First polling straw of the wind about where the SNP stand in election year

It’s hard to see how Labour lose from here at UK level.  You can try moving support around on a fantasy chess board, and have the Reform UK support implode and return to the Tories, but that would only get Sunak’s party into the low 30s.  You could have Jeremy Corbyn set up a new left-wing party and take a few percentage points from Labour, but a) why would a splinter left-wing party prosper when a splinter right-wing party does not?, and b) my guess is that Corbyn won’t form a party (as much as I’d like him to) because he won’t want a divide with left-wing MPs who stay with Labour to have a chance of keeping their seats under first-past-the-post.

I remain intrigued and perhaps even grudgingly impressed by the polling success of Reform UK, which is happening in spite of what seemed to be their folly of throwing away the brand advantage of the Brexit Party name, and also in spite of no longer having a big name like Farage as leader.  They do seem to have a genuine chance of replacing the Liberal Democrats as the third most popular party, which could blunt the psychological effect of the Lib Dems replacing the SNP as the third party in the Commons.

I was surprised to see a clip of Shona Craven suggesting rather breezily that the SNP are probably still likely to emerge from the election with some sort of majority, and I’m wondering if that reflects a mood music emanating from an SNP parliamentary group that is still in denial about the full extent of its plight.  On level pegging with Labour in terms of the popular vote, as the subsample suggests, the SNP would lose on seats – and this is before a campaign that will be dominated by media coverage of the London parties and the Sunak v Starmer horserace.

Moderation policy: I’ve decided to experiment with switching pre-moderation off in the comments section of this blog to encourage more free-flowing debate.  The quid pro quo, though, is that I henceforth reserve the right to delete (or possibly edit) any comment for absolutely any reason I see fit, and without explanation, so please only comment if you understand and accept that.  Part of the reason I had to switch pre-moderation on in the first place was the sheer exhaustion of endlessly having to deal with people demanding explanations for their comments being deleted – so please note that any comments criticising or querying moderation decisions will generally be deleted without reply (and that applies no matter how many times you indignantly re-post them!).

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I am currently fundraising in the hope of running a new Scot Goes Pop opinion poll in the near future – details can be found HERE, and the fundraiser page itself is HERE.

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