The latest Ashcroft poll of Scottish seats is more than a mere earthquake – it’s a cataclysm

If previous Ashcroft constituency polling in Scotland could be described as an earthquake, the poll the Tory peer had dropped this afternoon will require an entirely different word. A cataclysm perhaps. If this is an earthquake it’s certainly not the kind that rattles the windows in the middle of the night, it’s the sort that razes whole cities to the ground.

If Lord Ashcroft’s polling is correct, there’s a risk that Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy could lose his seat to the SNP. At the last poll Murphy had a slender one point lead over the SNP, that has now turned in a matter of weeks into a nine point lead for the SNP. That’s well outside the margin of error. What was once a Labour/Tory marginal could well fall to the forces of separatism. Such a result would be a painful – almost existential – blow to a Scottish Labour Party that is already battered and bruised.

But it’s far from the only astonishing result to come from this astonishing poll.

Douglas Alexander is running Labour’s General Election campaign, and could be the Foreign Secretary in a few weeks, but only if he can hold onto his seat. And this poll suggests that he’s eleven points behind the SNP. To lose one senior Scottish Labour MP would be bad, but if this poll is borne out on election day, it’ll be easier to list the Labour MPs who will still remain. And reeling off that list won’t take long either.

And this isn’t solely a Labour phenomenon (although Labour’s pains will be greater than all of the other UK-wide parties combined) with this poll suggesting the Lib Dems will lose the seats of not one but two former leaders – Ming Campbell and Charles Kennedy (although Campbell is retiring).

Is there anything that Scottish Labour can cling onto from the burning wreckage of this poll? Perhaps, but it is the slimmest of pickings. Ashcroft’s results suggest that Labour’s ground game is stronger than the SNP’s, with more voters being contacted by Labour than the nationalists in most seats – despite their veritable army of members. But of course the corollary of that is that Scottish Labour – too often flat footed in campaigning terms – has stepped up its game, even in seat’s like Murphy’s where the ground campaign is strong – only to see enormous swings towards the SNP.

That’s what will be especially hurtful to Scottish Labour and to Murphy. Because it was widely believed – not unreasonably – that Scottish Labour’s key weaknesses were a lack of coherent visible leadership and campaigning energy. Both of those have been addressed. No-one can claim that Scottish Labour is not fighting hard on the ground, nor can it be denied that Murphy is a more dynamic force than his predecessor Johann Lamont. But so far the polls are still moving away from Labour – even past the point that seemed impossible just a few short months ago. When you’ve thrown everything you have at a fight and nothing works, what else is there to do? In reality, plenty of these potential solutions identified to turn around Scottish labour’s fortunes are too simple for the problems faced. Another big belief was that “Blairism” was Scottish Labour’s problem – but it was never exactly a hotbed if Blairites and Jim Murphy has hardly signalled a shift to the right (just take today election pledges, for example).

It’s also worth pointing out that the huge swings recorded since the previous Ashcroft poll have been recorded in just a couple of months. That’s not to say this polling is wrong – we aren’t talking about margin of error stuff here, after all – but that we will not have a clear enough picture of just how bad things are until after the election.

If anyone was foolish enough to try and carry out an autopsy before then, that should be enough to get them to think twice. It’s clear that the answers required will be neither quick nor simple.

For what it’s worth, I still don’t expect Labour to be wiped out in Scotland to the extent that Ashcroft’s polls suggest. Those campaigning for Scottish Labour on the ground – hardened by a gruelling independence campaign – believe that seats like Alexander’s and Murphy’s will still be held. Certainly they remain more in play than this poll would suggest. Labour must continue to fight on that basis – because whilst a defeat on the scale implied by this poll would be deeply wounding for Labour’s chances of being the largest party on May 7^th, a more profound impact – an existential crisis from which it’s hard to see an escape route – might befall Scottish Labour. And perhaps the union itself.