Fear grips Westminster as landmark Telegraph mega-poll shows pro-independence parties are on course to win AN OUTRIGHT MAJORITY OF THE POPULAR VOTE at a de facto referendum in 2024

You'll probably have seen by now that there's a headline-grabbing Britain-wide poll for the Daily Telegraph which projects that a general election now would result in a Labour government, with the SNP overtaking the Tories to become the Official Opposition, and with Stephen Flynn replacing Keir Starmer as Leader of the Opposition.  I initially thought the Scottish component of the projection must be fairly questionable due to being based on a tiny sample size, but in fact that's not the case - the GB-wide sample was an enormous 28,000, meaning that the Scottish subsample is roughly the same size as would generally be used for a full-scale Scottish poll.  Here are the percentage voting intentions...

Find Out Now poll for the Daily Telegraph (27th January - 5th February 2023)

GB-wide voting intentions for the next UK general election:

Labour 49%

Conservatives 21%

Liberal Democrats 10%

Greens 6%

Reform UK 6%

SNP 5%

Plaid Cymru 1%

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election:

SNP 48%

Labour 25%

Conservatives 12%

Liberal Democrats 7%

Greens 3%

Reform UK 3%

There's almost no chance in the real world that the SNP will become second party in the Commons.  That doesn't necessarily mean the poll is wrong, but it's a snapshot of opinion at a certain period of time, and the likelihood is that when a general election comes around the Tories will be able to shore up their support sufficiently to at least hold on to most of their heartland seats.  So in a way that means everyone is missing the point about this poll - what's interesting about it is not the projection of Flynn as Leader of the Opposition, but instead the fact that the SNP and Greens between them have 51% of the popular vote in Scotland.  Which means that if the SNP stick with the original plan of using the next Westminster election as a de facto independence referendum, an outright mandate for independence would, on these numbers, be won.

That said, given the unusual nature of the poll, and the relatively untested nature of Find Out Now as a pollster, it's hard to know how much credence to give to the numbers.  If they can be trusted, they certainly seem to suggest that the impact of the GRR controversy has been vastly overstated - either that, or the SNP's U-turns on trans prisoners have reversed the damage.  (The fieldwork for this poll was conducted after Nicola Sturgeon announced Isla Bryson would not be held at Cornton Vale.)

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