From the full Holyrood Norstat poll for the Sunday Times, on 7 December, only days after two Westminster sub-polls suggesting an SNP recovery. and only 4 months after the Labour surge in the July General Election:
Constituency
- SNP – 37%
- Con – 14%
- Lab – 21%
- Lib Dem – 10%
- Green – 5%
- Reform – 12%
Regional
- SNP – 32%
- Con – 16%
- Lab – 18%
- Lib Dem – 10%
- Reform – 12%
- Green – 8%
- Alba – 5%
Based on the above, the seat projection is:
- SNP – 59
- Con – 19
- Lab – 20
- Lib Dem – 11
- Reform 13
- Greens – 7
This gives the SNP/Greens a 66 to 63 majority.
I’d have thought that 5% might give Alba 1 MSP.
Interestingly, putting an end the 2 child benefit cap did not seem to be a big vote winner whereas restoring the winter fuel allowance, extra for the NHS and raising tax thresholds were – there’s a message there and it’s a pretty cynical one.
Prof Curtice explains:
The finger of blame for [Scottish] Labour’s predicament, points to 10 Downing Street. Far from easing Anas Sarwar’s path to Bute House, Labour’s victory in July has seemingly made his task harder.
I’m not sure how that interpretation sits with the evidence from the Westminster polls where support for Labour in the Scottish subset is always lower, often only half that, of UK Labour. At least one finger of blame points to Ana Sarwar.
Source:
Talking-up Scotland 
If Green manages 8% I will be very surprised. I suspect the margin of error is at work there.
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George Foulkes was hilarious on Twitter huffing and stomping his feet.
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The Sunday Troll-ard informs us that loads of Scots PAID GOOD MONEY to listen to Starmerer & Co!!!! Whit? Are these folk daft?
“Scottish” Labour is down where they should be in the polls.
To form a government they will have to chum up to Farages’ Reform, the Toadies and Dumbs. Even then they fall short.
Anas back to dentistry, or running the family shop?
gavinochiltree.
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“I’d have thought that 5% might give Alba 1 MSP”
Well to make matters worse, and as referred by you in an article yesterday ‘Alba have now expelled James Kelly of ‘Scot goes POP’.
Honestly that seems a daft and also damaging move by them, expelling someone like James Kelly who has quite a high profile as someone who has an Indy blog that is still popular with a lot of people, and he was often both fair and honest in much of his opinion when he needed to be critical of Alba and some of their decisions.
Which is surely the very thing Alba always accuse the SNP of not being, as in according to Alba they seemed to promote that the SNP had an inability to go through the process of self assessment as a party and so then failed to be self critical when, according to Alba, it was and still is needed to be done by the SNP as a party.
So he, James Kelly, was right in highlighting in his Twitter (X) account that ” the Alba leadership’s hypocrisy laid bare as they do EXACTLY to me what they spent Wednesday lambasting the SNP for doing to Angus MacNeil” .
I think the wheels have come off this notion of Alba ever being a supposed real alternative to the SNP , as it seems that the internal politics aka power struggle within the party is the very thing that is going to see them fail to make any significant or essential impact politically.
Many within Alba have made it abundantly clear that they have a huge grudge against the SNP, but how on earth they expected that, as their main defining argument, to then sway the non politically engaged voters within Scotland to decide to vote for them as an alternative to the SNP God only knows ?
So far Alba have done their best to try and destroy the SNP which has not aided independence but has very much backed up all of the arguments made by the Pro UK parties.
Their choice to expel James Kelly , seems to me , to be a backward move as I do think he was an asset to them and now he will be a formidable opponent so they will reap via this action what (some with ambition within the party) have sown.
I think James Kelly realises that for some within Alba , that personal ambition has taken precedence over their supposed mission as a new party, as in for them to become the new alternative Indy party to the SNP, well I think that bubble has now well and truly burst and come 2026, if they do indeed make no impact in gaining seats (or retaining a seat via the SNP defector Ash Regan) , then they may rue the day they made the decision upon expelling people like James Kelly.
Although I am a SNP member I still very much respect James Kelly as someone who had always made a positive and intelligent contribution to the cause of independence, and his support for Alba was an honest decision , and one that he had made that was not tainted by an extreme and irrational hatred of the SNP but more a frustration on what he felt was their, the SNP’s, lack of action upon independence.
I do wish him luck for the future as I think he still has a huge amount to offer the independence movement, especially his honest and excellent skills at communicating poll results, and so I suspect his presence as a prominent contributor to the Indy movement will last far longer than some of the careerists within Alba.
