Could the tide go out for Labour in Scotland?

I've rehearsed this point before, but the tragedy of the current situation is not that Labour have a very real chance of winning a majority in Scotland.  It's that Scotland is selling itself to Labour so cheaply.  There's no equivalent of the "French kiss" offer that finally brought to an end Bloc Québécois dominance.  Labour are not offering any constitutional change or progress for Scotland at all, and yet Scottish voters are seriously considering flocking back to them.

Think back to the commentary that followed the 2015 election when Labour lost Scotland.  They had been taking Scotland for granted for decades, and that complacency had finally caught up with them.  They had thought they could work with the Tories in the Better Together campaign with total impunity, and without any negative consequences to themselves, and they had been proved utterly wrong.  If they wanted to have any chance of recovering their former position, they would actually have to start listening to their ex-voters, particularly those who supported independence - you know, just as they listened to voters in Middle England in the 1990s and adjusted their policies in line with the aspirations of English voters.

And then think back to Labour's reaction to that commentary.  Listening to voters was something Labour does in England, not in Scotland.  It's the voters who are wrong in Scotland, not Labour.  It's Scottish voters who must recognise they need to change, not Labour.  And if the voters don't change, that's regrettable, but Labour losing elections would still be a price worth paying for being right about the Union.  (Can you imagine the same people, such as Ian Murray, saying that losing elections in England under Jeremy Corbyn was a pride worth paying for being right about democratic socialism?!)

The irony is that the voters in Scotland haven't actually changed - polls show that independence support is as high as ever.  Pro-independence voters are returning to Labour even though Labour are offering them nothing of what they want.  How fortunate it must feel to be a Scottish Labour candidate - you don't have to earn votes, you don't have to make painful policy sacrifices to win votes.  Unlike in England, no reflection or listening is required - you just do nothing and the votes still fly at you for no particular reason.

I suppose any country gets the politicians and politics it deserves, and if Scotland votes Labour in these circumstances, the lesson Labour will learn is that they can go back to treating Scotland with just as much contempt as they did prior to 2015, and can expect to keep being rewarded as they were in the old days.

However, there's nothing more important in politics than how reality matches up to expectations.  Objectively, the 2017 election was a superb result for the SNP, it was a landslide win on a par with Mrs Thatcher's in 1987, and yet it felt like a catastrophe because the SNP and others were expecting so much better.  Scottish Labour are now getting into the potentially dangerous position where they and others are starting to expect to win a majority - and if they fall short of that, the psychological impact could be immense.  They may have fallen in love with the idea of a Scottish comeback to a sufficient extent that being deprived of that might shock them enough to start thinking the unthinkable, and wondering if listening to Scottish voters might actually be necessary after all.

The problem is, of course, that the expectations of a Labour win are there for a very good reason - Labour already seem to have a slight lead in a contest which will be a 'home fixture' for themselves and an 'away fixture' for the SNP, and thus you'd think any further swing is more likely to be pro-Labour rather than pro-SNP.  However, there are a couple of caveats on that.  Firstly, pollsters are not unanimous in showing a Labour lead in Scotland - the most recent Ipsos poll showed a decent lead for the SNP, and as the only telephone pollster in Scotland, it's not inconceivable that Ipsos are right and others are wrong.  And secondly, even if Labour do have the small lead reported by Norstat, they've achieved it on the coat-tails of absolutely gargantuan leads over the Tories at GB level.  It's at least possible that if those GB leads slip, Labour could suffer a corresponding slip in Scotland, sufficient to nudge the SNP back into a small lead.  And while it's probably impossible for the Tories to overturn Labour's GB lead, it's certainly within the realms of imagination that the lead could be trimmed from, say, 20-25 points to 10-15.  That kind of partial reversal of the tide might yet be enough to make all the difference in Scotland.  

However, the SNP would be incredibly foolish to bank on that, and they really need to start considering major strategic changes of their own.

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