How did Labour win Hamilton by-election with invisible man candidate?
Davy Russell's refusal to take part in the STV debate with SNP candidate Katy Loudon and Reform's Ross Lambie was seen as the party admitting that the contest was a straight race between the two parties.
An excruciating video of Russell being interviewed by the broadcaster's Colin Mackay also did the rounds on social media, which did not paint the Labour candidate in the best light, to say the least.
He also declined to take part in a BBC radio debate and various hustings.
READ MORE: LIVE: Labour win Hamilton by-election in shock upset for SNP
But, despite being labelled the 'invisible man', Russell is now Scotland's newest MSP for Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, winning with 8559 votes (31.57%) over Loudon's 7957 votes (29.35%). Reform came third with 7088 votes (26.15%).
Russell was largely absent from the press around the by-election, rarely giving interviews, instead Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar was frequently quoted by the press.
Reform UK took an old video of Sarwar out of context to run as a social media advert, sparking a row that united the Scottish Labour leader and First Minister John Swinney in calling it out.
It claimed that Sarwar would 'prioritise' the Pakistani community, which Labour has described as 'blatantly racist'.
Nigel Farage (below) would later double down on this, claiming Sarwar 'introduced sectarianism into Scottish politics'.
(Image: Ben Whitley) He would also attack the Scottish press during his first visit north of the border in six years, and then leave journalists waiting in a Hamilton car park for two hours before giving them the slip.
It may have made headlines, but it didn't push Reform into second place, as many commentators had suggested they would.
While the party leaders were embroiled in the spat, and the SNP pivoted their campaign to attack Reform, Scottish Labour ran a quieter, smarter campaign on the ground.
Russell's social media focussed on the impending closure of Wishaw's neonatal unit, an issue raised by Sarwar at FMQs.
He also chapped a lot of doors, making a big deal of his local connections, living in the constituency, and of course, his links to Rangers.
READ MORE: I was there as SNP vote collapsed in Hamilton by-election
Scottish Labour clearly had better data, and a more coherent campaign.
While Swinney claimed the by-election was a 'two-horse race' between Reform and SNP, he would be swiftly proven wrong as the results started to come in.
Activists would later reveal that their complaints about this pivot to focus on Reform rather than pointing out Labour failures at Westminster, were ignored by party HQ.
With the SNP focussing all their attention on Reform, Scottish Labour was able to set its own narrative, and the policy decisions of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were left largely untouched in the last few weeks before voters went to the polls.
The SNP's work to mitigate Westminster cuts and policy decisions, such as the two-child benefit cap and winter fuel payment, were left largely untouched, while the argument that this showed the need for independence was notably absent.
(Image: Colin Mearns) It's always difficult to extrapolate by-election results to what they can tell us about the Holyrood 2026 election.
Sarwar has clearly been reinvigorated in his quest to become Scotland's next first minister, telling Good Morning Scotland: 'Next year the choice is simple - a third decade of the SNP with John Swinney as first minister or a new direction for Scotland with me as first minister.'
But, polling expert John Curtice has already pointed out that Labour's popularity boost has disappeared, and they are essentially back to where they were in 2021.
What can the SNP learn from Russell's campaign and shock win?
Pick a message and stick to it, might be one.
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Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Booze, wood-burners, Sunday roasts... as the list of everyday pleasures targeted by the SNP grows longer, have we EVER been subjected to a more censorious nanny state government?
