Beattie Media employee, Kevin Reid.
| 'I know the Secretary of State very very well - because he's my father.' Beattie Media employee, Kevin Reid. | |
The Tory front-runners in Ayr now face a challenge from the rising Nationalists.
The figures in the latest monthly nationwide survey of party preferences show an alarming dip for Labour in its standing at every level from the personal leadership of Donald Dewar to the party's ratings at Westminster and Holyrood.
It is the question on the first vote for Scottish Parliament purposes, the most relevant to the Ayr by-election campaign, which carries the biggest worries for Labour. A slide of five points in one month from 42% to 37% has coincided with a leap in SNP fortunes of a similar level, from 31% to 36%.
In a Labour-held, former Tory seat which has become perceived in Scottish by-election terms as a three-way marginal, this is the doomsday scenario for the Labour campaign, which has struggled ever since the decision by incumbent Ian Welsh MSP to quit a matter of months into a four-year term.
The bookmakers last week installed Labour as third favourites. The latest System Three poll appears to confirm that. Another collapse in core vote, as witnessed in the Hamilton by-election last year, will further crank up criticism from within the Labour Party.
Glasgow Kelvin MP George Galloway yesterday called on Mr Dewar to step aside and allow someone younger to take over as First Minister, claiming that he had "lost the place".
Mr Dewar's popularity with the voters in general remains reasonably high but another part of the current Herald/System Three Poll, published on Saturday, did give cause for concern. Mr Dewar's rating of positive views minus negative perceptions in that poll gave him a rating of plus 15, not in itself bad given recent controversies but poor compared to his main opponent, SNP leader Alex Salmond, who stood at plus 30.
The Herald's academic analyst Malcolm Dickson of Strathclyde University said: "On this month's national figures, it is not outside the realms of possibility that the SNP challenge could be as surprising as in Hamilton South last September."
The Conservatives, reeling from the loss of the seat by Westminster MP Phil Gallie in 1997 and his failure at the hands of Labour by just 25 votes to recapture it a year ago for Holyrood, also saw their confidence sapped by the decision that Mr Gallie was not prepared to resign his current list seat to fight the by-election.
Nevertheless, Tory confidence in the party's ability to retake the seat in the by-election had been growing in recent days, particularly with its perception of a strong turn-out among its traditional support and the belief that Labour and the SNP were cancelling each other out.
The latest System Three poll is bound to set off alarm bells of a Nationalist surge which could turn the by-election into a more conventional two-way fight where disillusioned Labour voters might opt for the SNP as the most plausible anti-Tory vote.
For, despite modest month-on-month progress by the Tories, there is still little sign of any comeback to the levels of support which would permit them to start winning constituencies again. Our analysis of the latest poll indicates that on this showing they would win only 11 seats, none of them on first-past-the-post.
At any other time than a parliamentary by-election, the general trends and predicted outcomes in terms of seats in Holyrood would have been important in their own right. The poll posits a Scottish Parliament with 53 Labour seats (46 directly elected, seven additional), 44 SNP (15 and 29), 19 Lib Dems (11 and six), 11 Conservatives (all additional) plus two additional Socialists, one Green and one Independent.
This theoretical portrait is less interesting, however, with more than three years to go to the next Scottish Parliament election. What is most pressing to party strategists with a by-election just 10 days away is the current map of trends in party support.
The Herald remarked a month ago that System Three did not yet seem to be demonstrating any serious slippage in Labour support given a barrage of hostile stories and issues, such as spin doctor scandals, Section 28, and the soaring cost of the Scottish Parliament building.
At that time, Labour fell only one point on the first Holyrood vote and three on the second, and the SNP did not capitalise, falling two and one respectively. Labour was also holding strong in Westminster standings, down only one point to 49, while the SNP slipped three points to 24.
This month the SNP has bounced back in Westminster ratings while Labour has slipped a further four points. The Tories have continued modest gains, with Westminster up a further point to 15, Holyrood first preferences up one to 12% and second preference votes up two to 11%. The Conservatives tend to do better at the ballot box than in unadjusted polls because their supporters tend to be more committed come polling day.
But compared to the same System Three polling exactly a year ago, the Tories are precisely one point up on each of these three key markers. One percentage point up in a year is better than one down, but it scarcely indicates a renaissance.
- Mar 6 2000
e-mail: news@theherald.co.uk
Return to home page