Labour’s victory in a Scottish constituency signals a potential electoral decline in the UK international

Labour’s landslide victory in Thursday’s by-election in the Scottish constituency of Rutherglen and Hamilton, whose seat remained vacant after MP Margaret Ferrer was expelled for breaching confinement rules, has injected optimism into the main opposition party. . The Labor candidate, Michael Shanks, received more than twice the number of votes as the Scottish National Party candidate, Katie Loudon. 58.6% support versus 27.6%, respectively. The Conservative Party is hardly…

Labour’s landslide victory in Thursday’s by-election in the Scottish constituency of Rutherglen and Hamilton, whose seat remained vacant after MP Margaret Ferrer was expelled for breaching confinement rules, has injected optimism into the main opposition party. . The Labor candidate, Michael Shanks, received more than twice the number of votes as the Scottish National Party candidate, Katie Loudon. 58.6% support versus 27.6%, respectively. The Conservative Party barely got 3.9%, which confirms the lack of importance of the elections Toris in Scottish territory.

The value of this result is derived from its projections into a hypothetical general election scheduled for January 2025 at the latest. There was a time not so long ago when Scotland was under absolute Labor control, and the results in that region were a boost for Labour. The majority are across the UK. In the 2010 general election, with Gordon Brown at the helm, Labor gained 41 of the 59 MPs that Scotland contributes to the Westminster Parliament. In 2019, with Jeremy Corbyn as Labor leader, they gained one MP.

During all this time, the Scottish independence movement, initially promoted by the charismatic Alex Salmon and then strengthened by his successor Nicola Sturgeon, has snatched votes from the national left and won practically all the support of voters. Despite the 2014 referendum defeat, in which secession was rejected by a 10% margin, factors such as Brexit (which Scots mostly rejected) and a deep rejection of Boris Johnson’s character, pushed the SNP into Scotland.

Labor leader Keir Starmer said: “This result is earth-shattering.” “The voters of Rutherglen and Hamilton have sent a very clear message. It is time for change. I have always said that restoring the trust of Scotland’s citizens is key. “This victory is the culmination of three-and-a-half years of hard work,” he added. That’s how long Starmer has been leading the party. , to replace Corbyn, a period devoted to returning the party to centrist positions similar to the position of the New Labor Party, which Tony Blair swept at the ballot boxes.

John Curtis, the UK’s most respected and listened to sociologist and electoral analyst, expressed astonishment at the result. “Opposition victories in by-elections like this usually mean, historically, that the party is on track to win the general election,” Curtis told the BBC. Although he also cautioned that voters would often use these limited elections to express their feelings of protest. “Voters who supported Labor are not necessarily committed to that party. “They simply meant they didn’t like any of the other options,” Curtis said.

Self-criticism of Scottish nationalists

Among the ranks of the Scottish National Party, mired in an internal crisis after the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon, which was investigated by police on charges of embezzlement of funds raised by the party to promote a new independence campaign, criticism and thoughts began to emerge regarding the electoral defeat. . “We cannot avoid the fact that the results were very bad,” said Stephen Flynn, spokesman for the Scottish Nationalists in the British parliament, who called on his party to start looking at how to regain the trust of all voters. “They stayed home and did not vote for the SNP.” Turnout in these by-elections was particularly low. Six out of ten voters chose not to go to the polls.

Last March, the Scottish National Party elected Muslim Hamza Yousuf, of Pakistani origin, as the party’s new leader and Prime Minister of Scotland. Youssef’s emergence into politics, which could have been a breath of fresh air, was clouded by the way the party leadership, Sturgeon-style, interfered in the development of the primaries. The new leader failed to arouse enthusiasm among voters, who from the beginning viewed him as a candidate for continuity, unable to impose order in the SNP.

Although the UK’s next general election is scheduled for January 2025, the idea of ​​holding early elections next spring is gaining increasing momentum. All opinion polls give Labor an advantage of just over twenty percentage points over the Conservatives. The current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has embarked on a strategy that the most moderates in his party describe as populist and reactionary, in an attempt to overcome the wear and tear of remaining in power for 13 years. During all this period, negative factors have accumulated, such as the consequences of Brexit on the British economy or the disastrous period led by Boris Johnson. Throughout this period, feelings of independence increased in Scotland. Labour’s victory on Thursday is a further sign that the situation, both in Scotland and across the UK, may be beginning to take a historic turn.

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