The SNP’s catastrophic defeat in the Rutherglen and
Hamilton West by-election looks like it will decisively change Scottish and
indeed UK politics. The result is much worse than I expected. 58.55% for Labor
versus 27.56% for the SNP would if repeated at a General Election take us back
to the time when the SNP won a handful of seats and when Labour dominated
Scottish politics.
The usual caveats apply. It’s only a by-election.
Voters treat by-elections as not really mattering. The reason is that they don’t
really matter. Nothing will be changed at Westminster by one more Labour MP or
one less SNP MP. Sometimes by-elections tell us something about the future
direction of politics sometimes they don’t.
People who write about politics and TV news
journalists pay a lot of attention to by-elections, because they are paid to
write about these things. Usually, the result of a by-election is forgotten by
the time of the General Election, but not always. This may be a case of not
always.
A year ago, the SNP was guaranteed to win every
election in Scotland. There wasn’t anything much anyone else could do about
this. The SNP had around 45% of the vote while the Pro UK parties split the
rest. But there is a limit to the effectiveness of tactical voting and
electoral pacts between Pro UK parties were not possible nor even desirable as
it would prove the SNP argument that Labour was the same as the Tories.
We were stuck. The SNP didn’t have enough to really
push for independence, but Pro UK parties had no way of defeating Sturgeon. This
situation looked as if it was stretching into infinity.
What happened? No one really has an explanation for
the result of yesterday’s by-election. What caused a twenty-point swing to
Labour? It certainly wasn’t anything Keir Starmer did. Nor was it anything that
Anas Sarwar did. The explanation lies exclusively with what Nicola Sturgeon
did.
Nicola Sturgeon resigned. But no one really has a clue
why she resigned. She insists that it had nothing to do with her subsequent arrest
or problems with her party’s finances. We may or may not believe her. But that is
the explanation for the SNP’s defeat. If Nicola Sturgeon was still leader, the
SNP would have won in Rutherglen and Hamilton West.
After Sturgeon resigned the SNP elected Humza Yousaf.
A lot of the blame for the by-election defeat will fall on him. But I don’t
think things would be better if Kate Forbes had been elected instead. Her
conservative Christian values would split the SNP. A split SNP would do even worse
than an SNP led by Humza Yousaf.
Something has changed in Scotland in the past year. The
change is this. People who are still basically sympathetic to the idea of
independence who after 2014 automatically voted SNP are now willing to vote
Labour.
Independence may still be a long-term goal for these
voters, but they would prefer a Labour Government in Westminster and perhaps a
Labour Lib Dem coalition at Holyrood, because they no longer trust the SNP to
deliver on independence or anything else.
Nicola Sturgeon was trusted by large numbers of Scots.
Her resignation without a proper explanation plus the later financial scandals in
the SNP generally have destroyed that trust. Independence supporters openly argue
that SNP politicians are in it for themselves.
The SNP has continually promised supporters since
losing in 2014 that independence is just ahead. Sturgeon always said that next
year there would be a referendum even when she knew that it wasn’t up to her.
Worse the SNP has been in charge since 2007 and it is
not doing a good job. The standard response is to compare things with England
or something controlled by Westminster, but this excuse eventually wears out. It
just wore out.
Suddenly the SNP is viewed as corrupt, secretive and
incompetent. The investigation into Sturgeon without any resolution actually hurts
the SNP. We don’t get to move on. We are left feeling that something important
happened but we’re not quite sure what. We are left with rumours and suspicion.
No wonder previous SNP supporters are deserting en masse.
What does Rutherglen and Hamilton West mean for the
future? We don’t know. The Labour Party in Scotland needs to not take its
supporters for granted as it did previously. The Pro UK argument in general
must not go to sleep as is our tendency every time there is a victory.
If the result of this by-election is repeated at a
General Election then UK and Scottish politics will be changed completely. If
Labour can win 40 seats in Scotland, then it will be much more likely that it
will be able to form a Government in Westminster. If the SNP goes back to having
six seats like it did in the 1980s then the cause of independence will go back
at least forty years and it will cease to be an important issue in Scottish politics,
which puts the SNP into a further doom loop of loss of support.
A Labour Government in Westminster may be the price we
have to pay for UK unity.
I make no predictions. The result of the next General
Election will be determined by the events of the next year. Sunak is improving.
Starmer is still dull. The investigation into Sturgeon and her husband may
cease without any charges.
But if the SNP cannot win in Rutherglen and Hamilton West,
then it probably cannot win in much of the Central Belt, which leaves it
picking up a few scraps elsewhere. From winning fifty-six seats in 2015 to
winning just six in 2024 during the ten-year anniversary of the referendum
would destroy the independence movement. This is now the prize that is on
offer.
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