As is readily apparent, everywhere, Labour is in turmoil and chronic electoral decline. Its general election win last July might, I suspect, prove to be its final swansong before the party moves towards electoral oblivion.
Given that the Tories are also in total electoral meltdown, not helped by the fact that they elected Kemi Badenoch as their leader, and she has proved to be utterly incompetent not just at the Despatch Box but also with the country at large and even amongst its members, the comparison that is usually being made now is between the electoral fortunes of Labour and Reform, who are seen as the up-and-coming threat to Labour.
In England, this may be true.
There is no evidence, as yet, that this is really the case in Wales, where Reform has, so far, won a single council seat.
It is, however, in Scotland the most interesting electoral development might be happening. This is the revival of the SNP at cost to Labour.
As The National newspaper reported yesterday (and I make my usual disclosure, which is that I am a columnist for this paper), the SNP won two former Labour council seats on Thursday, and both in pro-Labour areas:
[Thursday's] by-election result in Glasgow's North East ward is a rarity by recent standards, because the SNP were comfortably ahead on first preference votes in spite of the fact that Labour had topped the poll in the ward at the local elections in 2022.
Note the first interesting fact here, which is that in Scotland local authority elections, and even by elections, take place on a proportional representation system.
They then added:
To put that in perspective, in 2022 the SNP were still the ascendant force in Scottish politics, and had a national lead over Labour of more than 12 percentage points. Without doubt, then, the SNP have just captured territory that is unusually favourable for Labour.
If the pro-SNP swing in the by-election were to be replicated across Scotland, the SNP would be a whopping 20 points clear of Labour – a bigger national lead than even the opinion polls have been suggesting.
The result is also a useful benchmark in another way, because it can be compared with a previous by-election that was held in the ward as recently as last November, at a time when Labour's decline was already well underway.
Not only has there been a hefty 4% swing to the SNP since then, but the SNP's own vote share has recovered by two percentage points.
Of course, gross extrapolation is always unwise from such results: by-elections can produce odd results, but these are hefty swings. I will, then, restrict myself to one overall comment, and that is, might Labour be losing Scotland? If so, it's another nail in its already rapidly closing coffin, if you can withstand the metaphor.
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Not just the SNP. The Greens were less than 200 votes away from winning Glasgow south.
I damn well hope so. They should get a well earned kicking in our General Election in May 2026.
That’s leaving aside the fact that Scotland is more than capable of running its own affairs without input from the neighbours next door – which I’m not of a mind to leave aside.
Well some good news then. I agree that Labour will lose votes in Scotland not gain them. The idea that Labour will win at Holyrood next year is pure fantasy. Scottish voters who voted for Labour last year will realise it was a totally wasted vote which has installed a Tory party (called Labour) in Westminster. The Tories are unlikely to gain either.
Let’s be more positive here shall we?
Scotland is losing Labour and that is a good thing – considering. They don’t need parties based in London as far as I can see.
Thank you PSR
I’d say this is a continuation of the steady decline in Labour votes from the middle of Blair, through Brown to Miliband. They’d become irrelevant, losing membership, in debt, they lost Scotland completely, and had shifted to the right leaving them vulnerable to the Conservative party. So, a short interlude when Corbyn tried to turn things round, and now the natural continuation.
They are lucky that the Conservatives are so obviously incompetent, but it looks like people are giving up on both of them. (Opinion polls should register how many people are not going to vote. “Swings” are meaningless without this.) In Italy, both major parties disappeared together, bringing in Berlusconi. In Scotland, Labour collapsed overnight, but the SNP messed up being a natural replacement. So, Farage it is. God help us.
Farage?
I hope you’re wrong but fear you may be right.
As Labour tracks the Tories further to the right, chasing Reform, I think they are assuming there is nowhere for more left-in minded voters to go.
So is there any party across England with a more “left” policy position than Labour? We can’t vote for the SNP. Only the Greens?
This is one of the many things I despise about current Labour. They are right wing, clearly, but seems to be smug in the fact that if Left leaning voters want to stop Reform they have to vote Labour. In my opinion anyway. And is it a coincidence that they have unleashed their latest round of cruelty at the same time Reform are having internal issues? I wonder. They are seriously underestimating Reforms grass roots game if they think they have them out maneuvered. As I’ve said before, their supporters seem to be getting their information from news sources and platforms that many of us don’t encounter, and are in a separate bubble of the algorithm. According to what the YouTube algorithm fed me during last year’s US elections, it seemed like Harris would win. It was clearly a different world for Trump supporters. I guarantee the same will be true for Reform.
I’m still reeling from the fact that so many Scots voted for the Labour Party in 2024, despite having told us on the doorstep in previous elections, “Never again”. Hopefully the Independence supporting parties can retain a majority next year, and while, at the moment, it seems the Labour Party will lose seats, it’s over a year until the election, and things can change, so we musn’t take victory for granted. What puzzles me, if the opinion polls are accurate, is why so many Scots seem intent on voting Reform, not even a political party, when one of their M.Ps, has called for the Scottish Parliament to be abolished. Strange.
There is a little further information in The National article written by James Kelly of the Scot goes Pop website about how Reform did in the two Glasgow Council by-elections:
“Another possibility is that the ongoing Reform UK bandwagon in Scotland is taking a disproportionate toll on Labour. However, that is only relevant to the result in the North East ward, where extraordinarily Reform took almost one-quarter of first preference votes.
After the Reform candidate was eliminated, most of his votes did not transfer to other parties – but of those that did, almost twice as many transferred to Labour as to the SNP. That indicates a hefty chunk of Reform voters may have been grabbed from the traditional Labour support.