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O/T
Woah “By the power of Greyskull” , someone at the BBC has clearly been eavesdropping upon our criticism in respect to them, the BBC , always omitting the (UK) party name in their headlines when it is #BAD story on a Pro UK politician.
As it seems that today on the BBC website, on their Scottish page(s), that has now been reversed (temporarily?) as an action :
BBC headline today:
“Police investigating Labour council leader”
But could it have been avoided ? AS in the BBC avoiding mentioning which party, I think not as the party name did need to be noted in this particular story.
So they, the BBC, have actually named the (UK) party, one wonders if the powers that be at the BBC will notice this and then demand this headline remove the said party’s name .
This story is in respect to “The leader of Edinburgh City Council, Labour’s Cammy Day, is being investigated by police over an allegation of inappropriate behaviour.
Scottish Labour confirmed he had been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation”
This is the same Edinburgh Labour council that suspended two of it’s Labour councillors for not voting with the Tories.
In fact Labour MP ,Siobhain Ann McDonagh, now a Dame (Surprise Surprise NOT) , boasted , at the time on ‘Live’ TV , that Labour did this in order for her to substantiate her point that ‘for Labour it is always a case of anybody but the SNP’ aka the “Bain principle”.
In fact in 2022 the SNP won the most council seats in Edinburgh but then Labour took over as a minority administration supported by the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives (this BTW was and is a common occurrence within Scotland’s councils where Labour collude with the Tories (and Lib Dems) to oust the SNP as the main party , same SNP who won more seats in the Scottish council election, but are then ousted as those in charge of those Scottish councils).
It seems the band formerly known as ‘Better Together’ never split up after the 2014 Independence Referendum and are still ‘Alive and Kicking’ as a united front against both the SNP and Scottish independence , where they all work as one in many councils within Scotland. (something the BBC fails to highlight for fear it negatively impacts both Sarwar and the Labour party in Scotland).
Which kind of then makes no sense in some voters in Scotland electing 37 Labour MP’s in the recent GE, if they did indeed do so , only to ensure that the Tories would not win the recent GE.
(Yet strangely, as voters, they do not mind that there still exists various Labour/Tory coalition council(s) in Scotland aka pacts , or are they, as voters, oblivious to that fact via a negligent MSM in Scotland)
However let’s be honest the Tory and Lib Dems voters did the same as the parties they supported, in that they also colluded to stop the SNP, in them, with certain seats, voting Labour in the GE to prevent the SNP either retaining or gaining those certain seats within Scotland.
It seems the scandals within Labour are mounting up, which uncannily was also a familiar occurrence with the Tory party,.
I mean this accusation is, as a scandal , one that was according to The Sunday Mail (who are the sister paper of The Daily Record WHAT?) a situation that involved this :
“Cllr Day “bombarded Ukrainian refugees” with messages”.
The newspaper alleges “he asked them sexually explicit questions, tried to meet them for wine dates and complimented them on their looks”
“The paper spoke to two refugees – who came to Scotland following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – who say Cllr Day had been messaging them”.
“They said they felt unable to ignore his unsolicited approaches due to his position within the council”
I bet the Tories and the Lib Dems in Edinburgh Council now feel less smug in colluding with Labour after the 2022 Council election , where it was reported that after the Council elections in 2022, that as an action, it was a ” unanimous backing from the Lib Dems and Tories that allowed the Labour group to take over control of the Edinburgh local authority”.
Funnily enough now both the Tories and the Lib Dems are changing their tune somewhat in now “calling for his , Labour leader Cammy Day’s, resignation”.
Well they , Tory & Lib Dems, did back a loser but now they want to distance themselves from that bad decision, well they should own it, I mean they did get what they voted for did they not.
As it also seems to be for some of the people in Scotland too , who also seem to have got what they voted for , when some of them elected 37 Labour MP’s in July in the UK GE.
Hence why Labour are now going down in the polls, Voters remorse.
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I’m not so sure about that, my favourite Anon. It relies on the political knowledge of the voters. I think many will still blame That EssEmPee.
Why? Because they’ll know that the SNP is the biggest party, with the most seats. They won’t realise that the other parties collude to ensure they have actual control of the Council and all the bad decisions are, therefore, theirs not the SNP’s.
I hope I’m doing them a disservice…
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Good point IUTBE, but it does show that although they, Tories & Lib Dems, may unite to always try to oust the SNP from holding or having any power, their true colours then come out when the proverbial you know what hits the fan.
Then it’s every man for themselves as they all clamber to sit on a moral high horse to try and distance themselves from their former allegiance with the party that is now linked to a scandal.
The Swines Ha Ha
🙂
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Three points in response to your article Prof.
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