Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The campaign in Glasgow East

Drive around Glasgow East and it seems the SNP is making most of the headway. Its simple yellow fluorescent logo is everywhere. When I was in the constituency yesterday, I saw the same SNP van in four different parts of the seat– blasting out music and with “on your side” written in big letters on the side of it. There’s no doubt about it, the Nationalists are making their presence felt. Their message is: “You’ve voted Labour for decades – and what has it got you?” This resonates.

The Nats have a head start. It is a delicious irony that Gordon Brown called the Glasgow East by-election early so as to catch the SNP unawares. Yet it is his own party that has run around clueless, trying to find a candidate and being knocked back by four. Labour finally got Margaret Curran—already MSP for Glasgow Ballieston (an overlapping, but different, Holyrood constituency)—to stand.

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