Lord Ashcroft: The records of the Conservatives, Labour and the SNP have condensed into ‘a strong need to give someone a sore face’

Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, author and pollster. For more information on his work, visit lordashcroft.com

Ask an SNP voter to name the Scottish government’s greatest achievements since it came to power in 2007 and you are all but guaranteed to hear the following: free university tuition, free prescriptions, free school meals, baby boxes, and free bus travel for young people. Nicola Sturgeon’s handling of the covid pandemic might also get a mention.

The trouble with these feats of civic nationalism, towering though they may be, is that they date, respectively, from 2008, 2011, 2015, 2017 and 2020. In other words, none of this passes what political scientists call (or ought to call) the Janet Jackson test: What have you done for me lately?

In my latest round of Scottish research, even some previously loyal SNP voters were starting to wonder if their party’s record over 19 years – let alone the last five – wasn’t beginning to look a bit thin. Only around half of them say it has done a good job on health, schools or the economy, or on keeping its promises. Some even dared commit the heresy of asking whether the money spent on universal free benefits might have been better directed towards those actually in need.

Among voters as a whole, the proportion saying the SNP has done well on these measures barely exceeds three in ten. Things like the ferry fiasco, the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital scandal and the police investigations into the party’s finances have done nothing for its reputation for competence or for honesty and integrity – the single measure on which it scored lowest in my survey. Energy and momentum have drained away since the intoxicating days of the referendum campaign and the subsequent election surge. Voters described John Swinney as an “interim manager” and a “wet weekend”; nobody expects him to come up with anything that could honestly be called a new idea.

So why, in common with other pollsters, do I find the SNP once again entering the election campaign in pole position?

One reason is that – not for the first time – they have been given a considerable helping hand by their opponents. I barely found even a Labour voter in Scotland who had a good word to stay about Keir Starmer’s record since 2024. Few thought his party had brought any change for the better, and Scots were more than twice as likely to say the SNP were doing a good job in Holyrood as to say the same of Labour in Westminster. Though they were much more likely than not to think Anas Sarwar had been right to call for Starmer’s resignation, most also saw it as a somewhat desperate tactical move to try and distance Scottish Labour from the London party.

Another reason for wavering SNP voters to fall into line is the rise of Reform UK, vying to become the second largest party in Holyrood after May. This phenomenon has not come out of nowhere. The effects of small-boat migration are increasingly making themselves felt in Scotland, and the records of the Conservatives and Labour in London and the SNP in Edinburgh have condensed into what one chap articulated as “a strong need to give someone a sore face”. While former Tory voters are the biggest source of Reform support, they are not the only one: I found more than one in ten 2021 Labour list voters leaning in Reform’s direction, not to mention one in sixteen of those who backed the SNP.

Even so, this gives the SNP a new purpose: that of a bulwark against the “far right” and, of course, the threat of England’s nasty political culture taking hold north of the border. (I would expect to see that message on a leaflet or two in the next few weeks).

Being the antidote to England, whether in the form of Starmer’s hopelessness or Farage’s right-wingery, is the SNP’s sweet spot. “Standing up for Scotland” was the only area in which I found most Scots – and three quarters of SNP voters – saying the Holyrood government had done a good job.

This can only be pushed so far, however. Only a quarter of Scots backed the idea that a pro-independence majority would constitute a mandate for another referendum. Indeed, only just over half of likely SNP voters agreed with the proposition. Those leaning towards the Greens – whose profile and credibility had received a boost from their success in the Gorton and Denton by-election – were divided but on balance agreed that we can’t assume someone supports independence just because they vote for a particular party. In fact, only a quarter of likely SNP voters put independence in the top three most important issues facing Scotland; for those leaning Green, the issue ranked equal eighth.

Just as the failings of the established parties – including the SNP – have opened the door to Reform, so Nigel Farage will concentrate nationalist minds. In other words, in this election, Reform and the SNP need each other. Who knows what the campaign will bring. But if, when the votes are counted, Farage and Swinney are the two big winners, both will regard that as a pretty good night’s work.