ABSTRACT
The chapter deals with the case of the Scottish National Party (SNP), which is a deviant one because of Scotland’s ambiguous fiscal position within the UK. The chapter however shows that, such ambiguous position notwithstanding, the SNP has consistently depicted Scotland as an advanced region that pays more than it receives from London and that would be richer if independent. The chapter further stresses how the discovery of oil opened up the possibility of an attractive constitutional alternative to the Union, while, in the 1980s, the narrative of the democratic deficit contributed to spreading a perception of Scotland as suffering the detrimental policies imposed by successive ‘illegitimate’ Tory governments. The chapter concludes that the combination of these two factors powerfully questioned the Union’s legitimacy.
