Labour facing "categorical" threat in Scotland, according to new analysis

The SNP threat to Labour is “categorical”, with the party forecast to win 45 seats in May’s general election, and Labour reduced to all but ten in Scotland, according to one of the UK’s most experienced political academics.

Professor Richard Rose was commissioned to carry out seat by seat analysis of polling across the UK by asset managers Toscafund, predicting that although support for the SNP was not enough to win the referendum, with differences in voting behaviour between Westminster and Holyrood beginning to disappear, the party is set to make huge advances in May’s general election.

The analysis states that if changes to party support were reflected in a uniform swing across Scotland in May then Labour would be reduced to seven MPs and the Liberals to just one.

However, because of differences in SNP support in different areas the wipeout is not expected to be so extreme.

It says: “A uniform ‘national’ movement of votes is unlikely because the SNP must jump from third to first place over different challengers in different parts of Scotland.  Because the median Labour seat is held with a margin of 31.6 per cent over the SNP, any recovery by Labour would reduce the depth to which Labour plunged.”

The Liberal Democrat vote has collapsed even more in Scotland than in England, while Conservative support has held steady enough to move it into a weak third place

It says: “The big SNP lead does not reflect sampling error but the political error that Labour has made in taking its traditional support in Scotland for granted.”

The report states: “While the breakthrough of the SNP is startling when viewed from Westminster, it is consistent with trends in Scotland over more than a decade. Labour has never won more than one-third of the list vote in elections for the Scottish Parliament since it was established in 1999. After two terms of a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition, in 2007 the SNP replaced it, forming a minority government with 36 percent of the seats.

“In 2011 the SNP won re-election with an absolute majority of seats and 44 percent of the Scottish vote, almost the same as it now registers for Westminster. Labour came second with 26 percent of the list vote for Members of the Scottish Parliament, almost the same as its current position in the polls. Since then, the former inconsistency between favouring one party for the Westminster Parliament and another party for Edinburgh has almost disappeared to the benefit of the SNP.”

Meanwhile it predicted that across the UK the Conservatives will win more MPs than Labour in May, but David Cameron will face an immediate vote of no confidence.

You can read the whole discussion paper here