Wings Over Scotland

For a country that prides itself on hating the Tories, this is very odd.

And if you don’t see how, let us illustrate.

If you simply combined the Tory and Reform votes from the latest poll, the election would be on a knife-edge, with the right-wing alliance just three points behind the SNP on the constituency vote and six points AHEAD on the list. On that basis it would likely win the election as the biggest party, though it would need Labour and Lib Dem backing to form a government.

(It would be genuinely unpredictable and interesting to see who could win the vote to be First Minister in this scenario.)

This is the Devolved Elections projection, showing Reform edging it by a single seat over the SNP, with a comfortable Unionist majority of 21, compared to the 11-seat “pro-indy” majority projected by More In Common on the actual poll numbers:

The map would look like this, with the right-wing alliance sweeping the traditional strong Tory areas of the Borders and the north-east and encroaching towards the middle, with the Lib Dems taking a huge chunk of the Highlands and Islands and the SNP reduced to the Central Belt, with Labour clinging to their existing pockets.

Considering that a right-wing party (the Unionist Party, forerunner of the modern Scottish Conservatives) last won a general election in Scotland in 1955, that’s an extraordinary stat. If Tory voters switched en masse to Reform on Thursday, according to this poll there would be an earthquake of utterly transformative impact on Scottish politics which would make the SNP’s 2007 victory, and 2011 majority, seem like a fieldmouse farting by comparison.

(If you count the SNP, Labour and Greens as all representing various degrees of “the left”, with the Lib Dems on the soft right it’s close, about 53-45 in favour of the left.)

And there’s another thing. More In Common didn’t ask about independence, but a poll for the Sunday Times at the weekend put support at Yes 55 No 45. Yet just 37% of people voting in the election are going to vote for ostensibly pro-independence parties.

That means that one out of every three independence supporters is refusing to vote SNP or Green in order to try to achieve it, and more than two out of every five are refusing to vote SNP. Just 57% of indy supporters say they’ll vote SNP on Thursday, and another 10% will vote Green.

(We suspect that once turnout is factored in those numbers will fall further.)

It really is quite hard to overstate how surreal all this is. On just over 30% of the vote, the SNP look set to either win an absolute majority or come close to it, while a combined Tory/Reform vote of over 32% will get them less than a quarter of the seats in the chamber.

Despite John Swinney offering a “100% guarantee” of a second referendum if he gets that majority, barely more than half of indy supporters look like they’ll bother to go out and vote for his party to get it. Meanwhile Tory voters will pass up a no-brainer chance to kick the SNP out and definitively end any threat of independence for the foreseeable future, despite being by far the party most obsessed with the constitution.

(Labour voters at least have the excuse that their party is still clutching at the comically absurd notion that they can win the election themselves, and the Lib Dems just want to carve out a few more seats, but Tories know full well that they’re looking at an epic humiliation AND a thumping SNP win unless they unexpectedly decide to throw their lot in with Malcolm Offord’s motley crew at the last minute.)

This, then, is an election in which both indy supporters and Unionists seem to be locked on a suicidally self-destructive course, each doing their best to throw it. The SNP is urging Yessers to waste their second vote and maximise the number of Unionist MSPs, while the Unionist parties are so engrossed in fighting among and within themselves that they’re going to get 61% of the vote yet still find themselves sitting irrelevantly in an indy-majority Parliament for another five years.

(Neither side much cares, they’ll get the gravy either way.)

As for the voters, nobody expects even half of them to turn out at all, so scunnered at they at the rotten catalogue of options being presented to them.

Our wee country’s gotten itself in a right old pickle, folks.