics voting SNP and 36% Labour (with Conservatives at about 5%). The SNP gained substantially across groups, but the swing was notable among Catholics, who had previously been one of Labour’s strongest constituencies in Scotland. https://www.thenational.scot/politics/14886604.poll-shows-huge-swing-to-snp-among-catholics/

A YouGov poll for the Scottish Election Study (fieldwork around March 2026, reported in The Times in April 2026) broke down Holyrood voting intention by religion:

Catholics: Constituency ballot: SNP 36%, Reform UK 22%, Labour 20%.

By comparison, among Protestants, Reform UK led with 25%, ahead of the SNP and Conservatives. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/reform-curious-christian-election-sff98dgjn

How has that become possible?

I’ve read the research (Tom Devine) – discrimination against Catholics is a thing of the past. They earn as much and are a bit better educated then the average ‘Protestant.’

If Mackay wanted to tell us something true, he might have had a look at evidence from official statistics and/or from a respected academic researcher like, say, Professor Sir Thomas Martin Devine OBE FRSE FBA. Here’s Devine in the Mackay’s host, the Herald, in 2018:

‘SECTARIANISM is in decline and claims of widespread anti-Catholicism in Scotland are “unhelpfully alarmist”, according to the country’s leading intellectual, Professor Sir Tom Devine. The University of Edinburgh historian claims there is little chance of coming up against religious prejudice in 2018, apart from at Old Firm matches, and accused politicians and church leaders of “brazenly spreading fear” and reinforcing “victimhood” among Catholics.’

Might Devine have based his words on empirical evidence? Well, yes. Who’d have thought it? Is that how you get to be a prof? Here is some official evidence from 2015 (latest):

‘In contrast to the strong perceptions of sectarianism in Scotland, there is evidence to show that personal experiences of it are relatively uncommon in terms of harassment, discrimination and criminal victimisation. Over recent years the SCJS has reported relatively low levels of sectarian crime. In 2008/09 1% of crimes were thought to be motivated by sectarianism, falling to 0.5% in 2009/10. In 2010/11 it was 1% while in 2012/13 (the most recently available figure) it was again 1%. Religious hate-crime accounted for around 10% of all hate crime charges in Scotland in 2013-14 (racial hate-crime accounted for 69%) and is at its lowest level since 2009-10.’ https://www.gov.scot/publications/examination-evidence-sectarianism-scotland-2015-update/pages/4/

My father-in-law was a Catholic from Donegal who met me for the first-time only months after Bloody Sunday. Once he knew I would treat him with respect, he did the same for me. My father was a committed Presbyterian, hostile to the Vatican but friends with several Catholics. At 68, I have no memory of ever directly witnessing even sectarian verbal insults far less violence though an Orange Walk did wake me up once.