 | 'The superpoll, an average of every Scottish element of 10 UK polls published since October, shows the SNP on 35.3 %, up 17 %, compared with Labour on 30.7 %, down nine points. The Tories were on 17.2 %, up one point, while the Lib Dems were on 11.3 %, down 12 points.' James Hamilton in the Sunday Herald, 30 th December 2007. |  |
ALEX SALMOND has recorded an unprecedented 75% lead in approval ratings over Labour rival Wendy Alexander, according to a poll seen by the Sunday Herald.
The First Minister has been given a plus-53% rating by voters, against minus-22% for the beleaguered Labour leader.
The Nationalists are also ahead on voting preferences for Holyrood.
The poll, conducted by MRUK earlier this month, has found that the SNP would increase their majority if a Scottish election were held tomorrow.
According to the results, which have been passed to the Sunday Herald, the SNP are currently polling 39% on the constituency ballot, up 7% from last May, and at 40% of the regional list vote, up nine percentage points.
Labour are on 31% of the constituency vote, down 1% from last year, and up 1% on the regional ballot. However, it is Alexander's personal approval ratings that will worry Scottish Labour as it prepares for its conference in Aviemore later this month. The MRUK results confirm her dreadful start as party leader has been noticed by voters.
She goes to Aviemore having to win over her many critics inside and outside the party.
First Minister Alex Salmond has recorded a 75% lead in approval ratings over his Labour rival Wendy Alexander, according to a Sunday Herald poll.)
The Nationalist leader was given a plus-53% rating by voters, as opposed to minus 22% for the embattled Labour leader.
An MRUK poll also found the SNP would increase their majority if a Scottish election was held tomorrow.
The SNP has welcomed figures which show First Minister Alex Salmond has recorded a huge lead in approval ratings over his Labour rival Wendy Alexander.
The Nationalist leader was given a plus 53% rating by voters - against minus 22% for the embattled Labour leader, according to poll results.
The SNP are also ahead on voting preferences for Holyrood. The MRUK poll found the SNP would increase their majority if a Scottish election were held on Monday, winning 57 seats while Labour would win 44.
Commenting on reports in the Sunday Times and the News of the World regarding Wendy Alexander's parliamentary expenses claims in the run up to the Labour leadership contest SNP MSP Alex Neil said today's papers make grim reading for Wendy Alexander.
Mr Neil said:
"Today's papers make grim reading for Wendy Alexander.
"She has recorded the lowest rating of a Scottish opposition leader with Alex Salmond's approval rating 75% higher than hers.
"An approval rating of -23% and clear public desire for Wendy to quit is not something Wendy or Labour can be pleased with.
"More people want Wendy to quit than think she is doing a good job.
"Even amongst Labour voters only 39% back Alexander whilst 66% think Alex Salmond is doing a good job.
"Another expenses scandal is the last thing Labour need right now.
"Secretive trips to the House of Lords and meetings with newspaper editors and key campaign members don't look much like constituency or parliamentary business.
"As Labour supporters and members drift away Wendy is once again faced with questions to answer."
Notes:
THE SNP have opened a commanding lead over Labour, according to a poll out yesterday.
Voters also gave First Minister Alex Salmond a much higher approval rating than Labour leader Wendy Alexander.
The survey by MRUK Cello showed 39 per cent support for the Nats on Holyrood's constituency vote, up six per cent since their election victory last May.
Labour's support was 31 per cent, down one per cent.
The Nats were even further ahead in the race for list seats.
The result suggested the SNP would win 57 seats and Labour 44 if an election was held tomorrow, with the Tories projected to take 16 seats and the Lib Dems 12.
Salmond also proved more popular than Alexander.
Seventy per cent of voters thought he was doing a good job, compared with 17 per cent who believed he was doing badly, giving him an approval rating of plus 53 per cent.
Thirty per cent of voters said Alexander was doing well and 52 per cent thought she was doing a bad job - giving her an approval rating of minus 22 per cent.
SNP depute leader Nicola Sturgeon said: "These are fantastic poll ratings for the SNP and the Scottish government.
"As we approach the anniversary of our first year in office, the poll shows our fast pace of delivery continues to gain the trust of the people with sky-high approval ratings under the leadership of Alex."
