A new YouGov poll in the Sunday Times in Scotland has Westminster voting intentions in Scotland of CON 17%, LAB 32%, LDEM 13%, SNP 34%.
The Holyrood voting intention figures are Constituency CON 13%, LAB 26%, LDEM 15%, SNP 42%%, and regional CON 14%, LAB 25%, LDEM 14%, SNP 35%.
| 38 | 39 | 10 |
 | 8 Feb | 40 | 38 | 10 | Con +2 |
| 7 Feb | 37 | 42 | 9 | Lab +5 |
| 6 Feb | 41 | 40 | 8 | Con +1 |
| 3 Feb | 39 | 40 | 9 | Lab +1 |
| 2 Feb | 39 | 41 | 8 | Lab +2 |
| 1 Feb | 38 | 40 | 8 | Lab +2 |
| 31 Jan | 39 | 40 | 9 | Lab +1 |
| 30 Jan | 40 | 38 | 10 | Con +2 |
 | 30 Jan | 38 | 36 | 8 | Con +2 |
 | 29 Jan | 37 | 38 | 14 | Lab +1 |
| 27 Jan | 39 | 40 | 8 | Lab +1 |
| 26 Jan | 39 | 40 | 9 | Lab +1 |
| 25 Jan | 38 | 40 | 9 | Lab +2 |
| 24 Jan | 40 | 38 | 9 | Con +2 |
 | 23 Jan | 37 | 40 | 10 | Lab +3 |
 | 23 Jan | 35 | 37 | 11 | Lab +2 |
| 23 Jan | 39 | 40 | 8 | Lab +1 |
 | 23 Jan | 38 | 38 | 12 | Tie |
 | 22 Jan | 37 | 38 | 13 | Lab +1 |
 | 22 Jan | 40 | 35 | 16 | Con +5 |
| 20 Jan | 41 | 36 | 9 | Con +5 |
| 19 Jan | 38 | 38 | 11 | Tie |
| 19 Jan | 41 | 38 | 8 | Con +3 |
| 18 Jan | 40 | 39 | 7 | Con +1 |
| 17 Jan | 39 | 40 | 8 | Lab +1 |
“problem is it wouldn’t be democratic”
Why is that a problem?
So is removing from democratically elected Councils,the power to raise revenue from their voters;and substituting a Scottish National Income Tax, raised by and allocated from Holyrood.
So is making a national promise of smaller class sizes before the election&-then,when in government saying “the target would be met by councils.”-without providing the funds.
So is making a national promise of a Scottish Futures Trust before the election-then when in a government which turns out to lack the bond issuing powers, suggesting that locally elected councils could raise funding-without consulting them.
Some of SNP’s fine promises are getting lost in a sea of arbitrary & un-democratic expediency.
Why not go the whole hog & just declare UDI?
IMHO LIT will not affect the vote in Scotland one way or another. The position is between the SNP who are the smart people in Scotland and the rest.Wasn’t this once Gordon Brown’s USP – that he was an economic genius opposed to John Major’s two O levels.?
Coiln,
The Scottish Parliamnet has the power to change Local Taxation and if it choses to change it then it can. It is elected by PR and if the bill gets through it will be with the support of those elected by a majority of those who voted.
That beats both the Poll Tax and the Community Charge both of which were introduced by Governments who only had the backing of a minority and what’s the democratic basis for central government capping the council tax or ring fencing funding.
In an ideal world Councils would set there own tax but in a nation of 5 million people with thirty two councils four of which have less than 60,000 people it’s impractical, or at least in would probably cost more to impliment than the difference between what Councils would raise.
As the difference between the highest and lowest CT in Scotland in proportion to the proposed 3% LIT is +/- 0.25%, is it really worth the Banks , large companies like Tesco’s or Health Boards and Councils in the central belt having to work out a dozen different pay tax rates for that kind of variation.
