Don't split pro-UK vote, Ruth Davidson urges Scottish unionists

Ruth Davidson has warned unionist Scots not to "split the pro-UK vote" in Thursday's Holyrood election after Labour deployed Alistair Darling in a last-minute attempt to woo people who live in Tory-held seats.

With opinion polls showing Nicola Sturgeon on the cusp of winning an outright SNP majority, Ms Davidson said the election would come down to "razor-thin margins" and just a few more tactical regional list votes for the Tories could make the difference.

The former Scottish Conservative leader warned that unionist voters splitting their support between the Tories, Labour and the Liberal Democrats on their peach ballot papers risked letting in more nationalist MSPs.

Labour sent a letter from former Chancellor Mr Darling, who led the victorious Better Together campaign in the 2014 independence referendum, to thousands of households in the seven Tory-held Holyrood constituencies.

He argued that they should support Labour with their regional list votes, even if they carry on backing the Tories with their constituency ballot paper, in an attempt to get more anti-independence MSPs elected.

• ​Scottish election results 2021 - how Scotland voted

His plea represented a marked change in strategy amid a series of opinion polls showing Labour is on course to lose seats and suffer its worst ever Holyrood election result despite the popularity of its new leader, Anas Sarwar.

Sir John Curtice, the UK's most eminent pollster, has disclosed that around one in seven people who plan to vote Labour in their constituencies are supporting the Tories on the list.

The Tories have argued for weeks that Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters should vote tactically for them to stop Ms Sturgeon's plan for another independence referendum by the end of 2023.

Although Mr Darling's plea is a mirror image of the Tory strategy, it came less than 48 hours before polls open, with many voters having already made up their minds or having sent their postal ballots.

Ms Davidson urged voters to "think peach on Thursday" to stop an SNP majority and a second independence referendum and force Ms Sturgeon to instead focus on rebuilding the country after the pandemic.

She said: "A vote for any other party on the peach-coloured ballot could split the pro-UK vote, help to elect more nationalists, and wreck Scotland’s recovery from the Covid pandemic.

“Scotland's top pollster has said Labour are going to lose seats. Not one poll shows them stopping an SNP majority. That's why one in seven Labour voters are willing to lend their peach list votes to the Scottish Conservatives."

But in his letter, Mr Darling said: "In your seat, voting Conservative with your second vote won’t help stop the SNP. Only a vote for Scottish Labour will do that. You may not have voted Labour in the past, or you may have left us in recent years, but under Anas Sarwar's leadership, we have changed."

A Survation poll for Good Morning Britain on Monday found support for the SNP on the constituency vote had dropped three points to 47 per cent, with the Tories and Labour tied in second on 21 per cent. On the regional list vote, backing for the SNP was up two points on 37 per cent, the Tories were up two on 22 per cent and Labour was down four on 18 per cent.

A second poll, conducted by Opinium for Sky News, gave the SNP 51 per cent of the constituency vote, the Tories 23 per cent, Labour 19 per cent and the Liberal Democrats five per cent. The SNP was on 41 per cent of the regional vote, the Tories 23 per cent, Labour 17 per cent, the Greens eight per cent, the Lib Dems six per cent and Alex Salmond's Alba Party only three per cent.

This would give Ms Sturgeon's SNP 67 MSPs and a five-seat majority, with the Tories on 29 seats and Labour only 20.