Better Together? A note on Scottish Independence and British Labour

The last UK general election won by Labour was, you will recall, that in 2005. Here's an electoral map of the result:

Quite a lot of red in Scotland, right? And thus an argument I've frequently heard within the Labour Party against supporting Scottish independence - "if Scotland gets independence, the rest of the UK will be doomed to perpetual Tory government".

So, let's break down the figures behind the map. UK-wide, we have:

Labour (inc. SDLP): 359
Conservative: 198
Lib-Dem: 62
Others: 28

Now let's look at Scotland's contribution. This is:

Labour: 41
Lib Dems: 11
SNP: 6
Conservative: 1

OK, so let's subtract the Scottish figures from the general UK ones. This gives us:

Labour (inc. SDLP): 318
Conservatives: 197
Lib-Dem: 51
Others: 22

This gives Labour whippable MPs 318 seats out of 588, an absolute majority of 24 (21 if we discount the SDLP). This is an election in which Labour didn't do particularly well compared to its recent form.

This argument is dead, it has ceased to be.

What is interesting to note, however, is that a Labour government for England, Wales, and the north of Ireland, whose majority was not supported by Scottish MPs, could depend of the support of a lower proportion of parliamentary leadership loyalists. With the honourable exception of Katy Clark, the Scots MPs are a supine bunch.