SNP underdogs in election – Salmond

Party leader tells candidates they have ‘everything to gain’ in the six weeks before elections which polls suggest Labour will win Alex Salmond has admitted the Scottish National party is still short of achieving a winning position in the race to triumph at the Holyrood elections in May, as the campaign jumped into gear. Speaking just after Holyrood was formally dissolved, Salmond appeared to hint that the SNP was starting as underdog when he told his party’s candidates that they had “nothing to fear” but had “everything to gain” in this campaign. He said the SNP were still three points off achieving the 40% of the votes they needed on 5 May to secure a second term in office. As the Weber Shandwick “poll of polls” showed Labour eight points clear of the SNP, Salmond acknowledged that a sufficient number of voters still had to be persuaded that his party was best able to govern Scotland. Referring to that 40% target, he said: “The recent polls show us within touching distance of achieving that objective, still a few points behind but I think we can go into this campaign with confidence. Because as the choice becomes clear, [as] the contrast between the SNP team and the Labour team becomes starkly obvious and as the message of a 100 brilliant commitments by this SNP government becomes clear, then we’ve nothing to fear from this campaign. “On the contrary, we’ve everything to gain in this next six weeks. Can we take our vote from 37% to 40% over the next six weeks, you bet we can.” Salmond’s cautious assessment is confirmed by senior party figures, who admit privately that its private polling puts the SNP three to four points behind Labour. Asked whether he did see himself as the underdog, Salmond said: “It’s a neck and neck race, and I’m taking nothing for granted. That’s your word, not mine. I’m quite happy with the position we’re in … It’s going to be a close finish.” That contrasts strongly with the SNP’s consistent lead in the polls at this point during the 2007 campaign, when the party won its first term of government. By the start of that campaign, the nationalists had established a lead in the polls for several months. The next Scottish parliament is expected to sit for a five-year term, after Westminster passed legislation fixing its current parliament at five years which would have clashed with the original May 2015 date for the following Holyrood election. Holyrood now has new powers to hold its election a year later. Weber Shandwick and its politics website ScotlandVotes.com said analysis of all the recent polls put Labour on course to win 60 of Holyrood’s 129 seats – five short of majority – against the SNP’s 46 seats. Moray Macdonald, Weber Shandwick’s deputy managing director in Scotland, said Labour was taking votes chiefly at the expense of the Liberal Democrats, who are down to 9% and are expected to suffer heavily with public anger over the Lib Dem-Tory coalition in Westminster. The main parties are expected to unveil their manifestos in early April and formally launch their campaigns from next week. Labour began its effort with a 48-hour tour of “battleground” seats in Edinburgh, Fife and central Scotland by its Scottish leader, Iain Gray. Speaking during the last first minister’s questions in Holyrood before the parliament was dissolved, Gray accused Salmond of holding back crucial announcements until the last four weeks for “partisan party advantage”. He said: “Well, it doesn’t make up for four years of promises broken, schools unbuilt, projects cancelled, criminals released and thousands extra on the dole. Times up. Hasn’t the first minister failed on all the big issues that really matter?” Scottish National Party (SNP) Scottish politics Alex Salmond Scotland Labour Liberal Democrats Conservatives Severin Carrell guardian.co.uk

Posted by on March 22, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.