Sturgeon warns of ‘heavier price’ of a big Tory majority
●Polls suggest a third of Scots are ready to vote Conservative
Nicola Sturgeon will today warn that the Tories will do “anything they want” to Scotland if they makes sweeping gains in the forthcoming general election.
The First Minister and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will each tell Scottish union leaders at the STUC in Aviemore that their party represents the only challenge to the resurgent Conservatives.
Polling at the weekend suggested Tory support is rising north of the Border, with the party poised to capture a third of the vote and up to 12 seats – it currently holds only one.
Mr Corbyn is battling to avert his party’s worst election defeat in a generation as Labour trails
the Tories by up to 20 points Uk-wide.
Ms Sturgeon will say the general election in Scotland is a straight fight between the SNP and the Conservatives.
“The more Tory MPS there are, the heavier the price Scotland will pay,” she will tell union delegates.
“They’re already cutting nearly £3 billion from the Scottish budget. They’re hitting family incomes hard by cutting and removing child tax credits. They want to remove Scotland from the European single market, which will cost thousands of jobs.
“They’ve done all this with a small majority. Now they want to crush any opposition. The bigger the Tory majority, the more they will think they can do anything to Scotland and get away with it.”
A poll published by Panelbase yesterday had the Tories on 33 per cent in Scotland, the SNP on 44 per cent and Labour on 13 per cent. A separate poll by Survation found support for the SNP at 43 per cent, with the Tories on 28 per cent and Labour on 18 per cent.
Ms Sturgeon will tell trade union members: “The election in Scotland is a two-horse race between the SNP and hardline Tories.
“The Tories have taken an extreme position, demanding an end to any opposition at Westminster if they win the election.”
She will say that a strengthened Conservative government will impose austerity measures including welfare cuts, and lead the UK to a “hard Brexit” without European single market membership or other trade deals in place.
The latest polling suggests it is unlikely that the SNP will recapture the 56 Westminster seats it won in 2015, although it remains on course for a comfortable majority of Scottish seats. But it could prove a difficult election for the Nationalists if they suffer losses of any high-profile senior figures.
The Tories are targeting the Moray seat of SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson, which saw huge swings away from the SNP in last year’s Holyrood vote to Ruth Davidson’s party. The region was also the most pro-brexit part of Scotland, with 49 per cent backing Leave.
The Perth and North Perthshire seat of Scottish affairs select committee chairman Peter Wishart could also be vulnerable after a big swing to the Conservatives in the equivalent Holyrood seat last year.
Meanwhile, in his speech to the STUC today, Mr Corbyn will insist his party can pull off a shock victory in the 8 June vote.
“Let no-one be in any doubt – we are in this election to win it,” he will tell delegates. “And we will fight for every seat in every corner of these isles.”
He will set out his plans for a £10 hourly living wage – which would hand almost half a million Scots a pay rise. He will also call on Police Scotland to open an inquiry into police activity during the miners strike of the mid-1980s.
Mr Corbyn will say: “The choice facing the country is clear. It’s the people versus the powerful. Labour will challenge the rigged system that is holding our country back. And just like trade unions, we will stand for the many not the few.
“Labour will never, ever apologise for the closeness of our relationship with the trade union movement – you are our family.”
But Mr Corbyn has a mountain to climb to reverse Labour’s ailing public support, with one poll showing half of all UK voters backing Theresa May’s Conservatives.
Comres puts support for the Tories at 50 per cent – double that of Labour, on 25 per cent. The polling company said it was the first time any political party achieved 50 per cent support since April 2002, and the first time the Tories had reached that mark since January 1991.
A separate Yougov survey had the Conservatives on 48 per cent, 23 points ahead of Labour, while an Opinium poll puts the Tories on 45 per cent with a 19-point advantage over Labour. Only Survation had a significantly narrower gap, with the Conservatives on 40 per cent and Labour on 29 per cent, an 11-point difference.
The Tories welcomed the latest polling which suggests that the party is on course for the most seats in Scotland since the advent of devolution.
A party spokesman said yesterday: “The polls make one thing clear. Only the Scottish Conservatives have the strength and support to take on the SNP. Only a vote for the Scottish Conservatives will send the SNP a clear message: no to another independence referendum.”
The Liberal Democrats are also confident of making gains after the Survation poll had the party on 9 per cent. The party is targeting East Dunbartonshire and a number of seats in the north of Scotland.
Party leader Willie Rennie said: “We stand firmly against Scottish independence. So every vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote for Scotland in the heart of the United Kingdom and Europe.
“Under no conditions can we sign up to Theresa May’s hard Brexit agenda, Jeremy Corbyn’s hard left programme or Nicola Sturgeon’s hard independence plan.
“This election is our chance to change the direction of our country. If you want to stop a hard Brexit, if you want to keep Britain united and if you want a real opposition, then Scottish Liberal Democrats are for you.”
“The bigger the Tory majority, the more they will think they can do anything to Scotland and get away with it”
NICOLA STURGEON
Are weekend polls which forecast the election of between eight and 12 Conservative MPS in Scotland accurate or wide of the mark?
