Following on from my piece about the Linn by-election result, I’d just like to offer my own party (Alba) some free advice. Nicola Sturgeon is undoubtedly a Marmite figure and there are lots of people out there who genuinely loathe her – as I can attest from personal experience, because years ago I went on a coach tour of the Balkans and sat in front of a well-to-do Tory-supporting couple from Aberdeenshire who moaned about her for several days solid. So it may seem tempting to try to gain political support by tapping into that sentiment, and treating Ms Sturgeon as either a monster or as a byword for failure. But there’s just one snag: the vast majority of people who don’t like her are viscerally opposed to independence and would never even consider voting Alba. In the bubble we exist in, it’s easy to lose sight of that crucial fact, because the hardcore of the independence movement contains many people who have turned against her. But broader pro-independence opinion in Scotland is not reflective of that.
Here are Nicola Sturgeon’s personal ratings among people who voted Yes in 2014. The numbers are taken from the most recent Ipsos UK ‘Scottish Political Monitor’, conducted by telephone in June.
Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way Nicola Sturgeon is doing her job as First Minister of Scotland? (Yes voters from 2014 only)
Satisfied: 78%
Dissatisfied: 19%
Don’t Know: 2%
The 19% who are dissatisfied works out at roughly 8.5% of the total voting population (leaving aside the complicating factor of demographic shifts since 2014 which have changed the electorate’s composition). Now, I suppose you could argue that this is just about enough to win list seats at Holyrood, but there are two problems. Firstly, not everyone who voted Yes in 2014 still supports independence, and the people who dislike Ms Sturgeon are probably disproportionately likely to have switched to No. So the pool of voters who both support independence and dislike Ms Sturgeon is probably even lower than 8.5% (maybe a lot lower). And secondly, by treating Ms Sturgeon as a hate figure you’re effectively alienating the near four-fifths of Yes voters who do like her, which means you’re putting all your eggs in one basket – you effectively have to get the votes of almost all of her pro-indy detractors, which leaves you with an incredibly narrow path to success.
By contrast, the pool of pro-independence voters who are receptive to the message that there needs to be greater urgency on bringing about independence is, I suspect, much, much larger, and overlaps with personal support for Ms Sturgeon. So if you can make that case positively, without attacking her personally except for carefully-justified reasons on specific issues, the pickings for Alba should prove to be much richer.
In recent days, a number of senior Alba people have been queuing up to vigorously support and endorse the “comeback” (sic) of Wings Over Scotland. Now, it may simply be that they personally enjoy reading the website, which is fine. But if it’s instead an indication that they see the Wings approach as a strategic template for the Alba party, we have a major problem, because that template is built to a large extent on personal hatred of Nicola Sturgeon. Any such strategy will prove to be a dead end for Alba, and that would be indescribably frustrating because it’s such a needless misstep. There are perfectly viable alternative strategies available.
Perhaps the argument will be that Wings has shown the way in how dislike of Nicola Sturgeon can be ‘fostered’ among independence supporters, thus increasing the pool of potential Alba voters. And it’s true that Stuart Campbell probably has succeeded through sheer persistence in turning a percentage of his regular readers against Ms Sturgeon, but in absolute terms that number is extremely limited. The
most up-to-date figures suggest that less than 1% of the Scottish population read Wings in an average month, and most of those people will just be very casual readers who drop by once every few weeks or less. It’s highly debatable whether Mr Campbell has even grown the anti-Sturgeon vote by as much as 0.1%.
There is, to be blunt, no future for the Alba Party as a de facto Wings Party with Stuart Campbell as its spiritual leader. One of the first things Alba needs to do is make itself liked among the masses of pro-independence voters, and it simply can’t do that with what will look to most of those people like a neverending wall of irrational bile directed against someone they respect and admire.
* * *
UPDATE: On a second inspection of the Ipsos UK data tables, I realised I’d somehow overlooked the personal ratings for Nicola Sturgeon among current Yes voters, which in line with the suspicion I outlined above, show that she’s even more popular among that section of the electorate.
Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way Nicola Sturgeon is doing her job as First Minister of Scotland? (Current Yes supporters only)
Satisfied: 86%
Dissatisfied: 12%
Don’t Know: 3%
That means the pool of voters who both support independence and are dissatisfied with Nicola Sturgeon is only around 5% or 6%, depending on how you do the calculation – which barely leaves any path at all to winning list seats with a relentlessly anti-Sturgeon message.
* * *
If you’d like to help Scot Goes Pop continue in some form, donations are welcome HERE.
Related
