Although it seemed fairly obvious from Humza Yousaf’s dismal public approval ratings during the leadership election that the SNP were likely to lose support with him at the helm, I did wonder if that consequence might be delayed for a month or two (or three) due to the honeymoon effect that most new leaders enjoy when they first take over. After all, in spite of the self-inflicted wound caused by (effectively) sacking Kate Forbes and all but one of her supporters, Humza has enjoyed some lovely coverage over his first week, as you’d expect given the symbolism of him being Scotland’s first ethnic minority, Asian and Muslim leader. (I’m using the word ‘leader’ because there have only been six First Ministers so far, and in pre-devolution times the role of national leader was effectively filled, albeit on a less democratic basis, by the Secretary of State for Scotland.)
So it was a disappointment that the first two polls of the Yousaf era, from Savanta and Panelbase, both showed the SNP vote already down on Holyrood and Westminster voting intentions, with Labour getting perilously close to drawing level, with swathes of SNP Westminster MPs projected to lose their seats, and with the precious pro-indy majority at Holyrood now projected to be lost. Interestingly, though, I noticed this morning that underneath the bonnet, there does seem to be evidence of a mini-honeymoon for Humza. Here are the new approval ratings from Savanta –
Nicola Sturgeon (SNP): +10
Anas Sarwar (Labour): -1
Kate Forbes (SNP): -2
Humza Yousaf (SNP): -12
Although those numbers look pretty awful for any newly-installed First Minister, they do actually represent an improvement for Yousaf, which seems to be driven almost wholly by current SNP supporters – exactly as you’d expect in the period of afterglow and novelty. The problem is that you’d then expect a reversion to, at best, the previous approval ratings once the afterglow wears off. So eleven points behind the Labour leader, and ten points behind his narrowly defeated rival for the SNP leadership, may be as good as it ever gets for Yousaf. If and when his ratings start slipping again, there’s an obvious danger that the current narrow SNP lead in the polls will be replaced by some sort of Labour lead.
The reality is that you can’t replace a leader whose net rating is eleven points better than Anas Sarwar with a leader whose net rating is eleven points worse than Anas Sarwar and not expect to pay a heavy price in voting intention numbers. Admittedly there was no alternative leader available who was quite as popular as Nicola Sturgeon, but as you can see from the above numbers, Kate Forbes is right in the middle of the two extremes and would have been able to compete on roughly equal terms with Sarwar.
I don’t expect a Liz Truss scenario, with Yousaf forced out within a month or two. But if, within six months, the SNP vote has dropped by just a few more percentage points and three-quarters of SNP MPs are staring down the barrel of losing their seats next year, I think the difficult question may start to be asked of whether the drastic step of replacing Yousaf at an early stage might be better than the alternative. The trajectory points to a relatively early leadership crisis, and at the very least there may be tremendous pressure on Yousaf to reverse his stubborn factional course and to bring back Kate Forbes, possibly as Deputy First Minister or as Finance Secretary (or both).
PS. Does anyone know the independence numbers from the new Panelbase poll in the Sunday Times? I get the impression they’re pretty decent, but not being a payer of the Murdoch Levy I can’t find them.
UPDATE: ‘Real Indy Loun’ on Twitter has answered the above question – the numbers are Yes 48% (-), No 52% (-). That’s now three polls in a row that suggest the trend on independence support has become decoupled from the trend on SNP support, with the Yes vote holding up strongly as the SNP vote falls.
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