They've clobbered smokers. Thought – aloud – about criminalising the ownership of cats. Its Fife panjandrums are now leaning on local chippies to slash portion-sizes – in the averred interests of public health: now, SNP surrogates threaten your Sunday roast. The ink had barely dried on the first Scottish Parliament minutes before that first cohort of MSPs had banned fox-hunting and hare-coursing. Passed a whole Act about dog-fouling. Our underemployed, overwaged legislators are still after anyone gasping for a fag - in the latest wheeze, you can now be prosecuted for puffing within fifteen metres of a hospital boundary, even if you are on the other side of the street. Disposable vapes are in their sights too: for years it has been an offence to vape at any Scottish railway station, even on a platform in the open air. No pleasure seems safe from the Nats, from their fatuous efforts to police football chants – indeed, the initial law was so intrusive, and so unworkable, it had to be abandoned. Forget that soothing drink, by the way. 'Minimum pricing,' whacked up again last year, means you're now shelling out more for a litre of sherry than, back in 1999, you had to hand over for a bottle of Famous Grouse. Our English neighbours enjoy cheaper beer than we do. And now the Nats have a real new beef with us. The Scottish Government's Climate Change Committee, wagging a sententious finger, says we should all be eating 30 per cent less red meat. And that farmers – as if they did not have trials enough, with scant profit-margins and over-weening bureaucracy in one of Scotland's loneliest jobs – should rear a third fewer sheep and cattle. Even that shocker has had to jostle for attention with other ridiculous headlines. NHS Fife, for instance, is leaning on the hot takeaway trade to cut the typical portion of, for instance, fish and chips. And the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission suddenly has anglers in its crosshairs. Fishing practices should be reformed, it drones, as fish are 'sentient beings' with 'emotional experiences that matter to them.' It hopes ministers will soon review the law regarding 'actions that occur in the normal course of fishing.' Such a move, panted one newspaper and as if it had just unmasked Lord Lucan, 'could outlaw many aspects of angling such as hooking a fish and removing it from the water.' SAWC does, admittedly, have form. Only in February, it thought about forbidding cat ownership in parts of the country where there was demonstrable predation on birds and small mammals. It would make still more sense to shoot every last bird of prey out of the sky and, if SAWC wants a rough guide, between 1837 and 1840 gamekeepers in forested Invergarry killed 285 common buzzards, 63 goshawks, 27 white-tailed sea eagles, 15 golden eagles and 18 ospreys. Not to mention six gyrfalcons, eleven hobbies, 275 kites, 371 rough-legged buzzards, 462 kes-trels, 78 merlins, 63 hen harriers and seven orange-legged falcons. The First Minister, of less stern stuff, limply assured the public that the SNP administration had no plans to ban pet cats. Last year, too, the Nationalists were even forced to abandon a crazed scheme to ban wood-burning stoves in new-build houses. It feels increasingly as if you cannot take three strides in what one of John Swinney's predecessors once hailed as 'the best small country in the world' without being lectured, harangued, re-proached and disapproved of. Tobacco, sugar, booze, salmon or that jumbo-sausage supper… ministers have their beady little eyes on us. And, no doubt, others have eyes on them too. It is only fair to point out that this culture of censure, rebuke and righteously rapped knuckles long predates the SNP's 2007 ascent to power. From practically the start, the devolved new Scotland rapidly won much wry comment for eat-your-vegetables nanny statism. After the first MSPs had solemnly voted themselves a com-memorative medal. In 2005, for instance, Nora Radcliffe – Liberal Democrat MSP for Gordon, till Alex Salmond toppled her from obscurity into oblivion – called for a ban on the boiling of live lobsters. The Scottish Executive, as it then was, pelted us with posters and raucous TV ads about the horrors of everything from eating too many crisps, through dodgy electric blankets, to the enormity of consigning your Christmas turkey to the fridge before it was completely cold. And, in April 2006 and to widespread trepidation – many journalists hurried up from England, hoping for riots on the streets – Jack McConnell's administration banned smoking in enclosed public spaces. A policy, in fact, first suggested by a Nationalist MSP, Stewart Maxwell. But Scots submitted to it so meekly that one wonders how much it emboldened another First Minister, fourteen years later, to impose all sorts of ridiculous restrictions on our liberties during Covid. At its height, you could not sit down on a park bench, enjoy coffee with a neighbour in your garden or leave your house more than once a day. It was even decreed an offence to venture beyond the bounds of your own local authority. When I in March 2021 had briefly to scamper back to my