Reform beat Labour to second place in Clydebank by-election
Nigel Farage has declared his party is 'becoming the opposition to the SNP' after Reform UK pushed Labour into third place in a council by-election in Clydebank.
The right-wing party's David Smith won 26 per cent of the vote in the Clydebank Waterfront ward on West Dunbartonshire council — edging out Labour by 1 percentage point, while the Conservatives took just 3 per cent. The SNP held the seat with 36 per cent of first-preference votes.
The result, three weeks before the first Holyrood by-election this parliament on June 5, will alarm Labour Party figures who fear embarrassment in the Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse constituency vote, which was called after the death of Christina McKelvie.
• Can Reform win in Scotland? The Farage juggernaut
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Scotsman
33 minutes ago
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PA Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... A new centre to train welders on the Clyde, in partnership with marine engineers The Malin Group and furnished with £11million-worth of equipment from Rolls Royce. It's the kind of announcement you'd think every government minister wants to make. But last week, it emerged that the SNP government put the whole plan in jeopardy by blocking a £2.5million grant. Why? Because the SNP has a ban on spending public money on munitions. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad This policy may seem a little out-of-touch in a world where Russia's guns are currently pounding a European country with millions of artillery shells a year. And in this case, the shells are hypothetical. According to reports, the reason for the ban on the centre is that any welders could build submarines for the Royal Navy. UK Labour's baffled Defence Secretary John Healey told BBC Scotland's Sunday show: "It's the first time I've come across [such a policy] but it really strikes me as student union politics." Not only does the SNP's defence policy have the ring of something scrawled on a Fresher's Week beer mat, but it doesn't even make any sense. The SNP Government owns and funds work at the Ferguson Marine shipyard, which does subcontract work for BAE Systems on the Royal Navy's type 26 frigate programme. It was left to me in Parliament last week to break the news to my SNP colleagues there will be munitions on the frigates. As I asked at the time: 'What does the Government believe that the army, the navy and the air force should defend the country with? Peashooters? Bows and arrows? A telling-off?' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Just to be clear, I don't take the issue of defence lightly. As the MSP representing HM Naval Base Clyde, I have seen countless submariners saying goodbye to their loved ones – and witnessed the relief and joy when they are reunited months later. But the reality is that the world today is a much more dangerous place than it was just a few years ago, and ignoring that reality won't keep us safe. Last year, Armed Forces minister Luke Pollard confirmed that an incident in 2022 , where Shetland's undersea cable delivering internet and telephone services was cut, was almost certainly an act of Russian sabotage. In November, fighter jets from RAF Lossiemouth were scrambled to intercept a Russian military aircraft over the North Sea. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad And only a few weeks ago, a Russian spyship was spotted lingering near the coast of the Outer Hebrides . As Keir Starmer put it when he visited BAE Systems in Glasgow earlier this month, spending on defence is about making the country 'an armour-clad nation with the strongest alliances and the most advanced capabilities equipped for the decades to come'. The Defence Review the UK Labour government commissioned tackles everything from cyber attacks to artificial intelligence. It includes plans for a hybrid navy with a new fleet of submarines and autonomous vessels patrolling the North Atlantic. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
Scotsman
33 minutes ago
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PA Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Like most political animals, I have always enjoyed the drama of by-elections. Whilst seldom making a difference to who actually governs us in the short-term, they can be clear indicators of the mood music amongst the public towards parties vying for power, particularly when the next national election is not so far away. That said, I didn't stay up for the result in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election last week, not expecting much in the way of drama. My expectation was that there would be a fairly comfortable SNP victory, with the only real interest being whether Reform would finish third or manage to beat Labour into second place. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad I woke up in the morning to a WhatsApp message from a colleague expressing surprise at the outcome, and when I checked the numbers I had to share that sentiment. Few saw the Labour candidate Davy Russell's victory coming, and it is all the more to his credit, and that of his campaign team, that they were able to pull off a quite dramatic victory against the odds. So congratulations are due first of all to Labour in delivering a result which undoubtedly is a boost to Anas Sarwar. Having been written off by the pundits, and with a candidate widely ridiculed for his refusal to participate in TV debates, it demonstrated the importance of a strong, local narrative in winning votes. The Scottish Conservatives had an equally strong local candidate in Cllr Richard Nelson from Larkhall who fought an energetic campaign albeit one we knew never had any realistic prospect of victory. Fourth place was always the best place we could hope for in this seat, as our voters were squeezed to vote tactically either for Labour or for Reform to beat the SNP. On the doorstep we met loyal Conservative voters who told us that they would be using this by-election to 'send a message' to the SNP by voting tactically for whoever they thought was best placed to defeat them, but at next year's Holyrood election would be back voting for us again. That said, we know there is work to be done in presenting a compelling message to maximise our vote for Holyrood in 2026. The real losers on the night were, of course, the SNP. All the polls suggested that this is a seat that they would hold, and the party poured in resources, with numerous visits by leadership figures from the First Minister John Swinney downwards. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The SNP strategy appeared politically clever, if essentially dishonest, in attempting to portray the contest as a two-horse race between them and Reform. This was designed to squeeze Labour voters, in particular, into voting SNP as the lesser of two evils. It backfired spectacularly. The Reform vote was indeed substantial, but if we analyse the figures, it seems that Reform's gains were not so much at the expense of Labour, or even the Conservatives. The 26 per cent of the vote achieved by Reform, at a time when Labour's vote share hardly moved, can only be explained by looking at the 17 per cent drop in the SNP vote. There was a direct transfer from one party to another. Perhaps this should not surprise us. 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Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad For years the SNP have played the part of a populist party, simultaneously in government and in opposition, blaming all Scotland's ills not on their own failings but on big, bad Westminster. Now we have the new entrants on the scene in Reform, singing a different song to the same tune. To change the metaphor, the two Parties are essentially opposite sides of the same coin. They are parties who seek not to find solutions to the complex issues that face our country, but rather resort to simplistic slogans appealing to the basest level. Little wonder, then, that voters have little difficulty in switching between the two. Swinney's claim that Reform's values are antithetical to Scotland now look ridiculous, when his Party was not only defeated in Hamilton, but finished a mere 869 votes ahead of Farage's. Scottish exceptionalism has never had such a rude awakening. 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