History doesn't record whether the Roman Emperor tried to win over the reluctant Caledonian tribes by setting up a "Senate North" somewhere really northern and close to them (like Milan), but even if he did it plainly didn't do the trick. Judging from the latest Scottish subsample from YouGov, Andy Burnham is proving to be a similar flop Beyond The Wall. However, he's not doing all that well further south either, because Reform UK have retaken the lead GB-wide.
Britain-wide voting intentions (16th-17th August 2026):
Reform UK 24% (+2)
Labour 22% (-2)
Conservatives 19% (-2)
Greens 13% (+1)
Liberal Democrats 12% (+1)
Restore Britain 4% (-)
SNP 3% (-)
Plaid Cymru 1% (-1)
As the fieldwork dates for the poll were well after the Clacton by-election, it looks like that contest may have provided a modest boost for Reform. A lot of people have been engaged in a 'fake it until it's real' effort to convince themselves that a novelty candidate taking more than a quarter of the vote was in itself some sort of obvious humiliation for Farage, but the reality is that Reform took a good vote share on a respectable turnout, so there was no way the result was ever going to be harmful to them. This poll is also a useful corrective to the notion that the normal party system is returning and that the Tories are gradually overhauling Reform. In fact, the Tories have been stuck in third place in all recent polls, apart from the one conducted by Lord Ashcroft, who is not affiliated to the British Polling Council and who uses an extremely strange, atypical, and questionable methodology.
Scottish subsample: SNP 35%, Reform UK 19%, Labour 18%, Liberal Democrats 13%, Conservatives 7%, Greens 6%, Restore Britain 2%
The SNP have been ahead in all of the YouGov subsamples since Andy Burnham became Labour leader, with the size of the lead oscillating from middling to high - and this one is an example of high. Labour's vote share this week is consistent with their performance in the only full-scale Scottish poll of the Burnham era so far, in which they were in the high teens and just barely ahead of Reform.
To put in perspective how badly Burnham has flopped in Scotland, it's worth remembering that even Jeremy Corbyn managed 19% of the Scottish popular vote in his supposedly disastrous 2019 general election campaign.
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This is Post 6 of "Seven Days of Retro Scot Goes Pop" - a shameless gimmick in which I attempt to solve this blog's funding problems in the space of a week with a conventional text-blogging marathon to help promote my Ko-Fi donations page, during which period pre-moderation in the comments section will be switched off. My target for the week is to either get up to 60 regular monthly supporters on Ko-Fi (as of now I have 22), or to reach £1500 in one-off donations to the page, or some sort of combination of a bit of both. In an equally shameless attempt to coax KC's stinking rich Tory landowner chums in Surrey into helping to fund Scot Goes Pop, I have pledged to try to leave pre-moderation switched off even after the seven days are over, but only if at least one of the targets is met in full. Yes, it's time to play hardball with our resident "Nessie" enthusiast.
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Source: YouGov poll suggests Andy Burnham is faring about as well in Scotland as the Romans and Edward II did (//)