Can Labour win in Scotland?

Keir Starmer will be buoyed by Labour's commanding lead in Scottish opinion polls as he launches his general election campaign in the country today.

Labour was on 39% in the latest YouGov poll, a 5% increase since April and 10 points ahead of the Scottish National Party (SNP).

In an article in the Daily Record following Rishi Sunak's shock July election announcement, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said the vote was a "chance to give Scotland a real voice" in Westminster. 

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What did the commentators say? 

The election in Scotland is "likely to be the most competitive for decades" and will "hang on fine margins", said pollster Mark Diffley in The Times. Analysis of the latest public opinion surveys suggests that Labour could expect to return about 30 MPs in Scotland, with the SNP reduced to fewer than 20.

A poll for The Sunday Times last June forecast "a seismic reversal of fortunes" that would see Labour "end a decade of electoral mediocrity north of the border" at the next general election, the paper said. Should that play out, the SNP would “likely be cast into turmoil”, with Labour “cannibalising” most of its new votes from the nationalists.

But Labour supporters “would be wise to insert a degree of caution into their analysis”, said Euan McColm in The Spectator in response to that poll. Sarwar "still faces the challenge of persuading Scottish voters that he is very much his own man and not merely a branch manager".

Yet that was before "turmoil" consumed the SNP, said The Guardian. The party was left "close to being broke" by Humza Yousaf's "botched firing of the Scottish Greens", policy "failures", and the arrest of Nicola Sturgeon's husband Peter Murrell, who was subsequently charged with embezzlement of party funds. By contrast, Scottish Labour is "better funded than ever".

The question that will now "dominate" the election campaign is whether First Minister John Swinney can "save the SNP from being badly defeated".

What next? 

Sarwar said last summer that his party was "not complacent", despite its lead in the polls. And things are "a lot tighter" when it comes to voting intention polls regarding the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, said The National. Predictions from pollster Professor John Curtice put Labour on course to win 35% of constituency votes for the Scottish Parliament, with SNP close behind on 34%.

The election's timing is "not ideal" for the SNP, said Diffley, given Swinney has had such little time to "set out his platform". But there is "some comfort" for the party in his approval ratings. A poll in The Times this week found that 35% of voters gave Swinney "the thumbs-up". Although that is "not a return to the heady days of ratings" under Sturgeon and Alex Salmond, it put Swinney ahead of Sarwar, who was on 26%.

Starmer has "already taken aim" at both the SNP and the Conservatives, said The National, describing Scotland as the "beating heart" of his ambitions for the UK. "There is no change without Scotland, because there is no Labour without Scotland," he said at a campaign event in Glasgow today.

Clearly, a "competitive election awaits", said Diffley. We will now find out "how ready the parties are to fight it".