Councils have been given an additional £280m over three years as part of the Council tax freeze and along with an end to ring fenching have agreed to a shared set of objects of which smaller class sizes is one. Any council that wants to priorities class sizes over other things is free to do so.
What democratically elected Councils do with their share of the money is up to them. Cathy Jamieson was saying that the £280m should be spent on 10,000 new teachers, well if that’s what Councils want to do then thye are free too.
Any Council that wants to fund what was previously ring fenced in exactly the same way as before is also free to do so. Funny thing is not one, even where Labour are in power or administartion, or where the administration hasn’t changed, has chosen to do so.
The Government agreed objectives and supplied funding and it’s up to the democratically elected Councils to set their own priorities.
Between setting the Council tax or being able to set my own priorities without ring fencing or central government dictat within a fixed budget I know which I prefer and which I support.
SFT isn’t what any of us would have hoped because without the powers of Councils to borrow or issue bonds we don’t have the power to borrow centrally. That leaves us with the half way house of Councils collaborating on projects and borrowing in groups to pay for construction.
It’s making the best of a bad job but it does remove the biggest scandal of PFI/PPP which was the manipulation of borrowing so that the consortium could make profits for subbordinate debt at rates of 20%pa over 20 to 30 years.
We need to deliver £30bn of national investment over a decade without national borrowing powers which means we need to try to get the best deal we can. I’d be the first to admit that we hoped for more than £150m a year savings from that size of programme but those attacking SFT seem to think it’s not worth the effort.
Well we think it is.
Still as you raised the subject given that these things need to be built, within the current limits of the parliaments powers, what would Labour, the Libdems and Tories intend to do about PFI/PPP.
Peter.
Cllr Cairns,
‘We have the same money as the Lib/Lab coalition had but are more popular because of how we have chosen to spend it’ – Rubbish, this argument works until you look at the polls and see how as Labour support is fading off yours is picking up. Labour is hemorrhaging voters and in the same way the Tories are picking up their votes in England, The SNP are doing the same in Scotland.
With regards to the LIT then of course the supprt is higher than your vote, the majority of SNP voters support it and then a fraction of all other voters. Its naive to suggest that only people who vote SNP would support it. The mainpoint is that the majority of Scottish people have seen sense and have decided that they are against it.
“If the SNP’s support has grown because the Parliament only spends money, then why did Labour lose as they had exactly the same money to spend.” Well they didn’t spend it like you are in fact, they were slightly more fiscally prudent. Given the option of an incumbent Labour administration or Salmond charging in on his over spending white horse of course you ‘won’.
I normally don’t comment on sites like this but I read the polls and I accept that a poll doesn’t actually give you a lot of information. For the SNP to proclaim themselves the champion of the Scottish people based on polling data is in some cases questionable and in most cases just wrong. As Anthony has written may times before, not only must you be very careful in the way polls are structured and the questions asked but also how they are interpreted. In the same way the Tories must be careful about crowing abouttheir poll lead so must the SNP or otherwise you will find it won’t last long.
Peter,
I do wish you would spend a little more time reading what people actually say as opposed to writing such long and convoluted messages.
I NEVER said or suggested that the Tories could ever gain power in Holyrood. They plainly won’t. As a matter of fact I think that their ceiling in Scotland in any election is 25% last achieved in 1992. But even such a modest figure would constitute a major revival by any yardstick. To answer your other points:
a) Eh no actually what I said was that the SNP might gain twice as many votes from Labour as lose votes to the Tories. Please keep up Peter.
b)Obviously many of the possible losers will be those earning a decent salary. Quite a few of them in my constituency deserted the Tories last year and voted SNP but from my soundings in Edinburgh they won’t do that next time if LIT comes to pass. Instead it is perfectly possible to suggest that they MIGHT Peter MIGHT revert to the Tories. As for elderly Tories that breed are such dyed in the wool unionists that I doubt they would ever vote SNP even if you gave them free tickets to all the home games played by Caledonian Thistle.
c) a fair point but in the current climate none of these people are likely to consider voting Labour but yes I concede that some of them could vote Lib Dem.
d) I am perfectly entitled to crystal ball gaze -which I did slightly tongue in cheek-without having to refer to an opinion poll since in this scenario the question has yet to be put and I am doubtful that it will be.
