Keir Starmer says Scottish byelection win is a sign that Labour is heading for power

Britain’s Labour Party has hailed its overwhelming victory in a much-watched byelection in Scotland as proof that it is heading for Downing Street, after a 20-point swing that Keir Starmer said “blew the doors off”.

After Labour exceeded expectations with almost 59 per cent of the vote in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, pollsters said the result could give the party the chance of winning dozens of seats in Scotland in a general election next year.

“You blew the doors off,” Starmer told Labour members at a victory rally in the seat, near Glasgow. “Because we’ve changed, we are now the party of the change here in Scotland, we’re the party of change in Britain, the party of change right across the whole country.”

At this week’s Conservative party conference prime minister Rishi Sunak sought to portray himself as an agent of change, despite his party’s 13 years in office, with promises to shift spending from high-speed rail to other transport projects, reform education and clamp down on smoking.

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But the scale of Labour’s success in the Rutherglen vote has given Mr Starmer a boost as he heads into his own party’s conference in Liverpool, which starts on Sunday.

A strong performance in Scotland in the general election would bolster Labour’s chances of forming a majority rather than minority government. The prospect of such a result could also help Mr Starmer rebut claims that Labour would have to turn to the Scottish National Party for support in Westminster – an argument the Conservatives have previously used in general election campaigns, particularly in England.

Labour’s Michael Shanks won 17,845 votes, or 58.6 per cent of the vote in Rutherglen, with a 20 percentage point swing that will increase confidence that his party can end the SNP’s dominance in Scotland.

The pro-independence party’s Katy Loudon received 8,399 votes, or 27.6 per cent, in a seat it won by more than 5,000 votes in 2019. The Conservatives’ share collapsed to 3.9 per cent on a 37.2 per cent turnout.

In a further potentially worrying sign for Mr Sunak, a YouGov poll for The Times on Friday indicated that the Conservative conference had failed to make any dent in the Labour Party’s 21-point lead across the UK.

The Rutherglen byelection was sparked by the ousting of former SNP MP Margaret Ferrier for breaking Covid-19 rules in 2020.

John Curtice, a leading pollster and professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, said that if Labour’s performance was replicated across Scotland in a general election, it could win 42 seats north of the border, having dropped to just one before its victory on Thursday.

“The Labour Party will be able to justifiably claim that this is the kind of result that suggests that [it] is potentially capable of winning seats again in Scotland,” Mr Curtice said.

[ Mark Paul: SNP must hold off Labour surge ]

[ Mark Paul: Kate Forbes may get another chance to lead SNP ]

The outcome is a heavy blow for the SNP and its leader Humza Yousaf, whose time in office has been dominated by a struggle to stabilise the party and an escalating police investigation into party finances since the resignation of his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon in March.

Mr Yousaf said his party would take the result “on the chin” but added that the circumstances of the byelection were “always very difficult” for the SNP.

“We lost this seat in 2017, and like 2019 we can win this seat back,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. A poll for Redfield & Wilton Strategies published on Friday put the SNP two points ahead of Labour in Scotland, compared with a lead of about 10 points at the start of the year.

Labour was heavily backed in betting markets to retake Rutherglen, given the crisis in the SNP and voters’ anger at the actions of its former MP. But the scale of the victory was a surprise, Mr Curtice said.

Starmer’s party previously indicated that it hoped to win more than 20 Scottish Westminster seats next year, which would boost its chances of defeating Mr Sunak’s Conservatives.

Labour held a majority of Westminster seats in Scotland until 2015, when its share of the vote collapsed after an independence referendum held the previous year. While Scots voted in favour of staying in the UK, the result galvanised independence voters under the banner of the SNP, which has dominated Scottish politics since.

Thursday’s outcome means Mr Yousaf faces a difficult conference when his party members gather in Aberdeen next week. The party last month suspended veteran MSP Fergus Ewing, an outspoken critic of its co-operation agreement with the Scottish Greens.

Turmoil in the SNP deepened after Ms Sturgeon, Peter Murrell, the party’s former chief executive who is also her husband, and Colin Beattie, its former treasurer, were arrested this year as part of a police inquiry into the party’s finances.

All three were released without charge pending further investigation. Ms Sturgeon has denied any wrongdoing.

– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023