Meanwhile, the price of a Labour overall majority on Betfair has drifted out to 1.77 (last matched), just as Labour look set to have a source of anything up to 25 seats that they wouldn't have expected two months ago. https://t.co/D1WNCxQbqi

— Alastair Meeks (@AlastairMeeks) March 18, 2023

Put another way, the top end of this would probably knock 3% off the swing Labour would need from the Conservatives elsewhere to get an overall majority.

— Alastair Meeks (@AlastairMeeks) March 18, 2023

Yesterday I noted that Lab 30 SNP 40 would net Labour 10 more seats in Scotland. Today, Electoral Calculus make that 19. At Lab 35 SNP 35, Labour go from 26 more to 31 more. At Lab 40 SNP 30, the SNP now are predicted to get 0.

2/2

— Alastair Meeks (@AlastairMeeks) March 19, 2023

Are Labour set to flower in Scotland?

The idée reçue for many, myself included, is that Labour winning a majority at the next election is unlikely due in part of the position they find themselves in Scotland, down to just one MP.

Until quite recently the SNP it looked like the SNP prepotency in Scotland would continue but after the recent events where the SNP gone out of their way to step on every available banana skin where it looks like the SNP couldn’t organise a farting contest in a baked beans factory. The fact this has all unravelled so quickly adds to the weirdness of it all. The inevitability of Scottish independence and SNP competence might have been the biggest deception perpetuated since Operation Fortitudes gave us FUSAG.

To use the standard measurement of political meltdown, this has somehow all happened in 65% of a Liz Truss premiership

— Philip Sim (@BBCPhilipSim) March 19, 2023

It has the potential to get worse, with the two front runners Kate Forbes and Humza Yousaf, have the potential to alienate voters in different ways, she with her socially un-liberal ways, he with general incompetence.

Then there’s the potential sleaze, as any Tory from the 1990s can attest, which is utterly corrosive for a party which can turn an honourable defeat into an epochal defeat.

If Labour continue to improve in Scotland then that majority becomes likelier, for those gambling on the next general election will need to pay even more close attention to events in North Britain.

TSE

PS – I hope Humza Yousaf doesn’t win. If he somehow wins Indyref2 on Sunak’s watch we would then be faced with the situation of a Pakistani heritage First Minister and an Indian heritage Prime Minister negotiating the partition of Britain. I fear the irony of that would cause an irony black hole so large that it would consume the entire universe.