Professor John Robertson OBA

Lucy Dunn in the Spectator yesterday has:

Scottish Labour may be down but they’re not out. The polls have not been moving in their favour over the last few months and on the eve of Labour’s conference in Liverpool a Norstat survey for the Sunday Times brought more bad news: never mind losing out on first place at the 2026 Holyrood election, Scottish Labour could crash into third next year thanks to a surge in support for Nigel Farage’s leaderless tartan outfit. It would be a pretty humiliating state of affairs. 

Yet despite all this, the mood in Scottish Labour is oddly buoyant, even upbeat. At the conference’s Scots Night, the Prime Minister made a quick cameo – bouncing into the soulless basement room to inform attendees that, no doubt about it, Anas Sarwar was going to be Scotland’s next first minister. Cue the applause from party loyalists and a few raised eyebrows from the journalists in the room, but despite the disparity between Sir Keir’s statement and the state of the polls, there was nothing forced about the optimism from Scottish Labour. 

Why, just eight months out from the Scottish election after around eight months of poor polling, is the party so positive? A lot of the fervour comes from the belief that, ultimately, the surveys do not reflect how the country will vote next May. There is a widely-held view that recent data showing Farage’s group is within touching distance of becoming the official opposition next year are an indication more of voter frustration with Scotland’s established parties than a vote of confidence in Reform UK. On speaking to Scottish voters, this idea holds up: those who swung behind the right-wing crowd at the recent Hamilton by-election tended to agree that the Tories, Labour and the SNP had all had their chance and failed – so what else was left to try other than Reform? ‘But I wouldn’t want Farage as Prime Minister,’ one such Larkhall resident insisted. 

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-is-scottish-labour-so-upbeat/

It’s the usual anecdotal stuff – ‘That’s not what my constituents are telling me‘ they say.

Look at the Norstat polls above, from August 2024 to September 2025 – 30, 21, 18, 19, 17% – almost 50% down.

I’m by no means saying the polls cannot be wrong but they are never that wrong – Labour is dying as surely as the Cons are dying too. It is a racing certainty that in these uncertain times, they will still suffer badly next May, Reform UK will do damage and take list seats, the small parties too will get a boost and the SNP will not do that well but at 30% plus will come through the gaps to take nearly all of the constituencies. As before the SNP will need the Greens to govern.

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