Polls apart

The Scottish Labour leadership race is back in focus – but not for the reasons that party supporters would have hoped.

Jim Murphy entered the contest, telling the Daily Record: “I want to unite the Labour Party but, more importantly, I want to bring the country back together after the referendum.

“I am not going to shout at or about the SNP, I am going to talk to and listen to Scotland and I am very clear that the job I am applying for is to be the First Minister of Scotland.”

Commentators have been painting the leadership contest as an ideological one, with Neil Findlay to the left, Sarah Boyack more to the middle and Jim Murphy, a Blairite MP who voted to take the UK into Iraq, sitting towards the right.

This aspect alone raises an interesting question – if Murphy wins and takes the party to the right, and Nicola Sturgeon takes over the SNP and, as some have predicted, moves the party left – could the SNP and Scottish Labour switch places?

But it doesn’t end there, with the publication of new polling from Ipsos Mori adding another dimension to the race – at least in reminding the party of just how much of a mess it is in if nothing else.

The survey, commissioned by STV, suggests that – if a general election were held tomorrow – the SNP would be on 52 per cent, Labour on 23, the Scottish Conservatives on ten, Scottish Green Party and the Lib Dems both on six and Ukip on two per cent.

The findings seem likely to add an extra bit of gloom to Ed Miliband’s dinner in Glasgow tonight.

But it gets worse – because of the disproportional nature of First Past the Post (a system Labour fought tooth and nail to retain) a 52 per cent vote for the SNP would translate into 54 seats, while 23 per cent for Labour could see the party lose 36 of its current MPs (though this is based on a uniform swing, not on constituency polling).

This sort of result in May would do serious damage to Miliband’s electoral hopes.

In fact the poll predicts that Margaret Curran, Douglas Alexander and – you guessed it – Jim Murphy would all lose their seats.

And, in another twist, one of the four who would retain theirs would be a certain MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath – Gordon Brown.

No wonder Murphy is keen to seek a new job in Holyrood.