TOM HARRIS: A sigh of relief for Anas - but don't be fooled by Farage's failure to win

Daily Mail​

a day ago

It is easy to see why the SNP often underestimates its traditional opponents in the Scottish Labour Party. But after Thursday's spectacular result in the Hamilton by-election, John Swinney 's party would be well advised not to repeat this strategic blunder.
The smiles of Labour's victorious campaign team, including its new MSP, Davy Russell, were all too genuine, if tinged by an element of relief. Anas Sarwar's party, after all, had been written off in this contest, not least by the First Minister himself, who repeatedly warned voters that the by-election was a two-horse race between the SNP and Nigel Farage 's insurgent party, Reform UK. But if there was such a two-horse race between those two parties, it was for second and third place.
Labour's victory will inject some much-needed confidence into its campaign to unseat the SNP at Holyrood next May, an effort that was looking increasingly forlorn as Keir Starmer 's one-year-old Labour administration at Westminster became ever more unpopular. But there is again a spring in Mr Sarwar's step this weekend, just as an ominous dark cloud has appeared over the head of John Swinney.
The nationalists ought to have seen this coming. The late Christine McKelvie, whose sad, premature death caused the by-election in a seat she first won in 2011, was a popular figure in her party and in her Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse constituency.
But world-weary strategists of any party know only too well that voters' sympathy for the loss of an MP or MSP, however sincerely felt, rarely translates into votes. The SNP's shameful record in government at Holyrood for the last 18 years played a much greater role in voters' judgment. And that does not bode well for Mr Swinney as polling day next May draws nearer.
Expect Scottish Labour to remind Scots at every opportunity, in the next year, of the ever-lengthening catalogue of SNP policy failures, from historically-high NHS waiting lists to dodgy ferry contracts, from the fall in Scotland's international reputation on education to its disgraceful record on drug deaths.
The result in Hamilton has boosted Scottish Labour's self-belief that it might actually draw the SNP's long hegemony finally to a close.
But as the two traditional political enemies warily circle each other, firing insults and defending their own records, Thursday's third placed party demands some attention of its own. Who could have predicted, even a year ago, that a brand new party that scraped barely seven per cent of Scots' votes at the general election would come within five per centage points and 1,500 votes of taking a seat in Labour's former working class heartland?
Aside from Labour's electoral resilience, the core message from Lanarkshire this week has been that there is, after all, an opportunity for a right-wing alternative to the SNP-Labour duopoly to attract the support of disillusioned and fed-up Scots.
That will be frustrating to the Scottish Conservatives and its new leader, Russell Findlay, who, despite consistently and effectively holding the SNP government to account week after week at Holyrood, failed to tun that into votes in Thursday's by-election.
Nigel Farage isn't exactly a new arrival on the political scene; most people hold strong views about him, one way or the other.
To say that he is a divisive figure is like saying Donald Trump might not be everyone's cup of tea.
But his party, Reform UK, looks likely to set the heather alight, even in left-wing, right-on Scotland.
That there has always been a large section of the electorate who didn't buy into the high-immigration, high-tax, progressive vision of Scotland has never quite been proved, partly because of the reluctance of such people to vote for the Conservatives.
Polling evidence suggested Scottish attitudes to immigration were little different from those in the rest of the UK, but that did little to dent Scotland's reputation as an exceptionalist haven of moderation and tolerance.
Now voters have been offered an electoral alternative to the Tories, and with it the chance to disrupt the cosy consensus that has prevailed north of the border since devolution was born.
Will they take it? The Scottish parliament elections will not be like a by-election, where the eventual winner can have little impact on how Scotland is governed.
Will Scots really place their trust in – and their crosses against – Reform candidates? What is fascinating about the Hamilton result – and for the SNP, chilling – is that while Reform came from nowhere, and where Labour's vote since 2021 dropped by just two per cent, the SNP saw its support slump by nearly 17 per cent, much of that, we must assume, going to Reform.
The establishment parties should avoid being lulled into a false sense of security by Reform's failure to win on Thursday.
There's a new player in town and if it's still around by next May, the consequences for both Labour and the SNP could prove devastating. And entertaining.