A NEW Tory poll has found that the SNP would see a surge in MPs at a snap General Election.
A survey of 10,000 adults, commissioned by the Conservative Group for Europe, shows a major Brexit boost for Nicola Sturgeon’s party.
The SNP would be set to gain 17 seats, giving them 52 of Scotland’s 59 Westminster constituencies.
Full results from the poll suggest a hung parliament overall, with the Tories on 311, Labour on 242, the LibDems on 21 and Plaid Cymru on four, with one MP for the Greens and one other MP.
The study did not poll Northern Ireland, and so the DUP’s 10 seats, if maintained, could allow the party to prop up the Tory government once again.
READ MORE: General Election: What the result of a snap vote could be in Scotland
SNP deputy Westminster leader Kirsty Blackman MP said the results showed that the public trusted the party to stand up for Scotland.
She continued: “Boris Johnson’s extreme Brexit would be devastating for communities across the country – threatening to destroy 100,000 jobs and hit living standards, public services and the economy.
“The SNP will do everything we can to stop Brexit and prevent a No-Deal disaster. If Tory MPs refuse to join cross-party efforts to stop Brexit they deserve be turfed out at an election.
“Any pretence that Scotland will ever be treated as an equal partner in the UK has long been abandoned. It is clearer than ever, that the only way to properly protect Scotland’s interests is by becoming an equal and independent European country.”
The Tory poll’s findings support longer-term trends, with new analysis from James Kelly of Scot Goes Pop! suggesting the same outcome.
Kelly said: “For some reason, we still haven’t had a full-scale poll of Scottish voting intentions for Westminster (or indeed for Holyrood) since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister.
“The change at the top has altered the trajectory of GB-wide polling, so it seems likely that the same will prove true in Scotland, but to what extent?”
However, he said it was now possible to calculate more “meaningful results” with YouGov having published eight subsamples with fieldwork that took place since Johnson became PM.
The average of those show the SNP on 44.4%, the Tories on 19.3%, The LibDems on 12.8%, Labour on 11.4%, the Brexit Party on 7% and the Greens on 4%.
That would give the SNP 52 seats, as projected by the new Tory poll. The LibDems would have four Scottish MPs, the Tories two and Labour one.
READ MORE: Boris Johnson to trigger snap General Election if rebels block Brexit plan
Kelly added: “We shouldn’t forget that, although the Tories have opened up a GB-wide lead, they haven’t recovered to anything like the kind of levels of support that they had even a few months ago – they’re still languishing in the low 30s, which normally wouldn’t be enough to top the popular vote in a General Election.
“They’re leading by default because their main opponents are polling at an unusually low level too. In Scotland, it looks like they’re not being so fortunate – yes, they’ve recovered a bit due to the Boris effect, but that’s not doing them much good because their main opponent actually appears to be polling higher than in 2017.”
Referring to the East Kilbride by-election result, he continued: “If the LibDems start taking significant numbers of Unionist/Remain votes away from Labour in seats that the LibDems can’t possibly win in a million years, and if there is no substantial movement of votes from the SNP to the LibDems, the stars might just be aligning for a dramatic SNP landslide in terms of seats.”
Meanwhile, the pound sunk by around 1% against the US dollar yesterday, amid fevered speculation over the possibility of a General Election.
And while the Prime Minister did not explicitly announce a return to the polls during his address to the nation, the pound remained at historic lows, falling one cent against the dollar to 1.2069.
Even after Boris Johnson’s speech, the pound did not recover and continued to trade at levels rarely seen since 1985.
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