But a Labour spokesman said: "This poll was taken before last week, the worst one for Alex Salmond and the SNP since they took office.
"Salmond was hammered over local income tax, the Trump report and the Aviemore affair is lingering on."
The SNP believe they will extend their poll lead as a number of policies are introduced this month.
The council tax freeze, a cut in prescription charges, the scrapping of the graduate endowment paid by students and help for small businesses are all about to take effect.
Labour will hit back with policies on children, skills and education.
They hope their spring conference will relaunch Alexander's leadership after the row over an illegal donation to her campaign last summer.
Yesterday, her spokesman denied claims she broke Holyrood rules by billing the taxpayer for campaignrelated meetings, including a trip to the House of Lords.
He said Alexander was conducting parliamentary and constituency business and entitled to claim expenses.
But Nats MSP Alex Neil said: "Secretive trips to the House of Lords and meetings with newspaper editors and key campaign members don't look much like constituency or parliamentary business."
FIGURES showed a two per cent drop in Labour Party membership to 18,052.
But a spokesman said: "Membership has been stabilising because people know it is Labour who are standing up for their communities and fighting against the SNP's broken promises."
Right now, I'd say Labour's best bet looks like assassination. With Alex Salmond leading by a ridiculous 75% over his Labour rival, Wendy Alexander, in a weekend poll, Labour's only immediate chance of getting back in the race would be to eliminate the SNP leader altogether.
Super-Salmond's party isn't doing nearly so well. In the same mruk poll, the SNP is only eight points ahead of Labour, even at the dizzying height of its electoral love affair with the Scottish voters. This would translate into 57 SNP seats to Labour's 44 in any election. Given Labour's abysmal performance recently, you might have expected the SNP's lead to be greater still. And, of course, if you were to ask Scots straight out if they wanted to leave the UK, then fewer than one-third would probably say they support independence.
So, the success of the SNP right now is overwhelmingly down to the character of its leader, Alex Salmond. He has matured as a politician just at the right historical moment to become Scotland's first truly national political leader, arguably, in three centuries. Salmond speaks for a broad range of Scots from all political backgrounds and none. That is his enormous strength and the reason why he speaks with such authority in a parliament of minorities. Politicians of other parties realise it, too, even if they don't admit it.
Does that mean it is all down to personality? If Salmond were to fall under one of Brian Souter's buses would Scotland go back to its docile, default Unionism? No, of course not. History has a knack of finding the right person at the right time. Scotland was clearly in the mood for a new kind of politics and Salmond simply answered the call. Like all great politicians, he is first of all a gifted opportunist.
But the SNP's fortunes certainly rest on Salmond for the moment. Right now he can do no wrong. Even with the local income tax plans disintegrating, with criticism of his dealings with Donald Trump and Aviemore developers, and with all those broken manifesto promises on student debt, new police and housing grants - Salmond remains above it all. He would loathe the comparison, but the SNP leader is enjoying the kind of unquestioning popularity that Tony Blair had in his first 18 months in office.
It's not just about leadership, of course, but what you do with it that counts. In the next few weeks Scotland will experience the results of Salmond's policy whirlwind last summer.
Prescription charges are cut from April 1, the graduate endowment disappears, the council tax freeze comes into force, business rates start to fall. These are tangible benefits which will bolster the SNP's position in Scotland. The irony is that, overall, the SNP has been pursuing a broadly social-democratic agenda, even though it has been kept in power by Conservative votes. Many of its policies are ones Labour MSPs would dearly have liked to implement themselves but couldn't because of the London veto. The SNP is not a party of the left, but it seems to be taking over from Labour as Scotland's natural party of government So far, so good. But the fact remains that the SNP is not Labour, but a nationalist party dedicated to creating an independent Scotland with all the appurtenances of a separate state: currency, army, revenue, health service, etc . . . The question is whether the SNP under Salmond will be able to go on to fulfil its mission statement. Following his sensational political coup, could Salmond, by force of character alone, persuade Scots to go all the way and seek statehood?
It's a subject I found myself debating at this year's Changin' Scotland - a political and cultural "boutique" conference in the celebrated Ceilidh Place in Ullapool. Somewhere with room to think. Mind you, every time I opened my mouth I disagreed with myself.