Hebridean lair, by deserted roads through silent towns, for an armful of Astra-Zeneca, I was so terrified of being stopped and challenged I carried a sort of letter-of-transit from my GP. Meanwhile, our unfortunate children shuffled down school corridors in sweaty masks as – concerned about classroom ventilation – ministers wondered aloud about sawing the bottoms off doors and Nicola Sturgeon tut-tutted that Prince William dared to visit Scotland. Behind this are two dark realities. The first is that, while finally responsible for a host of public services, the Scottish Government (and, by extension, the Scottish Parliament) delivers virtually none of them. Local authorities school most of our children; local health-boards direct primary care and hospitals, and so on. When it finally did have an immediate and grave responsibility, from the dawn of 2021 – vaccinating the elderly and the vulnerable against coronavirus – the Scottish Government made such a laboured fist of things that, quietly and with the deepest tact, Whitehall sent in the army. The second reality is that there is a very old middle-class tradition in Scotland of censuring working-class pleasures. In an era when, for most ordinary people, Sunday was their only day off, clergy insisted on the shuttering of galleries and museums. In a noted Court of Session case – with consequences, generations later, for the Western Isles – it was finally ruled that the good and respectable folk of Burntisland, most conscious of their goodness and respectability, could not ban the Sabbath visits of excursion steamers. In 1875 the Religion and Morals Report for the Free Church General Assembly railed that, to a large extent, 'our farm servants are ignorant, licentious, profane and rude'. What yokels might have thought of Free Church ministers is not recorded. Meanwhile, Presbyterians grew so obsessed with the demon drink that, by the Great War, many congregations celebrated Communion with non-alcoholic wine. And, in 1907, a United Free Church minister assailed a new social phenomenon as 'perfect iniquities of Hell itself,' capped in Glasgow Corporation's 1909 roar about 'the great and increasing evil' it was doing to the city's young men and women. Business ventures 'owned by 'aliens and Roman Catholics,' touting an unnecessary product 'epitomising,' gasped one gentleman, 'the evil of luxury being smuggled into the souls of Glaswegians.' The target of such ire? Italian ice cream cafés. As if not to be outdone, the Free Presbyterian Magazine warned young Highland lasses, seeking urban employment, of the perils of the white-slave trade. They should not, for instance, accept sweets from strangers. Retreating from such past larks to the latest decrees from those with the rule over us, it is striking how few stand up to logical examination. Take the Scottish Climate Committee's clamour for less beef and fewer cows; the reduced bleating of sheep. This is presumably pegged to three core tenets of tree-hugging faith: that reduced upland grazing will in scant decades see the regeneration of much Scottish forest; that cattle-feed is a wildly inefficient use of grain; and that cows, naturally flatulent, are responsible for about 14.5 per cent of global greenhouse gases. The precise figure is, in fact, disputed. But the Committee's lordly loftiness flies in the face of basic realities. For one, about 65 per cent of all the land in Britain can bear nothing but grass. Cows and sheep – hold the front page – eat grass. We cannot. Our cloven-hooved stock will, accordingly, be an essential part of our food economy till the end of time, and the beef industry in particular has for years been working hard to reduce its carbon footprint. For another, much of upland and coastal Scotland is too high – or too exposed to salted winds – to bear significant woodland. 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It remains official NatureScot advice to smash dead any American signal crayfish you meet in our fresh waters and, for over two decades, it has been determinedly exterminating feral mink in the Western Isles. Where SWAC may have a point is the dubious practice of 'catch and release.' My own view is that you should only venture out with the rod for fish you can eat and, having caught your salmon and thumped it on the head, you head for home and the deep freeze, rather than hauling in fish after fish, weighing them, measuring them, taking a few snaps for social media and then returning them to the deep. Not forgetting a protracted chat about emotional experiences that really mattered to them. But, in coarse fishing, catch and release is the whole point: we might, perhaps, command barbless hooks, or even the soluble sort decreed in the pursuit of bluefin tuna. The wild Atlantic salmon may not always be with us; the typical Scottish political animal will add to the gaiety of nations for decades to come. Bossy, virtue-signalling, carefully picking its targets, and unconsciously living what Ronald Reagan once mocked as the prevalent tenets in modern statecraft. If it moves, tax it; if it keeps moving, regulate it – and, if it stops moving, subsidise it.
