UK Labor Party leader Keir Starmer speaks at the UK Labor Party annual conference in Brighton, Britain on September 29, 2021. Portal/Hannah McKay/File Photo Acquire License Rights
- Labor gets 20% lead with big by-election win
- Leader Starmer is preparing for next year’s national elections
- SNP cites “difficult circumstances” after lawmakers are removed
LONDON, Oct 6 (Portal) – Britain’s opposition Labor Party won a bigger-than-expected victory on Friday in an election for a parliamentary seat in Scotland next year.
Labor leads Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party in national opinion polls, but is likely to need to regain much of the ground lost to the Scottish National Party in Scotland over the last decade if it is to return to government at Westminster after a 13-year absence.
“This is a shocking result. The people of Rutherglen and Hamilton West have sent a clear message – it’s time for change. And it is clear they believe this transformed Labor Party can achieve this,” Labor leader Keir Starmer said in a statement.
The by-election for an area on the outskirts of Glasgow was called after MP Margaret Ferrier was stripped of her seat in the London Parliament for breaching COVID-19 rules.
Labor candidate Michael Shanks received 17,845 votes, beating second-placed SNP candidate Katy Loudon who received 8,399 votes, marking a 20% swing to Labor from the SNP.
John Curtice, Britain’s most prominent pollster, said it was a “remarkable result” for Labor on the eve of its annual conference next week.
“Post-election swings of this magnitude are the kind of swings that oppositions have achieved, at least in the past, if they want to win the next general election,” he told BBC Radio.
“If Keir Starmer can win seats in Scotland, his chances of achieving an overall majority and avoiding a stalemate in Parliament will increase significantly.”
Ferrier was part of a wave of SNP politicians who pushed Labor from its former Scottish stronghold in 2015.
She tested positive for COVID in September 2020 after speaking in the House of Commons. Instead of isolating as was required at the time, she took the train more than 400 miles back to Scotland.
Ferrier was suspended from her party and has served since then as an independent before being removed from her party in August by a petition from her constituents.
SNP leader Humza Yousaf said it had been a “disappointing night”, adding that “the circumstances of this by-election were always going to be very difficult for us”, citing Ferrier’s behaviour.
Labor hopes the result marks the start of a political comeback in Scotland.
It lost all but one of its Scottish seats to the SNP in 2015 as the Nationalists retained the support of independence voters following a referendum in 2014 in which Scots voted 55% to 45% to remain in the UK.
After Labor recaptured Rutherglen and Hamilton West with an improved result in Scotland in 2017, the party again lost all but one Scottish seat in 2019. The SNP won the Rutherglen and Hamilton West seats in 2019 with a majority of 5,230.
Polls show Labor could draw level with or even win the most seats in Scotland for the first time since 2010, following the resignation of long-time SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon and a police investigation into the party’s finances.
Reporting by Alistair Smout; additional text by Kate Holton; Edited by Jamie Freed, Michael Perry and Toby Chopra
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