It’s not game over yet for Kate Forbes

Kate Forbes’ campaign to succeed Nicola Sturgeon has been largely written off by political rivals and the media. Her Christian faith is said to make her unsuitable to lead a progressive party like the SNP and to be the First Minister of a modern Scotland. Not least her admission that, while she doesn’t seek to roll back any existing rights, she wouldn’t have voted for same-sex marriage had she been an MSP when the legislation was before Holyrood. She also believes children should be born within wedlock and is sceptical of efforts to change the law on gender recognition. Game over, say people in the know. 

However, a new poll of SNP supporters finds the contest wide open. The survey, by Opinion Matters, was conducted between Monday and Wednesday, and should capture a partial response to the early days of the campaign, when journalists first began questioning Forbes on her faith-based beliefs. It’s worth noting that researchers spoke to SNP voters, rather than members, the latter of whom are the electorate in this race. The two demographics are not the same: only 30 per cent of respondents to the survey, for example, cited independence as a top priority for the next SNP leader. Even so, the findings have impressionistic value. 

The top line is that the plurality (31 per cent) of SNP voters have yet to make their minds up. Nevertheless, Kate Forbes enjoys the backing of 28 per cent compared to 20 per cent for her main rival Humza Yousaf. Ash Regan, who quit as a minister in Sturgeon’s government to oppose gender reform, trails on seven per cent. 

Asked what they’re looking for in a leader, the most common responses were having a plan to address the cost of living crisis (58 per cent), generating economic growth (53 per cent) and raising standards in health, education and across the public sector (53 per cent). A leadership candidate’s faith was important to just five per cent, though that finding could cut either way for Forbes. 

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One of the fault lines is the Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) Bill, which allows anyone 16 or older to be recognised in law as the opposite sex based on self-assertion and without medical evidence of gender dysphoria. The Bill was passed by Holyrood in December but blocked by the UK government, which has legal advice saying the Bill would change how the law works UK-wide. At his launch on Monday, Yousaf called this ‘an assault, an attack on our very democratic institutions’ but Forbes has said she would work with Westminster and try to salvage a version of the Bill that doesn’t stray into reserved law. 

The Opinion Matters poll finds SNP voters hotly divided on the gender reform question, with a net 33 per cent in favour, 33 per cent against and the rest unsure. That only one third of the SNP’s own voters back its GRR Bill is a reminder to the party that its priorities have diverged from those of the public at large. It’s also a reminder to the political and media class more generally that a matter on which they overwhelming agree is a minority view across Scotland. 

Paul Robertson, of the Scottish public affairs outfit The BIG Partnership, which commissioned the poll, says it ‘suggests that the focus of the leadership election so far does not reflect the priorities of SNP supporters’. Robertson notes that Nationalist voters are more concerned about ‘the bread-and-butter issues of government’ while matters of personal belief are ‘relatively unimportant for those choosing the new leader’. I think this is a solid reading of these numbers and of the SNP membership more broadly. They are more progressive than previous generations of party dues-payers but their views are not represented by the activist class, who have volume but limited depth of support. 

SNP voters are also cautious on some of those bread-and-butter issues. On maintaining Scotland’s higher income tax rates in order to fund public services, net agreement stands at 40 per cent compared to 35 per cent who disagree. Yousaf, widely seen as the continuity Sturgeon candidate, leans in the tax-and-spend direction while Forbes is more of a fiscal moderate. 

While independence is not a top-three priority for SNP voters, that doesn’t mean the issue has gone away. Thirty-one per cent want a referendum on secession within the next 12 months, 29 per cent in one to two years, 15 per cent in three to five years and eight per cent want to wait longer. Ten per cent oppose a referendum, though it’s not clear if that indicates opposition to independence or a wish to achieve it via a different route. 

Ash Regan has tried to pitch for the votes of the most impatient party members, by arguing that 50 per cent plus one vote for pro-independence parties in a Scottish parliament or House of Commons election is grounds to begin negotiations with the UK government. Yousaf is mimicking Sturgeon’s approach of ramping up the rhetoric while kicking the independence question into the long grass. As I wrote on Coffee House earlier this week, Forbes is the candidate the Scottish Tories privately fear the most, in part because they believe her moderation could bring soft No voters over to Yes. 

The campaigns will be keen to underscore that this is just one poll, conducted in the opening days of the contest, and that members will want to hear more from each of the candidates before making up their minds. The poll also won’t have captured the backlash to the treatment of Forbes for her religious views. Both Jim Fairlie, a Perthshire MSP from the right, and Christine Grahame, a veteran left-winger, have spoken up for the 32-year-old. 

Grahame, an atheist who supports transgender self-identification and same-sex marriage, said her colleague, a member of the Free Church of Scotland, was being subjected to a ‘witch hunt’ based on her religion. As well as principled opposition to a secular inquisition, this may reflect a view expressed by other SNP politicians that Forbes is the much stronger candidate and has not racked up a reputation for policy and political gaffes like Yousaf. 

Meanwhile, Yousaf, who says he supports same-sex marriage, is now facing accusations over his failure to vote on the final stage of the legislation at Holyrood. He says he had to attend a meeting about a Scot who was on death row in Pakistan at the time, but former SNP Cabinet minister Alex Neil has told the Herald Yousaf arranged this as a ‘cover for not voting’ because he was under ‘pressure from the mosque’. 

Yousaf may be the firm favourite of the party machine and its media outriders. But this contest isn’t over yet.