Achi news desk-
Speaking to journalists in Drumchapel on Monday morning, Scottish Labor leader Anas Sarwar said two things that I’m not 100% convinced he really believes in his heart.
The first was when he said Scotland could be responsible for the “upset of all time” by beating Germany in the opening game of the Euros on their home turf.
I’m as optimistic as the next Scotland fan, but after last week’s dismal effort against Northern Ireland, that feels borderline delusional.
I will be satisfied if we leave Munich on June 14 without embarrassing ourselves.
The second thing Sarwar said that felt a little unbelievable was that the Tories could “pull themselves together” before the general election.
“Don’t forget in an election campaign that they will have no shortage of money which they will throw enormously in that short period of six weeks. There is no culture of war or fighting they will not be willing to fight in order to hold on to power. And I believe the polls will get narrower and tighter. ”
I appreciate he probably had to say this. You can’t have a loud party crowd telling the troops not to worry, but last Wednesday, Professor Sir John Curtice said Labor now had a 99% chance of winning the election.
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Over the weekend we had two opinion polls giving Sir Keir Starmer stunning majorities.
The MRP poll of 15,000 people for Best for Britain on Sunday was bad for the Tories, suggesting they will return just 98 MPs at the next election.
Monday’s Daily Mail poll was even worse.
They interviewed 18,000 people and the Tories only got 80 seats across the whole of the UK, with Labor on 470.
Can the Tories turn this around? Can they pull themselves together?
“I think that’s highly unlikely,” Professor Jennifer Lees-Marshment of the University of Dundee tells me.
“They have been in power for a long time and the other thing is that the general brand of the party is being damaged because of those changes in leaders and the problems in the leadership in general.
“And on one hand, they need to offer a fresh new product, a fresh new brand. And the problem is that Rishi is not really new because he was part of the Johnson era government. ”
The Tories would need to be able to convey in the next few months to turn things around, “they are actually suddenly connected, they are suddenly connected, they suddenly understand, they have answers and they are going to do something better about them. this than they have in the last 14 years.”
The party’s problems, he adds, are “vast”.
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New ‘megapoll’ predicts SNP to win 41 seats as Tories face UK
One of the other interesting things about this weekend’s megapolls is that they both showed the SNP vote holding up.
The first suggested that Humza Yousaf’s party would win 41 seats, which would be a great night for the beleaguered Prime Minister.
The second predicts 32 seats, which would still be a good night, especially considering most of the previous, non-MRP polls, the party picking up around 20 MPs.
But it means that those huge Labor majorities are achieved without regeneration in Scotland, despite what Sarwar and Jackie Baillie say, the road to a Labor government does not necessarily run through Scotland.
Scots can vote SNP or Lib Dem or even Tory and chances are they will get a Labor government.
How does Scottish Labor convince those voters who are married to another party to come to them?
Sarwar says it’s about who is in the best position to “maximize Scotland’s input”.
“Do they want to elect an MP who wants to sit opposite a Labor Government shouting at him? Or do they want to elect Labor MPs from Scotland who will be in government sitting around the table helping to make decisions and maximize the revenue for Scotland?”
It looks like this will be the key debate during the Scottish election campaign. Who will be heard better, and have more influence in Westminster? The SNP on the opposition benches or Labor on the government benches?
We could find ourselves having that debate sooner rather than later. One of the suggestions floating around at the moment is that we could have an election in June.
Either because Rishi Sunak wants to abandon any attempt at a vote of no confidence after a likely defeat in the English local elections on 2 May or because he now, like John Curtice, but not Anas Sarwar, thinks defeat is inevitable.
Instead of prolonging the pain, he goes now, minimizes the damage and prevents his MPs from destroying the party.
I’d probably hedge my bets a bit more than John Curtice, but to be honest, there’s a better chance of Scotland winning the Euros than the Tories managing to “pull themselves to their each other”.
