By-election galvanises Labour ahead of conference

Labour’s smashing of the SNP in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election has given Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer an enormous boost ahead of party conference kicking off in Liverpool this weekend.

Starmer insisted that the dramatic victory was not merely “a protest vote” against the SNP.

With a 20 per cent swing, local teacher Michael Shanks took 58.6 per cent of the vote and secured a majority of 9,446. Languishing miles back in second place was the SNP’s Katy Loudon on less than half that tally.

SNP leader Humza Yousaf conceded it was a disappointing result for his party. Yousaf admitted that the ousted SNP MP Margaret Ferrier’s “reckless actions” during Covid and the ongoing police investigation into the party’s finances didn’t help.

Polling expert and professor at Strathclyde University Sir John Curtice was surprised by how well Labour did: “If you look at recent opinion polls across Scotland, they were pointing to an 11-point swing from SNP to Labour.”

Speaking today after the by-election victory in his trademark casual black shirt, Starmer congratulated Shanks on the trouncing. On my counting, he said the word “change” 14 times in two minutes just so everyone got the message that “Labour is the party of change”. He called Rishi Sunak a nodding dog as Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar nodded in docile fashion by his side.

Just as Labour did surprisingly well, the Tories did particularly badly even by Conservative standards in contemporary Glasgow. Failing to win more than five per cent of the vote, the Tories actually forfeited their £500 deposit for standing. It was clear Tories had switched to Labour tactically to get the Nationalists out.

Michael Shanks’s victory means that Labour now has two MPs in Scotland. Ian Murray of Edinburgh South now has a colleague to go for a pint with.

Despite the poor turnout of 37 per cent, down substantially from 66 per cent in 2019, election supremo and former Blair adviser Pat McFadden said it was more important than a normal by-election win for an opposition party. McFadden, who went to high school close to Rutherglen, said: “The SNP have been in government in Scotland for 16 years.” He said the result is a “real signal of a desire for change and a fresh start.”

It was an election fought almost entirely without reference to constitutional matters. Brexit and Independence, those polarising juggernauts that have defined British politics over the past decade, were nowhere in sight. It seems mainly to have been a verdict of new first minister Humza Yousaf and the party’s record.

This is often the nature of by-elections – they are distilled progress reports on the incumbent and wider fluctuations in politics. 

This is a pointer to the general election, when Labour will need to reclaim many of the seats it lost in Scotland in the 2015 landslide SNP victory. Then the Nationalists won 56 of 59 seats. Now, the signs are Labour is on the way back in Scotland.

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