A Guardian email this morning has the headline:
The associated article notes:
Scottish Labour's Michael Shanks has won the Rutherglen and Hamilton West byelection in an overwhelming victory over the SNP that the party leadership declared “seismic”, and a clear demonstration that Scotland could lead the way in delivering a Labour government at Westminster at the coming general election.
So let's get some facts right.
First, this was a LibDem style victory on a swing of 20%.
Second, the literal crimes of the outgoing former SNP MP always made a swing of that sort likely.
Third, this was hardly an SNP safe seat. As Lesley Riddoch has noted in The National:
Rutherglen and Hamilton West is the fifth most Labour-supporting seat in Scotland and the 36th most SNP-supporting seat. It had Scotland's third-highest Labour vote in 2015 and fifth-highest in 2019. If Labour can't win there – with local issues to grind like the cost of entering SNP-run Glasgow because of its pollution-busting LEZ – they won't win anywhere.
Fourth, as Lesley also notes:
It's also worth pointing out that few by-election victories survive the following General Election. Indeed, Winnie Ewing's historic 1967 victory over Labour in Hamilton was reversed in 1970.
Recent analysis by Electoral Calculus suggests seats gained in by-elections over the last 40 years are more likely to flip back to their “original” holders than to be held by challengers.
And in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, the “original” holders have pretty much been Labour since the party was formed.
So, the SNP may be set to lose a seat they were always lucky to hold – just like every other governing party.
In other words, this is not quite the result it seems.
And, fifth, part of the win is down to the collapse in the Tory vote:
But, having said all that, the optics for the SNP are not good. It has lost one of its more marginal seats whilst looking like a tired government in Scotland.
But that, maybe, us unsurprising. For a party supposedly of the left, its economic policies have been remarkably neoliberal.
It has also been strongly pro-Union with its leadership being dedicated to using the UK pound, even though its membership has strongly rejected that policy.
And it has failed to deliver a convincing strategy for achieving independence against the combined Unionist hegemony of the Tory and Labour parties, both of whom still have a profoundly colonial mindset whilst being indifferent to the interests of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, even though Labour rules in the last of these.
The SNP did in that case need this loss, in my opinion. Maybe it might just be shocked out if its comfortable indifference to its membership, independence and even governing as a result. If so that would be very good. The last thing the UK needs is a Labour landslide given how far to the right it has also drifted.
In summary, I don't think this a big deal. I don't think Scotland has suddenly found a massive new enthusiasm for Labour, because it already had it in this seat. But I do think the SNP might have to wake up and actually reflect the interests of its membership and Scotland again, and not those of a small coterie around its leader's office. And that would be a good thing.
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Absolutely correct. Sadly I don’t think the ‘continuation’ leader and his followers will smell the coffee.
I hear what you say but it’s a terrific outcome for Labour and gives them a boost and plenty of momentum to carry into an election campaign to become a majority government.
Would you say the same of a Libdem by election victory? I doubt it. So I doubt this too.
Well the Tory vote didn’t collapse, it simply voted for the party’s Better Together partners to drive out the SNP. And the SNP voters, and activists, stayed at home, utterly scunnered by identity politics taking priority over the quest for the country to become a normal one, an independent one.
Humza has much more humble pie to eat yet, if he can stomach it. Scotland needs them to fall further, to purge the poison in the party, before the country can come back stronger. But then country before party has long been the issue for a party where power, devolved power, trumps the risk of going for broke.
The tory vote didn’t collapse?
They lost their deposit! That looks like a collapse to me.
Jenw it didn’t collapse in the sense I think you mean. As Keith said in his comment, the Tories simply voted to get SNP out. They are well known here for voting for the Unionist candidate most likely to do so. There are many Councils in Scotland where SNP won the most seats but Tories, Labour, LDems or so-called Independents who have made unofficial coalitions to keep SNP out.
In Rutherglen they all effectively voted for the Labour Unionist candidate. Despite the supposed 20% swing to Labour it is clearly not SNP swinging to Labour
Tory vote was over 8000 at the 2019 election. It was 1100 at the byelection.
Tories didn’t vote. Neither did anyone else as it was only a 37% turnout this time, but losing your deposit,even in a seat like this, is bad.
Hope it happens everywhere. Not that I want a labour government, you understand.
“It has also been strongly pro-Union with its leadership being dedicated to using the UK pound, even though its membership has strongly rejected that policy”.
That is because the Scottish people are a great deal more committed to Sterling (which was itself fundamentally transformed by Union – a fact that is ill understood), than they are to any political party; and whatever anyone wishes to believe, a politically persuasive case on Sterling that will decisively change their mind has not been made. It is not about theoretical monetary principles, but real behaviour and the real execution of any change. So far, it simply doesn’t wash with the electorate as a saleable proposition. I do not think anyone in politics understands this.
