A double bombshell for Scottish Labour

There is widespread support for another referendum; now Labour must persuade the electorate that May is not a proxy vote for independence

 

Scottish Labour faces a double bombshell this morning, with new polling not only suggesting near wipe-out for the party in May, but showing that a majority of people now support independence.

The data, collected by Survation for the Labour-supporting Daily Record newspaper, has found that with undecideds and won’t says taken out, 51 per cent of people in Scotland would vote for independence compared to 49 per cent who would reject such a proposition. This is the first poll to put independence in the lead since September’s referendum.

More worryingly still for the pro-union parties, 60 per cent of respondents expressed support for another referendum being held within the next 10 years, despite declarations in September that the last vote had settled the issue ‘for a generation’.

Meanwhile, in the week that Ed Miliband ruled out any coalition agreement with the SNP following the election, today’s poll puts the SNP on 47 per cent, up two percentage points from Survation’s poll last month. Labour are on 26 per cent (-1), the Conservatives are up one point to 16 per cent, and the Lib Dems are on four per cent (down one point) with no changes on the seven per cent of voters who plan to vote for another party.

According to the calculations, if replicated across the country, the SNP would secure 53 of Scotland’s 59 seats with Labour slumped to just five MPs north of the border and the Lib Dems losing all but one of its seats.

Seeking to move attention away from independence and towards the General Election, Scottish Labour’s lead Jim Murphy has once again responded to this poll by telling voters that a vote for any party but Labour will lead to a Conservative government. He concludes:

“There is only one party across the UK that is big enough to stop the Tories being the largest party and that’s Labour.

“Now that it’s 100 per cent certain that there won’t be a Labour and SNP coalition there’s only one way to beat the Tories.

“A vote for anyone other than Scottish Labour risks the Tories being the biggest party and David Cameron returning to Downing Street by accident.

“That would be a terrible outcome for Scotland but it’s what could happen if this poll is repeated on election day.”

Unsurprisingly, the SNP have welcomed the results. The party’s leader at Westminster Angus Robertson has concluded it ‘shows that support to give Scotland a strong voice at Westminster by returning a team of SNP MPs to stand up for Scottish interests remains very high’. He continued:

“By contrast, Labour continue to pay the price for being on the same side of so many arguments as the Tories, including their joint commitment to imposing even more spending cuts.

“We take nothing for granted and will work extremely hard to win people’s trust on May 7 so that we can deliver jobs and growth in place of Westminster cuts, power for Scotland and the non-renewal of useless and expensive Trident nuclear weapons.”

Speaking exclusively to Left Foot Forward, Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University has noted that for Labour to gain a recovery would require three things:

  1. Showing to voters in Scotland that Westminster is relevant to their lives;
  2. Persuading voters that May is not a proxy vote for or against independence; and
  3. Gaining traction for its vision for a fairer society to counteract Nicola Sturgeon’s campaigning efforts in this direction.

Whether or not this can all be achieved between now and polling day remains to be seen.

Ed Jacobs is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter

127 Responses to “A double bombshell for Scottish Labour”

  1. Jim Bennett

    What Labour have is a Gerald Ratner experience x1000. It is a broken brand which is simply not trusted. Iraq, Afghanistan, cosying up to big business, introducing privatisation into the NHS, introducing university tuition fees, the Private Finance Initiative…need I go on? Even Ed Balls yesterday welcomed the Tory budget saying there’s nothing he would change. Does John Curtice really think the betrayal of trust which a decade plus of New Labour precipitated will evaporate in a few weeks?

    Labour in Scotland have a residual, historical base which is rapidly diminishing because it is seen as a party of entitled incestuousness. A fifth of current Scottish Labour MSPs are related or married to a past or present Labour representative. The most common previous job of new Scottish Labour MPs elected in the past decade is working in the office of a Scottish Labour MP.

    The vibrancy, youth, numbers of activists and progressive approach to politics are all with the SNP because they are seen as a “clean” social democratic alternative. Frankly, removing independence from the equation, the SNP articulate many policies which ordinary Labour supporters would be happy to give their vote to. Many Scots will see the SNP, rightly, as adding lead to Labour’s pencil.

    However, there’s a number of things to think about in relation to the polls:

    – The latest poll is best seen in the context of the Guardian’s Poll of Polls which at 20/03/15 puts the SNP on 43% and Labour on 30%. With a margin of error, this could mean a 40%-33% lead. This gives substantially different seat numbers. The closer Labour get to 35%, even if the SNP stay around 40%, Labour could retain most of its seats. This is not something I would want to see but it is a potential reality.

    – The website Elections Etc cautioned everyone re polls based on the Israeli experience this week where Netanyahu bucked all the poll trends, including the exit polling, to crate a convincing (if unpalatable) win. Beware polls!

    – The SNP, as evidenced by Nicola Sturgeon on Radio 4 Womens hour, are attempting to play down the polls and focus their members on winning votes.

    The SNP deserve to be leading Labour but their focus should be on winning votes not speculating about deals. The SNP are clearly leading but this article overstates that.

    So, what am saying? Labour in Scotland deserves to suffer a cataclysmic defeat because of past sins. However, the polls are likely very much overstated and the level of Labour’s defeat in Scotland will probably be significantly less than is currently being discussed.

  2. Ken Bell

    Relax, as Spud has been repeating these lies for weeks. It is a lie that the biggest party always forms a government, as what matters are the seats in the Commons. The Queen will send for the man who can command a majority there, how he obtained it is not important.

    It is also disingenuous, but not quite a lie, to claim that since Labour has ruled out a coalition with the SNP the Tories could get in as the largest party. A coalition was never offered by the SNP, but supply and confidence was. Labour has never ruled out that option, as Spud knows very well.

    So, here’s what you will get – Miliband as PM with the support of the SNP. Labour’s troughers will be able to ride the ministerial limos in return for an agreed set of policies being enacted.

  3. Leon Wolfeson

    Actually, many of those are with the SSP and smaller Scottish parties.

    The SNP is a mix of left, right and center with a Dear Leader, and many of their supporters don’t even support independence but DevoMax – it’s a really, really mixed ideological bag!

    Also, please don’t abuse polling by making seat claims off a single poll – polls are only useful for trends.

  4. Mike Stallard

    We all know that SNP is going to win in Scotland and that it is firmly Socialist at heart.
    We all know that the Conservatives and Labour are running equal.
    Is it impossible that Mr Miliband and Mrs Sturgeon will come to some sort of agreement? They are both very much from the same stable.

  5. Gary Scott

    Scottish voters are well aware that May is about Westminster. Voters who support Labour have not changed their political beliefs but feel that Labour have. They feel Labour has ‘deserted them’ and they find that their beliefs don’t align with Labour policies anymore. The referendum campaign went on for TWO YEARS in Scotland. The YES side put forward a proposal and the NO side (mostly Labour) spent the full two years on something that they called ‘Operation Fear’. This was ugly, dirty and offensive. It involved treating voters with contempt and making continuous derogatory remarks about Scotland for two years. The voters who have changed allegiance have done so because they have found a party that is a better fit and also because there is no longer any trust for the Labour Party. I don’t know how Labour could recover from this. One of the things that has confounded voters is that when Labour, in Holyrood, refused to work with SNP (Holyrood was set up to cause coalitions) and couldn’t form government with LibDems they were potentially hamstringing government. In every respect the Labour MSPs and MPs have poured hatred upon SNP. It is beyond normal opposition and much worse than Labour Vs Tory. The party, as it is, does not deserve to win seats..

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