The answer is quite simple: Nicola Sturgeon is gifting Labour all her SNP seats!!
And it's pretty clear by now that Labour are not going to win an outright majority, so they desperately need the SNP seats in order to make Ed Miliband the next Prime Minister. Given this is the last weekend before we cast our votes, it is ridiculous of Ed Miliband to still fume that he won't do a deal with the SNP.
Here is why. Electoral Calculus is predicting the following outcome for the May 7th 2015 General Election:
Con 280
Lab 276
SNP 52
Lib 18
PC 3
UKIP 2
Green 1
NI 18
(Note: PC = Plaid Cymru. Since Con, Lab, SNP and Lib don't field candidates in Northern Ireland, that regions MPs are simply listed as NI 18.)
Labour will claim that the SNP cost them the election. That's because, in the above prediction, Labour only win 6 seats in Scotland; in 2010, they won 41 seats. In contrast, the SNP win 52 seats, a massive improvement on the 6 seats they won in 2010. (Note: repetition of 6 seats for Lab and SNP in above paragraph is not a typo.)
But if Labour hold onto all of their current 41 seats, their UK wide total only becomes 311 but they need 326 to have an outright majority. So the SNP - in this prediction - clearly did NOT cause them to lose the election. Even if the SNP did NOT exist and their current 6 seats were Labour seats, that only brings Labour's total up to 317 - still short of an outright majority.
In 2010, Labour won 41 seats. If Labour accept the SNP's offer of doing a deal, then Labour can count on 6 Scottish Labour seats plus 52 SNP seats, giving them a total of 58 seats out of Scotland's 59 (Lib Dems are predicted to win one seat in Scotland).
Getting the support of 58 seats is far better than the support of 41 seats - especially when Lab + SNP gives a combined seat total of 328, which gives them a clear majority, i.e. they would have more seats in the House of Commons than all other parties combined.
So it's pretty clear - only with the SNP's help can Labour win this election. They really can't afford to look this SNP gift horse in the mouth.
The Northern Ireland party the SDLP takes the Labour whip in Westminster and is a sister party to Labour.
ReplyDeleteThe SDLP is a nationalist party that wants to remove Northern Ireland from the Union (and join with the Irish Republic).
It seems hypocritical then that the Labour Party are happy to deal with Northern Irish nationalists but not the Scottish National Party.
Perhaps their idea is to lose all their Scottish Labour MPs and not stand in Scotland in future - to tie in their position in Northern Ireland. Or maybe their campaign just feels like they're trying to lose...