Trade union leaders rallied against P&O bosses and the Conservative government in Westminster, demanding legal action and a boycott, applauding Scottish Labor leader Anas Sarwar, who then drove to the P&O terminal in Cairnryan. Sea of Ireland. This revitalizing air suits Sarwar. His party’s fortunes seem to be improving, on the eve of his first electoral test as leader of the Scottish Labor Party, in the local elections in May. For the first time since 2017, opinion polls this year firmly show Labor coming second in Scotland, replacing Tories as the main contenders for Nicholas Sterzon’s Scottish National Party. Party leaders are usually skeptical about opinion polls. record the mood, not the behavior or participation of voters. However, a poll has particularly excited Sarwar. Last week, Survation put the Labor Party at 27% for the Westminster election (excluding the undecided) – the highest poll in five years. During the worst months under Jeremy Corbyn, Scottish Labor support fell to 13%. With those numbers, Sarwar believes, Labor could regain a number of Scottish seats in the next general election. Every extra point north of 27% means a lot more gains in the Commons, he believes, and that boosts Keir Starmer ‘s chances of becoming prime minister. Sarvar strongly argued that Scotland was the initial “red wall” of Labor: it was the point where party support first collapsed in the 2015 general election, holding only one seat in Westminster in a humiliating disaster at the hands of the SNP . A recent poll by Survation, commissioned by Ballot Box Scotland, a political blog, also found that in the May general election, Labor garnered 23% of the vote, compared with 18% for the Tories and 44% for the SNP. “What I’m sure of is that the Scottish Workers ‘Party is back on the pitch, that the Scottish Workers’ Party is changing and that this is starting to resonate with the world,” Sarwar told the Observer as P&O protests continued behind him. “There is still a long way to go. The latest trends are positive, but I’m not in it to come second. “I’m in it to be first.” But, say Labor analysts and election expert Sir John Curtice, this mediocre Labor renaissance comes from anti-independence voters frustrated by Tories under Boris Johnson following the partygate scandals on Downing Street. There is no indication that the prime minister is enjoying a boost in support because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This mediocre Labor renaissance may have come from anti-independence voters frustrated by the Tories under Boris Johnson. Photo: Chris J Ratcliffe / EPA Labor’s generals are skeptical about their chances on May 5, when the party hopes to improve on the 262 seats it won in Scotland’s 2017 local elections. which asks voters to rank candidates in order of preference. SNP supporters have the lowest tendency to vote, but unless nationalist voters stay at home in very large numbers, Labor can only cannibalize votes from other pro-UK parties to win. He needs to see floating trade union voters switch to Labor or Tory and Liberal Democrat supporters voting regularly to keep away the pro-independence and pro-Green SNP candidates. It is very rare for SNP voters to lend Labor their second or third ballot. they are very likely to go to the Scottish Greens party, which is in alliance with the SNP in Holyrood. Sturgeon faces important and challenging questions about its government’s financial capacity: there have been revelations of costly delays on two vital new ferries to Hebrides, anger over councils that changed little in Scotland’s recent budget, and local service cuts. But even that is unlikely to affect the SNP vote next month, Curtice believes. Repeated polls show that in Scotland a voter’s preferences are determined almost entirely by their place in the constitution. Normal differences in policy and service delivery are “irrelevant” to most voters, he said. Curtice argues that Scotland’s political landscape has strong parallels with the constitutional divisions that govern Northern Ireland politics, where no Irish nationalist could ever vote for the Democratic Unionist Party. “It’s all almost a referendum now,” Curtice said. “This division is even more pronounced now than it was for Brexit south of the border in 2019.” At Sarwar’s side in the sun in Cairnryan was Elaine Murray, the outgoing Labor leader of the Dumfries and Galloway council, where 10 Labor councilors shared power with 10 SNP councilors to keep the Tories, the largest party with 16 chairs, outside the office. He retires in May, but sees, he says, solid evidence that trade union voters are returning to Labor. Despite strong pressure from the Labor left, including whispers from some of Starmer’s advisers, to be more polite in the case of an independence referendum, Sarvar has taken a hard line against independence. Combined with the much-hyped and recognizable name of Sarvar as the son of the first Muslim MP in the UK, Mohamed Sarvar, Murray believes voters are moving away from the Tories. “On the doorstep, things are improving,” he said. “We see people who left us in 2016 and 2017 to return. “It’s because of Boris.”
