Stephen Daisley's latest unmissable column: Is it really too much to ask for a politician to have substance, competence and a sense of duty?

If I could give one piece of advice about politics, though it applies to life in general too, it would be this: listen to people you disagree with.

One voice worth cupping your ear towards is Geoff Aberdein, former chief of staff to Alex Salmond.

Speaking on the Holyrood Sources podcast last week, Aberdein pointed to fresh polling showing the SNP still ahead of Labour, albeit just and no more.

Humza Yousaf called Michael Matheson ‘a man of integrity and honesty’ despite the iPad scandal

He asked: ‘At what point do these kinds of polls start being disappointing for the Labour Party given the current challenges the SNP face? The polling period when this was conducted was right during the Covid WhatsApp furore for the SNP. And yet the SNP was still marginally ahead on each.’

Now, Aberdein was not making a partisan point. He went on to talk about the likely scale of losses facing the SNP and Humza Yousaf’s stubbornly bad personal poll ratings. But he underscored the need for Labour to ‘manage expectations’ ahead of the general election, whenever that will be.

Woeful

That, for me, sums up the woeful state of Scottish politics in 2024. The Labour Party needs to be thinking about managing expectations. The Labour Party.

Whatever you might think of that outfit, it is the very definition of an anti-incumbent party.

It has been out of power at Westminster for 14 years and out of power at Holyrood for 17 years.

There are voters today who hadn’t been born the last time Labour won the Scottish local elections.

We keep hearing this will be a ‘change’ election, when voters of various political persuasions will kick out the current UK Government because they feel it’s time for fresh blood.

As the official Opposition in the House of Commons, it is naturally Labour that stands ready to benefit from this mood, and if the polls are accurate it stands to benefit handsomely.

Yet in Scotland, where Labour is able to position itself as the ‘change’ party twice over, the polling looks very different.

In five polls since the start of the year, the results were: Labour and SNP tied, SNP narrowly ahead, Labour narrowly ahead, SNP ahead, Labour narrowly ahead.

Maybe the party will suddenly break free from the Nationalists and its Scottish support will start to look more like the levels seen in the rest of the country.

And, true enough, there will probably be a Scottish variant of the ‘shy Tory’ syndrome seen down south, with ex-Labour voters who decamped for the SNP reluctant to admit that they are contemplating a return to the red flag.

But after the year the SNP has had –arrests, defections, Humza Yousaf – you’d think ‘shy Labour’ voters wouldn’t feel the need to be quite so shy.

As for those voters who still back the Nationalists, if gender wars, iPad bills and deleted WhatsApps haven’t prompted them to rethink their support, you have to wonder what it would take.

Make no mistake: Labour will take a significant number of seats off the SNP on polling day, but it will be nothing like the 2015 landslide when the Nationalists captured all but one of Labour’s seats.

This lack of voter enthusiasm is hardly limited to Labour. The SNP has a young leader, barely a year into the job, fizzing with energy, and he’s polling like someone who has been in post for a decade.

Humza Yousaf can’t break through with the voters and his government just can’t catch a break.

He has no record worth bragging about, his party staggers from scandal to scandal, and his ministerial talent pool only has a shallow end.

Then there is his predecessor, who is beginning to cause him as many problems as her predecessor caused her.

Then there’s the Tories.

After 14 years in government, they have almost nothing to show for it, and are squabbling bitterly with one another over this unavoidable fact.

They have a better story to retail in Scotland, where they can pitch themselves as the party that has led the charge against the SNP for the past eight years.

Collapse

I wouldn’t write them off.

As we’ve discussed in this column before, there are a number of seats where a sufficient collapse of the Nationalist vote could help the Conservatives score a gain.

But even their best efforts are going to be hampered by the unpopularity of the Tory government in Scotland.

It is for these reasons, and others, that I don’t believe this will be a change election – not in Scotland, at least.

I think it will be a pick-your-poison election, when voters are asked to choose the least worst of three leaders who wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice.

This, to my mind, gets to the root of the sense of voter malaise north of the Border.

It’s not that there is no party worth voting for, it’s that none of the main parties has a leader worthy of the name.

We have had a rotten run of luck lately.

Vacuous PR man David Cameron and overgrown student politician Ed Miliband.

Wobbly Theresa May. Odious Jeremy Corbyn. And the less said about Liz Truss’s unfortunate 49 days, the better.

Now in Scotland we are confronted by the prospect of Humza Yousaf, Rishi Sunak or Sir Keir Starmer. The fourth horseman of the apocalypse must be delayed somewhere.

None of them seems able to stay in the same place politically for more than five minutes.

None displays the wisdom, insight, strength of character or good judgment we expect from great leaders.

None has the faintest clue about ordinary people’s lives.

Sir Keir may be the darling of the commentariat, but the public is decidedly lukewarm.

In the most recent polling of Scottish voters, one third approves of his performance, one third disapproves and one third feels neither fair nor foul towards him.

Twice as many Scots distrust him as trust him.

Slippery

Little wonder. He has abandoned his flagship promise to pour £28billion into greening the economy. He blames the Tories’ stewardship of the economy for making it unaffordable, though I’m not convinced it was ever affordable.

But the point is that when you’re breaking your promise before you even get into government, you’re signalling that you’re slippery and untrustworthy.

If poor decision-making was a currency, Humza Yousaf would boast an embarrassment of riches.

As it is, he is just an embarrassment.

The Michael Matheson iPad scandal is a case in point.

Any leader with the skimpiest morsel of good judgment would have known instantly that Matheson had to go. Yet Yousaf not only backed his health secretary, he called him ‘a man of integrity and honesty’.

Now that man has quit his ministerial post and is poised to be damned by a parliamentary inquiry into the affair.

The First Minister has been left looking foolish and out of his depth.

As with Sir Keir, the voters can sense this, which is why Yousaf’s approval rating is just 25 per cent and his disapproval rating at 42 per cent. It is why 51 per cent of voters say they don’t trust him.

Then there’s the Prime Minister, who is disapproved of by 56 per cent of Scots and distrusted by 64 per cent.

His decision to make a £1,000 bet with Piers Morgan over the success of the Rwanda policy is among the most politically tone deaf things I have ever seen from a Prime Minister.

The Tories have presided over unprecedented levels of illegal immigration. In the past five years, 114,000 people entered the UK via small boats sailed across the English Channel.

In that same time, many people have died attempting to make this treacherous journey.

This is a matter of border integrity, national security and life and death itself. This is not something you make a wager on.

What on earth was he thinking?

This is the choice we face at the coming election.

Is a bit of substance too much to ask for? Is a sense of duty? Is competence?

Politicians complain about voters being cynical, or thinking all elected officials are as bad as each other, but I don’t blame them. Not when this trio is the best our politics can offer.

If this is a pick-your-poison election, I pick none of them.

Read more