Labour activists partied into the early hours on Thursday night in Rutherglen on the southern outskirts of Glasgow, drinking cans of Tennent’s lager and singing “Things Can Only Get Better” — the unofficial theme tune to New Labour when it won its 1997 general election landslide.
They were celebrating the seizure of the Rutherglen and Hamilton West seat in a by-election from the Scottish National party, whose previous MP had been ousted for breaching Covid lockdown rules.
But while the 20 per cent swing to Labour — the biggest towards the party in years — fired up activists and MPs as they head for the annual conference in Liverpool this weekend, some pollsters issued a note of caution.
“The margin of victory is impressive, but that can be chalked up to by-elections being a bit weird, and easier to squeeze the Tory vote,” said Chris Hopkins, political research director at pollster Savanta.
Electoral politics in Scotland has been dominated by the SNP since the 2014 independence referendum, which rejected a push for Scotland to leave the UK but prompted a surge in nationalist sentiment.
Labour, which had in the past held most of the Scottish seats in Westminster, saw its support collapse in the 2015 election as the unionist vote was splintered between the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems.
The SNP is now in disarray, however, after the resignation of former leader Nicola Sturgeon and a police investigation into the party’s finances that led to her arrest in June. She has denied any wrongdoing.
With a general election expected next year, Labour’s hopes of ousting the Conservative party from power and returning to government for the first time since 2010 rely on it taking advantage of the SNP’s weakness to rebuild its former power base in Scotland.
Josh Simons, director of campaign group Labour Together, said the victory cemented Labour’s role as the SNP’s main challenger. “Keir has blown through the expectations of the Starmer doomsters, on both left and right, once again,” he said.
In Rutherglen Labour jumped from just 35 per cent to 59 per cent of the vote, albeit on a low turnout of just 37.2 per cent.
It doubled the party’s tally of MPs in Scotland from one to two — out of a total of 59. A decade ago Labour held 41 of those seats.
UK polls show Labour consistently ahead of Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives by double-digit figures and the party has been building momentum with by-election victories.
The win in Rutherglen came just weeks after the party overturned a majority of more than 20,000 in a by-election in Selby in North Yorkshire. Labour strategists believe the party has a decent chance in two more by-elections later this month in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire.
“This is a seismic victory which moves the tectonic plates of British politics. It was the biggest swing towards Labour in Scotland since world war two,” said John McTernan, a former Downing Street aide to Tony Blair.
Though the result has sent a frisson of delight through the Labour ranks, experts cautioned not to over-interpret a single election result in a seat that the party had held prior to 2015 and from 2017 to 2019.
Patrick English, associate director at pollster YouGov, said it was realistic for Labour to get around 25 Scottish seats at the general election thanks to falling support for the SNP and the coalescing of the pro-unionist vote around Labour.
But he added: “Does this mean Scottish politics has gone back to pre-referendum format? Does this mean Labour could get 40 constituencies in Scotland? No, let’s not be silly about it. It’s a by-election.”
The victory was achieved in part thanks to tactical voting, particularly from previous Tory supporters. The Conservative vote sank from 15 per cent in 2019 to just 3.9 per cent on Thursday.
The Tories are likely to enter the next general election claiming that in the event of a hung Parliament Starmer can only become prime minister with SNP support — undermining the 316-year union between Scotland and England.
That was a key theme that former Tory leader David Cameron used against Labour to great effect in the 2015 election.
Yet that argument may strike less of a chord when Labour is 16 points ahead in the national polls, a lead that points to a decent majority for the party. Starmer has ruled out any deal with the nationalists.
Mark Diffley, founder of the Diffley Partnership, an Edinburgh-based polling company, said the result would help to “nullify” that line of attack. “It means that is less of a potent argument for the Conservatives,” he said.
Labour previously had a minor false dawn in Scotland in 2017 by winning seven seats, but then it lost six of them in the 2019 general election.
Anas Sarwar, Labour’s leader in Scotland, said when he took the job two years ago his party was 32 points behind the SNP.
“Two years later we are winning a parliamentary by-election having won more than 50 per cent of the vote, double the vote of the SNP.”
But Emily Gray, Scotland managing director of Ipsos, said her polling suggested that while the public wanted change they were still not “deeply in love” with Labour.
When it comes to Starmer and his party, she said, voters are “still fairly lukewarm”.
