Binfire Of The Vanities
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.
The reason why so many “indy” supporters refuse to vote SNP is, I suspect, because they are not so much “indy” as “want the best for my country”. I myself would tend to see “indy” as the best for my country…. but that is in theory and if it means voting NuSNP, then I will rather vote Reform for gas/oil drilling and “aspiration” (the latter in light of the recent Malcom/Beaker spat). I will also vote Reform as most likely to defeat NuSNP (constituency) and Green (list) where I reside.
The basic error contained in this analysis is that tory and reform votes are interchangeable when the truth is much more nuanced. A sizeable minority on the left, right and centre of politics don’t want to see their country gift wrapped and presented to whoever happens to bowl up on our shores. These people have nowhere else to go other than reform.
I went to the recent indy march in Edinburgh and questioned the SNP at their stand. I said that their two votes to the SNP is good for the SNP but not for Scotland and did they know and understand that. They said they did. I asked, are you still going to promote two votes SNP knowing this? They said yes. I said, even though its bad for the independence movement and Scotland? They said, yes again. I spoke to the SNP after speaking to Salvo. This is absolute truth. The SNP are putting their party before country and happy to do so.
Bang on MR B. ..and in putting party first the activists hand money and status to the SNP elite and its favoured parasites. We have been badly let down in Scotland over the years by the political class and wider Elite networks in Scotland. Self interest rules. It used to be, not that long ago, that a vote for the SNP was a vote for country before party or in other words a vote to break that cycle of self interest that ruled our country (or amanaged it on behalf of England/ Westminster if you prefer). Sturgeon and Swinney and the wider SNP elite swapped independence for membership of a 300 yr old club and have become wealthy as a result. They are now respected in elite circles now but have lost face with the ordinary people who see through them – I don’t think they give a damn about that. They might even see it as a right of passage to be despised by the general population.
“For a country that prides itself on hating the Tories, this is very odd.”
Aye, by the mid-1990’s Scots had made Scotland into a Tory-free zone sufficient for a wee pretendy parliament to be ‘granted’, giving us natives a wee sniff of ‘democracy’.
Since then, however, we have seen a million or more folk move in from England, and at least half a million Scots leave.
Which means that, today, between one and two million people in Scotland may not consider themselves ‘Scottish’ at all. This is in addition to ‘assimilated’ Scots who prefer to view themselves as ‘British’.
Ultimately, national identity, i.e. I am ‘Scottish’ or ‘British’ is how the ‘national’ vote splits.
People have had enough of the Left and all that it entails.
Who can blame them? The Scots are hardly immune, no more than anyone else is.
Slightly off-topic – but if you haven’t seen the amazing campaign advert by that Sarwar guy for Labour, you’re really missing out on something special.
“HEE-YEEUCH!” is the cry, before the bagpipes start skirling over a ditty about “Hills and country roads”.
I am sure it would appeal to the Rabbie Burns-meets-Dudley D Watkins types that congregate here.
D’Hondt is a complete farce..