We noticed a recurring theme in our latest Panelbase poll. In recent years Scottish politics has of course been defined mainly by the constitution, with all three major UK parties united in opposition to the SNP more or less reflexively. But if you strip out questions about the constitution, voters have largely reverted to the previous norm of a broadly centre-left consensus against the Conservatives.

For years now Lib Dem voters have shown up in polling as essentially Tories Lite, not because individual people’s opinions had changed but because most of the party’s traditional left-leaning voter base had abandoned it in disgust after the 2010 coalition which saw Lib Dem support plunge from 23% to 8% in a single Parliamentary term.

But now – although Lib Dem support has barely increased – things are changing.

In our poll we asked a series of questions about the Scottish Parliament’s devolved responsibilities, and the most interesting thing was the Lib Dems’ positioning relative to the other parties. The table has a lot of numbers in it, so we’ll summarise it for you.

The phrasing was “In your personal experience/opinion, how would you rate the overall state of the following public services?”, and the net responses came out:

THE HEALTH SERVICE

Overall: +17

(Good 46, Bad 29, Neither 25)

SNP VOTERS +46

(Good 62, Bad 16, Neither 22)

LABOUR VOTERS +8

(Good 41, Bad 33, Neither 27)

LIB DEM VOTERS +21

(Good 47, Bad 26, Neither 27)

TORY VOTERS -22

(Good 26, Bad 48, Neither 27)

EDUCATION

Overall: +19

(Good 46, Bad 27, Neither 27)



SNP VOTERS +52

(Good 64, Bad 12, Neither 24)

LABOUR VOTERS +20

(Good 45, Bad 25, Neither 30)

LIB DEM VOTERS +14

(Good 41, Bad 27, Neither 33)

TORY VOTERS -27

(Good 26, Bad 53, Neither 21)

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Overall: +10

(Good 40, Bad 30, Neither 31)



SNP VOTERS +26

(Good 50, Bad 24, Neither 26)

LABOUR VOTERS +6

(Good 39, Bad 33, Neither 28)

LIB DEM VOTERS +7

(Good 33, Bad 26, Neither 30)

TORY VOTERS -12

(Good 27, Bad 39, Neither 35)

POLICING

Overall: +8

(Good 38, Bad 30, Neither 32)



SNP VOTERS +35

(Good 52, Bad 17, Neither 30)

LABOUR VOTERS -6

(Good 30, Bad 36, Neither 35)

LIB DEM VOTERS -7

(Good 28, Bad 33, Neither 40)

TORY VOTERS -23

(Good 25, Bad 48, Neither 27)

HOUSING

Overall: -14

(Good 25, Bad 39, Neither 36)



SNP VOTERS +9

(Good 38, Bad 29, Neither 32)

LABOUR VOTERS -31

(Good 20, Bad 51, Neither 28)

LIB DEM VOTERS -23

(Good 15, Bad 38, Neither 47)

TORY VOTERS -31

(Good 16, Bad 47, Neither 36)

Now, there are several quite interesting things about those stats. One is that the two where voters are least happy – policing and housing – are the two where the Scottish Government’s record is empirically the best.

Crime is at an 42-year low and police numbers at almost an all-time high, nearly 1000 higher than when the SNP came to power, yet many voters still have a negative view. A massive 48% of Tories think policing is in a bad condition despite those statistics, presumably because muggers still aren’t being publicly flogged and hanged.

And the Nats have built far more council housing than previous governments (9,195 in 10 years, compared to just 358 in the preceding eight years of Labour/Lib Dem rule), maintained housing-association build levels despite a decade of austerity, safeguarded social housing stocks further by ending Right To Buy, protected both social and private tenants, implemented a widely-envied affordable-housing strategy, effectively abolished the Bedroom Tax and ended stamp duty for the vast majority of buyers, yet have garnered next to no appreciation for it.

Conversely, the areas in which conditions are the most difficult and some stats are suffering as a result – health and education – are the ones voters are happiest with.

It’s also worth noting that despite an absolutely endless daily torrent of “EVERYTHING IN SCOTLAND IS TERRIBLE” propaganda from the media and the opposition parties, even most Unionist voters think services are holding up pretty well. Only 26% of Lib Dems think the NHS is in a bad way. Only 25% of Labour voters are unhappy with the state of education. Even where the net ratings are in the red, only one in three Labour voters think public transport is actually bad.

But what’s striking is that on everything except housing, the Tories are WAY out of step with the rest of the opposition. (Which in itself is also somewhat odd, as housing is the place where SNP policy is most unarguably redistributive from rich to poor, so you’d think Labour and Lib Dem voters would be happier.)

The gulf between Lib Dem voters and Tory ones on the state of the NHS, for example, is a colossal 43 points. And on education – despite Scottish Labour’s constant attacks on it, in lockstep with those of the Scottish Conservatives – their own voters’ opinions diverge from those of Tory supporters by a whopping 47 points.

And that’s strange because all these people are using the exact same services (except Tories, who are more likely to have private healthcare and education, which if anything you’d expect to be better), yet have wildly different perceptions of their quality.

Out of interest, we then asked our sample if they thought any of Scotland’s devolved public services would be better were they run by the UK government at Westminster instead. The response was pretty resounding.

Fully 60% of Lib Dem voters and 57% of Labour ones thought that even where they weren’t happy with Scottish services, things would be even worse if any of them were under UK government control, with barely a fifth being prepared to hand back any one in particular. (38% of Lib Dems, say, thought housing was being handled badly by the Scottish Government, but only 7% wanted it run by Westminster instead.)

Even 29% of Tory voters didn’t think any devolved services would do better under their own London colleagues. (Conversely, a completely bewildering 13% of SNP voters reckoned Westminster would make a better job of the Scottish NHS, which if nothing else does seem to prove that there are some sizeable gaps in NHS Scotland’s mental health provision.)

And weirdest of all, the MORE unhappy voters were with the state of a devolved public service, the LESS they wanted Westminster to run it instead. Health and education got the best ratings but also the most people (27% and 25%) wanting them returned to London. Housing, the least popular of all, was also the one that FEWEST people (just 19%) wanted taken away from Holyrood.

It remains a puzzle to us that a majority of Scots trust their own government to control all the things they rely on day-to-day, yet they still want to surrender all the most key powers to a government Scotland has rejected at the ballot box for the last 63 years.

But it’s clear that the Conservative Party is still at ideological odds with the vast bulk of Scots, including most of its Unionists. So far, Scotland remains a country that’ll do anything to free itself from the Tories except vote for it.