Wishful thinking permeates much of what folk of all persuasions write on this site and you are no exception. And biased opinions don’t equate to the proper “analysis” you claim you always seek to portray .You do not speak for the people of Scotland but for only those who voted for you in just one ward in the City of Inverness. And so long as the long suffering Anthony concurs we all have an equal right to be heard. You do not have a monopoly on wisdom. Please remember that and get off your high horse.
Is there a price for imcompetent / dishonest reporting of opinion polls? If so the Sunday Times should have a big chance of winning it.
It reports the Holyrood voting figures as SNP 42%/35%, Lab 26/25, LD 15/14, Con 13/14 (and therefore others 4/12). It further gives seats as SNP 59, Lab 36, LD 19, Con 15 (and therefore others 0). These are the exact figures you get with scotlandvotes.com if you input the figures for the four big parties as above and assign the rest to ‘others’.
But the tables break down others as Greens 6%, Socialist (non-swinging) 4, Socialists (swinging) 1, other 2. For this scotlandvotes.com would have SNP 56, Lab 36, LD 17, Con 15, Green 3, SSP 2.
Christian
Re LIT, I think most of the apparent unionist who are denouncing it here are missing the point and are thus continuing the very behaviour that helped so much to get the SNP to where it is.
Let’s be clear about this, the hatred against LIT has little to do with the subject itself. If it was, then given the unpopularity of the Council Tax, Labour and the Tories would by now have proposed their own workable and sensible alternatives. They haven’t (in case of Labour because McConnell was vetoed by London), so the only other sensible idea is the Green’s Land Value Taxation (which suffers from being sponsored by the Greens).
No, the cause of the venom is that LIT is a big and radical SNP proposal. (Virtually all previous SNP actions were boring and sensible or popular gimmicks.) And if a proposal is a major change it often means that the detailed results can not predicted with 100% certainty. So there are some questions about LIT details, and die-hard unionist declare them to be principles because at the moment they cannot think of any other weapon to try to hit the Nats.
But in my view there are two problems. Firstly is that LIT is a fairer tax than the Council Tax. Yes, there might be some smaller problems with LIT, but its fundamentals are sound. So should the SNP get LIT through Holyrood, they’ll look when LIT bills appear.
Secondly, even if LIT fails, its opponents will be blamed for every single council tax increase. I can already see SNP controlled councils pointing it out to their constituents in future years, ‘Sorry for the Council tax increase, under LIT you would have paid £XX less, but the unionists stopped us’. Say 1/2% increase in support for independence? And every little bit counts…
Christian Schmidt,
I’d go along with pretty much everything you say although I would challenge the merits of LVT in a Scottish context.
Firstly there is the issue of the extreme variation in Land prices.
Even now a town house in Edinburgh with a nice garden covering 100mx100m will sell for close too £5m, but the Cullin Mountains on Skye which included 6 miles of coastline was on the market for two years and didn’t get a buyer at £10m.
Now if we assume the Cullins were say 10kmx10km at 100 hectares to 1km then prperty in Edinburgh is up to 5,000 times open moorland.
With 70% of Scotland open moor or hills and less than 10% build upon it still means that because of the land value differential the burden would fall disproportionately on business and home owners making it an electoral disaster.
It only takes a party researcher to replace “Land Value Tax” with “Garden Tax” and then any party proposing it is facing melt down.
If you have three plots the same size in the same area they all pay the same LVT, regardless of whats built on them but it’s the people in the buildings that matter in political terms.
The first plot is a small old bungalow with a pensioner couple, the second has a Young family with one earner and two kids in a detached house, and the third has a professional couple with no kids who have sold off half the garden to a developer who has put up a block of four flats, bought by people working on high salaries in the city.
