I was having a look at the YouGov website to see if I could find the datasets from the Times poll about Devo Max, which naturally Kenny “Devo or Death” Farquharson is beside himself with excitement about. They’re not there yet, but the tables from earlier questions from what was presumably the same poll are up – and what leapt out at me are the personal ratings for party leaders.
It was stated again and again throughout the election campaign that Alba were doomed because of Alex Salmond’s poor poll ratings. That was never true – in a proportional system you can win seats even if only 10% of the public like you, just so long as enough people within that 10% feel strongly enough about it. The fact that Alba didn’t win seats doesn’t in any way disprove that point, although of course people will pretend that it does.
Douglas Ross, however, is in a different category from Alex Salmond, because he’s not the leader of a small party trying to win seats – he aspires to be a national leader, and he’s already the de facto leader of unionism. Nobody seems to have spotted this yet, but his ratings in the YouGov poll are strikingly similar to Alex Salmond’s. Only 18% of the public think Mr Ross is doing a good job as Tory leader and 52% of the public think he’s doing a bad job, compared to 53% who think Mr Salmond is doing a bad job as Alba leader. If it’s supposed to be so unthinkable for Alba to ever have any electoral success with a leader with that type of rating, I’m struggling to understand why the unionist media are not questioning how unionists will ever win a second referendum with Ross as their champion.
Crucially, even 24% of Tory list voters think Ross is doing a bad job – that compares with just 2% of SNP voters who think the same of Nicola Sturgeon, and 6% of Labour voters who think the same of Anas Sarwar. The Tories got away with putting up a weak leader in this campaign, probably because their core voters are tribal and will vote for pretty much any Tory if it stops the SNP. But Better Together II will need a lot more than just tribal Tories to win a referendum. Unionism has got itself a Douglas Ross problem.
I am shocked to the core at this. The Scottish justice system is discrediting itself before our eyes. Even those who tried to justify the conviction must acknowledge there needs to be proportionality in sentencing.https://t.co/mqWOOanTAa
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 11, 2021
