SNP look set to take 57 seats

The latest poll from TNS is just amazing:

SNP 54 (+2)

Lab 22 (-2)

Con 13 (NC)

Lib 6 (NC)

Green 2 (-2)

UKIP 2 (+1)

Putting that into the seat calculator gives the SNP 57 Westminster seats, with Labour and the Tories one each. You can just imagine the SNP wondering who the Labour survivor will be and then throwing all their weight into getting the poor bugger out, can't you?

The Tory campaign has actually not been all that bad, but the problem that they have is that the party hardly exists outside the three border seats, one of which they hold already. The catastrophe here is a cold dish that Labour has to sup next week.

How did it come about? Much play has been made of the way in which Labour hugged the Tories up close during the referendum campaign, and the hubris that led Labour into doing that is certainly one of the reasons. 

At the start of the year, Jim Murphy who leads Labour's Scottish branch office was telling anyone who would listen just how easy it was to outwit the SNP at all levels. The attitude in Scots' Labour seemed to be one where they were telling their constituents that it was okay to have had their fun, but now it was time to revert to the old cause. Labour really believed that the traditional vote would rally behind the old, tattered banners just because Spud Murphy gave them their orders.

The Labour campaign in England seems to be going from strength to strength, but in Scotland people quickly began to pick holes in Labour's campaign slogans. There was a resentment at the downright lies that the party told, with the chief one being the enormous porkie from Spud Murphy that "The biggest party gets to form the government." You did not need to be a constitutional scholar to point out that what matters is a majority in the Commons, not where it comes from.

These tall tales have come thick and fast, with each one being quickly shot down. Labour made a play on "exploitative zero hours contracts" which they pledged to ban, so the young graduates with computers, internet access and time on their hands who are all gagging to pay back the Labour Party over its referendum stance, began to dig at that one.

It took until this weekend when some clever souls discovered that Glasgow's Labour run council has about 2,000 of its wage slaves on those contracts. Now Spud has been forced to admit that they will not actually ban zero hours contracts, just the exploitative ones, if that makes any sense.

As Wings Over Scotland pointed out today, you normally have to wait until after the election is over for stuff like this to come out.

However, at the end of the day, Labour is losing because its national leadership has to appeal to the Southern English, aspirational scrote vote and so it has to slap down the Scottish branch whenever it gets out of line. Two weeks ago Chuka Umunna had to remind Spud that his no-cuts pledge was worthless since Labour policy is made in London and not Edinburgh. Before that, Rachel Reeves gave the SNP an open goal when she said that Labour was not the party for claimants.

A Labour wipe out in Scotland is now on the cards and it is all their own fault.