(not satire)
There’s some pretty convincing statistical evidence in this study by Professor Phil Cowley at the British Election Study that Labour in Scotland will have to move quite a bit to the left if they want to win back SNP voters before next May’s general election.
Here’s Professor Phil Cowley’s key paragraph:
Labour voters in Scotland see themselves as left-wing and think they support a left-wing party and they see the SNP as noticeably to their right. SNP voters see the world differently: they see themselves as almost equally left-wing but they think they support a left-wing party, and see Labour as even further to their right.
According to the BES study, SNP voters rate themselves as 3.6 on the scale, their party as 3.8 and the Labour opposition as off to the right on 5.3:
That would suggest that if Labour in Scotland want to win back SNP voters, they will need to move to the left.
In fact, SNP voters on average see Scottish Labour as being slightly more to the right than the left so in theory they don’t regard it as a left wing party at all.
Interestingly, Scottish Labour voters see themselves in exactly the same position on the left-right scale as the Scottish Labour Party – but they perceive the SNP to be to the right of them:
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Which would suggest that if the SNP wanted to win even more Labour voters than they already have, they should also shift themselves more to the left.
Mind you, SNP supporters could quite rightly argue that, with their party at almost 50% in the polls at the present, they don’t need to move anywhere.
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Please feel free to comment. And share.
Pride's Purge 
Reblogged this on sdbast.
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Labour voters quite rightly see themselves as left-wing, but their party left them behind in the 1990s when Tony Blair ditched the party’s socialist principles in his quest for power. Labour’s new Scottish leader will not help his party’s fortunes either since he was one of Blair’s right-wing cheerleaders, happy to support the illegal war in Iraq, and to waste money on renewing WMD’s instead of helping the poor.
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Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog and commented:
This adds a bit more to the debate about which way the Labour party should go to win support in Scotland. The radical tradition of ‘Red Clydeside’ is alive and well north of the border, and it does resent the way the party’s policies are determined by the Islington clique down south, as shown in the recent change of leader. Some other, supporting evidence, for the view that the Scots Labour party will have to move further left to challenge the SNP comes from an interview the Scots SF authors China Mieville and the author of the ‘Culture’ novels gave to one of the SF magazines a few years ago. Neither of the two actually wanted an independent Scotland, but at least one of them had voted SNP as it was more left-wing than the Labour party.
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Left, right, centre who cares? Caring about people is what matters to voters. Scrapping Trident looks like a good policy to me. Putting people before “the body corporate” looks OK to me too. Left, right, centre who cares?
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@ beastrabban, China Miéville was born in Norwich, and has lived in London since childhood.
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Pingback: Proof that Labour in Scotland will have to move to the left to win back SNP voters | Alternative News Network
“The one on the right was on the left,
The one in the middle was on the right,
The one on the left was in the middle,
And the guy in the rear burned his driver’s licence.”
with apologies to Johnny Cash
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Reblogged this on nearlydead.
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Reblogged this on gingerblokeblog.
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All of this seems to demonstrate rather starkly that labour has no chance next May. If they move to the left (desirable in my view), it would have to be a move which includes all of the UK, not Scotland alone. This would result in most of the media recalling ‘winters of discontent’ etc. If they move to the left in Scotland alone, it would be denounced as ‘political maneuverings’. Whatever you do, you get Cameron/Farage, scary or what?
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It makes no difference how Scottish Labour swings it; left or right. It`s what happens in Westminster that determines the fate of Scotland. The people of Scotland know that . It`s why the SNP are still building support. They may end up holding the balance of power in Westminster after the general election.
The Labour party have betrayed their socialist roots and they have betrayed Scotland with their `better together` lies and their scare tactics. I`m afraid they`re going to be decimated at the general election both north and south of the border.
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dinnatouch – Absolutely right. I suspect Jim Murphy and Labour in Scotland will try to use more left-sounding rhetoric, whilst actually going nowhere at all in policy terms. Westminster Labour will just carry on as ‘Tory Lite’ in the hope that they upset as few people as possible.
The upshot will be a hung Parliament, with the SNP and possibly UKIP having substantial influence over policy. In the case of the SNP that would be brilliant for both Scotland and the UK.
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Reblogged this on Britain Isn't Eating.
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