Scotland could be key to General Election outcome

by Molly Nolan, Senior Consultant

Headlines this week have focused on a slight narrowing in the polls between Labour and the Conservatives, buoying Rishi Sunak’s team ahead of the local elections in May.

But while some Conservative strategists think Sunak has the ability to shift public opinion if he continues on his current trajectory, developments in Scotland mean that the Prime Minister continues to face an uphill battle ahead of the 2024 General Election.

Turmoil in the SNP - most recently the revelation that a party-owned £110,000 motorhome has been seized by police - has led to voters moving away from the SNP and towards Scottish Labour.

Helpfully for Labour, First Minister Humza Yousaf has propelled the story forward in a series of broadcast interview gaffes, drip feeding details of the scandal to the press on an almost daily basis. The new SNP leader is still without a spin doctor, and it is showing.

The problem for Rishi Sunak is this: the SNP and the Conservatives are electorally symbiotic. If one struggles, so does the other.

A Conservative collapse is bad for the SNP’s prospects in Scotland, because if a Labour government seems winnable, Scottish swing voters will move from the SNP to Labour. Voters like to back a winning horse. Right now, Labour is cantering ahead.

Meanwhile, an SNP collapse would help to usher Keir Starmer into Number 10 via the M8 corridor. On national swing alone, up to two dozen constituencies could flip to Labour in Scotland’s formerly industrial central belt. Think of it as Scotland’s red wall.

There is an old adage that Labour needs Scotland to win a UK-wide election. It’s just not true. But given the state of the polls at present, it is likely that Scotland will play a defining role in the outcome of the next General Election.

If the UK-wide polls continue to narrow, Rishi Sunak’s personal ratings recover and the Conservatives begin to snap at Keir Starmer’s heels, there may not be much to separate the two parties in England and Wales once all the votes are counted. But an SNP collapse in Scotland could provide those 20 seats needed for Labour to get over the majority line.

Keir Starmer and his team are well aware of this electoral calculus. Starmer is spending increasing amounts of time north of the border. And without the spectre of local elections looming over parties in Scotland this year, Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar has used this time to reshuffle his frontbench team of MSPs and declare them ‘election ready’.

So, while there may be cause for cautious optimism amongst Sunak’s team, the downfall of Nicola Sturgeon and her party is probably a bigger problem for them than they realise. At the next General Election, Scotland just might swing it.