Margaret Ferrier has lost her seat and a by-election has been triggered in the Glasgow constituency of Rutherglen and Hamilton West after almost 12,000 of her constituents signed a recall petition. The petition was sparked after Ferrier was given a 30-day ban from the Commons for breaking Covid rules.
The recall petition requires 10 per cent (8,113) of constituents to sign in order to trigger a by-election.
Ferrier broke Covid rules back in September 2020 when she spoke in the Commons while waiting on the results of a Covid test which consequently came back positive. She then travelled back to Glasgow by train exposing people to “the risk of infection, illness and death”. She had the SNP whip removed after the allegations emerged.
Earlier this year an independent panel issued her a 30-day ban (well over the 10-day minimum to trigger a recall petition) and demanded she carry out 270 hours unpaid work.
Until now, there hadn’t been a recall petition in Scotland since its introduction in 2015.
It comes only days since Alex Salmond and Humza Yousaf had some jibes at each other over the SNP’s treatment of Ferrier. The Alba party leader accused his old protégé Sturgeon of throwing Ferrier to the “media wolves”.
Salmond said: “The current first minister has carried on this disgraceful lack of compassion to a woman who has devoted her life to furthering the cause of Scottish independence.
“If SNP members need to understand what has gone wrong with their party, they need look no further than this totally depressing display of disloyalty.”
To which Yousaf responded: “It’s not just an error of judgment of course, Margaret Ferrier was guilty of a number of charges as well. That’s pretty serious.
“I think Alex Salmond, perhaps not for the first time in this regard, is in a minority in terms of how Margaret Ferrier has been treated.”
Back in 2019, Ferrier won with a 5,230 majority which may have all but disappeared after not just her own personal scandal but that of her party. The constituency was created for the 2005 general election by combining Glasgow Rutherglen and Hamilton South – both of which for the past 50 years have predominantly voted Labour. Ferrier held the seat from 2015-2017 before returning to power in 2019.
Deputy Labour leader Dame Jackie Baillie criticised Ferrier’s “desperate plea” to her constituents asking them not to sign the petition. Baillie said she was “astonished [that] Margaret Ferrier…is trying to hide the fact that she stood as an SNP MP. She let them down badly by her actions during Covid, and now she’s desperate to try to cling on to a seat.”
Labour’s candidate for the by-election is Michael Shanks, a modern studies teacher and leader of a Scout group for disabled children. The unfortunate SNP candidate in for a tough time is Katy Loudon – The Times quoting an anonymous SNP MSP said: “Short of a miracle, we’re done.” It is unclear if the Alba party will field a candidate and the Green party has not announced anyone yet.
As recent polls have shown – and as The Hound has explored – the Labour Party is on course to claim a serious number of scalps from the SNP in Scotland, potentially reducing the Nationalists’ Westminster contingent by almost half. In this first showdown, will the polls be vindicated?
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