JIM SILLARS: SNP settled for mediocrity and paid the price with this result
The by-election: two winners, one major casualty and a lot of questions answered.
Against a background of anger in a 'Broken Britain' alongside 18 years of a SNP government (the last ten seeing ferry fiascos, a failing NHS, declarations of a housing emergency without emergency action, falling school standards and more time spent politically on trans identity and dodging the definition of a woman than on child poverty) the electorate in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse gave their verdict.
There is a sea change taking place in UK and Scottish life.
People have had enough of the virtue signallers; they are fed up with lectures about what they can and cannot say; they have come to despise spin as a substitute for action; they are no longer afraid of being labelled bigots and racists for strongly opposing illegal immigration.
Reform has caught that tide, and their Hamilton by-election and local equivalents is the result.
Reform, which came within 869 votes of the SNP, accomplished its two objectives: find out if it could pass the acid test of significant support via the ballot box in Scotland, and if so, become a serious participant in the Scottish political scene.
It enters the fray for the 2026 Scottish general election in the happy position of having a base, no government record to be attacked on, and opposition parties not understanding that it has risen because of their failures allied to their woke agenda and still clueless on how to combat it.
If the parties Reform now threatens do not grasp their contribution to its advance, and stay with their by-election tactic of denouncing it as 'racist' and 'poisonous,' they will make the same mistake as the Democrats in the USA who, in demonising Trump, failed to realise that they had substituted lecturing to the people instead of listening to them.
Perhaps even the Greens will look at their derisory 695 votes at Hamilton and reflect on the role they have played in the lecturing game at Holyrood.
The big winner was, of course, Labour, who took the seat.
The announcement of the result must have been sweet music to the ears of Anas Sarwar and Jackie Baillie, given all the pundits fell for the John Swinney claim that they were being outclassed and heading for a poor third place. Being umbilically attached to the unpopular UK Labour government was thought to be their fatal weak point. That proved not so. Even with a candidate who, as his reading of his victory speech showed, is not exactly inspirational, they took a safe SNP seat.
What makes Labour's win important is that Hamilton is smack in the middle of the central belt, where lies the seat of Scottish political power, and where the SNP-Labour contest will be settled. A repeat of Hamilton in 2026 and Labour will be, at least, a minority government or the majority in a coalition.
But for the SNP this was a very bad result.
John Swinney, whose manifest failure to read the street shows a man with a tin ear and poor judgement, unfit for the leadership role the misguided SNP membership put him in.
Their 7,957 votes at 29.4 per cent share of the vote was down by 16.8 per cent and much lower than the 33 per cent they have been getting in opinion polls.
The old adage you reap what you sow remains true.
The Sturgeon legacy of elevating mediocrity above talent turned the SNP government into a calamity for Scotland.
On every issue that matters to the people, tax, jobs, education, housing, health, roads not built, and chid poverty they are failures. They got the defeat they deserved.
Under the dead hand of Swinney there is more of that to come.
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