Support for independence is solid so why is SNP shedding supporters?

However, that is the English picture. The election in Scotland, on the other hand, is legitimately fascinating. Again, the fascination is not so much the impact the election in Scotland has on the composition of the green benches at Westminster, but the impact it has on the composition of the brown leather chairs at Holyrood in 2026.

Labour is back. Confirmed again in yesterday’s exclusive Herald poll, conducted by Survation in association with Ballot Box Scotland, Labour’s single seat will be turned into several dozen (31 according to BBS based on yesterday’s poll, and anything from 20 to 40 in other polling), and the SNP’s 48 seats will be reduced significantly (to 17, BBS believes).

Sir Keir Starmer is almost certain to be the next PM (Image: free)

The shift in power is not shocking; it is, in fact, predictable and traditional politics. Just as voters throughout the UK have turned against the Conservatives based on a message of competence and change, so voters in Scotland are turning against the SNP based on the same premise.

What is of much more significance is the continuing solid support for independence. Yesterday’s poll has Yes support at 46 per cent, which is broadly in line with almost all polling which asks the binary question.

In other words, the votes for the SNP and the votes for Yes are being disaggregated. This disaggregation means that we are in the midst of a change in voting patterns every bit as meaningful and impactful as the surge in SNP support in the aftermath of the independence referendum a decade ago.

There is a clear subtext which explains why this is happening; it is because independence is off the table. This is now axiomatic, yet it is an axiom some are struggling to accept. The SNP and the Tories have both profited over the last decade from a heightened opportunity or risk (delete according to your constitutional preference) of independence.

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The realistic prospect of a second independence referendum has galvanised supporters of Yes around the SNP, and in the face of a Labour party which showed weakness on the issue, galvanised the No vote around the Tories. When independence is on the table, the SNP and the Tories are on the table.

But this is now falling to pieces. The ascent of Sir Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar, both credible leaders and both clear on their opposition to independence, combined with the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling that the Scottish Parliament does not have power to legislate for a second referendum, and further combined with a post-Covid reappraisal of most people’s priorities, have changed the rules of the game.

Voters regularly told pollsters in previous years that independence, whether in support or in opposition, was their first, second or third priority. No longer. Quarterly polling conducted by the Diffley Partnership for the David Hume Institute now records it somewhere in the teens in terms of priority, behind mental health, behind schools, behind housing, even behind Brexit.

The SNP and the Tories have a vested interest in clinging to the independence life raft. The Tories’ best moment of this campaign was when the SNP’s manifesto placed independence on ‘page one, line one’, because it gave them a credible reason to focus on it as a way to galvanise a unionist vote. However, they are facing a strong headwind. There is a mutually assured destruction between the SNP and the Tories, and the voters are pressing both buttons at the same time.

Douglas Ross and Rishi Sunak have endured a torrid election campaign (Image: free)

Since the last general election, the Tories have lost their transactional, unionist vote, slipping by somewhere around eight per cent. Similarly, the SNP has lost somewhere around 12 per cent; voters who still believe in independence but no longer prioritise it, and therefore no longer see an SNP vote as a fait accompli.

Next Thursday, both of those apparently irreconcilable groups will likely vote for the same party - Labour.

What is fascinating, between next Thursday and the Scottish Parliament election of 2026, is what Labour do with this. Can Anas Sarwar move us to a post-constitutional political environment, where voters can retain their views on independence whilst also accepting that the debate is moribund and that, to put it bluntly, there are bigger fish to fry?

Perhaps. He will have plenty data to light his path. Polling for the Holyrood Sources podcast, of which I am a host, also conducted by the Diffley Partnership, showed that nearly half of Labour voters want more power devolved from Westminster to Holyrood, and that almost one-third of SNP voters would not vote for independence if Scotland instead had some form of enhanced devolution.

Mr Sarwar has this desire for decentralisation in mind as he explores options for elected mayors and more regionalisation in Scotland, which has become extraordinarily centralised during the first quarter century of devolution.

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None of this is a done deal. The SNP, internally, will point to their general election result in 2010, when they returned only six seats on a 20 per cent vote share, before breaking the Holyrood electoral system only a year later, with a 45 per cent vote share. Then, the electorate showed an ability to express a preference for Labour at Westminster, but for the SNP at Holyrood.

John Swinney and Kate Forbes, no doubt, will try to bottle the remains of that successful strategy and give it a go for 2026. However if they lose, and if Labour’s momentum takes Anas Sarwar into Bute House, and takes the country further beyond the constitutional debate, we will look back on next Thursday as a dawn of a new era for Scottish politics.

Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters and Zero Matters