John Curtice: Labour is more vulnerable to Reform in Scotland than in England

Several polls are suggesting Nigel Farage’s party is on track for a stellar performance at the upcoming Holyrood election, with many predicting the party will leapfrog Scottish Labour into second place.

However, polling expert Sir John says Reform’s success will be at the expense of Scottish Labour because Labour won so many votes off of the Conservatives north of the Border at the 2024 general election.

The expert from Strathclyde University made the comments at a PoliMonitor hustings in Edinburgh.

He said: “Labour’s principal problem in Scotland, as opposed to England, is indeed Reform.

“Labour are losing about one in six of their 2024 voters to Reform, whereas down south the number is more like one in eight.

Get our revamped Steamie newsletter

“Why? Because Labour were much more successful north of the Border in gaining votes from the Conservatives in the 2024 election. Labour’s vote north of the Border is not as left-wing as it is south of the Border, and it is therefore more vulnerable to Reform.

“You’ll see many Labour voters in 2024 voted Conservative in 2019 and 2017, and that matters to Labour’s vulnerability to Reform.”

He noted that Sir Keir Starmer has “never been a popular leader”, including in the years he served as leader of the opposition, and is now “in more negative territory” since becoming Prime Minister.

He added: “Support for the Labour Party has fallen very rapidly.

“No previous newly-elected government has lost support so quickly and so heavily as Labour has suffered since 2024.

“They are now running at around 20 per cent in the opinion polls - they lost about half the support they had in 2024.

“The Conservatives are in an even weaker position than the record low they got in 2024.”

One of the big losers out of this situation is Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar. Only 18 months ago he had a real shot at becoming the next First Minister, and while he himself is still confident of this, that dream is steadily slipping away from him.

Most of this is down to issues within the party that are outside his control. It comes just weeks after Mr Sarwar called for Sir Keir to resign as Prime Minister in the wake of the Peter Mandelson scandal.

Sir John said: “Sarwar has suffered the collateral damage in terms of his personal popularity and you will see that the progress he was making seems to have been eroded.

“After he called for Starmer to resign, he did not manage to start the ball rolling in the way that perhaps he hoped so, so it didn’t do anything for Starmer’s reputation.”

The one party that Sir John said is benefitting from this polling is the SNP. Currently they are projected to remain the largest party in the Scottish Parliament after May 7, despite their vote share being way down on what it was in 2021.

Scottish Labour is also losing more votes to the SNP than the SNP is losing to Labour in this election race.

Sir John added: “It is the Conservative Party above all that are losing votes most heavily to Reform, and that is in line with the position south of the Border, although the rate of loss is a little bit lower than it is south of the Border.

“Crucially, the one party that is not losing support to Reform, at least compared to 2024, is the SNP.”

He added: “Both Keir Starmer and John Swinney have reasons, albeit different reasons, for sometimes being thankful for Nigel Farage’s intervention.”

Reform UK is due to announce its candidates for the upcoming election and its manifesto policies at a conference next week, where both Mr Farage and the party’s Scottish leader Malcolm Offord are due to speak.

Many are anticipating Reform UK will split the unionist vote in Scotland, and that fragmentation will allow the SNP to come through the middle and claim victory in this election.

It will be short of the 65 seats Mr Swinney has his eyes on for a Holyrood majority, but is comfortably ahead of the other parties in the race.

Sir John said: “You are looking at the SNP gaining about 60 seats. It’s not the 65 seats that Swinney wants for a majority, but it’s not far short of the 64 they got in 2021.

“All these projected wins are in constituencies because the SNP has a geographically widespread vote and is about 10 points ahead of everybody else.

“The SNP is likely to hang onto most of their constituency seats, but there is probably just enough places where the Conservatives and the Lib Dems in particular are dug in to deny the SNP the 65 seats.

“The second point is that the Greens might well pick up about a dozen seats, so although there won’t be an SNP majority perhaps there is a high probability of there being a pro-independence majority, and that matters because it keeps the issue alive.

“It means that if we end up with some kind of hung parliament in Westminster in 2029, the SNP has leverage they can exercise, and leverage knowing that Holyrood would vote for a second independence referendum if there was a section 30 order.”