We should be like... someone that reads the data

The European Social Survey (ESS) is a highly respected, academically driven cross-national survey that has been conducted across Europe every two years since 2001.

It collects rigorous, comparable data on public attitudes, beliefs, values, and behavioural patterns through face-to-face interviews with representative samples in over 30 countries. 

Its widely regarded as one of the gold standards in social science research, the ESS is used by researchers, policymakers, and analysts worldwide to understand social change, political opinions, and cultural trends. 

I was working my way through the latest edition, Round 11 (2023/24), and realised it provides a brilliant opportunity to test the Nationalist claim that Scotland is more like Norway than it is like England. Using data for the UK, other European countries as well as UK regions and nations we can test the alignment of Norway, Scotland, GB and areas of England. 

TL:DR : Scotland is not like Norway, but the North West of England is much closer. 

Using European Social Survey Round 11 data, I compared mean scores across six key attitudinal variables: Left-Right political placement, three immigration measures (economic impact, cultural enrichment, and overall benefit), support for income redistribution, and LGBT rights. You can see the charts for this below if you are interested. 

I then went to on extract Scotland, London and GB and calculated the absolute differences between each and then extended this to compare all three against Norway. 

Finally, I ranked all English regions by their average distance from Norway's scores.

Who knew Carlisle is close to Oslo?

Scotland is closer to GB than London is. 

Across all six variables, Scotland's average difference from GB is just 0.32 points, compared to London's 0.60 points. Scotland is closer to GB on 5 of 6 measures. This suggests that if any part of the UK is an "outlier," it is London — not Scotland.

GB is actually closer to Norway than Scotland is. 

Contrary to the "Scotland is Norwegian" narrative, GB overall is closest to Norway on 5 of 6 variables, with an average distance of just 0.20 points. Scotland's average distance from Norway is 0.42 points — more than twice as far. 

Scotland is only closest to Norway on LGBT rights, and even then by a negligible margin (0.01 points).

Most English regions are closer to Norway than Scotland. 

When I compared all English regions to Norway, 7 of 9 regions were closer to Norway than Scotland. North West England is actually the closest to Norway (avg diff: 0.19), followed by South East England and West Midlands (both 0.20). Scotland ranks 8th out of 11 areas analysed.

Lesley Riddoch or Rigourous data

I guess then you can listen to Lesley Riddoch types with a few anecdotes or you can just look at the data. When you do you can simply see that Scotland is not an outlier within the UK on these social attitude measures. 

Nor does it support the claim that Scotland is "more like Norway" than the rest of the UK. If anything, the UK as a whole — and several English regions in particular — are closer to Norwegian attitudes than Scotland. 

Datasets