Under LVT, the pensioners and family both pay the same, the professional pay half of that and each of the city slickers pays and eighth of the pensioners.
That is of course an extreme example, but I use it to illustrate just what a nightmare trying to get LVT introduced would be.
In a Scotland in terms of LVT the best developement was Glasgows Red Road flats because they had the maximum number of people in the smallest possible area, but they were a huge vertical slum that we are now in the process of pulling down.
Peter.
What makes me see RED is the ridiculous draconian left wing policies of the SNP in Scotland which have been the downfall of Labour in the rest of the UK.
PETER CAIRNS still talking about class and who votes for who – he must open his eyes and see that voting intentions based on class is something from another era and not relevant to modern voters ANYWHERE in the UK. I have warned our SNP cllr before about he and his party being complacent and taking the Scottish votes for granted.
The current rise of the SNP is purely disaffected Labour voters and will fade with time (a short time). The old phrase comes to mind “the bigger they are, the harder they fall !”
“the cause of the venom is that LIT is a big and radical SNP proposal.”
No, not all. To take the LD argument for a second: LIT is a big and clunking SNP proposal.
LIT is a centralised Scottish national tax collected by Holyrood, spent on Holyrood projects and accountable to Hollyrood – in other words, an SNP tax collected by the SNP, spent by the SNP projects and accouted for by the SNP.
So, no wonder the SNP is for it.
However this does raise the question why the SNP wasn’t in favour of LIT when they weren’t in power and whether they will still be in favour of it when they are no longer in power.
As I understand it the LDs have been in favour of LIT for the better part of a couple of decades (correct me if I’m wrong) and originally suggested it as one of a variety of altrnatives when replacing the poll tax (of which LVT was already a well-establish option).
A true LIT means different councils would be freed from dependency on grants from central government (Westminster of Holyrood) and thereby provide a real incentive to get involved in your local democracy and hold local councillors accountable.
So it is bewilderingly generous that the LDs would even propose to give this power to authorities where they never stand a hope in hell of getting elected!
For the record I’d complicate the matter by proposing a mixed LIT+LVT scheme and is one of the reasons I cannot support the LDs on their taxation plans. I also have less problem than the LDs with the Scottish executive using their tax-raising powers at a Holyrood level if this makes them more accountable and removes the motivation for the wasteful pork-barrel projects and favoritism shown under Labour and SNP administrations. I want to see politicians stop treating their constituencies like their feifs and their constituents like their chattle.
As for how this influences the polls, this is where the cracks within the SNP start to open out between the liberal localists, right-wing nationalists and centralising socialists that form their ‘Scottish Coalition Party’. I expect this non-LIT proposal will alienate the localists first and therefore benefit the LDs in subsequent scottish polling. Their new leader Tavish Scott must be licking his chops for his good timing!
Mike,
I commented on the breakdown by the divisions presented in the poll and mostly on the lack of difference. I have to wonder why, if as you suggest Class has nothing to do with it almost all the polsters still use it.
I think regardless of whether you use class or income peoples relative wealth does have an effect on how they both percieve policies and ultimately vote.
Looking at the responses by income or classification to see how different groups respond to different policies isn’t class warfare, it’s making good use of the available information.
That’s one of the reasons political parties put so much effort in to collecting an analysing it, so that they can tell if the policies they are proposing are going to get them the votes where they need them.
LIT looks in demographic terms very likely to be a vote winner for the SNP because it appeals to the core vote of our biggest opponent while being least popular with the smaller groups who are the least likely to vote for us.
The fact that those who will benefit are the most deserving in my view and the most in need and those that will pay more, though hard working the most able to afford it are bonuses.
If you see helping those at the bottom as draconian and left wing you probably think we should have stuck with the poll tax and made those who couldn’t pay do community service.
Thomas,
LIT has been SNP policy since the early ninties and we have called for it since before devolution. The change has been to set it nationally rather than locally because as I pointed out elsewhere the costs and red tape involved in setting 32 different rates aren’t justified by the half percent variation in tax that the currrent spread of Council tax equates too.
