LABOUR has won the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election.
The contest was brought about by the sacking of former SNP MP Margaret Ferrier after she broke Covid rules.
The Labour victory was widely expected given those circumstances, the SNP’s current difficulties and the deep unpopularity of the Tory government at Westminster;
Labour’s Michael Shanks amassed more than double the votes of his SNP opponent Katy Louden. In what predictably turned out to be a two horse race, all of the other candidates lost their deposits.
It was Labour’s first win in a Scottish by-election for twelve years and doubles Labour’s representation at Westminster. The party sees this as a springboard to nationwide success in next year’s general election, which Labour is also predicted to win emphatically.
‘Seismic’ was the Labour party’s agreed word of choice on the night , but was the result really seismic? An impressive victory, certainly – but the turnout in this so-called ‘crucial’ by-election was a miserable 37 per cent. Nearly two in three voters simply couldn’t be bothered.
VOTES WERE CAST AS FOLLOWS:
- Gloria Adebo (Scottish Liberal Democrats) – 895
- Bill Bonnar (Scottish Socialist Party) – 271
- Garry Cooke (Independent) – 6
- Andrew Daly (Independent) – 81
- Cameron Eadie (Scottish Greens) – 601
- Prince Ankit Love, Emperor of India – 34
- Niall Fraser (Scottish Family Party) – 319
- Ewan Hoyle (Volt UK) – 46
- Thomas Kerr (Scottish Conservatives) – 1,192
- Katy Loudon (SNP) – 8,399
- Chris Sermanni (Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition) – 178
- MICHAEL SHANKS (Scottish Labour) – 17,845
- David Stark (Reform UK) – 403
- Colette Walker (Independence for Scotland Party) – 207
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