Quote Originally Posted by ragnarok View Post
Brexit, rather than offering a path to a second referendum has simply muddied the waters. It still isn't clear what an independent Scotland's relationship within or with the EU would be. Given that the UK appears to be leaving the single market, that would potentially create significant issues for an independent Scotland within the EU given that England would still be Scotland's biggest trading partner.
At the moment what seems to have happened is Brexit has created a huge amount of uncertainty and some people are reluctant to pile more uncertainty on top of it by backing independence. There's also a potential framing effect. The Leave and Yes campaigns were very different, but they both appealed to a certain type of anti-establishment voter. As Brexit is now at the centre of the political agenda these voters are perhaps less inclined to support independence because the SNP are on the other side of the EU issue.

Personally, while I completely agree that the economic argument for independence is far weaker than it was in 2014, and the polling doesn't seem to be too favourable to Yes at present, I still think Yes would have a good chance of winning a second referendum. The framing effect mentioned above immediately disappears if we're suddenly in another referendum campaign and what Brexit highlighted is that economic arguments can be trumped by making appeals to identity and democracy/sovereignty (the EU referendum strengthens the latter case pretty significantly).