THE Westminster voting intention numbers in The National's new full-scale Scottish poll from Find Out Now are the first meaningful corroboration of a fascinating pattern that has been observed in the Scottish subsamples of Britain-wide polls since Andy Burnham arrived in Downing Street on July 20.
Right from the start, it has appeared that any "Burnham bounce" is proving much less transformative in Scotland than it is south of the Border, and sure enough, the Find Out Now results indicate that Labour have only just barely squeezed past Reform UK to regain second place in Scotland, and remain behind the SNP by a familiar double-digit margin.
That is not necessarily to say Labour's recovery in Scotland has been trivial, however. The most recent comparable Westminster numbers from Find Out Now were in February, also in a poll commissioned by The National, and they showed Reform UK on 23% and Labour on only 14%. That suggests there has been a hefty 5% swing from Reform to Labour in Scotland since six months ago, although it is unclear whether Burnham can claim some credit for that or whether all of Reform's decline occurred before the Holyrood election.
By contrast, the SNP's vote share has only slipped from 31% to 29% since February, a change that is well within the standard margin of error of any individual poll, and therefore may be real or may not be. Even if it is genuine, it's only making a modest dent in the SNP's dominance of Scottish politics and still leaves them on course to take advantage of the distorting effect of First Past The Post by seizing the lion's share of Scottish seats at the next General Election.
Some independence supporters may be a touch concerned to see SNP support dip below 30%, but the numbers are complicated by the creditable 10% showing for the Scottish Greens, who are tied with the Tories and the Liberal Democrats in joint fourth place. The only way the Greens can actually replicate that result in a real life election is by standing in all Scottish constituencies, or at least in the vast majority. If they instead concentrate their resources by only putting up candidates in their most favourable areas, as they did on the Holyrood constituency ballot earlier this year, it's likely that the SNP will take a significant portion of Green votes. That perhaps means the SNP are entitled to feel confident of a vote share in the 30s even if the Find Out Now numbers are broadly correct.
The Greens' strength in the poll is fuelled to a large extent by voters under the age of 30, among whom they are by some distance the most popular party. It's noteworthy that Labour are only finding true success at the opposite end of the age scale, with over-75s being the sole age bracket in which they have opened up a clear lead in Scotland. That does not present any sort of practical problem for Burnham – quite the reverse, in fact, because older people are typically more likely to turn out to vote. But it might be a hint that Burnham's style and messaging would have comfortably occupied the centre of gravity in Scotland's general population 30 or 40 years, but is not quite chiming with the zeitgeist in the here and now. The trends seen in the poll are also a far cry from the Corbyn surge of 2017, which in urban England was driven by younger people marching to the polling stations in unusually large numbers.
And yet Burnham seemed to make a deliberate choice to copy Jeremy Corbyn's stated plan for announcing an end to rough sleeping as his very first decision if he ever stood on the steps of Downing Street after becoming Prime Minister. It's arguably surprising that the occasional left-wing signals Burnham has been sending out, even if there is no real substance behind them, have so far fallen flat in Scotland in particular, which is one of the most left-leaning parts of the UK.
Labour would doubtless argue that Burnham has only just got started, and that he needs time to make more significant inroads into the huge lead the SNP built up during the latter part of Keir Starmer's premiership. But there's always a real possibility that the initial honeymoon period will be as good as it ever gets for an incoming PM – meaning that the SNP's already formidable lead could easily grow from this point on, rather than shrink any further.
