Just how far has the Labour Party fallen in Scotland? One recent poll put Labour on 26 per cent of the vote, a mighty 25 percentage points behind the SNP. Is this a true reflection of Labour’s standing in Scotland? We don’t know yet but we will in the spring when voters go to the polls in Scotland’s local elections.
Local government contests are usually pretty low-key affairs but this year’s will be slightly different. All the main parties will go into them knowing that they represent the only real test of public opinion this year and the only real indication of how well the SNP Government is doing – and that will be crucial ahead of the independence referendum.
The SNP will expect to make progress. Labour will be desperate to hang on to what it has. The Tories would like moderate gains but are used to not doing very well and the Liberal Democrats, well, they will just be hoping they don’t get completely gubbed.
This year’s council elections will also be different from recent contests, first because they are not going to be overshadowed by parliamentary elections and also because proportional representation has started to really change Scotland’s town hall map.
At the moment, the SNP has a hand in power in a dozen of Scotland’s 32 local authorities and although it does not control any outright, it does have minority administrations in three and is in relatively stable coalitions in another half dozen.
Can the SNP extend its power in Scotland’s town halls and grab a share of power in each and every local authority in the country?
It would take a big shift to the SNP for the Nationalists to achieve their aim, particularly with the independents still a force (although a declining one) in the north of the country and Labour support remaining bullish in parts of west and central Scotland.
But the SNP only needs to pick up a proportion of the new voters it won over this year to start making inroads in those areas where it has so far found it impossible to take at least partial control.
Then there is control over Cosla, the local government umbrella organisation. This has been Labour-dominated for as long as anyone can remember. If the SNP was to get some kind of control in every council in Scotland, the case for a Nationalist president of Cosla would become difficult to resist.
That would change the relationship between Scotland’s councils and the Scottish Government which has been tetchy, to say the least, for the past few years.
Voters often use council elections to pass judgment on the performance of their national governments and this is also likely to happen next year, but which government will they pass judgment on?
All councils are having to try to provide the same level of services as they have for years, but with less money. Jobs are going and services are suffering. The voters know that but what nobody knows, as yet, is whether the voters will blame the councils for those ever-widening holes in the road, the delayed bin collections and shoddy service, or will they blame the UK or Scottish governments?
This is a key factor because the SNP tends to do well in Holyrood contests with Labour doing better at UK General Elections.
If the local elections mirror last year’s Holyrood vote, then the SNP can expect to do well, particularly at the expense of the Lib Dems.
But this would bring its own problems. While the SNP might pick up votes and seats from the Lib Dems across the country, a collapse in the Lib Dem vote would make it more difficult for the SNP to find willing and acceptable coalition partners – the SNP share power with the Libs in four Scottish councils. The advent of proportional representation for council elections has also resulted in a reduction in the power and influence of the traditional Highland independents, a trend that is unlikely to be reversed next year.
Much attention will be focused on the big, influential councils like Edinburgh and Glasgow.
At the moment, Edinburgh is ruled by a Liberal Democrat/SNP coalition but the trams debacle has cast such a pall over the city that all the parties represented on the council are likely to suffer.
As a result, no-one can predict the election result with any degree of certainty. What does seem likely, though, is that the Lib Dems will lose seats, probably to the benefit of the SNP and Labour.
But whether the SNP will gain enough to take complete control of the capital remains to be seen.
In Glasgow, the election should be much more straightforward. Labour secured 45 of the city’s 79 councillors in 2007 – twice as many as the SNP’s 22. With its success in the Holyrood elections acting as a fillip, the Nationalists would hope to make further inroads into Labour’s council block but a change in control of the council is unlikely: Labour should stay in control, but with a reduced majority.
In other Labour-run councils, though, the situation is less clear. In areas like North Lanarkshire, the gap between Labour and the SNP is smaller (40 councillors to 23 councillors) and it is in traditional areas like this that the Nationalists hope to make the most headway.
While not expecting to take over the council, SNP strategists believe they could make enough progress to take a share of control in North Lanarkshire and maybe in other parts of west and central Scotland too.
There is also one other bonus that comes from doing well at local government level, something the Lib Dems have been particularly good at exploiting in the past – and that is using elected representation to build towards greater electoral success at a national level.
For years, Labour has had battalions of councillors in west and central Scotland willing and able to knock on doors, deliver leaflets and spread the word about Labour successes.
If the party goes on losing council seats to the Nationalists, that balance of power on the doorsteps will change. The SNP can expect to gain much more than council seats at this election. It should look to take hold of local areas in the way the Labour Party did for generations.
If it can do that, then it really can look forward to displacing Labour as Scotland’s natural party of government – at all levels.
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