What now for Gordon and Alex?

I'll admit if things continue as they are the SNP will gain more seats at the nest Westminster election. However, in light of an interesting graph attached to these articles in today's Scotsman I'm going to add a couple of caveats.

The first is that this is not simply because of some uber-intelligent strategy of the SNP to attract more voters. But because the Labour party are in danger of going into freefall. The reason is aptly summed up by my own MP, Michael Connarty, who says in that article:

"[Gordon should] take some time for reflection in a quiet environment and speak to a wider range of people than he has as far been asking for advice. This means not just his confidantes or those left over from the Blair era."

The people have spoken to a new Prime Minister less than a year on the job in the way they know hurts most, through the ballot box. Yes the SNP can rejoice over their showings in opinion polls, their figures are going up, Labour's going down. But how many of those being asked are actually in a state of flux, disenchanted Labour voters who don't yet know where they will turn. Some of those may have already done that last May here in Scotland and in many areas to voice their disaproval already voted tactically for the best alternative to knock Labour down a peg size or two, voting for the Nats.

It the short term being a protest party against the Government isn't a bad thing, it's trying to move beyond that point and retain those votes that is hard. The SNP is not necessarily a natural final resting home for people who have permanently lost faith in Labour. So before 2010 unless some radical New New Labour emerges phoenix like from the ashes of this week the SNP will pick up seat on the back on doing nothing at all apart from being not Labour. Of course I know that won't be all of their strategy but watch out for it intensifying in their message over the next couple of years.

The second caveat relates to the graph itself. Sadly not viewable online. From the council votes this week it predicts the following changes to Westminster:

Tory gain 254 seats to 446
Lib Dems gain 28 to 91
Labour lose 298 to 53!!
Others gain 13

Note that is on current state of parties and does not account for the whip withheld MPS or the UKIP defection from a Tory seat.

That second caveat is that even with Labour close to the Canadian Progressive Conservative level of wipeout, the others are only predicted by the Scotsman to gain 13 seats. Now as it is a Scottish paper I'm assuming that some consideration has been made that Scotland had no elections this year, with Northern Ireland the only other parties generally predicted in the other's column and no new seats being created there, we can assume that the 13 others will be Nationalists, either the SNP or Plaid Cymru.

Now here's the rub. There are 59 seats in Scotland 39 held by Labour, 6 Nats, 1 Tory. There are 40 seats in Wales 29 held by Labour and 3 each by PC and the Tories. Assuming universality of the Labour wipe out, as I can't be bothered going through all 632 non-Northern Irish constituencies, that is 69% of their MPs gone.

In Scotland while that does mean 27 Labour MPs would go, while in Scotland the result sees 20 Labour seats wiped out, it fails to take into account that the Tory surge would almost certainly take some of these and the Lib Dems are also strong seconds in a number of others and could claim several of their 28 North of the border.

Of course central belt of Scotland and the heart of Wales are seats with some of the largest Labour majorities, 13 have a majority of over 40% between the two. Indeed drawing totally arbitrary lines in the sand at 20% majority Labour retains 23 MPs in Scotland and 18 in Wales. So I'm going to split the Nat gains fairly evenly by proportion. So the split of 13 gains ends up with:

7 more SNP up to 13
6 more Plaid Cymru up to 9.

Thus I conclude Alex Salmond has his work cut out to reach 20 SNP MPs.