Labour Votes and the missed opportunities

Scottish Labour’s framing of the election around the SNP and the constitution, avoided robustly challenging the Tories on their record in government at Westminster. Feedback from the doorstep was indicating people were fed up with the SNP; however, Labour’s disunity – especially with senior figures in Scottish Labour’s leadership team being openly hostile towards Jeremy Corbyn – turned people off. Moreover, the Scottish Tories managed to decouple themselves from David Cameron’s and Teresa May’s governments, and present themselves as being an effective opposition to the SNP. By not challenging effectively the Tories’ record in government since 2010 and focussing on the SNP, Scottish Labour’s strategists – still in the Better Together mind-set – tacitly oversaw the Scottish Tories increase their votes by approximately 5,500 in the average constituency (the Tories increased their votes across GB by 21%).

The SNP suffered significant losses in terms of seats and majorities, with the average constituency seeing a collapse of approximately 8,500; however, the majority of this went to the Tories. Scottish Labour’s strategists need to shift away from chasing Tory voters and fully harness Jeremy Corbyn’s transformational programme of government to win votes from people, who are experiencing (and/or concerned about) hardships due to austerity and the unfair economy.

The ‘Jeremy Corbyn’ effect saw the Labour vote increase by over one-third across GB (38%); however, in Scotland, where the Scottish Party led an anti-SNP campaign with the ‘send Nicola a message’ narrative that almost silenced Jeremy’s message of ‘for the many’, only saw a very small increase of 1% as Table 4 shows. Yet, this is better than many pollsters predicted at the start of the campaign. The more positive landing place is generally accepted due to Jeremy Corbyn’s national campaign.

After 15 months of a hostile PLP and media, the turning point of the campaign was the leaked draft manifesto and Jeremy Corbyn talking directly to voters, Jeremy’s campaign cut through the Scottish Labour message. This saw a surge of people opting to vote Labour for a better future. Unfortunately, by the time the momentum gathered the majority of the postal votes were cast. Yet, this ‘Corbyn bounce’ in a last few weeks of the campaign coupled with the collapse of SNP majorities saw an additional six Scottish Labour MPs returned to Westminster and many new marginals.