I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m finding it quite hard to work out what to wish for in this campaign. I don’t want there to be a Tory government, and especially not a majority Tory government, which on the face of it means that I should want the GB-wide Tory lead to start dipping. But that would mean a Labour recovery, and we know from what happened in 2017 that it’s very difficult to keep a Labour surge “quarantined” in England and Wales – it’s highly likely to spill over into Scotland, and at the end of the day it’s Labour that poses the biggest threat to SNP dominance. Not only are most SNP seats in former Labour heartlands, there’s also the problem that any gain in Labour support is like a “six point swing” in football – it’s bound to be partly at the SNP’s expense, and therefore erodes the SNP lead much faster than any gains for the Tories.
So far the chances of that happening have looked remote, but today for the first time I’m beginning to wonder. A new poll in Wales has shown a really significant jump in the Labour vote, way beyond anything that can be explained by random sampling variation. Something very similar happened just before the 2017 election.
Welsh voting intentions (YouGov):
Labour 38% (+9)
Conservatives 32% (+4)
Plaid Cymru 11% (-1)
Liberal Democrats 9% (-3)
Brexit Party 8% (-7)
Greens 1% (-2)
OK, Wales is not the UK, and we haven’t seen anything similar in Britain-wide polls yet. But there is a Britain-wide ICM poll today reporting a smaller swing to Labour. Whether that’s just margin of error noise, or the start of something more significant, remains to be seen.
Britain-wide voting intentions (ICM):
Conservatives 41% (-1)
Labour 34% (+2)
Liberal Democrats 13% (n/c)
Brexit Party 4% (-1)
(Note: For some reason the SNP are often edited out of the results summaries for GB polls, but on past form with ICM they’re probably on around 3%.)
It’s just conceivable that a 7-point Tory lead might not be quite enough to win Boris Johnson an outright majority – it depends on the geographical distribution of votes, and on the extent of pro-EU tactical voting.
Would we prefer to have 45 SNP MPs plus a Tory majority government, or 35 SNP MPs with genuine influence over a Corbyn minority government? I suppose I’d prefer the latter, but if Labour reduce the SNP’s haul of seats without actually removing the Tories from office, that would be the worst of all worlds (as we discovered two years ago).
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I have two more constituency previews in today’s edition of The National – this time it’s Dundee West and Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross.
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If you know of any independence and/or SNP supporters who might not have registered to vote yet, make sure they know that tomorrow is the deadline. They can register HERE.
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