Keir Starmer goes into Labour conference this weekend on a high after his party turned Rutherglen and Hamilton West red in a decisive victory against the SNP. Yesterday’s by-election saw a 20.4 percentage point swing to Labour from the SNP. The Labour candidate, Michael Shanks, won 17,845 votes to the SNP’s 8,399 – a majority of 9,446. In the 2019 general election, the SNP won the seat with a majority of 5,230.
The SNP will try to argue it’s a normal mid term result for a party in government
If the Labour swing was repeated at a general election, Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, said the party would win 42 seats in Scotland. This would leave the SNP with a mere six. Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has said the result showed that Scottish Labour ‘could lead the way in delivering a UK Labour government’. In Starmer’s office, a resurgence in Scotland has been viewed as key to winning power.
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