WITH an announcement on a general election on June 7 widely expected this week, all appears to be rosy for the Labour Party, both at UK level and in Scotland.

UK polling evidence in the last week has pointed to perhaps an even larger majority than in 1997, and Tony Blair now stands at odds of 40/1 on of winning. In Scotland too, Labour's dominance is set to continue in any Westminster election, despite a loss of support from last month.

Despite that drop, latest figures from System Three tell a story of Labour continuing to show as strongly as it did four years ago with all the other parties playing catch-up. On the basis of voting intentions for Westminster, as few as two seats would be likely to change hands.

The SNP would pick up Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber as it did in the 1999 Scottish parliament elections. Labour, on the other hand, could pick up Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale from the Liberal Democrats, although the Liberal Democrats' poor national share of the vote often masks its ability to fight in its areas of strength.

The foot-and-mouth crisis has failed to affect the make-up of political support either in Scotland or in the UK. Whatever the failings in the government's handling of the affair, it is clear from two months of UK and Scottish polling results that voters are not intent on punishing Labour for it.

All of which is music to Labour ears in Scotland as well, with the Scottish Executive's role in the foot-and-mouth crisis also showing little impact on its popularity. Labour's drop in the figures this month is probably as much to do with the continued sniping within Scottish Executive ranks and perhaps the fiasco over visitscotland.

Overall for Westminster, the SNP is achieving a better performance than in 1997 and is still on course to record perhaps its second-best ever share of the vote in a UK general election. However, it is not enough to make any headway on Labour's Scottish lead.

If our poll figures were repeated, it would give the SNP seven Westminster seats to Labour's 56. There is, of course, considerable distortion caused by the first-past-the-post electoral system. For 27% of the committed vote in our poll, the SNP would have under 10% of the seats.

Yet to underline the increasing complexity of Scottish politics, when we look at voting intentions for Scottish Parliament elections the picture is different. Labour is ahead, but not by the 20 percentage points for Westminster, but in the comparable first ballot figures for Holyrood this gap is reduced to five points.

This, coupled to the more proportional voting intention, would see the SNP's influence at Holyrood increase much more substantially. What is encouraging from the nationalists' point of view is that the increase is in spite of the fact that Labour is not doing significantly worse in voting intentions for Holyrood as its actually achieved in 1999.

As events such as last autumn's fuel tax protests have shown, Labour discomfort is capitalised on well by the SNP. If the nationalists can be showing a strengthened level of support for Holyrood at a time Labour is doing well, then that augurs well for its ability to take advantage of any Westminster mid-term blues that Labour may suffer at the time of the next Scottish Parliament elections in 2003.

For now attention is focused on the almost certain Labour victory in the general election. In UK terms, it is the Conservatives that still hold the prime opposition position, but in Scotland, William Hague can count on little support from his Scottish wing. It is now unlikely to achieve the 17.5% won in 1997 and that almost certainly means no Scottish seats for a second parliamentary term in a row.

If the reports of the parties' private polling are correct, then Mr Blair may even win with a majority in the region of 200. This will be an election of significance not only for that fact, but also because it will set the mould for Scottish domestic politics as well. Far from being an irrelevance, this UK election will be important in determining how well the Scottish Parliament continues to ''bed down''.

Malcom Dickson lectures in

politics at Strathclyde University