Sorry Pete, but I don’t think there’s anything hugely ambiguous about the result from the Inverclyde by-election. This was a pretty solid victory for Labour and another reminder – if these things are needed – that Westminster and Holyrood elections are played by different rules.
Labour and the SNP ran neck-and-neck in the gibberish spin stakes last night as some Labour hackettes, preposterously, tried to claim that the seat “was the SNP’s to lose”; for their part the nationalists tried to suggest they’d never been very interested in winning Inverclyde at all. More weapons-grade piffle. Then again, without this stuff how would anyone fill the weary hours of television before the result is announced?
Labour’s majority may have been reduced but that’s little reflection on Ed Miliband or his leadership. It’s not particularly fair but Miliband receives no credit for holding Labour’s heartlands but defeat would have been considered another blow to his credibility. Such is life. Nevertheless, Mr Miliband is more or less an irrelevance here these days and, even in a Westminster election, not much of the campaign is very much about him.
As it did in the Holyrood election, Labour’s vote remained steady last night; its problem is that in other, more competitive seats across Scotland the SNP has become the catch-all alternative to Labour hegemony, scooping up votes from non-nationalist voters who can recognise a two-horse race when they see it. For example, in May the Tories won the Ayr constituency vote by just over a thousand votes but the SNP prevailed by more than 5,000 ballots on the list vote in that same constituency.
Whether the SNP can maintain that performance in future elections remains a mootish point. There’s every prospect Salmond has maximised the SNP vote and we may tentatively expect a swing against the SNP in future elections as some of his temporary allies think it prudent to clip the SNP’s wings. Nevertheless, this too will happen on a case-by-case basis and be dependent on the given circumstances and trends present in a particular constituency. Equally it remains evident that the SNP is still unlikely to make a major breakthrough at Westminster and that the momentum it carried from Holyrood is not enough for it to prevail in elections to the Imperial British parliament.
The Tories, meanwhile, continue to tread water, neither drowning nor making any progress. As for the poor old Liberal Democrats, well Nick Clegg has every reason to be hacked-off with his erstwhile supporters. What a collection of gutless ninnies they are. Certainly those Lib Dems who thought the party a left-wing alternative to Labour have reason to be disappointed, even if the only thing that’s been exposed is their own credulity. Other Lib Dem voters have no such excuse: they evidently prefer the comfort of opposition and would rather see no Lib Dem input in government than accept or actualyl welcome the opportunities – if also the compromises – of government. If ever a party leadership had reason to despise its supporters, Mr Clegg has that prerogative now.
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