Would it be possible to make these clickable?

Not quite sure what this page is doing here! The proper (clickable) list is here:

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/guide/conservative-target-seats

Well there’s a definate 31 seats in the bag / the seat i live in has a Labour majority - it’s one of the seats that is known as - “if the Tories win this seat they’ve won the election” - i’m expecting Dari Taylor to be back in Wales retired by 2010.

Mike, you’re a laff, but there’s a distinct whiff of the barroom about your talk. When was the last time you knocked on a door except to say “it’s not yet closing time”?

In any Scottish constituency, in the present state of opinion, the SNP, (which is doing unexpectedly well in the SP) and not the Conservatives, will take most of the votes from disaffected former Labour supporters, and a good proportion of the former LibDem votes.

Even if the latter breaks nationally in favour of the Conservatives it will not do so in No 30 Perth and North Perthshire, because true Conservatives had their chance last time to vote for a Conservative candidate with a chance of being elected and had no reason to vote for another party. Also, even if most lost LibDem votes went to the Conservatives, the LibDems are a poor fourth position and have few votes to lose.

Neither will the SNP lose No 39 Angus for the same reasons, but Conservatives can expect to take their most likely and possibly only gain in Scotland, No 50 Dumfries and Galloway where a Labour majority of 5.7% can be overturned without their share of the poll being overtaken by the third placed SNP or as would be likely, should LibDem losses be great enough for the LibDems to lose in No 122 Argyll and Bute.

The difference between No 30 Dumfries and Galloway and the rest is that the Conservatives do not need to increase their share of the poll and may actually reduce it and yet win the seat.

In many Scottish seats it is a race for the bottom not the top, with the SNP picking up most of the votes lost by other parties, but the Conservative vote is significantly more resilient than the other two.

I challenge the inference that the LibDem vote can be more unstable than that of a past-their-sell-by-date party of government which is suffering from “events,” but not that the LibDems are losing support as is of course Labour.

While the SNP is not only doing better in government than its supporters expected, but - as Peter Cairns acknowledged here several months ago - even better than they had dared to hope - and the repellant “Party of Thatcher” is on course to be the next government, it is not difficult to see why the favoured choice of most transferring Scottish voters is the SNP.

Its not that the SNP have done anything to deserve it. They have done nothing to deserve it. Doing nothing is WHY they deserve it. I hope that with more experience they will learn to do more nothing and do it better.

This week’s example was Nicola Sturgeon’s robust support of the Scottish NHS in her address to the BMA demonstrating a clearly distinct and outmoded ideology which - whether she knows it or not - is deeply and profoundly embedded in distinctively Scottish values and history: the response to 19thC Cholera,the Scottish Enlightenment, the different course of the Reformation in the two kingdoms and ultimately it is rooted in St Matthew 25:40.

It’s about values, not policies. These values are in sharp contrast with the creeping privatisation and flavour-of-the-month gimmicry of the alternate Westminster parties of government, but more than that, analysis of the language used and the opinion of those who know the minister personally strongly suggests that she means it, and will stick to it.

That’s the bit that’s different, and it could be popular enough to bring about the end of the UK.

John B Dick - so the SNP is is benefiting from playing its right-wing credentials while managing to avoid alienating its core statist support?

If you are correct the internal stability is sustainable only while there is a perception of momentum in electoral success. Which suggests the first sign of failure could spark damaging infighting.

One wonders then how much emphasis the SNP should be placing on fighting the Glasgow East seat, as any mixing of the picture (failure to win, failure to reduce the LD vote, failure to hold back any Con resurgence) would imply they have reached their high water mark and lead to the more impatient members to push on with a divisive referendum campaign they cannot be certain of winning well, or indeed winning at all.

The canny SNP politician will be busy covering themselves against the inevitable future downturn, so one has serious concern for the longevity of Nicola Sturgeon’s career.

John (B Dick),

“Its not that the SNP have done anything to deserve it. They have done nothing to deserve it. Doing nothing is WHY they deserve it. I hope that with more experience they will learn to do more nothing and do it better.”

