LABOUR and the Tories face being wiped out in Scotland as part of a UK-wide political realignment over Brexit.
The findings are published today in a new report by the Hope Not Hate charitable trust.
Their analysis, carried out jointly with Best For Britain, found that the Labour Party would win more seats than any other party in the UK, despite losing 40% of their vote.
The Tories, however, would haemorrhage MPs, losing 181 of the seats it currently holds, mainly to the Brexit Party but also some to the LibDems and the SNP and a handful to Labour.
Nigel Farage’s party would move in to second place, winning 135 seats, 124 of them from the Tories.
In Scotland, the SNP would win all but the four seats currently held by LibDem MPs. Only 48% of people who voted Tory in 2017 now say that they would vote the same way in a new General Election.
READ MORE: Polling proves the writing is on the wall for the ‘precious Union’
Hope Not Hate say that based on their evidence it seems “virtually impossible” that Jeremy Corbyn’s (pictured below) party could get a majority in Parliament with its current Brexit policy, adding: “The only way it can form a government will be in coalition with the LibDems and/or the SNP – and the price for such a deal will likely be a second EU referendum, a change to the voting system and/or a promise of a new independence referendum for Scotland.”
Across the UK, the report also shows how the failure of the UK Government to bring the country together over Brexit has inflamed a “Culture War” with attitudes to identity, race, faith and belonging all hardening over the last few years.
A “disconnection and growing resentment towards ‘the establishment’ is driving” people in the UK apart, the report says.
In a poll of more than 6000 people for the charity, YouGov found that 52% of people agree that you cannot be proud of your national identity these days without being called racist – only 27% disagree.
When you break that down by party lines, that statement was backed by 71% of 2017 Tory voters and 75% of Leave voters.
However, the poll also reveals a surprising changes in voters’ priorities. YouGov says the environment is regarded as the top issue for 27% of voters, up from 17% last summer. In Scotland, 29% of voters put climate change their most important issue.
Meanwhile, 73% of Scots who took part in the poll think global warming poses a serious threat to the world, compared to 27% who think the threat is exaggerated. And while 68% of Scots think taxes should be increased to put extra money into the NHS, 47% said a sharp reduction in immigration after the UK leaves the EU will have an “adverse effect on the British economy”.
Report co-author Nick Lowles, chief executive of Hope Not Hate, said: “Brexit offered a black and white choice of Leave or Remain, which exposed a lot of pre-existing divisions – but it was never that simple, and the impacts of the Brexit process are fracturing us even more.
“As time has gone on, the Brexit process has degraded political trust, with pessimism and anti-establishment anger rising, which for many is distilling into hatred in a backlash against an ‘elite’, veiled in narratives about suppression by ‘PC culture’.”
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