The question wasn’t about whether Labour would win the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election, but by how much. A good win would involve a swing in the double digits, Sir John Curtice confirmed yesterday evening, while a moderate win would suggest that Keir Starmer’s party would have its work cut out in fighting for a majority in the next general election.
The true result of the by-election however, announced in the early hours of this morning, was nothing like Labour had predicted. ‘Seismic,’ veteran Labour MSP Jackie Baillie mouthed as the numbers came through: ‘Stonking.’ With 17,845 votes to the SNP’s 8,399 and 1,192 for the Scottish Tories, Scottish Labour came away with a majority just short of 10,000 – and over 50 per cent of the vote.
Today’s result was an important first step for a Labour party trying to prove it’s making a comeback
Though it has been a long time coming (it’s been three years since former SNP MP Margaret Ferrier was found to have broken Covid rules), the official launches for candidate campaigns only took place during the summer. But even then, Labour’s launch felt very different to the SNP’s. Labour’s candidate Michael Shanks was placed front and centre of the launch, exposed to seasoned journalists in a move that a Labour insider later described as a ‘risk’. Meanwhile, the SNP’s Katy Loudon wasn’t even afforded a seat at the table – literally. Sitting behind First Minister Humza Yousaf, who took most of the questions from the press, even cutting Loudon off at one point, the atmosphere felt markedly different: noticeably more tense.
The launches seemed to set the tone for how each party’s campaigning would continue. Humza Yousaf was criticised for his lacking presence in the area and former first minister Nicola Sturgeon didn’t appear once, while Labour pulled in its top brass: Starmer, Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting, Rachel Reeves and even former prime minister Gordon Brown all made their way around the constituency.
‘It seemed like the SNP weren’t putting up much of a fight,’ said one source from the Labour trail. Certainly the Starmer-Sarwar duo worked the area hard, aware of just how crucial Scotland’s seats will be for a Labour majority in 2024. Scotland’s central belt, more so than Northern England, is viewed by many in Labour as the first ‘red wall’ to fall. Claiming it back with a 20 per cent swing will bolster Labour’s hopes that this type of victory can be replicated across the UK in many of those seats lost in 2019.
But while Labour’s victory here is large, the Rutherglen and Hamilton West constituency is not thought to have been the most difficult one for Starmer to claw back. Margaret Ferrier won in 2019 with a majority of just over 5,000, making it one of the SNP’s more vulnerable seats, and it has see-sawed between Labour and SNP over the last thirteen years, being a Labour stronghold before that.
On speaking to voters in the area, it wasn’t a newfound faith in Starmer, or his party’s policies, that was driving people to vote for his party. Indeed, a number of people took issue with his New Labour makeover: ‘It’s the Tony Blair playbook,’ one insisted. ‘He’s trying to do anything to get into bed with the right people.’
Instead, many voters driven towards Labour were simply fed up with the SNP. The cost of living crisis and failing public services were top priorities and though Ferrier’s name did crop up (two spoiled ballots did in fact nominate her), it was her party’s recent woes that came up more often. In fact, Yousaf’s name didn’t appear to crop up much either. Though Nicola Sturgeon hasn’t been the First Minister for six months, she remains associated with the leadership of the SNP – another problem for the First Minister who is keen to cast off his predecessor’s shadow and shift the public focus onto his own vision for Scotland.
The Scottish Tories lost their deposit after picking up less than 5 per cent of the vote share, though in a race that was primarily between Labour and the SNP they weren’t expecting to do well. It is also likely that the small proportion of Conservative voters in the area may have chosen to back Labour this time around to protect the unionist vote.
Far more striking are the gains Labour has made from the ‘soft indy’ population: the nationalists lost over 16 per cent of their voters from the last election, many of whom have turned to a pro-Union party. The numbers only amplify what was being said on the streets of Rutherglen and Hamilton: the issue of independence was simply not at the forefront of peoples’ minds in this election.
Labour will be elated at this morning’s result, but both Starmer and Sarwar will have some expectation management to do. Voters don’t feel as though any of the main political parties have put forward an attractive, cohesive vision for the country yet and are instead motivated to choose whichever party they dislike the least. As one Rutherglen constituent said yesterday afternoon: ‘I’m choosing the best out of a bad bunch.’
Today’s result was an important first step for a Labour party trying to prove it’s making a comeback. But Starmer has a lot of work to do north of the border if he is to ensure this kind of result is replicated across Scotland.
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