Sterling replaced Presbyterianism as a primary article of faith, with political leverage in Scotland long ago. Could that change? Yes, but the lever is not around merely technicalities of the changeover, but only when the electorate is persuaded they are better off, at very low risk by changing. The usable lever to achieve that is actually there; but in the unfashionable economic principle of the balance of trade; but nobody is addressing it.
We have to disagree John
That is fine, Richard I am perfectly satisfied with my position (and have never been in the least disconcerted by being in a minority – of one). I would merely point out that it is not simply a matter of persuading a majority; but carrying sufficient of the minority to respect it: especially when that minority possesses so many of the levers of influence within the old, discreet Scottish institutional and non-instituional networks that have been there – forever.
I agree with everything you say but one of the things I’d like to see is the election spend for each party, and where the funding came from.
I do wish that Scotland’s leadership was a bit more like the Welsh one – keen to push back on any perceived failings when they are linked to Tory over-centralised austerity although I have seen some elements of enlightened good practice in Scotland in the DWP etc.
The SNP’s silence on this matter is akin to Labour’s silence on the alleged and unfounded accusations of having the left the country bankrupt (thank you Liam Byrne – you arse).
The turnout, or lack of it, a pitiful 37% compared with 66% at the last GE was another interesting stat. Looks like potential SNP voters just didn’t, or couldn’t bring themselves to turn out for what has become a totally dysfunctional Party.
There is one aspect of this situation that has been completely ignored by all the media and politicians but which is in my opinion the most important. When Margaret Ferrier travelled around after getting a positive test result there were around 300 deaths a week in the UK from Covid, and three weeks earlier it was under 100/w. We are currently at around 300/w again, and this is rising as we enter the autumn wave. For the first few months of this year we were mostly at 500-800/w. If travelling around while knowingly having Covid was such a terrible thing back then I don’t understand why it is considered perfectly acceptable now, with the number of Covid deaths the same as it was then. Workers are being encouraged to go into work even when testing positive and kids are being encouraged to go into school when testing positive. It’s also not clear how reliable the current data are, with the government cutting back on monitoring Covid, so the current data might be underestimates. All those 12000 constituents who signed the recall petition presumably due to how terrible they considered Ferrier’s actions to be – are they all testing when they have symptoms and isolating when they test positive?
Last week Starmer spoke about how terrible Ferrier’s actions were, and yet did not mention anything about the current number of Covid deaths and how high it is, and what he would do to get it down. Why does he seemingly not care at all about all the people dying unnecessarily in such large numbers when he could be loudly advocating for the clean air revolution that is required? He could be advocating for increasing clean air across the country with a massive government programme of ventilation, air filtration, and air sterilisation. This would save lives and greatly improve health on a massive scale, take massive pressure of the NHS (and thus greatly aid the NHS in all the other areas), and greatly aid the economy by having a much healthier population that will not be ravaged by long Covid. I do not understand why he, or any of the other politicians or those in the mainstream media, does not care about the health of the people of this country.
Your concerns are entirely appropriate.
You might be interested in yesterday’s Indi-sage youtube, which was all about statistics.
Starver just likes to stir things up, writing in the S*n the weekend of the labour conference in Liverpool.
As a member of the S.N.P, I agree entirely with all your comments Richard.
Same. SNP member, agreed with every word. This was the best result for the SNP, medium term. It was important that we lost by a sufficient margin for it to *serve as a wakeup call, and if we’d lost by 4k votes there would’ve been zero soul-searching. But the support for independence remains as strong; the SNP have to reclaim it. Ditch Humza, a decent man too tied to the old regime, end the toxic coalition with the Greens, even if only to demonstrate a confident independence of thought. And for heaven’s sake get Forbes in as FM. And I’m speaking as someone who doesn’t much like Forbes. Uniting the party isn’t as nearly as important as the party growing the hell up, and realising it has to now accommodate heterogeneous opinion.
I agree entirely with your analysis Richard and I say that as an SNP member increasingly frustrated with their digression from the sole purpose of their being: Independence.
It is also pertinent to note the extremely low turnout of 37% compared with 2019 GE, when Labour took 2nd place with 18,545 votes, here in 2023 they have won the by-election on 17,845 votes. That’s hardly the seismic result that Sir Kid Starver and his branch office manager are talking it up to be!
I know I shouldn’t comment on Scottish politics but….. I will anyway!
A by-election in a seat vacated by a disgraced MP is hardly a great barometer of broader public opinion. However, with Scottish Labour sitting to the left of Labour (in tone if not policy) could this make Labour overall a bit less timid?
Or am I being hopelessly optimistic?