No, I don't see the remotest prospect of the SNP winning an independence referendum in 2010 as planned. There is no majority for it in parliament or in the country. But, yes, Scotland might well be functionally independent within a decade or so, in which case a referendum might be an anachronism. If you ask Scots whether they want to separate from Britain, they will say "no" for a variety of reasons - filial obligations, economic and sentimental ties, geography and history. Above all, because Scots just don't go in for "revolutionary moments", for epic historical upsets, and will opt for stability whenever possible. We talk a lot, but we don't like conflict - we've had a bellyful of it.
However, if there were an election tomorrow, I'm certain the SNP would be back in office with a much increased majority. And there is no sign that the Scottish voters are losing their enthusiasm for gaining ever-greater powers for their parliament. Devolution is a process, and an unstoppable one. The other Scottish parties, and even the Tories, accept this now - which is why they have set up the Constitutional Commission - or rather the commission-that- dare-not-speak-its-name because Gordon Brown doesn't like the "c" word.
It's our old friend the Caledonian Paradox again: Scots don't want separation but they do want self-government. And while Salmond may not be able to win Scots to independence on the strength of his personality alone, he is clearly in a position to help Scotland explore the outer limits of home rule.
Salmond is a constitutional gradualist, after all. It was he who brought the SNP kicking and screaming to acceptance of devolution. He has shown the SNP that half-way houses can be quite comfortable places. And his job now will be to show that it can be more comfortable still with a few extensions and a roof conversion.
My view is that this constitutional expansionism will continue until Scotland has full economic powers short of its own currency, and full political control of domestic policy - broadcasting, firearms, drugs, energy, etc. Holyrood will not have a fully independent foreign policy, but it may lose Trident and have a veto on Scottish regiments participating in American military adventures.
The SNP may cock it up, of course, by getting carried away and trying to impose formal independence on a reluctant electorate. Westminster might equally take a wobbly and force Scotland out, just as the Czechs pushed Slovakia down the independence road in 1993. We are apparently entering an economic crisis which could cause relations to sour rapidly. But, in the end, I think the Scots are committed to home rule by stealth. And I think Alex Salmond's strength is that he knows it.
The popularity of the SNP in an opinion poll published yesterday is evidence that Alex Salmond's honeymoon with Scottish voters is growing ever more passionate.
The Labour and Liberal Democrats ejected from office last May are both going backwards, with the UK picture showing a post-Budget slump for Labour who are trailing the Tories by 16 points.
That is the widest margin for 21 years, though with little sign of that boosting Scottish Conservative fortunes.
This rare evidence of Scottish public opinion shows Salmond out-polling Wendy Alexander by a colossal margin. Their favourability ratings, taking the negatives from the positives, put him 53 points in the black, while the Labour leader is 22 points in deficit. She clearly trails the First Minister even among Labour voters.
This comes less than two weeks before the first Scottish Labour party conference since it lost power, with Ms Alexander's own six months as leader facing criticism along with significant doubts about her future.
Much of the public perception of her leadership results from media reporting of her campaign fundraising, which broke the law, so perhaps the surprise is that as many as 30% of people think she is doing a good job as leader. It will not help that new allegations were published yesterday, saying her Holyrood allowances were used to support her leadership bid. Such stories have led 40% of those polled to be less likely to support Labour, and a minority think she should quit.
However, the MRUK poll carries a warning to the SNP. Support for independence, at 23%, is unusually low. Only one other poll has found it that low in recent years. With 45% preferring the devolved parliament to continue but with more powers, it shows the SNP could be proving so adept at running a devolved administration that it undermines its own case for an independent one.
In the coming weeks ministers are to highlight the difference they are making in an advertising campaign starting this week, drawing attention to the falling cost of prescriptions, the council tax freeze and reduced business rates.
Another clear message from the poll is that much of the SNP's strength is in its leader, whose favourability ratings - 70% say he is doing a good job, with 17% saying the opposite - are far ahead of support for his party. When pollsters asked those who do not support independence what might persuade them to do so in future, Mr Salmond's persuasive skills were one of the two top factors.