After several calamitous failures, pollsters might be ready to admit that “results” are essentially snapshots, subject to a host of complicating factors before polling day.
Firstly there’s the small matter of candidates and personalities. The Survation and Panelbase polls sampled support for parties, but the SNP have the benefit of recognisable people – 54 sitting MPS with medium to strong candidate recognition. Every other party is desperately trying to find quality candidates and if the Tories’ trouble with council candidates is anything to go by, they’re struggling. Last week a Fife candidate who called Nicola Sturgeon a “drooling hag” on Twitter had to be “reminded of her responsibilities” by Scottish Conservative party officials.
Meanwhile, Labour is doubtless searching among the ranks of those ousted from Holyrood, but many are council candidates and it’ll be hard for them to jump ship and stand for Westminster in the same local area. The Greens are a wild card – if they opt not to stand against the SNP in seats where they previously lost deposits, Nicola Sturgeon’s party will receive a vital boost.
Secondly there’s the jolt these poll results will give SNP supporters. Flat out for the council elections, many felt daunted at the prospect of another six weeks of doorknocking, canvassing and leafleting. But the prospect of ten Tory MPS and endless Tory gloating will restore batteries and remove any vestige of complacency.
Thirdly, there’s a question over what message about independence can be drawn from any loss of seats that still leaves the SNP a country mile ahead. Much as it suits Ruth Davidson and Kezia Dugdale to say Ms Sturgeon talks about nothing but independence, it isn’t true. The SNP have a careful strategy for the run-up to the second vote over the next two years and they won’t be rushed into launching it prematurely. Meanwhile, as Professor John Curtice points out, neither weekend poll found any change in support for independence and a steady 48 per cent of Scots still thinks a second indyref should be held between 2019 and the end of Brexit negotiations. That’s a fairly solid base from which to launch an independence campaign when the time comes. But that isn’t now.
Fourthly, there are the local elections: if the SNP win Glasgow and other west of Scotland councils which have been controlled by Labour for half a century, and hang onto former Labour fiefdoms like Dundee, it will provide momentum for the SNP in the Westminster election – just as failure will be a setback. The impact of those results cannot be factored in now.
Fourthly, there’s that great imponderable – the nature of the media election campaign.
I almost sympathise with Theresa May’s aversion to the live TV debate format. Almost – but not quite. Since leadership and articulacy are two essential qualities in a Prime Minister, there is a case for one TV debate – but not many and not at the expense of other more probing types of programme.
Since it entered our political culture from the US, live leaders’ debates have made our democracy appear presidential when it is not, created a focus on personality rather than policy and usurped other programme types by becoming cheap to make and as mildly addictive as Gogglebox.
It’s ironic. The media worries viewers are bored with politics because many of them are terminally bored. So they favour dramatic formats that might provoke live punch-ups or at least testosteronecharged confrontations. I’m sure I detected a collective sigh of relief among broadcasters with Brenda from Bristol and her spontaneous cry of election horror. It confirmed their own deep-seated ennui and scepticism about the democratic process.
Actually it’s the broadcasters’ general failure to tackle the nitty-gritty issues of class, elitism, control and authoritarianism that makes elections boring. And live TV debates let them off the hook big-time. TV and radio journalists don’t need to dig deep into claim and counter-claim – all producers need do is find some podiums, hire the studio, invite guests, select the audience, remember the stopwatch, add a presenter with the authority to control the noisiest contributor … and relax. Job done.
During the 2014 independence referendum and 2016 Holyrood election, Scotland was awash with unwieldy live debates involving commentators and politicians. The format was wildly overdone, offering a platform for audience obsessives and former MPS whose entire careers were based on the ability to talk over opponents.
BBC Scotland in particular has relied almost exclusively on this format to provide “balance” – it’s become a very bad habit. But with a new head of the corporation and a whole new channel on STV, Scottish broadcasters could decide to make a clean break and produce a variety of formats during this general election campaign. There could be themed programmes examining each party’s manifesto commitments in key areas like energy, taxation, welfare benefits, human rights, employment, trade and Brexit. Broadcasters could give each Scottish party a film crew and half an hour of TV time to answer the top three questions chosen by viewers. And before anyone complains there isn’t enough time to change gears – haud on.
Broadcast journalists in Scotland urgently need to reacquire the knack of creating high-quality “built” programmes and documentaries as a default, not a one-off. Raising the bar during the general election means journalists will be comfortable with properly probing formats by the time the second independence referendum rolls around.
A vigorous media is particularly important as the London-based press becomes ever more compliant, with a former Tory chancellor at the helm of the Evening Standard and almost every right-wing paper ignoring the police investigation into Tory election fraud in which up to 20 sitting MPS (including Scots Secretary David Mundell) are the subject of criminal investigation by 16 police forces. Who but Channel 4 has even mentioned this?
Finally, first past the post is not a fair voting system but it’s the one successive Labour and Tory governments have opted to retain. Which means the winner of the election in Scotland will not be the party with the biggest share of the vote. It’ll be the one with more than half the seats.
And no matter how poll results are spun, there’s little doubt that will be the SNP.