Speaking to The Steamie, The Scotsman’s political podcast, the polling expert predicted that the local election would see potential SNP gains and Conservative losses, with Scottish Labor potentially coming in second.
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read more Douglas Ross interview: Boris Johnson “fit for office” despite the Partygate scandal Although the Scottish Government is under tremendous pressure over its responsibilities, Sir John said issues such as the ferry fiasco are unlikely to change the minds of many voters as to who to vote for due to the pull of the constitutional debate. Two ferries, the Hull 801 and the 802, are at least 150 150 million above budget and five years behind ministers’s contract with Ferguson Marine. The professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde said the independence movement was unlikely to suffer from the SNP’s perceived incompetence due to the party’s possibility of “not surviving the experience” of Scottish independence. He said: “If Scotland became an independent country, there is no guarantee that the SNP would inherit the land. Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon under pressure over alleged incompetence within Scottish government “Just to point out that trying, as he puts it, to cut independence with the SNP incompetence is not necessarily a logical argument, and I’m not sure if that ultimately works.” The poll expert said that the real debate about independence in a post-Brexit world after Covid in the face of a possible indyref2 has not yet begun. He said: “What matters is the quality of the arguments about the economic consequences of independence, Brexit, etc., and this is a debate that we still have to have north of the border. “Neither side has dealt with the fact that the argument for and against independence is very, very different from what it was in 2014. “It is a much bigger, much more intense, much more geostrategic choice than it was in 2014.” Parties have spent much of their campaign campaigning, claiming that they are the only ones who can defeat either the SNP or the Conservatives. However, Sir John said much of the rhetoric about the election material was “special nonsense” and warned that trade unionists could lose a trick. This is due to the fact that pro-independence voters are accepting a very strong slogan to give their preferences to the Greens due to the coalition between the party and the SNP, with pro-independence voters not receiving such a regular push. Sir John said: “I have received many leaflets telling me that we are the only party here that the SNP can beat, so you have to vote for us. The honest truth is that this is idolatry under the STV system. “If you want to beat the SNP or you really want to win the Conservatives or any other party, what do you have to do with your ballot, [it] it does not matter who you prefer your first preference to, just keep sorting the candidates so that you put the party you really do not like at the bottom. “In a sense, the trade unionists are in danger of losing a trick. If the nationalist transfers really work more effectively than in 2017 and the trade unions do not because voters have not been given the slogan, then the trade unions are in danger of losing.” Douglas Ross and Anas Sarwar have both said they are confident their respective parties will finish in second place overall, with the Scottish Conservatives securing second place in 2017 in one of the best results of all time in local elections. However, Sir John said the rise of Scottish Labor to second place would not be due to a resurgence in the fortunes of Mr Sarvar’s party. He said: “If Labor gets the equivalent of about 24 per cent of the vote they are currently collecting at the polls, it will be only one or two points more than last year. “This is not a dramatic Labor recovery. We are talking about Labor coming in second because of declining Conservative support, not because there is a major revival of Anas Sarwar. “We have to keep this in mind. It is the Tories who are slipping to third place, the title, not the rise of Labor to second place.” Sir John’s assessment comes as the Tories of Scotland urged Nicola Sturgeon to confirm that any silencing orders for Ferguson Marine employees would be revoked immediately by the Scottish Government. Ms Sturgeon told First Ministry’s Questions on Thursday: “No one at Ferguson Shipyard will be prevented in any way, shape or form from speaking fully to Audit Scotland.” However, Graham Simpson, Scotland’s shadow Transport Minister, said: “Confidential people with a specific knowledge of what went wrong with the ferry contract were prevented from speaking by using silencing orders. “These non-disclosure agreements have prevented key Ferguson Marine employees from talking to the Auditor General or making public what they know.”
