John Curtice: Poll shatters illusions of nothing to lose in Scotland

Published on Wednesday 20 October 2010 20:36

The Liberal Democrats did badly at the last Holyrood election in 2007, winning just 11 per cent of the regional list vote. Many in the party believed that, as a result, it had little to lose from its coalition with Tories when MSPs face the electorate next May.

Our poll shatters that illusion. It puts the Lib Dems on just 8 per cent in the battle for regional list votes. The party is on the same figure on the constituency vote too - only half of what it achieved on that ballot in 2007. Such an outcome could leave the Lib Dems with just nine seats at Holyrood, well down on its current tally of 16.

But there is another thought. Maybe those who are unhappy at the Westminster party's volte face on the speed of deficit reduction have already left the fold. If so, then at least the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) should not have inflicted any further damage on an already precarious position.

Indeed, the party might even hope that some of their former supporters will now decide that the decisions made by the Westminster coalition are not quite so bad after all. Child benefit apart, not only have universal benefits been left largely unscathed, but spending on two key popular public services, health and schools, has been protected. And thanks to that latter decision, then according to the Treasury at least, the cut to the devolved budget in Scotland is set to be a little less than the cut in government spending overall.

Together with Tuesday's announcement that work on the two aircraft carriers will continue, the Lib Dems might even be able to argue they have ensured Scotland has got a fair deal out of the review after all.

Yet the CSR also leaves leader Tavish Scott with a headache. The Scottish Lib Dems claim credit for having ensured in the early years of devolution that up-front tuition fees were abolished in Scotland. More recently they provided the SNP with the votes needed to axe the graduate endowment.

But universities in England were amongst the big losers yesterday. The coalition made it clear that as and when students in England start to pay higher fees, so the grant from Whitehall to universities will be cut, more or less pound for pound. Thanks to the Barnett formula that cut will be reflected in the money Holyrood receives too.

This leaves Scottish Lib Dems with a tough choice. Do they announce that, in tandem with their colleagues down south, they have abandoned their commitment to one of the icons of devolution, free university tuition? Or do they argue that Scotland should find the now even greater sum required to sustain free tuition by taking an even bigger hit than England somewhere else in the extremely tight Holyrood budget? Neither choice seems likely to be politically palatable.

l John Curtice is Professor of Politics, Strathclyde University