I am sorry but I can’t really agree with that as I think we have actually done rather a lot which will have long term benefit.

I am not talking particularly about the things like bridge tolls and tuition fees but a more significant culture change and a real break from the executive we replaced.

John Swinney has been central to this in the concordat with Local government which has seen a set of simplified outcome agreements, an end to ring fencing and a three year freeze on the Council Tax, all agreed voluntarily.

Some of these things particularly the outcomes part have already begun to appear as proposals being discussed in England but they represent a real move to focusing on output not input.

The executive approach and indeed the tradition with Labour has very much been for the last decade or so to judge the government on how much it’s putting in so we get “record investment in the NHS”. x number of New schools and hospitals, more doctors and nurses and extra bobbies on the beat.

But those aren’t results in themselves, they are just measures of how much more is being put in or spent. What the SNP has been doing in the last year is saying enough is enough, we’re not going to use the Tartan Tax and we won’t let councils raise the amount it charges people, for the next three years we all have to deliver improvements on effectively fixed budgets.

That will be tough but it chimes with the public mood which is we are paying enough but not getting enough for it. We’ve gone from a decade ago when there was a public out cry for “greater investment in public services” to demands for “better value for tax payers money”.

In some respects the reason the SNP is popular is that the public see the alternative to financial stricture as higher taxes and in that sense the SNP’s policy although attacked by any group that loses out has the support of the majority of Scots.

The real challenge of the next few years will be to keep delivering improvements in services on fixed budgets with high inflation particularly in energy costs which the public sector has to absorb.

Peter.

thomas:

You can’t call the SNP right wing, while we have New Labour.

In Glasgow East or elsewhere there is no Conservative resurgence, and the LibDem and Con voters in Glasgow East are too few to be squeezed. It’s a two horse race, and they arn’t in contention.

The SNP has had its ups and downs over the years, and even internal divisions. So have most if not all the other parties, but this seldom if ever happend when a party is doing as well as the SNP are at present.

Christian doesn’t describe a failure to take Glasgow East as a “failure,” nor would I and nor would SNP supporters. Were Labour in 1997 disappointed not to win Kensington and Chelsea?

If, as seems more than likely, we soon have a Conservative Government, Scottish voters will blame the Labour party for its shift to the right and spin over substance. I would then expect SNP support to grow markedly AFTER the election at the expense of Labour as they would then be seen as a more effective centre-left option than the Greens or LibDems.

If the Conservatives dealt with Scottish issues and sensibilities as ignorantly and insensitively as they did the last time, they are sure to hasten the drift to independence.

I can’t see anything that would stop it now.

Peter:

“a more significant culture change and a real break from the executive we replaced.”

Not confusing inputs with outcomes, not privatising the NHS, not building nuclear power stations, not starting illegal wars, not taking Scottish School children out of their beds and deporting them, not planning to build WMD’s, not selling the right to manage schools, not having PFI, not locking up suspects for 42 days, not allowing torture flights through Scottish airports, not having ID cards, not …

That’s a lot of not doing and some of them arn’t even devolved matters yet you have ensured that they are not happening in Scotland.

I reckon that the Labour party has a better chance of forming the next government than the next government has of locating the replacement for Trident in Scotland if the SNP is in government in the SP. Don’t you?

John,

I don’t think Labour in Ken&Chelsea is a valid comparison to the SNP in Glasgow East.

And, yes, I do think that it can be considered a failure on behalf of the SNP not to take this seat in light of the amount of resources and effort being poured into the contest, if only because Labour will consider any victory a victory at this point of time despite fighting in what is traditionally one of its most secure seats.

To come close, but be unable to make the final step is not just to fail to continue carrying momentum forwards but to hit a brick wall.

While they are in power at Holyrood the SNP are in a bind - they can operate a successful regime and independence falls in popularity, so they become marginalised as a regional party, or they must adapt their policy delivery to avoid being painted as bad, if not worse than the others.

With the unsustainability of the current Barnett formula rising up the agenda as devolved control of services increases to cope with differences across the different parts of the union the SNP will only have themselves to blame for future political dissatisfaction.

