Pro-UK parties fight for second place in Scotland

If the crucial battle for second place in Scotland’s parliamentary elections were decided by a dance-off, Anas Sarwar, new leader of Scottish Labour, would already have won.

Sarwar charmed social media when he got down to Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk with an outdoor dance class during a campaign stop in central Scotland this month. By contrast, Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross’s self-choreographed riposte, a performance of an Atomic Kitten song, was dubbed “toe-curling” by the Glasgow-based Daily Record.

But the contest between the Conservatives and Labour is a serious matter. Both parties trail far behind the pro-independence Scottish National party ahead of voting on May 6, but which of them comes second could have far-reaching implications for Scotland’s constitutional debate and the future of the UK.

If Labour is able to overtake the Tories to become the second-largest group in the Edinburgh parliament, it would raise hopes for a long-awaited revival of the party that once dominated Scottish politics — and for a renewed pro-UK challenge to the SNP for the loyalties of leftwing voters.

Slipping to third place would be a heavy blow for the Conservatives, who have used their success in surpassing Labour at the last Scottish parliamentary elections in 2016 to portray the party as the bulwark of resistance to the SNP’s push for another independence referendum.

Coming second is “clearly important”, said Ross, elected Tory leader in Scotland only last August. “The Scottish Conservatives are the strongest challengers to the SNP — people have seen that over the past five years,” he told journalists last week.

Tory success in holding on to the party’s 2016 gains appears far from assured, however. The Financial Times’ opinion poll tracker shows Labour narrowing the Conservatives’ lead in recent weeks. With less than a week to go to polling day, both parties had a 21 per cent share in the constituency vote section of the elections, although Labour still trailed three points behind the Tories on the regional lists that are used to make the Edinburgh parliament more proportionally representative.

“It’s looking very close,” said Emily Gray, Scotland managing director for polling company Ipsos Mori. “The Conservatives have had a fairly lacklustre campaign and Douglas Ross’s ratings have certainly fallen a bit in recent polls compared with a couple of months back.”

Sarwar, by general consensus, has had a better campaign. A former Labour member of the UK parliament and deputy leader of the Scottish party, he has given assured performances in televised party leader debates and in just a few months has achieved greater voter recognition than his predecessor Richard Leonard managed in years.

A former dentist, Sarwar was steeped in politics from an early age — his father is Mohammad Sarwar, who was the UK’s first Muslim MP and is currently governor of Punjab in Pakistan. While seen as a centrist within Labour, he is ideologically flexible and set out a leftwing policy stall in his leadership campaign.

And he has taken a conciliatory tone to party comrades unhappy that he sent his children to the same expensive private school that he attended. “I accept it is a fair criticism,” he told journalists last month.

A poll by Savanta ComRes for The Scotsman newspaper published on Thursday found Sarwar was the second most popular party leader in Scotland after Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP, with a net favourability rating of +9 compared to Ross’s -15.

John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde university, said Sarwar’s ability to think on his feet had helped him score points against his Conservative rival. In a BBC encounter early in the campaign, Sarwar portrayed Ross as obsessed by the constitutional issues and told him to “grow up” when he said the Tories would refuse to work on other issues with the SNP.

And in a Channel 4 debate last week, Sarwar seized on Ross’s admission of past opposition to gay marriage and attempts as a local councillor to make it more difficult for gypsy travellers to find camp sites in his native Moray. “We’re back to the same old Tories and frankly we deserve better,” said Sarwar.

“What he’s proved himself most adept at doing is coming up with one-liners to put down Douglas Ross,” said Curtice.

But the Channel 4 debate also highlighted Sarwar’s vulnerability on the independence question, now the main faultline in Scottish politics. While opposing a second referendum, he has refused to say whether he thinks the UK government should approve one if there is a majority for it in the Scottish parliament, instead seeking to shift election debate to other issues such as health policy and child poverty.

Gray said Labour was in a difficult position because of its lack of a clear position on an independence referendum, the result of the party’s need to try to retain a current voter base that is divided between backers of the union between Scotland and England and those would favour leaving the UK.

“The independence question still hampers Labour,” added Gray. “Whichever way they move on it they are probably going to lose support.”

And Curtice said polls suggested that, so far at least, Sarwar has had only limited success in converting his personal approval ratings into support for his party.

“Lots of people [are] going: ‘Yeah, he’s not a bad chap’, but not then going on to saying they are going to vote Labour,” he added.