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
STEPHEN DAISLEY: Baillie grinned like the cat who got the cream...and sent the milkman to A&E
With its astonishing victory in the Hamilton by-election, Scottish Labour becomes the first recorded case of resurrection from the dead in more than 2,000 years. No one predicted this. Not the pollsters, nor the pundits; not the bookies, nor the broadcasters. Anyone who says otherwise is telling big fat porkies. Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse was staying SNP or there was going to be an upset for Reform. And while Richard Tice didn't look upset necessarily, you'd have been hard-pressed to guess his party had received one in every four votes cast in a staunchly left-wing seat it had never contested before. The Reform deputy leader's mind might have been on other matters. Earlier in the day, his party chairman Zia Yusuf quit amid an internal spat on the merits of banning the burqa. Hacks ambushed Tice at the count demanding his views. It's not every day South Lanarkshire Council HQ hosts an impromptu debate on Islamic theology. The man of the night, though, was Davy Russell. Up there on the dais with the other candidates, the bloke just beamed. He is what you'd get if you asked ChatGPT for a Lanarkshire granda: ruddy coupon, unpolished manner, plain diction, doesn't like a fuss, slips the grandweans full-fat Irn-Bru when their mammy isn't looking. (Speaking later to a journalist, he said: 'The only high greater than this was when my grandson Adam was born six weeks ago.' Bless.) His victory speech had obviously been written for him by a press officer and if his delivery was flat and unvaried, it was all this banal checklist of soundbites called for. There was, to be fair, one moment of wit. 'And for Ross,' Russell smirked, 'can you see me noo?' Ross Lambie, his Reform opponent, had branded Russell 'the invisible man' after he failed to show for a televised hustings. Labour's decision to keep their man away from the debate was a canny one. Russell is not a seasoned public speaker. He would have opened himself to awkward questions about Labour policies at Westminster. The potential for gaffes would have been too great. With any luck we'll see more pushback against this alien American interloper into our democracy. TV debates are show-business, not politics, and unless you have a showbiz candidate, they should be avoided. The outcome was as dazzling for Labour as for everyone else. As Anas Sarwar made a valiant attempt to explain the result to Sky News, over his shoulder Labour whip Martin McCluskey had an expression I've only ever seen on someone coming off a three-day bender. What was happening? Was it actually happening? Is it possible to hallucinate off the back of three cups of lukewarm tea? TV cameras caught Sarwar, gape-jawed and gripping Jackie Baillie by the elbows, before breaking into a smile. This victory belonged as much to him as to anyone. Beating the SNP is one thing, but he had triumphed over Scottish Labour's most fearsome foe: Keir Starmer. The Prime Minister threw everything he could at Russell's campaign — Universal Credit changes, Winter Fuel Allowance cuts, uncontrolled immigration — but somehow Scottish Labour managed to clinch victory from the jaws of Starmer. In the wee small hours of Friday there was already speculation that Sarwar could turn around the polls in time to win Holyrood 2026. But, wait, where was John Swinney in all this? He was the face of the SNP's campaign in Hamilton. He made the poll a choice between his genre of politics and that of Nigel Farage. Yet when the chips, not to mention the ballots, were down he was nowhere to be seen. On STV, it was put to Baillie that the First Minister had been adamant that Hamilton was a straight fight between the SNP and Reform. She grinned like the cat that not only got the cream but had sent the milkman to A&E in the process. 'The First Minister is adamant about a lot of things,' she purred. On Friday, Swinney finally found his way to a TV camera and asserted that, while the SNP had come second, it had nevertheless 'made progress'. If losing a constituency the SNP had held uninterrupted since 2011 is the First Minister's definition, may his party make much, much more progress over the next 12 months
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
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.
