Ipsos poll confirms that the end is nigh for Alba

I didn't get around to giving you the party political voting intentions numbers from the Ipsos poll yesterday, so here they are...

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 34%

Labour 23%

Reform UK 14%

Conservatives 10%

Liberal Democrats 9%

Greens 9%

Alba 1%

Scottish Parliament list ballot:

SNP 26%

Labour 22%

Reform UK 16%

Greens 15%

Conservatives 10%

Liberal Democrats 8%

Alba 2%

Scottish voting intentions for next UK general election:

SNP 31%

Labour 22%

Reform UK 16%

Conservatives 10%

Greens 10%

Liberal Democrats 9%

Alba 1%

If the Alba vote shares are accurate, and I don't particularly doubt that they are likely to be reasonably accurate, Alba have made no progress at all since 2021 when they were light-years short of winning any seats.  One of the several dishonest points in Jim McEleny's email to party members after resigning as convener of Alba's Inverclyde branch was that he tried to make out that things had fallen apart since the good old days when his son/brother (I think it's son but I'd better cover all the options) was General Secretary - ie. that opinion polls showed the party on course for seats back then but no longer do.  In fact there has been no change in the polls at all - Alba have always been on course for zero seats and they remain on course for zero seats.  To be blunt, Alba members were cynically deceived by Chris McEleny with his ridiculous "poll after poll" catchphrase - it was a downright lie that Alba were ever on course for seats, and yet it was obvious from social media that many Alba members were successfully duped.

This is why independence supporters must ignore the siren voices, such as the controversial "Stew" blogger, which are trying to convince them to throw their list votes away on fringe parties that cannot in the real world win any list seats.  Given how evenly spread their vote is, Alba would need to at least double their support to even have an outside chance of nicking a seat somewhere.  If anyone were to say "oh of course the SNP can achieve objective X or Y, all they need to do is double their vote", Stew would be the first to mock the naivety and the dishonesty of that position - so why it should supposedly be any different with Alba or with the wilder fringe elements represented by Liberate Scotland is a complete mystery.  There are only two pro-independence parties capable of winning list seats, namely the SNP and the Greens, and frankly the task facing anyone who is serious about electing a pro-indy majority at Holyrood next year is to choose between those two parties.  Voting for anyone else increases the chances of a unionist majority without a shadow of doubt.

Incidentally, I heard an extraordinary story last week about a senior figure within Alba, possibly even one 'of Salmond blood', trying to get the police involved in her vendetta against a female NEC colleague who recently left the party.  The story was so garbled that it was hard to fully make sense of, but there's a real whiff of 'the last days in the bunker' about Alba at the moment.  NEC or other committee members who are the subject of the leadership's paranoid suspicions about "treachery" should probably just count themselves lucky if they escape the firing squad.

Stew was gloating yesterday about John Swinney's net approval rating of -17.  It's true that's unusually low by the standards of other recent polls, but nevertheless it still leaves Mr Swinney with slightly better ratings than Mr Sarwar.  There was speculation at the Holyrood Sources event last week that Labour's position might improve once voters turn their attention away from Westminster and towards Holyrood, just as there was a big swing towards the SNP in 2011 once voters actually remembered it was a Holyrood election.  But that swing in 2011 was driven by two factors - a) the fact that Alex Salmond was regarded as a far more credible leader than Iain Gray, and b) the fact that the SNP were more trusted than Labour to stand up for Scotland.  Well, in the new Ipsos poll, John Swinney is slightly more popular than Anas Sarwar, and the SNP are more trusted than Labour to stand up for Scottish interests, by a margin of 37% to 12%.  If the hypothetical Labour fightback is going to happen, what exactly will it be built on?