While a hypothetical polling question from part of a sample should be taken with a bigger pinch of salt than usual, another 29%, said they may change their minds if Scotland's share of public spending is cut by the Treasury.
Within that group, 24% of people could be persuaded to support independence by the election of a Tory government at Westminster, while 20% could be persuaded by the re-election of Labour. That shows people are already open to persuasion about the case for independence, and whatever the outcome of the next election, due by spring 2010, more people will be persuadable.
It also shows the Conservative Party may be shaking off its electoral disadvantage in Scotland. It has been assumed the return of a Tory prime minister, backed by a large English vote, would drive more Scots to support autonomy.
But it seems the prospect of David Cameron in No 10 Downing Street would not have much more impact on Scottish public opinion than Gordon Brown's re-election.
Scottish Tories should worry, though. The Scottish data, collected from 1028 people nearly three weeks ago, shows their support down slightly on a poor result at last May's election, leaving a stark contrast between Annabel Goldie's fortunes and those of David Cameron.
A separate poll, published yesterday and researched by YouGov since last Wednesday's Budget, put Tories throughout Britain on 43% while Labour is on 27%. Despite being a fresh face as LibDem leader, Nick Clegg is failing to turn around his party's polling fortunes, with only 16% support.
ALEX Salmond was given a boost yesterday after an opinion poll found the SNP would increase its Holyrood majority by 10 seats if a Scottish election was held tomorrow.
The MRUK poll found the party would win 57 seats, Labour 44, the Conservatives 16 and the Lib Dems 12.
According to the results, the SNP are polling 39 per cent on the constituency ballot, up six per cent from last May, and 40 per cent on the regional list, up nine points.
The SNP are running ahead of Labour in voting intentions for a Westminster general election, a poll has suggested.
While Labour are running at 30%, the SNP are running at 37%, the YouGov poll for the Sunday Times suggested. But the findings are based a tiny sample - 207 adults - out of 2,311 who took part in the poll across Britain.
Nationalists acknowledged the small sample size but said it was still "fantastic" news.
SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson said: "The SNP are on course to significantly increase our number of MPs at the next election - we would win 27 seats on the basis of this sample, for example.
"With the possibility of a hung parliament at the next election, it could well be the SNP who hold the balance of power."
The poll, conducted on March 13-14, put the Tories at 18% in Scotland and the Lib Dems at 11%. The Greens rated 3% and the BNP 1%.
The poll also found Scots to be more approving of Gordon Brown - and less approving of Tory leader David Cameron - than voters south of the border. Some 47% of Scots considered Mr Brown was doing "fairly well" and 3% "very well", compared to Britain-wide levels of 31% and 2%. By contrast, 39% of Scots thought Mr Cameron was doing "fairly well" and 5% "very well" compared to 44% and 7% south of the border.
The findings also found minimal support - just 10% - in Scotland for school-leaver citizenship ceremonies which would include an oath of allegiance to the Queen.
The findings come in the wake of another poll putting the SNP in the lead for Holyrood elections, giving First Minister Alex Salmond a huge ratings lead over his Labour rival Wendy Alexander.
The MRUK poll findings put the SNP on 39% in the constituency ballot, up 6% from last May, and at 40% in the regional list vote, up nine percentage points. Labour are on 31% for the constituency vote, down 1% from last year, and 30% for the regional vote, up 1% on the regional ballot.
The Scottish National Party's popularity has soared despite the fact that public support for the party's principal goal of independence has dropped to its lowest level in recent years.
An MRUK poll published last week found that if an election were to be held now the SNP would enjoy a considerable increase in the number of seats it has in Holyrood.
Around 70 per cent of Scots surveyed thought that the First Minister, Alex Salmond, was doing a good job.
The poll found Mr Salmond's popularity ratings to be at plus 53 points while his opponent, the Scottish Labour Party leader Wendy Alexander's, ratings were at a low of negative 22.
The poll signalled good news for the SNP, demonstrating that the honeymoon for the new administration is far from over despite nearly a year in government.
As Ivor Knox of polling agency MRUK said: "The first 10 months of SNP administration has clearly strengthened its support."
However, observers have remarked that the party of Scottish independence should be doing so well when support for independence itself is low, at only 23 per cent.