As to SNP tax for SNP projects, all money raised by LIT will be retained by councils and it’s the SNP that on comming in to government has removed 90% of the ring fenced funds and rolled them in to Council budgets giving them the freedom to use them as they see fit.
Oh and as you’ve raised it;
Just what are the SNP pork barrell projects you are talking about?
Finally if you like the idea of LVT ,how would you overcome the issues I’ve highlighted. Even if you overcome them, I can’t see the electorate being excited by the prospect of replacing one tax with two.
Peter.
Peter, what the SNP is calling for is not LIT, so how long you’ve been calling for LIT is a blatant misrepresentation.
‘Ring-fencing’ of funds is not the same as decentralising powers so it is an untruth to say you are giving new freedoms to councils.
Perhaps ‘pork-barrel’ is harsh, when ‘symbolic’ might be more accurate, but nevertheless the SNP inconsistently applies incoherent principles. The SNP will struggle to paper over the cracks in your internal coalition as successive policies chip away the unity and successive failures chip away at harmony.
This ‘non-LIT’ will start to splinter the liberals, the economic failure will crack the socialists and the inability to bring about independence will alienate the nationalists.
The longer the SNP remains in government the weaker it will become at the polls, so just like Brown’s failure to call an election when he had a chance of winning has drained support from him, the window is closing on this once-in-a-lifetime chance for Salmond to redefine the political geography by imposing his vision on the parliamentary landscape.
Thomas,
I didn’t say we have given them new freedoms, I said we have given them the freedom to spend the money as they see fit. Exactly which new powers would you want Local government to have.
Okay if not Pork barrell, symbolic then. Which symbolic wasteful policies are we talking about. For that matter what are the inconsistantly applied incoherent principles are we implimenting.
You are of course correct in saying that, like all Governments, the SNP’s popularity will decline over time. No one, least of all the SNP, expected us to be this popular for this long. but unlike the UK PM the FM can’t call an election as we have fixed four year terms and any minority government we have would simply be replaced by opponents.
We could I suppose have tried to rush the referendum, but again as a minority we’d have hardly have got that through the parliament if it looked like at dash for independence was going to work, would we.
As to splits between liberals and socalists I’ll probably be at conference in October in Perth, and I full expect to see a degree of unity probably greater than any other UK conference this year.
Nor would I expect to see much decent over the next year with a UK election coming up followed by a possible referendum and then we are in to 2011 and the next Holyrood elections.
So barring “Events” try me againin about 2013, when I suppose if we are still the government we will be looking a bit tired our opponents will have there act together and things will have moved on a good deal from the politics of today.
Peter.
I’ll look forward to your report back from your conference to hear the details, but you’ll forgive me if I take everything you say with a pinch of salt as regards your objectivity. And whether your expectations are borne out by the reality remains to be seen.
The SNP’s opposition to Skye Bridge tolls is popularly trumpeted as an example of how you are ‘in touch’ with the wishes of the populace, but your grandstanding gives lie to your inability to change the way government works with regard to financing mechanisms and the continuing dependancy on PFI, to provide one simple example.
In effect the SNP is just tinkering at the margins and represents just more of the same, when your vote were won with the promise of real change – this kind of approach is inconsistent and is unsustainable over the medium-to-long term. When the hangover kicks in people will be left scratching their heads asking what remedies you offer.
Enjoy this years’ conference while the euphoria lasts, the next few will be very different.
Thomas,
So as we have no borrowing powers as a parliament or the ability to issue bonds, other than coordinating those parts of the government who can borrow to do so in groups so we can get the lowest price and to create a pool of expertise to do better in negotiations what would you have us do.
Despite the criticisms of private profit, the biggest issue with PFI/PPP has been the profits made from interest on the borrowing. To borrow from banks is more expensive that through the PWB ( public works board) and if the borrowing is made by consortium rather than Councils then they add there mark up to.
