Strictly speaking we’ve had one full-scale Scottish poll since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister – the now-legendary Ashcroft poll that gave Yes a narrow lead on the independence question, and that also showed that Nicola Sturgeon was the most popular of the leading Scottish and UK politicians. But oddly there were no Westminster or Holyrood voting intention numbers in the poll, and that’s what we could really do with now. We’re in the highly unusual situation where it seems to me that some London commentators are possibly being a tad optimistic about the SNP’s prospects in any autumn snap election – and that’s specifically because they’re assuming that nothing has changed since the pre-Boris polls that suggested the SNP were riding high and that the Scottish Tories were taking an absolute hammering. Logically it seems possible that the Boris effect may have seen the Scottish Tories recover somewhat at the expense of the Brexit Party, which mean that even if the SNP are still in a commanding position, they may find it harder to make heavy gains from the Tories. Straws in the wind from Scottish subsamples of GB-wide polls have sent conflicting messages about the extent of any Tory recovery. But, as it happens, the latest subsample from YouGov (which unlike subsamples from other firms is likely to be correctly structured and weighted) is very much on the troubling side for the Tories…
SNP 46%, Liberal Democrats 16%, Conservatives 15%, Labour 9%, Greens 6%, Brexit Party 4%, UKIP 1%
I don’t think the SNP will be too concerned about the Lib Dems’ recovery as long as it remain at that kind of level – all it means is that the Lib Dems will hold their four current seats and perhaps take North East Fife. But the slight worry would be a Swinson bandwagon effect during the election campaign itself, similar to the Corbyn effect in 2017. We should never underestimate the potential for Scottish voters to get swept along with Britain-wide trends during the heat of a Westminster campaign. The SNP could counteract that problem by firing up their own potential support base with a strong campaign message on independence, but I have my doubts as to whether they’ll be bold enough to do that.
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It’s disappointing but not surprising that the SNP leadership are not going to allow the McEleny/MacNeil “Plan B” amendment to be debated at the party conference. As you know, I’m worried that the Wings party, if it goes ahead, could be damaging for the independence cause at the next Holyrood election – but the obvious way for the SNP leadership to ward off that threat is to make potential Wings party supporters feel that their voice is being heard inside the SNP. I’m struggling to understand what the leadership are so scared of – the chances are that they would have won any vote with a “we’ve heard you, but please trust us” message. The Blair-style control-freakery of trying to shut down all debate is wholly unnecessary and counterproductive, and will just further arouse suspicions (which may or may not be unfounded) that the leadership are not serious about ensuring that a vote on independence takes place in the relatively near future.
I’m also a tad concerned about possible fallout from the showdown on the gender self-ID issue that will take place at conference, with the elections of Women’s Officer and possibly Equalities Officer functioning as proxy votes on the issue. If there are clear losers, I hope they don’t feel that they no longer have a home within the SNP. The potential for a problem is probably much greater if the anti-self-ID side loses. If it goes the other way, at least the trans lobby would still know that the leadership is highly sympathetic towards them.