One suggested reason for this is public discontent with the SNP's major rival, the Scottish Labour Party. The Labour leader, Wendy Alexander, has been damaged by scandal, which errupted last November, involving illegal donations to her leadership campaign.
The poll, which surveyed over 1000 adults across Scotland between February and March, found that 40 per cent were less likely to support Labour because of the recent controversy surrounding Ms Alexander and a quarter thought she should resign over the issue.
The Scottish Labour Party also faces problems from within, with party membership dropping by around a quarter since 2002, positioning the SNP to overtake Labour as Scotland's largest party in the near future.
The Scotsman has reported that party sources described membership as "haemorrhaging." The same party sources blame this not only on Scottish Labour's performance but also on Labour's Westminster record and the war in Iraq.
This is supported by a recent YouGov poll which shows UK wide support for the Labour Party to be 16 points behind the Tories, creating the widest margin in 21 years.
Nonetheless, Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has blamed Scottish Labour MSPs for their party's difficulties, arguing that the Scottish Labour Party "have got every single aspect of opposition wrong."
Describing recent poll ratings as "fantastic" for the SNP, Ms Sturgeon said: "The poll shows that our fast pace of delivery continues to gain the trust of the people with sky high approval ratings under the leadership of Alex Salmond."
Almost an hour before Gordon Brown addressed his first Scottish Labour conference as prime minister, a vast queue began to form outside the main venue in the Highland resort of Aviemore, as its security system became jammed with human traffic.
Outside, the car park was stripped of all vehicles and surrounded by high metal fences. There was no mistaking the prime minister was close by. It was a far cry from the same scene six months earlier when Alex Salmond had sauntered up to the entrance of his first SNP conference as first minister, when there had been barely a policeman in sight.
There was an implicit political message in the operation: while Salmond is a wannabe national leader undeserving of such attention, Brown is the real deal.
His visit came at the end of a week in which he and Wendy Alexander, his protégée, could take pride. His speech to the conference, though lacklustre, appeared to go down well with the party faithful. Alexander, the Labour leader in Scotland, launched her constitutional commission into more powers for the Scottish parliament and had one of her better days at first minister's questions. She even had a dig about the first minister being booed by the Tartan Army at Hampden the night before, suggesting his popularity was on the slide.
Alex Salmond, in contrast had a rare off week, his proposals for a referendum on independence using the single-transferable vote system badly misfiring. This 'Free by STV' approach, as it was dubbed, raised the theoretical possibility of Salmond claiming a mandate for independence on the back of 26% of voters ranking it as their first choice.
But Alexander and Brown need more than one good week to get them out of trouble. The reality is that the 'People's Party ' is doing its best impression of a swan. Despite apparent serenity on the surface, below the water line there is churning, panic and disarray.
Just how scared Labour are of Salmond and the SNP is revealed in a leaked account of a meeting between Brown and his closest aides on devolution. At the end of January, Brown met Des Browne, his Scottish secretary, Alistair Darling, his chancellor, and Jack Straw, the secretary of state for justice, who handles constitutional issues. An account of the meeting, seen by The Sunday Times, reveals that the prime minister believes that the advance of nationalists in the British Isles has become so great, he plans to mount a 'Save the Union' campaign.
Far from being relaxed about the constitution and confident that independence will be rejected by Scottish voters, it suggests Brown and Alexander are afraid of the direction in which the country is travelling.
At the meeting, Brown said that it was important for all those who believed in the Union to become mobilised and to make their voices heard. He raised the issue of the abolition of student tuition fees north of the border for native students, while keeping them for English ones, and the'Welsh Assembly voting not to fund Welsh patients using English hospitals, as examples of 'emerging tensions'.
Designed to set out the case for the Union, and sway public attitudes, Brown's pro-Union campaign will involve business leaders, civic society, academia and politicians. Straw has been tasked to provide polling data on attitudes to the constitution across the United Kingdom.
The tone and content of the meeting betray the unmistakeable impression that the architects of devolution now recognise the scale of the problem that they have unleashed. The genie is out of the bottle and they are doing their best to force it back in.
The election of a minority nationalist government in Scotland was a shock to those in the Labour party who subscribed to George Robertson's oft quoted prediction that devolution would 'kill nationalism stone dead '. As a Sunday Times poll published earlier this month revealed, being in office has strengthened the nationalists' hand.