Anyway, with the weight of debate swinging away from SNP turf I can see the combination effect of issues deconverging in a way which doesn’t favour them. They will need to be able to lessen the emphasis given to their ‘left-wing’ credentials in order to continue to prosper - so there are pitfalls ahead to be watched for, even if all pratfalls can be avoided.

Their single area of policy differentiation reduces the SNP to virtual meaninglessness - imagine the argument is won and it was achieved, do they then disband or allow themselves to be riven apart?

One wonders if it was a sensible gamble to accept the chalice of minority power to satisfy the short-term ambitions of the politicians for office, or whether SNP incoherence means this confrontation is inevitable.

thomas:

“I don’t think Labour in Ken&Chelsea is a valid comparison to the SNP in Glasgow East.”

Why not? It’s a similar share of the poll for the sitting MP.

“And, yes, I do think that it can be considered a failure on behalf of the SNP not to take this seat in light of the amount of resources and effort being poured into the contest”

So it’s just a matter of who spends most on a bye-election?

“SNP are in a bind - they can operate a successful regime and independence falls in popularity”

Unless they compare so favourably to the Westminster lot that the electorate trust them with the whole thing. That’s been the strategy since devolution, and I don’t see why it couldn’t work.

“SNP will only have themselves to blame for future political dissatisfaction.”

There is plenty of political dissatisfaction right now, and would be even if the SNP didn’t exist. There will be even more when the Conservatives get back in with almost no seats in Scotland.

“…with the weight of debate swinging away from SNP turf…”

Trident?!?!?!?

“They will need to be able to lessen the emphasis given to their ‘left-wing’ credentials in order to continue to prosper”

There is absolutely no evidence to support that. Quite the reverse I would have thought, especially if we have an even more right wing government than at present and Labour is in crisis.

” - imagine the argument is won and it was achieved, do they then disband or allow themselves to be riven apart?”

Few would care either way. It’s independence they want, not power. The Unionist parties, (if they are still London controlled the day before independence) are the ones which would disband or be riven apart. They would be in no condition to form a government for some time, nor would they be trusted to do so.

There would be some re-alignment on the left, but New- as distinct from Old- Labour will be gone. If there are divisions and realignments that is only a disaster in FPTP. It’s no big deal if there are 6+ parties as we had before the Socialists destroyed themselves.

“One wonders if it was a sensible gamble to accept the chalice of minority power to satisfy the short-term ambitions of the politicians for office”

Some of these politicians have been waiting for their short-term ambitions for forty years. If office was what they wanted they would have joined another party.

They actually want independence. There is nothing incoherent about that.

Over the last 50 years, television has exposed the failings of the Westminster Parliament to an extent not possible before. The decline of deference has made the Scottish voter less willing to accept these failings.

The cultural and historical arguments have become weaker over the same period. The economic arguments on both sides are best ignored. No rational person would believe any of them. It would have been possible for the Westminster Parliament and governments of either party to deal competently with Scottish problems and sensibilities and to get rid of traditional practices and customs that have no place in a 20thC far less a 21stC parliament.

They did not do so, and despite the fact that they have had(as Donald Dewar told me over half a century ago that they would) the Home Rule Parliament as a model of how they could reform Westminster, that opportunity has been missed.

I have never thought Independence was the only way, or even the best way, to deliver good governance for Scotland, but it is the only chance of seeing it in my lifetime. It’s the quickest way of escaping from a failed parliamentary system.

The SNP are missing the best argument for independence.

With independence we get a parliamentary system that would prevent the abuses of power of the executive we have seen from Westminster and the misuse of spin.

Independence can’t now be prevented. The only difference the result in Glasgow East makes is that it is a portent that will tell us whether it comes soon, or very soon.

You appear to be in denial and clutching at straws, refusing to acknowledge the obvious.

It isn’t a two party choice. The Conservatives have failed in Scotland. Once the only party ever to command a majority of the popular vote in any part of the UK, Scottish Conservatives have been almost wiped out by association with the free market fundamentalists and English Nationalists in the UK party. Labour have also now failed by their gimmicry, reliance on spin and shift to the right to appeal to middle England. Understandably perhaps, both have failed by giving more attention to the Murdoch press than to Scottish issues and values.

