Keir Starmer ‘does not need Scotland’ to win election majority, says Yousaf
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Humza Yousaf has claimed that Labour will win a general election majority even without a single Scottish seat.
The First Minister pleaded with independence supporters not to abandon his party, claiming Sir Keir Starmer “does not need Scotland” to become prime minister due to Labour’s commanding lead in UK-wide polls.
The radical shift in strategy, which saw the SNP ditch its claim that it would “pull the strings” of the UK Government by holding the balance of power in a hung parliament, was branded “desperate” by opponents.
To win a majority without Scottish seats, Sir Keir would have to achieve a far larger swing from the Tories even than Tony Blair won in his 1997 landslide.
Mr Yousaf told independence supporters they “must” vote SNP to keep separation “on the table”, amid mounting evidence that they are deserting his party following a string of policy disasters and the police investigation into party finances.
One recent poll found the SNP is on course to lose up to 33 of the 48 seats it won at the 2019 general election in this year’s contest. Labour figures are confident they can claim well over 20 Scottish seats, compared with one in 2019.
“It’s very clear now that Keir Starmer is going to be the next Prime Minister,” Mr Yousaf said at an event billed as a general election campaign launch in Glasgow.
“Rishi Sunak is finished as PM. The Tories are done. Keir Starmer doesn’t need Scotland to win the next general election. He does need Scotland and SNP MPs to keep him honest.”
In May, Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, claimed that it was “increasingly clear” that his party would hold the balance of power in the hung parliament, putting Scotland in a “prime position to pull the strings of a minority UK Government”.
Mr Yousaf also said last year that he could demand an independence referendum in exchange for propping up a minority Labour government.
But Mr Flynn said on Friday that the “situation in England is very clear” and was certain to lead to Sir Keir becoming Prime Minister.
Asked whether this meant there would not be a hung parliament, he said: “I don’t think anyone can argue with the polls.”
However, Sir John Curtice, the UK’s leading pollster, said the claim that Labour “does not need Scotland” relied on polls remaining consistent and then being replicated at a general election which is likely to be several months away.
“If the polls are correct and nothing changes until the election, then Labour will not need Scotland,” Sir John said.
“But of course, neither of those conditions may be correct. The election could be 11 months away and who knows what could happen.
“It’s currently not an unreasonable supposition but it’s not necessarily a supposition that will stand the test of time. We’d be talking about a record swing.”
‘An obvious lie’
Blair McDougall, a Labour election candidate who was a senior figure in the pro-UK campaign at the independence referendum, said Mr Yousaf’s claim that Sir Keir could win the election without Scottish votes was an “obvious lie”.
“Without them, Starmer will need to secure a 14-point swing,” he wrote on his Notes on Nationalism blog.
“To put that into context, Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997 was a 10-point swing and Clem Attlee’s 1945 earthquake result was delivered on a 12-point swing.
“The swing needed, if Scots believe Yousaf that their votes are not needed, would see Labour win seats that have never, literally never, been Labour in all of political history.
“Yousaf is arguing that it’s a certainty that things that have never happened are certain to happen.”
Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader, said Mr Yousaf’s speech was “nothing more than another desperate attempt to reset the SNP’s failing political strategy”.
She added: “From talking down the influence that Scottish voters have to desperately moving the electoral goalposts, it is clear that the SNP is in trouble.”
