A SCOTTISH pollster has said Scottish Labour are “on their death bed”, suggesting the party continues to believe it has a right to win every election in the country.
Speaking on The National Podcast, Ballot Box Scotland founder Allan Faulds said the party has an attitude problem as he tore into Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander’s “defeatist” approach.
Alexander appeared to write off 30% of the Scottish population “who now see voting SNP as both a habit and an identity” in comments this week, when he also said Labour “misjudged” the SNP’s popularity at the Holyrood election.
Faulds also cast doubt on Michael Marra or Joe Fagan – the current candidates to replace Anas Sarwar as leader – being able to turn the party’s fortunes around, as he suggested party has not reflected on how Scotland has changed since the referendum.
“Scottish Labour have lost seats at every single Scottish Parliament election and there’s a real risk that continues,” he said.
“If you’d said to me two years ago that Labour wouldn’t win this Scottish Parliament election and they’d just go on fading forever, that would’ve been laughable. But now it does look like Scottish Labour are on their death bed in a way that no amount of Andy Burnham TikToks and Manchesterism will make a difference to.”
He added: “The kind of feeling you get with Scottish Labour is the lesson has never been learned, and the lesson isn’t necessarily about policy […] but some of it is around attitude.”
Alexander, who co-chaired Scottish Labour’s campaign to get Anas Sarwar elected as first minister alongside deputy leader Jackie Baillie, said the SNP’s “lock” on a third of voters has made it “really hard” for his party to challenge them.
He suggested this contingent of voters back the SNP regardless of what they do in government saying: “It is about who they are more than what the SNP do.”
But Faulds said these comments suggested to him Labour have never gotten away from an entitled attitude they should always win elections in Scotland.
“I was thinking well Douglas, when I was born, your party had won every election in Scotland for 31 years and would continue doing so for 17 more,” he said.
“It sounds less like ‘well people should be weighing up parties by their policies’, and more like ‘well that used to be us. We are the party that used to just win in Scotland as a matter of habit’.
“I don’t think Scottish Labour have ever gotten away from that when you consider that Anas Sarwar inherited his seat from his dad in 2015.”
Looking at the current contest to replace Anas Sarwar, Faulds said he doubted whether Marra or Fagan could put Scottish Labour back on an upward trajectory, suggesting the party keeps turning to figures who have played a part in previous defeats.
He reflected on how Marra was previously an adviser to former Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray who dramatically lost the 2011 election to the SNP.
“If Scottish Labour is just going to come back to the same people who have played leading roles in their previous defeats because they just think Labour should win in Scotland, Labour’s not going to win in Scotland,” he said.
“There has to be an offering and there has to be a reckoning with how Scotland has changed since the referendum and I’m not sure Labour have ever done that and that I think is why Scottish Labour are struggling above and beyond the woes that Keir Starmer heaped on them.”
You can watch the episode on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
