Nationalists imperil 35 of Labour's 41 Scottish seats - poll

By Andrew Osborn

LONDON (Reuters) – A new opinion poll shows Britain’s opposition Labour Party risks losing 35 of its 41 seats in Scotland to nationalists, in a serious setback to its hopes of unseating David Cameron‘s Conservatives in May elections.

Scotland is crucial to Labour’s chances of winning the UK-wide vote, one of the closest-run contests in modern British history, as the country has traditionally been a power base from which it has drawn around a sixth of its lawmakers.

The poll released on Wednesday, funded by Michael Ashcroft, a British peer and former deputy chairman of Cameron’s party, took a detailed look at 14 of Labour’s Scottish seats in the British parliament and found it was on course to lose all but one on May 7.

It registered an overall swing to the rival Scottish National Party (SNP) of 25.4 percent, with only 60 percent of voters who supported Labour at the last UK-wide election in 2010 saying they would do so again this year.

Scots voted to stay part of the United Kingdom in a referendum last year, but support for the SNP has since soared amid suspicion the London government will not give Scotland’s parliament the extra powers it promised to persuade voters to reject independence.

Prime Minister Cameron’s Conservatives have only one seat in Scotland and the SNP has argued Labour tainted itself by teaming up with the ruling party to campaign against independence.

Ashcroft said the seats examined were ones which had returned a strong yes vote for independence in Scotland’s referendum, cautioning against drawing overly broad conclusions. But he said Labour would need to conduct a “vigorous” campaign if it was to fend off the SNP threat.

“If a swing to the SNP of 21 percent, the smallest in this range, were to be repeated across the board next May it would endanger 35 of Labour’s 41 seats in Scotland,” he said.

A Labour spokesman said the party accepted the “stark message” in the polls, and that it wanted to close the gap by highlighting to Scots that if they backed the SNP they could cost Labour seats and hand victory to Cameron’s Conservatives.

“We do recognise these polls show Labour is well behind with a big gap to close, but the person who is going to benefit from this is David Cameron,” the spokesman said.

The poll showed Douglas Alexander, Labour’s campaign chief, was on course to lose his seat, as was Danny Alexander, a senior figure in the British finance ministry and a member of the Liberal Democrats, Cameron’s junior coalition partner.

More than 16,000 adults were interviewed for the poll by phone from Jan. 5-30 in 14 Labour seats and two Liberal Democrat seats.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Andrew Roche)

Nationalists imperil 35 of Labour's 41 Scottish seats - poll