Scottish Labour has won 37 of the 57 seats north of the border, an increase of 36 on the 2019 result. This is the party’s best showing in Scotland since 2010 and comes nine years after losing all but one of their seats to the SNP. Labour will be sending its most impressive crop of Scottish MPs to Westminster in a generation. Leading the pack is Douglas Alexander, the new MP for Lothian East. A protege of Gordon Brown, he was MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South from 1997 to 2015, serving as transport and later Scottish secretary under Tony Blair and international development secretary under Brown. After 14 years in opposition, the pool of Labour MPs with senior ministerial experience is small, so it’s unlikely that someone of Alexander’s talents will stay on the backbenches for long.
Shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray, the only Labour MP to survive in Scotland in 2015, returns to Westminster, accompanied by Michael Shanks, a teacher who won the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election last October. As the man who kept the Scottish Labour flame alive during its darkest days, Murray can expect to play a leading role in the Starmer government. Joining him will be Blair McDougall, who turned an SNP majority of 10 per cent in East Renfrewshire into a Labour majority of 17 per cent. McDougall is a hate figure for Scottish nationalists, having masterminded the Better Together campaign which won the independence referendum in 2014, and his strategic nous could prove invaluable.
Melanie Ward, who regained Brown’s old Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy constituency from the Nationalists, could be particularly useful to the new Prime Minister as he attempts to neutralise the Muslim revolt over Labour’s pro-Israel stance. Ward was until this morning the chief executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians and has succeeded in combining mainstream soft-left politics with outspoken support for Palestine. Two Holyrood veterans will enter the Commons in the form of Richard Baker, the new MP for Glenrothes and Mid Fife, and Patricia Ferguson, who captured Glasgow West from the SNP’s Carol Monaghan. Baker served as a Labour list MSP from 2003 to 2016 and was the party’s spokesman on justice and finance. Ferguson was one of the original 129 members elected to the first Scottish parliament in 1999 and represented Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn for 17 years, during which time she had a three-year stint as a minister in Jack McConnell’s government.
Martin McCluskey, who won Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West, was a respected and well-liked Labour strategist in the Scottish parliament and a prominent anti-independence activist. Another Unionist player is Pamela Nash, most recently head of the pro-UK lobby group Scotland in Union and MP for Airdrie and Shotts until 2015. She took Motherwell, Wishaw and Carluke, deep in the old Labour Scottish heartland, after three terms with an SNP MP. Kirsty McNeill, policy director at Save the Children, added 19 per cent to Labour’s vote in Midlothian to oust the SNP. McNeill spent three years as a special advisor to Gordon Brown in No. 10. Also worth watching are Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) and Johanna Baxter (Paisley and Renfrewshire South), both of whom have extensive experience in the trade union movement, as well as former diplomat Alan Gemmell, now MP for Central Ayrshire, and Joani Reid, the granddaughter of Red Clydeside hero Jimmy Reid, who has triumphed in East Kilbride and Strathaven.
Torcuil Crichton, a former journalist for the Daily Record, captured Na h-Eileanan an Iar, which had been SNP since 2005. A campaigning reporter and experienced broadcaster, the Gaelic-speaking Crichton will help shape the voice and conscience of the new Scottish parliamentary party. Another rising star to keep an eye on is Gordon McKee, a 29-year-old son of a welder who wrested the middle-class suburbs of Glasgow South from the SNP’s Stewart McDonald. McKee, a former advisor to Ian Murray, represents the next generation of Scottish Labour and already has years battling the SNP under his belt. Whatever other problems the new government might have, it appears to have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to Scottish MPs.
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