What the SNP is trying to do is cut out the consortiums role in borrowing by going directly to the banks and by having a centralised specialist team negotiating for groups of Councils to get a better deal for Banks.
As I’ve said before it’s not what we want or would choose but as we can’t borrow or issue bonds what else can we do. As with pretty much every other area all we can try to do is improve on what we inherited with the powers we have.
Ultimately we will be judged on what we have done with the powers we have compared to what others did with the same powers and then what we promise to do with them in future.
One of the reasons we are actually getting so much support from traditional Labour supporters is that not only do they like what we are doing they feel let down by Labour because there is nothing we have done that Labour couldn’t have.
Peter.
Stuart Gregory-
I am afraid your system still makes no sense. I have little doubt it overstates Lib Dem support and understates SNP support. It seems first you took the general trends and rightly noted an 11.5% swing (i.e., 23 point change in the margin) from Labour to SNP and also a 4 point swing Labour-to-Tory and a 1.5% swing ***Liberal to LABOUR***, then it is not seriously possible that the Liberals will gain a seat and the SNP take fewer than in the general calculation. You are taking tactical voting into account . . . ok, fine. But how much of a swing can there really be from Labour to Liberal in the few seats where the anti-Labour vote won’t actually go Tory or SNP? Only a couple points. And this means the swing Lib to Lab in Lab-SNP marginals must be higher. Yet, it means most importantly that the Lab-to-SNP swing in the industrial heartland must be upwards of 15 points. I don’t have the free time now to make the calculations, but I have no doubt that this would only lead to a higher SNP score than 16 seats.
Remember, the SNP will gain in Lib-Lab and Tory-Lab marginals as well, and can easily zoom from 3rd place to victory in these conditions.
Okay, I actually did the math . . . . I won’t write it all out here but I figured a 17% swing from Labour to SNP in the 22 such marginals from 2005. This means that elsewhere the swing averaged around 8%. In Lib-Lab marginals the swing from Labour was just 1% and in Con-Lab 8% (but still 9% to SNP). This also means in Lib-Tory marginals the swing to the latter was 5% and in SNP-Tory seats, the SNP had a 13 point advantage on their rival.
In do not believe I found a case of a party shooting from third place to victory though the SNP came close in a couple.
The results are: SNP gains 14 seats from Labour (well, if we consider the Liberal by-election win last year, 13 from Labour and 1 from LD). The Tories take three seats and Liberals win Edinburgh South. Labour wins back Glasgow East, however.
So, my account of tactical voting leaves: Labour 23, SNP 20, Liberals 12, Tories 4. So Stuart was not so wrong in predicting a gain for the Liberals but I was right in expecting bigger Nationalist wins based on above average swings in the West, Glasgow, and Central regions.
Thomas S:
The only quibble I would have with your analysis is that while the Cons might have a reasonable chance of winning an any one of the four seats, they would be lucky to get them all at once because there may be local issues that we cannot know about at this time. They should feel quite pleased with the result of their efforts if they only manage three.
One of the third placed nationalists which came close to winning will be in the constituency in which I vote, Argyll and Bute, a three way and formerly a four way marginal.
Everything depends on where any lost LibDem votes go. The Conservative will certainly be in second place. Local information points tentatively to an SNP gain.
Not that that means it will necessarily be close, just difficult to predict the outcome, anywhere between hardly any change and secure SNP majority.
I wouldn’t bet on Glasgow East returning to Labour. The result of the bye-election itself creates other factors favourable to the SNP:
Loss of Labour morale; proof that the SNP is not a wasted vote and wont let the Tory in; party resources more thinly spread; backing a winner; gaining media attention; continuing trends of both parties; mould broken not protest vote; active MP trying harder etc.
I think that the voters in Glasgow East enjoyed kicking the government and will do it again.
Just for fun.
That’s not very scientific, poll based or numerate, but wait and see if I’m right.