Poll predicts Scottish wipeout for Labour in general election

Labour is facing a potential electoral wipeout in Scotland, with a new poll suggesting more than twice as many voters would back the Scottish National party in May’s UK general election.

The Ipsos Mori poll for STV found just 23 per cent of voters would back Labour if a general election were held immediately, compared with 52 per cent who would back the SNP. That would imply the loss of almost all the 41 Westminster seats Labour won in Scotland in 2010.

Such a result could kill the hopes of Ed Miliband, Labour leader, to form a government and would give the SNP unprecedented influence at Westminster despite the Scottish nationalists’ defeat in last month’s independence referendum.

“For Labour this is a massive shock,” said Mark Diffley, Director at Ipsos Mori Scotland.

“The challenge is pretty stark when you put these numbers on it – and there is only six months to go [to the UK general election],” Mr Diffley said. “They need to get themselves sorted pretty damn quick.”

A separate poll for the Times by YouGov also suggested Labour was facing disaster in May, but it put the party’s support at a slightly less woeful 27 per cent compared with 43 per cent backing the SNP.

A spokesman for Scottish Labour said: “It is clear that a vote for the SNP helps elect a Tory government. Nobody in Scotland wants to jump into bed with the SNP and wake up with the Tories.”

Labour officials are shell-shocked – not just by the poll but by the steady rise of the SNP in support and membership in the weeks following the referendum. “It’s clear there has been a post-referendum bounce,” said one. “We can’t really tell what it’s being caused by – we may simply be too close to it at the moment. But we are just a few weeks after the referendum – we don’t know what the situation will be come May.”

Analysts caution against reading too much into any single poll, but Labour has widely been seen to be struggling to regain momentum despite its leading role in the pro-union No side’s victory.

Scottish Labour last week suffered the acrimonious resignation of its leader Johann Lamont, who accused Labour’s UK leadership of treating the party in Scotland like a “branch office” and its Westminster MPs as “dinosaurs” who did not understand that the parliament at Holyrood was now the focus of Scottish politics.

The Ipsos Mori telephone poll put the SNP far ahead of all rivals among those certain to vote, with the Scottish Conservatives on 10 per cent and the Liberal Democrats and Scottish Greens both on 6 per cent when undecideds were excluded.

Mr Diffley said Labour’s low rating could mark a post-referendum trough from which its new leader could rebuild “like taking over a team at the bottom of the league”.

Jim Murphy, Labour MP and shadow international development secretary, on Wednesday confirmed he would stand as leader, saying the party needed to change and that he was "big enough and ugly enough" to ensure that the Scottish party could not be pushed around.

"I'm determined to bring the Labour party together, end the period of self-harm,” Mr Murphy told the BBC.

Two members of the Scottish parliament are also standing for leader, but Mr Murphy is considered the favourite and his path is likely to be smoothed by the surprise announcement by fellow Westminster MP Anas Sarwar that he would resign as deputy leader of the Scottish party.

The departure of Mr Sarwar, announced at a party dinner in Glasgow attended by Mr Miliband, would clear the way for the election of a new deputy to be drawn from the ranks of the Scottish parliament.

“I believe Scottish Labour should be represented by a leadership team that is focused on the Scottish parliament,” Mr Sarwar told the Daily Record ahead of the dinner.

Some Labour members in Scotland say giving the leadership to a Westminster MP would reinforce perceptions that the party is run from London, with one member of the Scottish parliament saying doing so could turn a “crisis into a catastrophe”.

Mr Murphy says he will step down from the UK parliament if elected leader and would seek election at Holyrood, aiming to become Scotland’s first minister in 2016 – a goal that polls suggest will be extremely challenging at best.