SNP win Clydebank by-election as Reform beat Scottish Labour
The Clydebank Waterfront by-election was held on Thursday, with the results declared at around 1.50am on Friday.
The SNP's Kevin Crawford (below) picked up the seat with 1331 first-preference votes, while Reform UK came in second with their candidate securing 919 first-preference votes.
Kevin Crawford (Image: Newsquest) READ MORE: LGBT+ people 'living in fear' after politicians' 'betrayal', John Swinney told
The first-preference votes were as follows:
Kevin Crawford (SNP) – 1331
David Smith (Reform UK) – 919
Maureen McGlinchey (Scottish Labour) – 770
Cameron Eoin Stewart (Scottish LibDems) – 167
Brian Walker (Scottish Conservatives) – 87
Eryn Browning (Scottish Greens) – 83
Kristopher Duncan (Alba Party) – 51
Andrew Joseph Muir (Scottish Family Part) – 25
The by-election was held after the resignation of former SNP councillor James McElhill, who cited personal health reasons.
The voting turnout was 25.3%, which is around 2954 out of 11,657 eligible voters.
After the result was announced, First Minister John Swinney congratulated Crawford in a post on social media.
READ MORE: 'Anti-LGBT+ lobby at work in UK and Scottish Governments', Scottish Pride groups warn
Swinney wrote: "Warmest congratulations to Kevin Crawford our newest @theSNP Councillor and his hardworking team."
BREAKING : SNP WIN CLYDEBANK WATERFRONT. Warmest congratulations to Kevin Crawford our newest @theSNP Councillor and his hardworking team. https://t.co/Bx1Vq5FXRD — John Swinney (@JohnSwinney) May 16, 2025
Another crucial by-election, this time in Holyrood, will take place next month in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, following the death of MSP Christina McKelvie.
The National reported how Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is set to visit the constituency in the first week of June, just days before the vote on June 5.
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Telegraph
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Britain's pensions mess won't be resolved by the latest stab at reform
It's the absence of ambition that really gets me. Labour may be trailing badly in the polls, yet there are still four years to go before the Prime Minister has to call another election, and for the time being he commands the sort of majority that would normally allow him to do truly radical things. But he doesn't. Instead, ministers sit on their hands, seemingly frightened of their own shadows, and allow Reform UK, with just a handful of MPs, to make all the running. Nigel Farage is probably right to claim that without Reform snapping at its heels, the Government would not have about-turned on the winter fuel allowance. Yet it is not just on entitlement spending that the Government appears incapable of doing anything of significance. On wider pension reform too, there's little sign of the resolve needed for meaningful change. The Government's Pension Schemes Bill – published last week – is more notable for what it doesn't do than the changes it seeks to bring about. This may seem a little unfair. There are few areas of public policy where the old joke that 'you wouldn't start from here' more aptly applies than pensions. Decades of meddling has left the UK with a hopelessly confused array of different pension arrangements that collectively fail to serve the country as they should. It is also fair to say that there is no silver bullet likely to deliver optimum outcomes. Let's take gold-plated, final-salary public sector pensions, widely thought to be unfair on the great hinterland of taxpayers who don't enjoy such perks but are required to underwrite them. These are left completely unaffected by the new pensions legislation. Richard Tice, Reform's deputy leader, said last week that the party would consider moving all public sector employees out of their 'Rolls-Royce' defined benefit pension plans and into the defined contribution schemes common to much of the private sector. 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What's more, these pay-as-you-go arrangements conform much more exactly with the founding principle of occupational pensions than the defined contribution model – namely that the employee pays for the retirement income of his predecessor rather than saving for his own pension. Go back to the origins of the modern-day pension, and in some professions the individual job would be sold by the incumbent to the new entrant as a way of funding retirement. Alternatively, the newcomer would agree to pay his predecessor a proportion of his income for a set number of years. If you were lucky, the old codger would quickly pop his clogs. These days, workers can expect to live 20 years or more in retirement, making the arithmetic of pay-as-you-go pension arrangements much more challenging. The last set of 'Whole of Government Accounts' showed the total present value of public sector pension liabilities at a jaw-dropping £1.415 trillion. 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As on much else, Reform doesn't seem to have thought things through. Best, perhaps, not to poke that particular hornets' nest. Of course, the Government's Pensions Schemes Bill doesn't touch on these concerns. Rather it is about private sector pensions, and in particular it is about attempting to get them to invest more in productive UK assets, forcibly if necessary. Personally, I see nothing particularly wrong with this objective provided it is not pushed to extremes. The UK is almost unique in how little its pension funds invest in home-grown equities and infrastructure, and indeed in the lack of coercion currently applied. Given the tax breaks this form of saving enjoys, it's reasonable to expect investors to give something back. But there is also a good reason why trustees are as reluctant as they are; it is because relative to the alternatives, the returns on British assets are low. It's chicken and egg, and perfectly explains why the London Stock Market is dying on its feet. 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