Wee bit of cheer for Miliband as SNP support dips

A new poll of Scottish voters has given Labour their best figures from north of the border since support for the SNP surged in the wake of the September independence referendum.

The Panelbase poll puts the Scottish Nationalists on 41 per cent, a ten-point advantage over Labour. It means Ed Miliband’s contingent of Westminster MPs could be halved from 41 to 20 – not nearly bad as predicted last autumn when Panelbase had the SNP 17 points ahead and Ipsos-MORI famously had them ahead by staggering 29 per cent.

That prompted talk of Labour facing a wipeout in Scotland, destined to lose as many as 37 of their 41 MPs.

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Another new poll in Scotland – from Survation for the Daily Record – also shows a slight move away from the Nationalists towards Labour: it has SNP support on 46 per cent, down two points from a similar poll last month, and Labour on 26 per cent, up two points.

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We should discover soon whether the apparent drop in support for the SNP is a blip or the start of a trend when ICM and YouGov update monthly polls. Lord Ashcroft is also surveying individual Scottish seats and the results are expected later this month.

They may offer clues to the impact of Jim Murphy as the new leader of Scottish Labour and of the political fallout from the dramatic fall in the price of North Sea oil.

At Holyrood, Scotland’s new First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, is under pressure to forecast how low oil tax receipts could fall and what the impact will be on Scottish jobs and living standards.

As the Herald reports, fiscal autonomy would mean Holyrood taking charge of “all taxes in Scotland, including North Sea oil revenues, to fund public services and make a contribution towards shared UK functions such as the armed forces and overseas embassies”.

The most recent Scottish Government forecasts – released before the referendum – predicted tax receipts from North Sea oil of £20.2 billion in the three years 2016 to 2019. But that was based on an oil price of $110 per barrel. With oil now down to $50 a barrel, the UK government estimates a drastically reduced figure of £1.6bn instead of £20.2bn.

For Ed Miliband, the Panelbase poll will come as some relief, boosting his hopes of heading the biggest party in the Commons post 7 May.

The Labour leader’s prospects of getting to Downing Street are also helped by the fact that the same poll offers grim news for the Lib dem leader Nick Clegg. All 11 of his Scottish MPs are in peril, putting the renewal of the Cameron-Clegg coalition in severe doubt.

The latest UK-wide polls also continue to show Labour and the Tories neck-and-neck, with Labour standing to make gains from both the Tories and the Lib Dems in the key marginals in England and Wales and destined to be the biggest party at Westminster on 8 May.

ComRes for the Independent on Sunday shows: Conservatives 33 per cent, Labour 34 per cent, Lib Dems seven per cent, Ukip 18 per cent and Greens three per cent.

You Gov for the Sunday Times has: Conservatives 31 per cent, Labour 32 per cent, Lib Dems seven per cent, Ukip 18 per cent and Greens seven per cent. A separate YouGov poll for the Sun on Sunday has Labour two points ahead – on 33 per cent to the Tories’ 31 per cent.

Opinium for The Observer gives Labour a five-point lead over the Tories – which is way out of line with the rest and, like last week’s Ashcroft poll giving the Tories a six-point lead, should probably be treated as an “outlier”.