Hamilton by-election: Farage to visit before vote
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is expected to visit the constituency ahead of the vote on June 5.
The vote is taking place following the death aged 57 of the local MSP and Scottish Government minister Christina McKelvie in March this year.
The First Minister said official figures show the government's decision to scrap peak rail fares - made under the government's Cost of Living Guarantee - could save rail commuters in the constituency hundreds of pounds every year.
READ MORE:
'The SNP are terrified': 'Reform can win by-election - and take power in Holyrood'
Analysis: Reform support in Hamilton should worry other parties
Hundreds of care staff to go on strike over £38 million government U turn
Update on winter fuel payments to more pensioners expected in coming weeks
The main destination station for passengers travelling to or from Hamilton Central is Glasgow Central. Currently, an anytime day return between Glasgow Central and Hamilton Central is £9.20 and an off-peak day return is £6.00.
Glasgow Central is also the main destination station for passengers travelling to or from Larkhall. An anytime day return from there is £11.20 and an off peak return is £7.70.
Following the Scottish Government's decision to scrap peak rail fares for good from September, someone commuting five days every week from Hamilton Central to Glasgow Central will save more than £760 a year from September, the SNP said.
The party added that someone with the same commute from Larkhall station will save £910.
'The SNP is taking action to cut costs and ease financial pressures amid the cost of living crisis," said Mr Swinney.
'Scrapping peak rail fares is a critical part of my Cost of Living Guarantee that will save commuters hundreds of pounds.
"Alongside SNP policies like free tuition, free prescriptions and the most generous childcare offer in the UK we are supporting people when they need it most and putting more money in people's pockets.
'Labour meanwhile took away the winter fuel Payment from over 36,000 pensioners in South Lanarkshire, have allowed energy bills to rise by over £200 and cut £5 billion of support for disabled people.
'Unlike the Labour Party, the SNP is always on your side; taking action on what matters to people in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse and across Scotland.'
SNP by-election candidate Katy Loudon said: 'Too many households in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse have borne the brunt of the cost of living crisis, with the UK Labour government presiding over rampant inflation and soaring energy bills.
'In Scotland, the SNP is bringing costs down for people, with policies like free bus travel for 2.3 million people, bringing back the winter fuel payment and scrapping peak rail fares.
'The Labour Party has lost its way, but this SNP government is delivering on what matters to you.
'Vote SNP on 5 June for a cheaper commute and to put your priorities first.'
Labour came second in the seat in the 2021 election but have had a challenging campaign following a number of policy decisions by the government taken to improve public finances.
They include the decision to end universal winter fuel payments and cuts to welfare benefits.
Last week the Prime Minister said he would restore winter fuel payments to some pensioners. Details on who will receive the benefit are expected next month.
Reform UK have been campaigning in the constituency with the deputy leader Richard Tice telling The Herald on Sunday last week he believed his party could beat the SNP following momentum behind the party in the wake of the local elections in England.
Mr Farage campaign trip will be his first visit to Scotland since 2019 when he attended a campaign event for the Brexit Party.
During a visit to Edinburgh in 2013 he had to be locked in a pub on the Royal Mile by police for his own protection and rescued by a riot van after a protest by independence supporters.
Reform UK took 7% of the Scottish vote in last year's general election, while recent polling suggests increasing support among the electorate - most notably at the potential expense of the Conservatives and Labour.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Spectator
10 minutes ago
- Spectator
US urges UK to U-turn on Israeli sanctions
As if the Labour government didn't have enough on its plate with Rachel Reeves's spending review to be announced at midday, it is also facing pressure from the US over sanctions imposed on two Israeli cabinet ministers. Late last night, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the travel ban and asset freezes imposed on security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich 'Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said that the asset freezes and travel bans on Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich 'do not advance US-led efforts to achieve a ceasefire, bring all hostages home, and end the war'. Rubio hasn't just taken aim at the UK – President Donald Trump's man has also urged Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway to row back on their sanctions, while Israel has slammed yesterday's sanctions as 'outrageous'. The move by the UK and allied countries came after remarks made by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich were deemed to have 'incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights' by Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
Scotsman
25 minutes ago
- Scotsman
SNP's defence policy has the ring of something scrawled on a Fresher's Week beer mat
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
25 minutes ago
- Scotsman
Reform and SNP are two sides of the same coin
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. Both SNP and Reform are essentially parties of protest, who have spent years pointing the blame elsewhere for the country's troubles – in the case of Reform, to the EU and immigrants, and in the case of the SNP, to Westminster governments. I can well remember at a previous election meeting on a doorstep in Perthshire one voter who we had previously identified as a regular Conservative supporter, who came out red-faced and angry to lambast me for the failings of the Tory government. 'You've let me down', he shouted, 'letting far too many immigrants in. That's it, I've had it with you lot. From now on I'm voting SNP'. It was an encounter indicative of a particular type of individual who rages at the world around them. These will be some of the people who were motivated to vote for independence in 2014 on the basis that anything must be better than what we currently have. And it will be some of the same people who were amongst the 2 in 5 Scots who voted for Brexit in 2016. 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. Over the last 18 years, the SNP have demonstrated how far populist politics can take you. Now, the rise of Reform shows they have a significant competitor for that segment of the population who are content to blame others for the country's woes. Fortunately, there is an alternative: the serious parties prepared to do the heavy lifting in proposing credible solutions to fix the problems in our society.
