Is Scottish Labour embarrassed by Starmer?

They had balloons, handmade posters and a big red van lit up with ‘Michael Shanks: A Fresh Start’ flashing on the side. The Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election is Labour’s to lose and don’t they know it. Despite the pressure on the modern studies teacher and now-Labour candidate Michael Shanks, the atmosphere at Labour’s by-election launch was relaxed – if the Glaswegian weather miserable. Former SNP MP Margaret Ferrier lost her seat on Tuesday night and constituents will face a second vote in October, a by-election that will bring the SNP and Labour head to head. 

Tuesday’s result was a small win for Labour – literally. The recall petition’s low turnout of 14 per cent is nothing to boast about and suggests that while voters were unhappy with Ferrier’s Covid breaches – and perhaps with the SNP more generally – their apathy extended towards the Labour party too. Shanks has been campaigning with Anas Sarwar and Keir Starmer for months, and while he has come across disillusioned SNP supporters, he accepts the task ahead of him is sizable.

‘The other day I had a woman who showed me her SNP membership card and was not voting SNP,’ he told reporters on Wednesday morning. ‘Now, these people are not immediately saying they’re voting Labour, but they’re open to the conversation. I’ve got 60,000 more [people] to speak to, and that’s what our target will be over the next two months.’ 

While events leading up to the recall petition were hardly ideal for the SNP, Shanks’ selection caused a stir among Labour activists after the names of local choices – particularly councillor Mo Razzaq and trade-unionist Leah Stalker – didn’t appear on the ballot paper. But though it has been suggested that Shanks had been selected as a centre ground candidate who would be less likely to rock the boat with UK Labour, he told reporters on Wednesday that if successful, he would spend his time in parliament campaigning against many of UK Labour’s policy shifts.

On the two-child benefit cap, Shanks said: ‘I’ll campaign within the Labour group to abolish the two-child cap.’ On the bedroom tax, he commented: ‘I don’t think the bedroom tax is a good idea and I will be campaigning against that as a Scottish Labour position.’ And on UK Labour’s stance on gender reforms, he admitted: ‘Personally, I support the medicalisation of that process.’ Shanks’ position highlights more broadly the deepening splits between the Scottish and UK Labour parties which are looking to pose serious problems for the party as the 2024 general election approaches. ‘The two-child benefit cap and bedroom tax comments have gone down like a cup of cold sick with Scottish Labour members,’ one party activist added. But even if Shanks, alongside Scottish Labour, is successful in changing the UK party’s stance on these issues, more u-turns will hardly convince voters Labour has a coherent vision.

The Labour candidate has previous with u-turns though: in 2019, he left Labour, led by Jeremy Corbyn at the time, over Brexit, criticising the party for having a ‘bankrupt approach to our membership of the EU’. On Wednesday morning, however, Shanks’ position was that ‘we’ve left the EU’ and that ‘we need to make Brexit better’ – following Starmer’s lead on this issue, at least. When quizzed on splits within the party, he deflected back to his opponents, saying: ‘The SNP want to make this election all about divisions in Labour because they’ve got nothing to offer themselves.’

Certainly the SNP’s campaign launch was less about its candidate and more about Humza Yousaf, who took the majority of the questions – even cutting off his party’s candidate, Katy Loudon, before she could answer a follow-up from one journalist. Keen not to dwell on Ferrier, or the SNP police probe – Loudon admitted that it was ‘not an ideal situation’ – the nationalist launch was more focused on independence, ‘the surefire way of scrapping, not mitigating, but scrapping cruel policies’.

Both candidates admit there is plenty more campaigning to do – and a lot at stake for their parties. Not only does the by-election present First Minister Humza Yousaf with his first big electoral test, it will indicate whether the picture painted by polling (that predicts Labour is on track to snatch over 20 SNP Westminster seats) really is accurate.