Could a pact between Scottish Labour and the Tories oust the SNP?

The idea of Labour and Tory strategists working together at the next general election – plotting over tactics and where to place their resources – sounds like an SNP attack line.

Indeed, the SNP has used it as an attack line. The nationalists have mocked recent reports of an electoral pact north of the border as a reunion of the Better Together band which saw unionists team-up for the independence referendum of 2014.

But it’s an idea that Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross is determined to push. He seems willing to defy Rishi Sunak and Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) by arguing in favour of tactical voting.

Mr Ross said on Sunday that Scottish voters should “do what’s best for the country” to help loosen the nationalists’ grip on power north of the border.

He told The Telegraph: “If parties maybe look beyond their own narrow party agenda and do what’s best for the country … what would be best is if we see this grip that the SNP have on Scotland at the moment is loosened.”

A Westminster Tory spokesperson insisted that tactical voting was “emphatically” not the view of the party. And Scottish Labour has ruled out the idea of a “unionist pact”, saying the 2024 election was a change to get rid of the Tories as well as sending a message to the SNP.

So what is Mr Ross playing at? Scottish Tory sources have floated the idea of a “vote smart” which would gently encourage supporters of various unionist parties to opt for the best candidate to defeat the SNP.

While Labour may have the best chance of winning seats in the urban central belt stretching from Glasgow to Edinburgh, the Tories believe they are best placed to win more rural constituencies, where Labour’s appeal remains limited.

Key Scottish Tory targets are thought to include Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock in the southwest and Angus and Gordon in the northeast, although boundary changes may shift the party’s calculus.

Grilled on the strategy on Sunday, Mr Ross suggested it was really a cunning plan to encourage Labour and Lib Dem voters to hold their nose and back the Tories in rural Scotland.

The Scottish Tory leader told GB News that voting for his party would be, in some places, the best way for unionist voters to end the “decade of division” and the SNP’s obsession with a second independence referendum.

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Despite Labour insistence it isn’t interested in a deal, and despite Mr Ross’s not-so-subtle push to remind left-leaning unionist voters that the Tories can diminish SNP dominance in Scotland, could there be something of substance to the idea of an informal pact?

Labour and the Lib Dems have been forced to play down the idea any kind of pact ahead of the 2024 election. But recent by-elections have seen parties informally backing off from each others’ key target seats in a bid to manage their resources.

It is not impossible Sir Keir Starmer’s party could informally prioritise its efforts north of the border as well as in the south and give way in harder to win areas – something centre-left think tank Compass has advocated on a more systematic basis.

The real problem with an informal electoral agreement is the limited chances of ending SNP supremacy. With the unionist vote spilt three ways – Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems – it becomes even harder to organise a main competitor in each seat.

And on the basis of current polls, there appears little chance of removing the SNP as the largest party at a general election. Prof John Curtice has said that Labour’s recent rise in polls gives them a chance of winning between 10 and 14 seats in Scotland, up from its present grand total of one.

But Prof Curtice said recent Panelbase results suggested that the SNP – for all their woes with Nicola Sturgeon’s exit, a chaotic leadership race and financial turbulence – would still take 34 seats, down from 48. Even after a horrible couple of months, the SNP are still projected to win the most seats at a Holyrood election in 2026.

The SNP have carefully constructed a mountainous command over the Scottish electoral map over many years. It appears Labour and the Tories will have to gradually chip away at the edifice, rather than dreaming up ways to create a complete collapse.