Scottish politics: who are the leaders and how are they doing?
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Version 0 of 1. Four parties returned MPs to Westminster from Scottish seats in 2010, but the contest between them next year is far from even. Friday’s ICM poll for the Guardian reveals that some of the “faces” of the campaign remain virtually unknown. Here we review the challenges facing each of the main players in the runup to 2015. Alex Salmond He may have resigned as first minister, but Alex Salmond is still the most recognised face in Scottish politics and everyone else has a job to compete with him in getting a hearing with the electorate. Of those polled, 94% correctly identify his mugshot. He’s popular too, with 53% saying they expect him to do a good job for Scotland in the years ahead, while just 30% take the contrary view. As he gears up to contest the Liberal Democrat seat of Gordon in north-east Scotland, Salmond effectively assumes a commanding role in the general election campaign. Even if he does not want to dominate the coverage – and that is far from clear – it would be tricky for him not to do so. The principal challenge for a man who is still deeply mistrusted by a minority is not to overshadow his successor as party leader and first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, as she seeks to make inroads into the traditionally alien realm of the Labour heartlands. Nicola Sturgeon After a decade as Salmond’s deputy, and now a month at the top, the new first minister is fast catching up with her old boss in the recognition stakes: 84% can name her face. With a Glasgow seat, left-of-centre credentials and a far-from-privileged family background, she appears well placed to make a breakthrough in the Labour heartlands. Her biggest challenge is a lacklustre SNP performance in the last general election campaign. With just 19.9% of the ballot in 2010, the nationalists have a long way to go if they are to pick up more than a handful of seats. But with the ranks of her party’s membership having increased dramatically following the referendum defeat, it has the advantage of a mass membership not seen in Britain since the 1950s. And the SNP plans to build on its social media successes in the referendum, where activists used friendship networks on the internet to boost the yes vote, by harnessing this new activist base to build a digital army on Facebook and Twitter. Jim Murphy More Scots than not can name Scottish Labour’s new man, and more are inclined to think he will do a good than a bad job. But alongside these crumbs of comfort, the poll confronts Murphy not only with a huge overall SNP lead but also with the fact that he is nothing like as well known as Sturgeon or Salmond. The exposure of the campaign should help with recognition, but his deeper difficulty is demonstrating that he can speak for Scotland unbeholden to Westminster interests. He kicked off his leadership by announcing he would not consult Ed Miliband about Scottish Labour positions, but there are issues such as Trident where Miliband’s former defence spokesman has a hawkish reputation, out of kilter with many in Scotland, and especially with those disgruntled former Labour supporters who broke for yes in September. He talks about holding on to all 41 of the Labour seats that Gordon Brown won, but senior party sources admit they are aiming to recover to 35%, well down from the 42% it polled then. He is going to need all those streetfighting skills that he recently burnished in his energetic referendum campaign. Willie Rennie Scotland is the one area of the UK where first-past-the-post voting is not an automatic disadvantage for Liberal Democrats: the 11 seats Nick Clegg won in 2010 were in line with his 19% Scottish vote share. A few years before, the popular Scot Charles Kennedy led the party to an even stronger performance, and during Holyrood’s first eight years there was a Lib Dem deputy first minister. But this happy history suddenly feels extremely old. Today’s challenge is staying in the game: only 17% of voters overall, and indeed only 26% of today’s shrunken band of Lib Dems can identify party leader Willie Rennie. Clegg’s alliance with the Conservatives at Westminster, a brand still toxified by association with Margaret Thatcher in Scotland, saw the party lose almost all of its constituency seats in Holyrood in 2011, and could do so again at Westminster next year. Salmond is personally expecting to dislodge the Lib Dems from Gordon, and several other rural seats are similarly vulnerable. Scottish secretary Alistair Carmichael’s Orkney and Shetland is looking like the only rock-solid hold. But Scottish Lib Dem convenor Craig Harrow sees hope in the considerable number of Labour and Tory voters in other Lib Dem seats who may consider voting tactically for the party as the best way to stop the SNP surge. Ruth Davidson The young leader of the Scottish Conservatives was widely reckoned to have a credible referendum campaign, and her unguarded remarks about the slim chance of a Tory UK-wide win in 2015 reveal how far she is prepared to go to put distance between herself and a London leadership which is so deeply disliked in Scotland. But three years in post, a mere 32% of Scots can identify her, which underlines how far from the centre of the political action the Scottish Conservatives remain. In line with the Tories’ continuing overall miserable vote share, more Scots than not judge her to be doing a bad than a good job. While there is scant chance of a major breakthrough, not everything is lost. There are three large rural seats, two of them in Scotland’s far south, where collapsing Lib Dem and Labour support could allow the Conservatives to inch over the line – just so long as the SNP does not surge so far that it comes from behind to win. |