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Nationalists Are on Track to Win Every Seat in Scotland

This should be taken as a warning to any party that thinks it can take its constituents for granted indefinitely.
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Labour seems to be on track to lose every seat it holds in Scotland, and the SNP are poised to win all 59:

The SNP will win every seat in Scotland, a devastating poll has found as senior Scottish Labour figures demanded resignations over the possible wipeout.

The Scottish nationalist surge has been going on long enough over the last seven months that it can be easy to forget how remarkable these poll results are. The nationalists currently have six MPs. If the latest poll is right, the SNP will have almost ten times as many seats in the House of Commons after next week’s election as they have now. There may be other examples of such a dramatic and total humiliation for a major party in one of its traditional strongholds, but it is quite rare and fascinating to watch. Sebastian Payne relays some of the poll’s findings:

If there was any more proof needed that Scotland is the most politically fertile parts of the country, 80 per cent of those polled by Ipsos MORI said they are certain to vote in the upcoming election, just below the turnout in last year’s independence referendum. For comparison, 64 per cent of Scots voted in the 2010 general election. This marks the second poll this week which puts the SNP above 50 per cent — TNS also put the SNP on 54 per cent of the vote but predicted this would translate into 57 seats. Either the SNP are going to face a disappointment next Thursday, or Scotland is on course to turn into a one party country.

In the span of just five years, the Labour Party has gone from dominating Scotland in national elections to becoming a footnote. The rot may have set in long before these last few years, but the party now appears to be collapsing in all those places where it was once invincible. Not that long ago it seemed fanciful to think that the SNP would win 30 seats this year. Now 50 would be considered a disappointing result. This should be taken as a warning to any party that thinks it can take its constituents for granted indefinitely. Eventually, voters will get rid of representatives that neglect them and their interests. On occasion, they will get rid of an entire party that has served them badly.

The Scottish Labour leader, Jim Murphy, is coming under fire for the abysmal showing that his party will have next Thursday, but he was given an impossible task and it is doubtful that any leader would have been able to halt the pro-SNP wave. By the same token, it is doubtful that any Labour leader will be able to revive the party in time for the Scottish parliament elections next year. It’s possible that Murphy was the best leader Scottish Labour could have had under the circumstances, but that in itself shows the extent to which the party had become hopelessly out of touch with the voters there. Whatever else may come next, their repudiation by Scottish voters is a very healthy development.

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