Will the SNP’s Pete Wishart win seventh term as MP?

Labour tell them that if they’re serious about dislodging the SNP’s longest-serving MP, Pete Wishart, they must vote Labour, on the basis of an MRP polling projection showing that Labour have moved ahead of the Tories into second place in the constituency.

But then right-wing commentators such as Stephen Daisley pop up to say the situation is far too grave to risk voting for any party other than the Tories, who are the obvious tactical choice to stop Wishart and that voters should just be very grateful that the Tories have blessed them with a candidate as splendid as Luke Graham.

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And last but not least Reform UK forcefully insist that there is so much momentum behind them that only they have any hope of beating the SNP, and that voting Labour or Tory would just result in Wishart grinning as the votes are counted. So who are the befuddled pro-UK tactical voters of Perth and Kinross-shire supposed to believe?

Leaving aside the obvious explanation of naked partisan self-interest, there are actually good reasons for all this confusion. This is a radically different constituency from Wishart’s former Perth and North Perthshire seat.

It’s geographically much smaller, with the sprawling “Perthshire Glens” segment having been transferred to what was previously the Angus seat. But in compensation a huge number of voters from the old Ochil and South Perthshire seat have been brought in, which explains the involvement of Graham, who was the Tory MP for that constituency between 2017-19.

That has made it difficult to judge what the Perth and Kinross-shire result would have been at the last election if the new boundaries had been in place. Daisley’s claim is that the Tories would have been only 2364 votes behind the SNP, which makes it sound like Graham has a plausible chance of overcoming the deficit.

But another version of the notional results suggests Wishart’s majority would have been more than 5000 votes, which could be virtually insurmountable for the Tories given their current unpopularity.

And that’s the basic dilemma for the self-appointed experts on how Unionists should vote tactically in seats where the Conservatives start from second place. Is it really worth betting the house on the Tories being able to pull off a long-shot victory when it is so much more difficult to persuade Labour supporters to tactically vote Tory than vice versa?

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Or is it instead better to try to overcome the credibility problems associated with any suggestion that Labour could jump from third or fourth place to gain the seat? In the case of Perth and Kinross-shire, the notional figures suggest Labour start from fourth, behind even the LibDems, with just 5% of the vote.

And yet on the basis of national poll trends, it ought to be roughly even-stevens between Labour and the Tories in the battle for second place in the constituency right now.

Nevertheless, the loudest voices do seem to be plumping for the Tories as the anti-SNP tactical option, and that may work firmly in Wishart’s favour. Any perception of a two-horse race between himself and Graham will mean that he can count on plenty of anti-Tory tactical votes of his own.

He has famously faced a close battle once before in 2017, but was able to buck the national trend and defeat the Conservative candidate by just 21 votes – and to some extent that was thanks to a successful pitch for tactical votes from Labour voters in the city of Perth. Even in the more rural parts of the new seat, Wishart also has a potential advantage due to the recent change of SNP leadership.

So in spite of the fighting talk from the tactical voting brigade, most indications suggest that Wishart may well be returned to Westminster for a remarkable seventh consecutive term.