Labour’s surprise Scottish by-election win opens up race for Holyrood

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Labour’s victory in a tight three-way Scottish by-election has opened up the race for next May’s Holyrood parliamentary elections, with Reform UK establishing itself as a serious contender.

After an ill-tempered campaign marked by racism rows, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar was beaming on Friday morning. The party, written off by pundits in the run-up to the polls, will now seek to use the win in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse as a launch pad to target other central belt constituencies that will be vital to Sarwar’s mission to oust John Swinney as Scotland’s first minister.

Held back by the unpopularity of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government at Westminster, Sarwar had struggled to capitalise on public disenchantment with the Scottish National party’s record on public services after 18 years in power.

Swinney had portrayed the Hamilton contest as a two-horse race between his incumbent SNP and insurgent populist party Reform UK.

“The SNP was trying to push people into the arms of [Nigel] Farage to help their own electoral position — the lesson for pollsters and pundits is stop believing John Swinney’s nonsense,” Sarwar said. “People believe this SNP are done — this by-election has proven that if you want to get rid of the SNP, it’s a straight choice between me and John Swinney.”

Swinney, speaking on Friday morning, said the close result — with the SNP trailing Labour by 602 votes — showed that the SNP’s fortunes had improved since the general election, but added: “We’ve got to build on that.”

Pollster Mark Diffley described the result as a “much-needed shot in the arm” for Scottish Labour after months of frustration with the Westminster government, but not a full-scale revival. “The big question is whether Anas can use this victory to change the mood,” he said.

Labour’s ground game, so effective in its general election sweep of seats in Scotland, was credited with much of the party’s success in Hamilton.

“The key to this incredible victory was the fantastic organisation that we had at ground level, the data, the targeting and the message along with having a hard-working local candidate,” said Graeme Downie, Labour MP for Dunfermline and Dollar. The SNP’s deployment of numerous cabinet secretaries to campaign in the seat proved to be less effective.

But polling expert John Curtice said it would be a “serious misreading” of the result to suggest it was an outright success for Labour. 

“There is little in this result to suggest that, after 18 years in the political wilderness, Labour are well set to regain the reins of power in Edinburgh,” he wrote in The Times.

Curtice added that it was “Reform’s political prospects that now look brighter”, securing a 26 per cent share with 7,088 votes. In 2021, it got just 58 votes.

Diffley agreed that Reform’s ascent, even given typical by-election protest voting, was “the story of the night”. “Reform is now a serious player in Scottish politics and likely to win seats in Holyrood next year,” he said.

Polls have suggested that Farage’s party could send around a dozen MSPs to the Scottish parliament after next May’s election which, unlike Thursday’s by-election, will include a component of proportional representation.

Farage, who engaged in a chaotic whistle-stop tour of Scotland this week, predicted that the Hamilton by-election would turn his “teenage” movement into an “adult” one.  

The Reform leader used a press conference on Monday in the oil capital of Aberdeen to advocate for renewed drilling in the North Sea and scrapping net zero emissions policies to lower energy bills.

In the poorer areas of the central belt, such as Hamilton, immigration is a more salient issue than the environment.

Reform’s attack ad on “sectarian” Sarwar, whom it incorrectly accused of promising to prioritise the Pakistani community, attracted some support among voters. But Labour campaigners said it alienated more by raising the issue of sectarianism in an area riven by the historic Protestant-Catholic divide.

In the sunshine on Friday morning, Muslim residents were shopping in their holiday best on the first day of Eid al-Adha, the second most holy celebration in the Islamic calendar.

“Good morning, Nigel. Eid Mubarak! I hoped you enjoyed the result last night,” Sarwar told GB News, the right-leaning news network.