The SNP offer an escape. There is a new parliament ready to take over. Westminster has had a decade to get its act together and hasn’t bothered. The SNP are (narrowly) in government, and popular.

Labour will probably win in Glasgow East, but the many Scottish Labour MP’s shipped in to the election campaign should now go home and prepare for independence.

Anthony has pointed us to his proper list of Conservative target seats. However, I have recently posted on the page for Walsall South pointing out that, given recent polls, the list needs to be extended. There is active speculation for Walsall South that sees a Conservative gain as quite plausible, so presumably the same applies even to other “safer” Labour seats.

Couldn’t the lists of target seats for the various parties include ALL the seats they do not hold and are likely to contest (i.e., for instance,clearly English seats are not SNP targets)?

John, you should write an opera on it!

Where is the list of SNP target seats? It will surprise many to see just how few marginals the SNP can win. LibDems winnable seats against Lab are actually more numerous and more winnable than the SNP’s and may offset losses to SNP.

Some of the smallest Scottish majorities which Conservatives might hope to overturn have sitting SNP MP’s. If they had been against Labour, there would be a high probability of a change, but SNP is likelier than Con to receive ex-Lab and some ex-LibDem votes.

They will do well to have a net gain of three.

The number of Scottish seats changing hands woll be surprisingly few. There will be LibDem gains as well as losses so the net effect on the balance of the parties will be that Labour will lose not so many and the SNP gain only a few with not much change for the other two.

English Conservatives understand nothing about Scotland so they will be mystfied by a gain of only two or three seats and not realise that this is a significant advance that a rebranded party in an independent Scotland could build on.

The significance of the fact that the SNP will be in a winnable position in many more seats after the election should not be underestimated.

Interesting post John,
but how about shorter snappier ones!

Interesting post John,
but how about shorter snappier ones!

I don’t any Scot who wants to save money on excess taxes will be voting for the Scottish Tories. And as there’s no other reason to vote Tory seems like they’re stuffed.

The Conservatives will not win the election, but they could learn an important lesson.

The lesson is that elections are not won, they are lost. The Conservatives will have a comfortable majority, but they will not have won.

The role of the SNP as the preferred recipient of ex-Labour votes in Scotland should make that clear to anyone other than NewLabour loyalists in denial.

Should the Conservatives in Scotland have fewer votes or a smaller share of the poll than last time, the message would be even clearer, and that is even likely.

If the proportion of SNP votes continues to significantly exceed the proportion in favour of independence, so much the better for making the point that Scottish voters have a poor opinion of the Westminster parties and the way they operate.

When offered a once-in-a-generation chance to walk away from it altogether, they might just think “Why not?”

There is a small section of Scottish opinion which believes that an independent Scotland would be a land flowing with milk and honey, and the honey would be low GI, have fewer calories and be suitable for diabetics.

There is another minority of Unionist trolls who are polluting the Scotsman blogs.

Most Scottish voters are just risk averse. Yougov would do well to ask some questions that bring out the extent to which pro-union opinion is soft, rather than just ask which way you would vote if there were a referendum to-morrow.

What matters is how you will vote when you are standing in a polling booth on 30 11 10, and that can be different from what you thought you would do five minutes before, far less over two years before.

In the meantime, Scottish voters are content that the SNP still serves them well as a means of sending a message to Westminster.

Gordon Brown says he is listening. Was the message from Glasgow East loud enough?

Probably not. The NewLabour leadership are in denial and party members who know better from the doorsteps are disraught.

Scottish voters will just have to shout even louder at the General Election. I am in no doubt that they will.

All the above seats should turn blue
except
Eastleigh
Perth & N Perthshire
Brighton Kempton
and unfortunately, Westmorland & Lonsdale.

JJB:

All these and more.

Westmorland and Lonsdale, I guess you have local insight. Why not Eastleigh and Brighton Kempton?

John B Dick, you dismiss the Conservatives one moment, then offer a sop the next because your own interests depend on them. That’s an unreliable stance if ever there was one.

