Does Keir Starmer need a majority in Scotland – and will he get it?

As polling suggests that Scottish Labour could take as many as 25 Westminster seats in the general election, Sean O’Grady looks at the fall and rise of the party in Scotland

The latest polling indicates a big jump in support – good news for Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, left, and Keir Starmer (Getty)

Obviously, there’s been much coverage of the prospective big loser in the general election being the Conservative Party, which is still stuck around 20 percentage points behind Labour in the polls. However, there are two other parties that are likely to get battered on 4 July – the Democratic Unionists in Northern Ireland, and the Scottish National Party.

It is the SNP’s prospects that will be of the greater significance in the new House of Commons. The latest polling suggests that Labour could go from the single Scottish constituency it won in the 2019 election to a majority of the seats that Scotland now sends to Westminster. This would provide Keir Starmer with even more of a national mandate and, if sentiment swings away from him in England and Wales in the coming weeks, provide him with a useful bridge to an overall majority, which he might otherwise not have.

How much has changed?

It’s been dramatic. Scottish Labour has decisively overtaken the Nationalists, and the latest Survation poll puts the party on 36 per cent to the SNP’s 32 per cent. This time last year, the same company had the SNP leading Labour by 38 per cent to 31 per cent. Overall, it represents an impressive swing of around 15 per cent from the SNP to Labour since the 2019 general election.

If replicated at this election, the 43 seats that are currently held by the SNP (of the 48 they took in 2019, of a total of 59 at the time) would be reduced to 16 (of the current total of 57). Labour would, by contrast, command a “majority” of 27 seats out of the 57. That is a big jump for Starmer and for Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, of 26 seats over what Jeremy Corbyn and Richard Leonard managed in 2019. (Labour added one seat to its tally when it won the Rutherglen by-election last year.)

What about the other parties?

The Tories have slipped from 25.1 per cent of the vote last time to about 17 per cent now, but their decline has been less precipitous than that of the SNP, and they could pick up a seat or two. The Liberal Democrats, by contrast, have been steady on 9 per cent, and can hope for one gain. The Greens are unlikely to gain Commons representation in Scotland; and Reform UK is very weak north of the border.

Why is Labour now doing so well?

Some of it is down to Labour’s Britain-wide revival, though Starmer and his centrist policies tend to be relatively less popular in Scotland. Another factor is the massive unpopularity of the “English” Tories. Even with considerable devolution to Edinburgh, for many Scots, getting the Tories out is a priority – and the quickest, surest way to do so is to put Labour in.

Most of all, though, it is the SNP’s travails that have pushed voters towards Labour. Having been in power since 2007, the Nationalists were always going to find it difficult to sustain that level of support indefinitely, and so it has proved. Failures in government, scandals within the party itself, the resignation and humiliation of Nicola Sturgeon, leadership crises and splits have combined to push the SNP firmly into second place.

Why did Labour collapse in Scotland in the first place?

Partly because of a perception, and the reality, that Labour treated Scottish Labour as a “branch office” and neglected and patronised its voters, who have loyally and reliably sent an increasingly strong contingent south of the border since the 1950s. The way Labour handled the independence referendum in 2014, working with Tories and others, coupled with the rise in pro-independence sentiment, also helped to weaken support.

The SNP skilfully leveraged pro-independence Scots into supporting it more widely; only now is that linkage fraying. At that time, the traditionally dominant Labour base in Scotland collapsed completely; at the 2015 and subsequent general elections, as well as in Holyrood elections, Labour has done extremely poorly (coming third behind the Tories at Holyrood in 2016 and 2021).

It is interesting to reflect that, had Labour retained its traditional hegemony in Scotland, Corbyn might well have become prime minister in 2017... and Rishi Sunak might well be running a minority government now.

Will Scotland elect a Labour administration at Holyrood in 2026?

Sort of. Scotland’s electoral system of partly proportional representation makes it difficult for any single party to gain a majority in the Scottish parliament (and was designed that way in order to stymie the SNP). So if Labour does become the single biggest party, depending on the arithmetic, it could govern as a minority administration, or form a coalition – most likely with the Liberal Democrats (just as it did from 1999 to 2007).

What does this mean for the cause of independence?

It doesn’t help, but neither does it kill it. Support for a sovereign Scotland remains comparatively strong, with around half of the population backing the idea. But that doesn’t really put any pressure on a Labour government to grant a second referendum, and the loss of SNP MPs in the Commons doesn’t help, either. Before he was ousted, Humza Yousaf suggested that the SNP winning the greater number of MPs at this general election would constitute support for another independence referendum, but that looks like it isn’t going to happen anyway.

Does it matter?

Oddly, no. Given that the Conservatives are now so weak, and Labour could win in the likes of Worthing and North Somerset, Starmer hardly needs Scotland. However, he might well need such support in more difficult future elections, and he would no doubt prefer to win right across Great Britain.