Holyrood poll & thoughts on Gray's albatross

God save thee, ancient Mariner
From the fiends, that plague thee thus
Why look'st thou so? - With my crossbow
I shot the ALBATROSS.
...
Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner

"Fortune vomits on my eiderdown once more". In the darkling watches of the night, you work up a wee post and with a wearied yawn, resolve to press the publish button come the morning. Too late! The fatal error is made. As you shut your eyes, a cruel glister illuminates the thrawn peepers of the bilious Goddess of Chance. Gleefully, she sickens your best laid schemes. With the sudden appearance of the unanticipated, She regurgitates a glutinous bolt from the blue. Somewhere, in the undergrowth, I'm sure a proverbial blogging mouse is sharing my vexation, with much effing and blinding.

My case was this. I had thought to argue that in public polling terms, we Scots were still gambolling in the wake and spray of the 2010 Westminster election and that much remained uncertain in the meanwhile. In particular, it seemed to me that while public appetites have been whetted for the 2011 Holyrood poll, our stomachs have not yet started their hollow grumble in earnest and immediate anticipation. Moreover, various election-type questions aren't being asked at this stage. In particular, I have in mind a question that I confidently predict Iain Gray will come to loathe - who do you think would make the best First Minister? We can be lofty about it if we like, proclaim ourselves wedded to policy, detail, substance. That's spiffing, as far as it goes. However, I doubt it will placate an enquiring press, all too disposed to trade in binary political options. As the campaign solidifies and polling day approaches, it seems likely that the press will increasingly present the election as primarily a contest between Labour and the SNP for government, between two candidates for First Minister - no doubt seasoned in the UK nationals with an eye for the coalition story. Even Labour supporters must be mildly anxious about their leader in the Scottish Parliament. With Jim Murphy's authority turned to dust by Labour's heave-ho, you might think Gray has the opportunity to demonstrate his rugged independence and capacity for leadership, relieved of the perpetual presence of his sepulchral associate. However, it isn't so easy to emerge from your own shadow. Even if Labour continues to fare well in Scottish polls, his lack of prominence and lack of charm will be a difficult itch to sooth and his obscurity may well come to hang about the party's neck like a Gray albatross.

Labour supporters, I fancy, will argue that all of this is unfair, that he is a substantial fellow unfairly neglected, that the press would be wormeaten and vacuous and trivial to focus on such matters of personality in the midst of the campaign. For myself, I read Gray as a man who may be dispositionally more virtuous than leadership of the Labour party is making him. There he has been snarling, disingenuous, ungenerous. I take no comfort in the corruption of a better nature. Nor do I think this reactionary condemnatory character he is playing terribly becomes him. I may be mistaken, of course. I have no personal knowledge of the man and my hunch may be an overgenerous one. Either way, I'm a firm believer that the face grows and hardens into the mask it wears. In the end, it is that leering phizog, its words and deeds, which we must judge. That, more or less, was what I was going to argue, sans polling assistance. Until this morning, that is, when the sun came up and brought with it a copy of the Herald, in which snippets of a new poll conducted by TNS-BMR into Holyrood voting intentions was published. For reference, in case you've not seen them already, here are the percentages:

Constituency 
Labour 46%
SNP 32%
Liberal Democrats 11%
Tories 10%

List Vote
Labour 42%
SNP 30%
Liberal Democrats 12%
Tories 11%

There remains an insistent, distinctly Westminster-centric undertow here, the Herald turning the condensed percentages into a story about the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, rather than focus on the "domestic"  implications of a Labour lead in Holyrood. My sense is that the good ship Westminster continues to buffet the boat of Scottish democracy. While the metropolitan media can be counted on to continue to do so right up until election day, we've not yet matured into the more urgent and more critical phase, immediately anticipating the election and our choices. As to the figures themselves, they show that the SNP has significant work to do. There is no question about that. Although irritatingly the newspaper keeps the detail to itself, significantly, the Herald notes that:

"The poll suggests that one reason for the gap between Labour and the SNP is that the Nationalists are struggling to attract enough female voters. Women were almost twice as likely to vote Labour as SNP."

Regular readers will know, this marked gender gap in SNP support was a subject I addressed just last week. These latest figures will only serve to corroborate the urgency of these concerns.