That’s a headline deliberately “in the style of the Daily Mail”, but there’s a perfectly serious point behind it, and it’s one I’ve made a number of times before. I thought it might be worth revisiting on the day that we’re told Humza Yousaf thinks – with a certain lack of self-awareness, it has to be said – that his opponents in the leadership election might cost the SNP some of its supporters. In reality, that concern relates mainly to himself.
We know that the approval ratings of leaders are often highly predictive of general election and Scottish Parliament election results, and every poll that has measured approval ratings over the course of this campaign has had Kate Forbes well ahead of Humza Yousaf. But the most telling results have been from Ipsos, who also asked the same approval question of non-SNP politicians, and most importantly of the Labour leader Anas Sarwar, to allow a direct comparison to be made. Here is what the most recent Ipsos poll showed…
Ipsos net approval ratings (6th-7th March 2023):
Kate Forbes (SNP): +8
Anas Sarwar (Labour): +5
Humza Yousaf (SNP): -7
So the SNP really are at a crossroads. They can opt to give themselves a slight inbuilt advantage over Labour at the 2026 Holyrood election by choosing in Kate Forbes a leader who is a touch more popular than the de facto main opposition leader – and even having that option after so many years in government is pretty extraordinary, let’s face it. Or they can self-harm by spurning that opportunity and installing a leader who is significantly less popular than his Labour opposite number.
Would it be possible for the SNP to overcome the hindrance of an unpopular leader like Yousaf to hold onto power? That would be a very tall order. For as long as anyone can remember, UK general elections have generally been won by the party with the most popular leader. The two exceptions that are generally cited are 1970, which was won by the Conservatives in spite of Harold Wilson being more popular than Edward Heath, and 1979, which was also won by the Tories in spite of James Callaghan being more popular than Margaret Thatcher. But UK elections were a lot less presidential in the 1970s than they are now.
In a Scottish context, some may point out that Ruth Davidson often had slightly superior approval ratings to Nicola Sturgeon, and yet Sturgeon always got the better of Davidson in elections. But that’s not really a meaningful comparison because the Tories can’t compete on a level playing field with the SNP in Scotland. Their brand is too loathed outside their own core vote. Scottish Labour have no such disadvantage, and in any case it’s hard to dispute that Davidson achieved something very close to the best results that were realistically possible for her.
The only glimmer of hope for a Yousaf-led SNP might be the question of “which came first – the chicken or the egg?” We might assume that it’s leaders that make parties popular or unpopular, but just occasionally it can be the other way around. Just by chance, I happened to be in the Republic of Ireland (Donegal, to be exact) in the week of the 2007 general election, which was widely expected to be won by Fine Gael, led by Enda Kenny. But the snag was that Kenny was significantly less popular on a personal level than Fianna Fáil’s incumbent Prime Minister Bertie Ahern. I watched Kenny deliver his final party election broadcast, in which his strategists had forced him to parrot some North American-imported artificial nonsense about a “Contract with Ireland”, and he came across as stilted and uncomfortable. In the end, Fianna Fáil surprisingly retained power, and to a large extent that was attributed to the charm of Ahern, who was thought to be the sort of guy people would like to spend time with in a pub.
But four years later, it couldn’t have been more different. Kenny had somehow survived as Fine Gael leader, and in spite of the fact that his personality hadn’t changed one iota, he weirdly had much higher approval ratings than before, and indeed was more popular than his opponent. Voters had grown thoroughly sick of Fianna Fáil, and simply by embodying something different, Kenny became much more liked. However, I think it would be wildly over-optimistic and naive to imagine Humza Yousaf could benefit from a similar effect – if you’re unpopular just before you assume the highest office in the land, the likelihood is that the only way is down.
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Over the last few days I’ve published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls – an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead. However, as you’ll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options…
The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:
jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
If you wish, you can add a note saying “for the fundraiser”, although even if you don’t do that, it’ll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.
If you don’t have a Paypal account, last year’s fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.
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