Anas Sarwar’s plea for the Prime Minister to step down has failed to boost Labour’s fortunes in the run up to the Holyrood election, a leading pollster has said.
Emily Gray, managing director of Ipsos Scotland, said the Scottish Labour leader’s call in February for Sir Keir Starmer to quit had “not really” made much difference to his support.
Ms Gray said: “We haven’t seen significant movement on that.”
Speaking at a webinar two weeks ahead of polling day for the Scottish Parliament, the Ipsos Scotland boss added: “What is clear from the trends you see in the polling is that the fortunes of Scottish Labour are pretty closely tied up with people’s views on the UK Government and the Prime Minister at Westminster.”
She also said the chances of a pro-union majority at Holyrood after May 7 “look pretty slim”.
While the prospect of a deal between Labour and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has grabbed headlines during the campaign, Ms Gray questioned if this would happen.
She said: “Could you have a pro-union coalition which might then return Anas Sarwar as first minister? On the polls as they stand, it is very hard to see that happening, it doesn’t look as if they have numbers.
“But let’s see if things change at all before polling day.”
Previous research by Ipsos had indicated 42% of voters could still change their minds about who to back on polling day, and Ms Gray added: “Last-minute movement at this election could make all the difference to whether the SNP are returned as a minority government again or win a majority of seats.”
She added that support for both John Swinney’s SNP and Reform UK – led in Scotland by Malcolm Offord – “looks firmer” than support for either the Tories or Labour, whose backing she said appeared “more vulnerable to voters potentially switching to other parties”.
With the polls putting the SNP on course for a record fifth consecutive Holyrood election victory, she said Mr Swinney’s party is “continuing to defy political gravity”.
However she said voters in Scotland “have pretty low expectations of what the SNP will actually deliver in government if it were to win a fifth parliamentary term”.
Ms Gray continued: “The cost of living is the second most important issue for voters at this election, just behind the NHS, but six in 10 of the Scottish public think that it is unlikely an SNP-led Scottish government would reduce the cost of living.
“It’s not that Scottish voters are deeply enthusiastic about the SNP but it is that they don’t see an alternative that they think will do a better job.
“Ahead of the UK general election Labour were more trusted than the SNP in Scotland to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, that has really changed.
“So the SNP emerge from this, from the public’s perspective, as the best of a somewhat disappointing bunch.”