Yes, in a word
Scottish Labour has no independent existence
It is just a branch office
As well as the SNP being in a mess after being corrupted by Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon all the polls show the majority of the public don’t even want another referendum let alone independence… Scotland is wide open for Labour at the next GE.
Wow
You have got it all very wrong
There speaks a man who knows nothing about Scotland, its people or its politics
Meanwhile, back in the real world…
Agreed.
Lab may well do well overall in Scotland at the General Election, but the same old issues for Scotland will remain if they get a Tory lite Lab Government.
Actually, I’m more interested in the Tory getting just 3.9% of the vote. Total wipe. Any pretense that the Tories have of being a one nation party (other than that one nation being Little culture war England) has just been blown out of the water.
Message to the Tory party, most people don’t like you. Hopefully, your days are numbered.
Good point
MarP, there are also the issues of tactical voting to support the more-likely-to-win pro-Union Labour candidate and the very significant drop in turnout which negates any comparison with prior events in the constituency
I agree with your comments. It is also worth noting the low voter turn out, which suggests that many would be SNP voters remained at home. The SNP has alienated very many Independence supporters.
While I dont follow Scottish Politics in any great detail I get a feeling that the SNP has been a victim of its own success and doesnt seem to have either been able to or concentrated on running a competent administration.
The whole Ferries saga is a case to point, both with the state of the Cal Mac fleet and the ‘Glen Sannox; fiasco at Fergusons.
That of course and as you say neo liberal policies
While you may have a case in point re Fergusons John, I suggest you look at the Talking Up Scotland website, run by Professor John Robertson, where he will give you the facts regarding C.Mal.
I do follow Scottish politics ( I live in Scotland), and this is a bit rich coming from someone who presumably lives elsewhere in the UK. The ferries fiasco is not a great advert, agreed, but pales into insignificance compared with HS2, track and trace, billions spent on useless PPE etc etc
I suspect a lot of people who also live here do not appreciate how much better it is than England now. For example, I refer you to this report of an investigation by Professor Danny Dorling of Oxford University, on the impact of the Scottish child payment https://www.thenational.scot/news/23802729.scottish-child-payment-impact-biggest-since-fall-berlin-wall/ I wonder if this was reported in England at all?
To quote Miriam Margolis ‘England is shite now’. I guess most people reading this blog agree with that? Scotland, not quite so shite.
I agree with pretty much everything Richard has said about the by-election result. The SNP are tired and we could do with a change but support for independence remains high, and I don’t think Labour will do well here in a general election with their current attitude to the union.
Completely fair
But there may be another blog on this issue in the morning
Rutherglen and Hamilton West Labour vote history:
2010: 28,566
2015: 20,304
2017: 19,101
2019: 18,545
2023: 17,845
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutherglen_and_Hamilton_West_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
In the last five general elections Labour won three times – the last in 2017
This is not seismic
Agreed Richard, but it does show a persistent negative trend in Labour votes cast
For those of us with long memories and political nerdiness, Rutherglen does have a symbolic meaning for Labour as, about 60 years back, Labour gained it from the Conservatives and there followed the 1964 general election where Harold Wilson ended 13 years of Tory misrule.
I think that’s a case of over projection
An intriguing analysis of the political dynamics in Rutherglen and Hamilton West! ️ The historical context and the statistical perspective on by-election victories provide a nuanced view of the situation. It’s particularly interesting to consider the impact of the former SNP MP’s actions on the swing and how historical voting patterns might influence future elections. I wonder, how might the SNP strategize to regain trust and support in such a context, especially considering the historical voting tendencies of the constituency? Additionally, how do you foresee these patterns and the current political climate influencing strategies of other parties in the region, particularly in engaging with voters and addressing local issues? It’s always enlightening to delve deeper into the multifaceted aspects of electoral dynamics and anticipate potential future shifts!
“region”?! Scotland is not a region, it is one of the Nations (still, sadly) in this dysfunctional Union.
The percentage vote share gives a misleading impression. The drop in turnout was largely in the SNP vote. The Labour vote fell by only 700, the SNP one fell by 15,000. Labour is retaining its voters.
So?
Stephen McNair suggesting that Labour is holding on to its vote misses one rather large factor. I have no doubt that the detailed analysis will eventually reveal a large number (potentially thousands) of tactically voting Tories.
For them this was a free shot at giving SNP a bloody nose, safe in the knowledge that on the Friday an 80- seat Tory majority would still be there. It was also for Labour and Tories a policy-free election. I defy any Rutherglen constituent to name one Labour policy they voted for and, into the bargain, which UK Labour policies the winning candidate actually supports. The man is on record as opposing a large number of Starmer’s pronouncements to date. “Voter for me to oppose UK Labour policy” is not a long-term sustainable strategy