The survey, by the pollsters MRUK Cello, showed support for the SNP in the Holyrood constituency vote up six points on last May at 39%, with Labour eight points behind on 31%, the Scottish Conservatives on 15% and the Scottish Liberal Democrats on 12%. In the regional vote, the SNP was on 40%, 10 points ahead of Labour, with the Tories on 13% and the Lib Dems on 11%.
If a vote for the Scottish parliament was held tomorrow, the nationalists would extend their lead from one to 13 seats. The poll showed that Alex Salmond is Scotland's most popular first minister yet, with an approval rating 75 points higher than Alexander. It also found that support for the nationalists at Westminster has doubled since the general election in 2005, with the SNP and Labour neck and neck on 34%.
Brian Wilson, the former Labour energy minister, summed up a growing opinion in the party that Alexander is mainly responsible for the slump of Labour and that another approach is needed to halt the nationalist advance. 'Wendy Alexander is very much part of the presiding influences in Labour politics over the past 20 years in Scotland who have decided politics is really about constitutions and commissions and the more you set up the better life must be, ' he said.
'As long as Labour continues to go down what is essentially a nationalist agenda, the outcome is pretty preditable - the beneficiaries will be the nationalists. I fail to understand why the people who've created Labour's difficulty in Scotland learn nothing. They just keep on making the same mistakes. '
In bars and coffee shops at the conference, the problems besetting Labour are not hard to find. 'Wendy Alexander is simply bad for the party, ' said one activist. 'She's bright, but she's a wonk, an academic. She doesn't understand what drives ordinary people and what stirs them. The bottom line - she's not a politician. '
A donor to Alexander's leadership campaign denounced her commission as 'appeasement ' of the SNP. Baron Moonie of Kirkcaldy, a former defence minister who gave £500 to Alexander last year, said that instead of proposing big changes, she ought to be trying to stabilise the current devolution settlement. 'This policy of appeasement, Chamberlain tried it in the 1930s. It didn't work. It ain't going to work now, ' he said.
'You are either in favour of independence or you are in favour of the Union. It is a very difficult road you're going once you start altering the deal that was made at devolution. That's the slow creep towards independence. ' He said Alexander, Scottish Tory leader Annabel Goldie and LibDem leader Nicol Stephen had let themselves be dragged into a debate in which Alex Salmond, the first minister, called the tune.
Jim McCabe leader of North Lanarkshire council and head of the Labour group on the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, said Alexander had to drop her 'superior
attitude ' and listen to the party's grassroots.
In contrast to Alexander's perceived obsession with constitutional minutiae, Salmond combines the roles of competent political manager and flamboyant ideological grandstander, grabbing headlines with gestures such as demanding the saltire fly above the Union Jack at public buildings and seeking a .sco website domain for the country. Even when he is criticised, as he was over his involvement in planning applications by the US millionaire Donald Trump and the SNP donor Donald Macdonald, he explains it away as doing what is best for Scotland.
While support for independence remains stuck at about 23%, a recent Sunday Times poll, run by MRUK Cello, showed public opinion on the matter was volatile and that a majority of Scots would be prepared to back separatism in certain circumstances, for example, if a Tory government was elected at Westminster.
No matter how hard she tries, Alexander seems unable to hold the initiative. Her good week at Holyrood was undermined on the first day of conference when she awarded herself a '10 out of 10 ' rating on her first six months as leader. An e-mail from her spin doctor Simon Pia in advance of her speech yesterday suggested she should model herself on Martin Luther King and John F Kennedy.
'The 10 out of 10 thing was a catastrophic error, ' said one party insider. 'She should be going back to basics, not borrowing stuff from JFK. I don't think even Alex Salmond has the balls to steal from JFK.'
For Moonie, the best tactic for Alexander is to hold tight, not panic, and wait out the storm until the 2011 elections.But by then, Brown may be out of power in Westminster, support for independence may be on the rise in reaction to David Cameron, and Alexander will have had her chance and blown it.
For all its gaffes and inadequacies, Aviemore 2008 may turn out to be one of Alexander's better years.
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