Any independence referendum held on a day with nationalist connotations automatically carries with it the suspicious burden of unsustainability, so be warned against attempting to manipulate the electorate quite so cynically as that, there will inevitably be an unwelcome reaction.

The conventional wisdom that elections are lost, not won is absolute hooey. Sure some commentators think there is an overwhelming consensus on centre-ground issues that the use of incumbency is the overriding factor in any outcome, but I suggest that they are biased by their inability to conceptualise the dynamic nature of debate and public concerns beyond their experience. So the statement really only expresses the growing divide of inequality that exists and will turn to bite those with exactly such pro-establishment views on the behind. The classic British example is the ingratitude shown in the 1945 result, which was an obvious reaction taken from several seconds of hindsight.

thomas:

I cannot imagine any way in which my interests have ever depended on the Conservatives. All my life I have voted against the Conservative Party. My analysis is based on the numbers and local opinion, not my personal wishes.

It is not I who chose the date for the referendum. If it produces the result the government wants, in what sense is it unsustainable? I do not understand what you mean.

My old friend Donald Dewar said that “Scotland will be independent when people vote for it”.

If they do, that’s it. Anything other and Britain has no claim to be a democracy. Turn that statement round: “Scotland will not be independent even if people vote for it.” If anything is unsustainable in the other sense that must be it.

It is by no means certain that the referendum will go the way that the government want, but if it does surely that’s it. Only the need to negotiate the separation arrangements would delay the end of the UK as it now is.

If the current unpopularity of Labour resulting in increased support for Conservatives in England and the SNP in Scotland is not a sign that elections are lost, not won, I do not know what could be. There is no increase in Conservative voting intention in Scotland or support for independence either. There is no alternative explanation and no better argument for PR.

I cannot attribute much meaning to your final paragraph. There may be “an overwhelming consensus on centre-ground issues” among the Westminster political class, but round here the overwhelming consensus is that both the main parties have values and priorities which are abhorrent to the majority of Scots.

The way things are going, the referendum is in the bag. Peter Cairns won’t say that, because he is an SNP politician. I’m not. I’m a retired accountant with a spreadsheet. It wouldn’t be my first choice, but I’ll vote for independence.

I could be wrong. I was wrong about Glasgow East, but you need to be aware that at some not too far distant date - perhaps 05 04 11 - Scotland will no longer be part of the UK. Please believe that it is entirely possible. It can really happen.

If you don’t like it, don’t blame me. Don’t give much credit to Smart Alex either. Blame Tony Blair for spin the shift to the right, and his presidential style, helped by Thatcher and the ignorance of the London media.

thomas:

Have you any comments on: -

“One wonders then how much emphasis the SNP should be placing on fighting the Glasgow East seat, as any mixing of the picture (failure to win, failure to reduce the LD vote, failure to hold back any Con resurgence) would imply they have reached their high water mark and lead to the more impatient members to push on with a divisive referendum campaign they cannot be certain of winning well, or indeed winning at all.”

The impatient members of the SNP will have to wait. The date of the referendum is fixed. Peter told us here it is St Andrews Day 30 11 2010. The Scottish Parliament has a Unionist majority. The present stance of the three Unionist parties is that they will win the argument and are not afraid to campaign against it.

What do you think the electorate would think if the Unionist parties voted down the referendum because they thought they would lose? What do you think the outcome would be at the next SP election in May 2011?

The SNP will be supported by the Greens and the extra-parliamentary Socialists.

When you can’t see any way forward that doesn’t lead to checkmate, the custom is to knock over the King.

Mention of Gordon Brown reminds me that I heard on the news to-night ….

I will happily equivocate on the prospect of scottish independence, but one has to look beyond the headlines of the potential fact and understand the effective irrelevance and potential danger that it would be likely to cause before it becomes possible to make a clear-headed decision - which is why a Burns night or St Andrews day vote couldn’t be trusted. If you are so sure of it’s importance why not a five-minute plebicite-by-text on Hogmanay? Because such a vote would as reliable a measure of public approval as a confession of a suspected terrorist after several years in Guantanamo followed by continuous sessions of waterboarding!

