Midlothian: winner in 2019 –Owen Thompson (SNP)

THE constituencies in which it’s hardest to find much reason for SNP optimism in this General Election are the seven that were actually won by Labour in 2017 – and Midlothian is one of those.

Although the SNP incumbent Owen Thompson only lost by two percentage points that year and subsequently took the seat back by a reasonably comfortable 12-point margin in 2019, it’s very difficult to see why Labour wouldn’t regain it this year if they were able to previously do so under Jeremy Corbyn at a time when they were still as much as 10 points behind the SNP across Scotland. There was also an equivalent Midlothian seat in the Scottish Parliament until 2011, and ominously Labour won that by seven percentage points even in 2007, when the SNP were ahead of Labour in the national popular vote.

A question mark would only creep in if Keir Starmer was attracting a very different coalition of Labour support than Corbyn did, in which case the Labour vote might have a different geographical distribution now than in 2017.

Labour leader Keir Starmer

That would mimic, for example, the way in which Tory-held seats with lots of Remain voters proved much more vulnerable to the SNP in 2019 than the more Brexit-friendly fishing constituencies.

Intuitively, the radical leap from Corbynism to Starmerism ought to be producing a similar sort of effect, but in practice there’s no evidence that it is.

Voters swinging back to Labour in Midlothian in 2024 are probably motivated by a reversion to an old tribal instinct in the same way as they were seven years ago, and might be imagining that they are somehow “kicking the Tories out” – without realising that voting SNP is just as effective a way of doing that in any SNP-Labour battleground seat where the Tories have no chance.

Additionally, although Midlothian was a solidly Labour constituency from its creation in 1955 until the SNP’s post-indyref landslide of 2015, there was always a significant minority support for right-wing or centrist parties. In 2010, the combined vote for the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives was 29%, creating a substantial pool of voters who might now consider voting Labour either for anti-SNP tactical reasons, or simply because they are tired of Tory rule and find Starmer’s centre-right offer appealing.

In spite of the proximity to Edinburgh, the SNP cannot even pin their hopes on disproportionately high levels of opposition to Brexit. Midlothian in fact voted Remain in the 2016 referendum by a margin of 62% to 38%, exactly in line with Scotland as a whole.

And the No vote against independence in 2014 was a touch bigger than the national average at 56%. The only point that leaps out in the SNP’s favour is that 70% of the constituency’s population have an exclusively Scottish national identity, which is well above the equivalent Scotland-wide figure – but clearly that hasn’t translated into similarly higher levels of support for either the SNP or independence so far.

On a uniform swing, Thompson would only retain his seat if the SNP are at least 15 points ahead of Labour nationwide. Although there are still a few days left for the SNP’s national position to recover, it’s phenomenally improbable that there will be a surge on that scale.

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The latest constituency-level projections from polling companies confirm the problem – despite WeThink reporting the SNP are on course for a surprise national win, they still suggest that Thompson is currently losing to Labour by a margin of 49% to 30%. The Focaldata results, which are poorer for the SNP across the board, imply that the Midlothian contest is even more lopsided with Labour enjoying an advantage of 50% to 25%.

Realistically, Thompson’s main goal may be to ensure that his second-placed finish is strong enough to leave the SNP well-placed to recapture the seat once Starmer becomes an unpopular prime minister and the pendulum swings decisively against Labour once again.