Relief for Starmer in Hamilton, but Reform has arrived as a force in Scotland

Independent

13 hours ago

When local businessman Davy Russell was announced as the new Scottish Parliament member for Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse in the early hours of the morning, the look of relief on the faces of Labour members at the count was palpable. And they were entitled to revel in what was a shock result.
The party had defied the polls and the bookmaker odds to win a seat which in the last Holyrood election in 2021 was easily held by the late SNP MSP Christina McKelvie.
Many had the SNP as clear favourites to win the seat again, with the new kid on the block Reform UK as second favourites and Labour expected to come third.
The victory was achieved through hard graft and sending teams of MPs and other activists for weeks to campaign hard in a seat which had become an almost existential question for the Labour Party. But more importantly, it had also become a question of whether the Keir Starmer project is working.
The seat was for the Scottish Parliament, but its Westminster equivalent is held by Imogen Walker, who won with a big majority last year. She herself is a symbolic figure as the wife of Starmer's all powerful chief-of-staff Morgan McSweeney and parliamentary private secretary to chancellor Rachel Reeves.
Defeat in this by-election - and worse still a third place - would have been catastrophic. It would have been portrayed as a rejection of the Starmer-McSweeney approach and triggered fears of yet another wipeout for Labour in Scotland.
But what the result showed was that an area that was once a Labour heartland before being split by the left-wing nationalism of the SNP, has now become a three-way marginal.
It proved that the allegations of corruption and criminality, which ended the Nicola Sturgeon era of the SNP, have left the Scottish nationalists damaged still. They remain a force but they look as though their dominance in Scottish politics is now on the slide.
The SNP showed an incredible amount of hubris in the campaign, with first minister John Swinney even suggesting the by-election was a straight fight between his party and Reform.
Even as votes were being counted, senior SNP figures were briefing that Labour had not been able to find anybody willing to vote for them - 'needle in a haystack stuff,' one noted.
But in truth, it may be that the SNP helped Labour turn a potentially humiliating defeat into a morale boosting victory.
David Mundell, the former Tory Scottish secretary in the David Cameron and Theresa May governments, a highly experienced operator north of the border said: 'If this was an English seat Reform would have won easily but the SNP start with around 30 per cent of the vote.'
In the end Labour got 31 per cent, the SNP 29 per cent and Reform 26 per cent. Just a few hundred votes separated them.
What it proved is that while Labour are far from being as dead as some presumed, Reform has arrived as a political force in a part of the UK where Nigel Farage had no previous traction.
Back in 2013, Mr Farage was literally chased out of Scotland when he tried to hold a campaign event in an Edinburgh pub. Now his party is looking at winning many seats in next year's Scottish Parliament election.
It was noticeable on Monday that Farage received a warm welcome in Hamilton when he went to campaign while Sir Keir, just 22 minutes away in Glasgow to launch his strategic defence review, stayed away. The fact remains that the prime minister is personally very unpopular on the doorstep.
According to Professor Sir John Curtice, Reform has taken a quarter of Tory votes and one in six from Labour.
Victory has handed Sir Keir and his party a much needed boost but it may only mask the oncoming threat of Farage and Reform in all parts of the country. Reform is now no longer just an English phenomenon but one that is going to do the traditional parties damage in Scotland and Wales too.