Labour would be forgiven for reaching for the paracetamol this morning.
Labour would be forgiven for reaching for the paracetamol this morning
The Labour Party is facing a further headache following new polling that has revealed that the SNP are now ahead of the party in voting intentions for both Holyrood and Westminster.
According to new data collected by Survation and commissioned by the SNP, asked how they would vote in the constituency vote for the Scottish Parliament, when the undecided are taken out, the SNP now lead Labour by 15 per cent, with the nationalists on 42 per cent (down 3 per cent on the 2011 election results) whilst Labour are on 27 per cent (down 5 per cent).
On the regional list vote, again, the SNP lead Labour with the Scots Nats on 37 per cent (-7 per cent), and Labour on 27 per cent (+1 per cent).
Labour will however be most concerned about the figures on voting intentions for Westminster where the SNP now lead Labour on 34 per cent (+14 per cent from 2010) whilst Labour are on 32 per cent (-10 per cent). This represents a 12 per cent swing from the SNP to Labour which George Eaton in the New Statesman has argued would be “deadly” for Ed Miliband if it were to be reflected in the election next year.
Interestingly, on Westminster voting intentions, the Conservatives north of the border, according to the poll, now stand on 18 per cent, up 1 per cent from 2010, a reflection of the good campaign that Ruth Davidson is widely believed to have had during the independence referendum as leader of the Scottish Conservatives.
It could be that this is a rogue poll, but none the less, a combination of the SNP’s membership trebling since the independence referendum and the boost the party will undoubtedly get with Nicola Sturgeon taking the leadership in November now makes it look highly likely that the nationalists will successfully take some seats from Labour next May on the mantra of holding the UK parties ‘feet to the fire’ when it comes to further powers being devolved to Holyrood.
Given Labour’s continued reliance on its rump of Scottish Labour MPs, such news will have many at Labour HQ worried about the rapid erosion in its once heartland seats.
This is compounded by a similar pattern emerging in Wales where Roger Scully, Professor of Political Science in the Wales Governance Centre at Cardiff University, has noted that Welsh Labour has seen a considerable decline in support over the past 18-24 months. As he has explained:
“In the four polls conducted in 2012, Labour’s general election vote share was always at or above 50 per cent. Both the last two have had it below 40 per cent.”
The polling comes following what was widely believed to have been a lacklustre performance from Ed Miliband in his speech to the party conference last week with the icing on the difficult to swallow cake being today’s YouGov poll putting the Conservatives ahead of Labour on UK wide voting intentions.
And for information, YouGov have also revealed that more people would want to go for a drink with Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Theresa May than Ed Miliband.
Labour would be forgiven for wanting to grab for the paracetamol this morning.
81 Responses to “Labour’s headaches get worse”
Leon Wolfeson
Don’t underestimate Labour’s skill at driving away voters by moving right. They can still manage to lose this if they try hard enough.
Guest
Keep throwing out random nonsense. That you’re Islamic or whatever your excuse for voting for the far right is, as you troll on…
Peter Thomson
The talk amongst us Scottish political wonks is that a number of Labour bigwigs, like Jim Murphy, will be reliant on Tories in their constituency voting tactically to stop the swing to the SNP, the current polls are indicating. It is more likely that Libdems in Scotland will reach the same level of endangered species as the Scottish Tories and be reduced to probably to 2 MP’s.
Whether the SNP can win the majority of seats in Scotland is moot given how FPTP skews the seat to the sitting MP. The likely number of SNP MPs returned in May 2015 is between 15 and 20 seats (mainly dependent on how badly the Libdem vote collapses but even the most optimistic projection sees Danny Alexander being handed a P45 by the electorate) with Labour around the 30 seat mark.
Between now and May 2015, with SNP membership in Scotland now bigger than the Libdems across the whole of the UK, a lot will depend on whether Labour can look like delivering on the Vow and Promise the ‘Three Stooges’ made when they thought they were going to lose.
Godzilla Brown’s petition has nothing to do with him – it was started by 38 Degrees a campaigning organisation with 150,000 members in Scotland. His attempt to claim the petition as his own has put a lot of folk’s nose out of joint, Labour’s stupid idea of using the new, enlarged Scottish electoral roll to attempt to recover hated Poll Tax arrears is just another shot in the foot for Labour in Scotland and another easy win for the SNP.
There is a degree of potential irony or sangfroid in the idea Ed Miliband could be reliant on doing a deal with the SNP to form a UK Government in May 2015, given the expected collapse of the Libdem vote across England, leaving the SNP as the UK Parliament’s third biggest party.
That will go down really well with the average English punter – won’t it ….
Mukkinese
Because the Tories have never been implicated in any scandal…
Mukkinese
Vote Tory, get no NHS, no rights and have your money given to the rich…