Frankly John, your first sentence shows up such an obvious contradiction (your views don’t depend on any relation to conservatives, but you consistently vote to oppose to them - eh?) that it is hardly worth the effort to scratch away the veneer of sense in any of your other statements.

It ought to be expected of supporters of independence to have a better knowledge of the complexities of British history when making their case for secession - in particular the continued messes which Scots have brought upon themselves when forming policy reactively (in particular to your southern neighbours).

Finally your assertion that current polling figures are anything more than indicative to future election results is both presumptive and laughable. If it is proof of anything it is that political fortune is cyclical and relative. The next GE is not a foregone conclusion - otherwise the whole political industry and infrastructure (including sites like this) would be better served by packing up and leaving the administration to the experts.

May I then ask you: what clauses would you add to any secession treaty to place limits on future changes of status, how long before (re)unification could be (re)considered, what guarantees would Scotland provide to avoid destablising the rest of the union and what measures would be fixed to ensure effective financial independence and minimise the necessity for outside intervention (such as EU grants or IMF loans)?

From my position there is one fundamental and unavoidable flaw in the independence argument - interdependence.

Unification by integration has been the method by which segregation, repression and poverty has been gradually overcome. One wonders how many times the elites of Scotland need to learn the same lessons while they repeat the mistakes of the past and you grow tired of your own history; one wonders how long before you start treating yourselves not better or worse than others, but as equals.

I have no doubt that there will be alcohol related fatalities among the more enthusiastic SNP supporters if the Referendum is successful on St Andrews Day 2011.

I think you are conceding that the government has made a very smart move in the symbolism of the timing; that it will work to their advantage and you are discomfited by that. That’s politics. At least they are not allowed in Scotland to pick the timing of elections to suit party advantage as they do at Westminster.

I have never said that I wanted independence. What I want is better government and I won’t ever get it from FPTP Westminster.

Polling figures, crudely used, are misleading in a four party context when any two can be also-rans. Whatever use they may may be in England, or in the past in Scotland only constituency level analysis can be of any use in Scotland now.

I have always voted against the “forces of conservatism” to use Tony Blair’s expression. In the past, that has always meant the Conservative party though now, more often than not, it means the Labour party too. I could imagine, depending on the other options, voting for Ms Goldie’s rebranded independent Scottish party whatever it may be called after independence. Not before, while it is an adjunct of the hotch potch of fundamentalist free-market believers and Little Englanders that is the Conservative party at Westminster.

They are not as bad as they were. I remember a time when they were ridiculed as “hangers and floggers and out-with-the-wog ‘ers.”

Now only the flogging is left and that’s consensual.

I know of no separation agreement of nations or marriage or commerce which provided for reunion. That’s the point really, that each party is free to decide for itself in the future, and the other need not feel obliged to comply.

Scotland does not need to consider the destabilising of the rest of the UK. That would not be our business, you would not wish it so, and we would have our own Panglossian garden to dig. I’d expect Scotland will be in the €urozone and r-UK out of the EU. If so, interdependence will decline to the status of arms length trading as with other foreign countries.

We may even drive on the other side of the road, just to annoy you.

We could have started treating ourselves as equals a decade ago if the London political establishment and media had also done that. They did not, and they have missed their chance.

You are entitled to your view of history, but I think your difficulty is an unwillingness to face up to the very real prospect that the next UK election will be the last one including Scotland.

Worse than that (from your perspective) it can’t be blamed on the evil SNP. Thatcher and Blair and the dysfunctional, corrupt, inefficient and undemocratic political system which they controlled are almost entirely responsible.

The Scottish Parliament may yet be a model for the reform of Westminster as the 17 year old Donald Dewar promised me a Home Rule Parliament would be, but it is now more likely that that reform will now be some decades after independence rather than that it will forestall it.

The current difficulties of Labour and the probability that the next Conservative government with few Scottish MP’s will deal with Scotland as ignorantly as the last one or as ineptly as Labour, together with the continuing popularity of the SNP government and the rise of English Nationalism have set us on a course that can only have one outcome.