By complete contrast, Reform suffered an embarrassing flop in the Southside Central ward, finishing behind the Greens and even the SSP. That can perhaps be explained by the ward’s more cosmopolitan demographic mix.”
The useless, corrupt toerags that Labour in Scotland became were kicked out of office here – not before time. There are new generations of voters now, though, who never experienced the yes-men and yes-women who, ingratiating themselves with Labour to further their own interests, often acted against their country’s interests in the Commons.
Thanks
I’d hate to see the UK break up, but mostly because of the issues it would cause, and the distraction to politics, like Brexit. But, seeing as how I despise Westminster, I can understand why the Scottish want to leave, and wish them luck. At least they have the option. I may move north and join them.
Richard, you say “Its general election win last July might, I suspect, prove to be its final swansong before the party moves towards electoral oblivion.”
I think I may already have posted on here, certainly elsewhere, the idea that Starmer is a latter-day Campbell-Bannerman (a chalk and cheese parallel, I agree, with Campbell-Bannerman being quality chalk such as Leonardo da Vinci used, as he was a substantial politician of talent and integrity. Starmer, by contrast, is a mouldy, maggot-ridden cheese, fit only for a food waste bin, being almost completely lacking in either talent or integrity. When, for example, is he going to condemn the Genocide in Gaza that even a child knows is a Genocide?)
Remember, the Liberals under Campbell-Bannerman won a tremendous landslide victory against the Tories in 1906, having been out of power since 1895.
However, this lead vanished in the 2 1910 Elections, called over Lloyd George’s Peoples’ Budget, with the Liberals losing 123 seats in the January 1910 Election, to end up with 274 to the Tories’ 272!
In the December Election the Liberals did even worse, and ended up with 272 seats to 271 Tories, who actually also won a greater share of the vote, with 46.6% as against 44.2% of the vote.
Note, December 1910 is the last time Liberals took power and formed an administration, their place on the political stage being taken over by Labour.
History never repeats itself exactly, but it chimes – some particular note or chord is replayed, maybe in a different key. But the overall melody may survive in variation form, as occurs is musical variations.
And I really do believe that Starmer’s Labour (actually Faux-Labour) Variations herald the end of that Party’s particular song, with something like the 1910 drama playing out, now Reform has emerged, and while we still have the poisonous FPTP electoral system.
Consequently, it’s up to the Left, Richard’s 53% and more that actually want a Courageous State, to get together and fashion a coherent offer to the British electorate.
This must be enough to entice the non-voters out of hiding, as happened in 2017, though the malign Tory ID barriers not lifted by Labour militate against that, alas, and thereby wrench UK politics back to the “I am my sister’s and brother’s keeper” politics of post-WW2, before the serpent of Neoliberalism came along to expel us from that haphazard, ramshackle Eden.
Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project is a start, but not as a new Party. Rather, let is see it encourage a coming together of like-minded movements in various parts of the UK, to offer a common programme, to include the repeal of all the illiberal legislation passed of late, aiming to inhibit protests and freedom of speech and access to the vote, the introduction of PR, and a promise to hold an election under that new PR system within 18 months to 2 years, at most.
Be assured, the next GE, especially as it will still be held under FPTP, will almost certainly be the last UK Election, because Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are on their different ways out of the United Kingdom, and only a truly Federal UK could halt that process. If, indeed, it can be halted. I suspect not.
All noted.
Thanks, Andrew
I’d like to draw attention to the widespread weighting distortions in polling results relating to Scottish Independence and to Holyrood matters. This surfaced in the pro-Independence blogsite Talking-up Scotland yesterday – Latest Holyrood poll adjusted to minimise support for pro-independence parties – Talking-up Scotland – which pointed out that most of the English-based polling companies are still using weightings relating to the 2014 Independence Referendum and yet, in the interim, c500k older voters (who in the main were No voters) have dropped out of the electorate and been replaced by a similar number of young voters the majority of whom are Yes voters.
A Survation poll between 6th & 13th March asked for voting intentions if an independence referendum were to be held. Once Don’t Knows are removed the Weighted scores were 46.1% for Yes and 53.9% for No, but the Unweighted scores were 60.8% for Yes and 39,2% for No. That’s a massive Yes majority of 21.6% A similar poll by Norstat on 11th February produced a similar large Yes majority of 14% (57% Yes and 43% No).
We all get it that polls aren’t precise indicators but it’s clear that the use of inappropriate and outdated data for weighting skews the outcome significantly. In addition LINO’s adoption of Tory economic policies and demonstrable ineptitude in office has changed political thinking in Scotland. It’s also clear that support for Reform is significantly lower here than in England – memories of Farage taking refuge in an Edinburgh pub (where I’m sure he wasn’t welcomed) from a jeering mob and having to be rescued by police – are still prevalent here. Given all that it’s likely that support for independence is running above 10% higher than staying in the UK.
Apologies for saying it again, but it’s hard to imagine us making a bigger mess of running our own affairs and Robin McAlpine’s 2018 book ‘How to Start a new Country’ lays out what needs to be done. We’ve got a government which puts Scotland’s people first, but is hamstrung economically by Westminster. What are we waiting for?
Robin’s book is great, but I contributed to it….
And your comments re polling are spot on
Thanks, Ken
And, what are we waiting for – for the SNP leadership to decide they want to do what their membership want
Labour may be on the way out across the UK but the question is what will replace it
I don’t see any serious alternatives at the moment sadly