Will Scottish Labour EVER Gain a Seat from the SNP?
Labour has never won a Scottish Parliament Constituency from the SNP.
In fact, Labour has never gained a Scottish Parliament Constituency from any of the other parties. These facts, I’ve found, tend to startle my comrades in the Scottish Labour Party when they learn them. And quite rightly too when one considers that the SNP now hold 52 out of 73 Scottish Parliament Constituencies. Even if the SNP doesn’t win a single Regional List seat in 2016 hanging onto that 52 would be a bigger win than Jack McConnell achieved in 2003. The SNP has only ever lost ONE Scottish Parliament Constituency, and that was Galloway and Upper Nithsdale to Alex Fergusson in 2003.
In hindsight, the only real opportunity the Scottish Labour Party has ever had of poaching a seat off of the SNP came in 2003. In that election there was only one SNP held constituency in which Labour were within 10 percentage points of the SNP: Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber, with a majority of just 441 (or 1%). It also bore the dubious distinction of being the only seat at that time to be held by Labour in Westminster but by the SNP at Holyrood. Not only was the Scottish Labour party unable to gain this seat, and not only did the SNP more than double their majority, but the SNP also snatched Ochil, Aberdeen North and Dundee East from Labour despite suffering a net loss of 8 seats overall. Though little significance was attached to these results at the time they foreshadowed the very real difficulty Scottish Labour has in winning seats back once lost to the SNP.
Even if one looks through the doldrums of history to the dark days of the SNP, Labour has only ever won 4 seats back from the SNP: East Dunbartonshire and Clackmannan & East Stirling in ’79, and Dundee East and the Western Isles in ’87. Labour has never won a seat from the SNP in a by-election.
I offer no explanation as to how or why SNP incumbents are hard to shift. The problem, however, doesn’t appear to be that SNP incumbents simply dig-in their heels (though as one former colleague remarked to me recently “the bastards make bloody good MSPs!”) The problem, I fear, is much more deeply rooted in that once Scots break their lifetime habit of voting Labour it’s very difficult to win them back. If this is indeed the case then the new leader of the Scottish Labour Party, whomever they might be, has a far greater mountain to climb than perhaps they realise.
Dec 01, 2011 @ 19:32:39
A few missing facts: Motherwell won back by Labour from the SNP in 1945, Hamilton in 1970, Govan in 1974 and again in 1992. Until 1997, the SNP had never held a seat they had won in a by-election. That year, of course, represented a high water mark for Labour. This year, an absolute disaster.
Dec 01, 2011 @ 19:40:27
Now Andrew, you know perfectly well that by-election “win-backs” don’t count as “gains”. The most obvious example of what you describe is the most recent which is, of course, Glasgow East.
Dec 01, 2011 @ 22:10:37
They might win back a few such as Paisley, Glasgow Anniesland, Kirkcaldy, Edinburgh Southern and Aberdeen Central in 2016 but that may well be the limit of how well Labour does against the SNP.
That should probably be viewed as the best case scenario and is why Labour needs an actual list strategy as well next time.
Dec 02, 2011 @ 05:58:19
Join us Stuart.
SNP Saor Alba
Dec 02, 2011 @ 16:38:02
I agree, I’m an SNP voter all my life, and if i”m not mistaken Aberdeen has always had a strong base of support for SNP? Most people i know from Aberdeen are either SNP voters or Labour.
I my self am from the west coast of the highlands (Achiltibuie, Coigach), which as a lib dem strong hold, only as an alternative to Tory, and Labor. Now that we have opened our eyes and realize just how undemocratic the Union is (all party’s are exactly the same one more right wing that the other, none the less all on the right side of the center.)
In short the only real chance that Labor has of winning back the hearts and minds of the people of Scotland is to abandoned “new” tory sorry i mean labour, Become a left wing party again, but even that is a shot in the dark. When a Nationalist movement gains momentum their isnt much any one can do to stop it. Every thing that has risen…must fall, Its the law’s of the universe. “Nothing last forever” the union in this case.
Soar Alba Gu Brath
Dec 02, 2011 @ 08:18:10
People used to say that Lib Dem constituency parliamentarians were hard to shift (until last year, at least). 2007 in Argyll & Bute, Gordon and Roxburgh & Berwickshire were the first seats since the war where an incumbent Lib Dem or Liberal lost their seats. Their problem until 2001 was often not being able to ‘hand over’ to a party colleague successor when an incumbent stood down, except for Orkney & Shetland. So the same factors at play in 2007 and especially 2011 which reversed this established trend could also be the factors which overcome any ‘digging in’ element for the SNP – a resurgent opposing party at national level, with a charismatic leader, well funded and well organised, as opposed to incumbent party unpopularity associated with unpopular decisions in government and/or a perception of having broken promises. The latter aspect is unlikely to have much traction in 2016 because the chief reason given for switching to the SNP in 2011 was a perception that they had ‘done a good job’ since 2007 and Labour were seen as a bit pathetic by comparison. The 2011 campaign wasn’t predicated on many specific promises which could run aground, especially not with a working majority. So the most realistic scenario for Labour is to eliminate their own handicaps (leader, complacency, money, organisation) and see how far that gets them. Many more than six or eight recoveries would be surprising in the absence of other national political factors.
Dec 02, 2011 @ 16:58:23
Now that Danny Alexander has proved himself to be more right wing than the tories the LIBDEMs are finished in Scotland. They used to be thought of as an honourable party but not now. Even John Farquhar Munro was disgusted at how his much loved party had betrayed the Scottish people and he said as much when he retired.
Dec 02, 2011 @ 20:35:38
A very interesting analysis.
Your use of the word ‘comrades’ suggests you believe the Labour party to actually be socialists.
You must know they’re nearly as right-wing as the Tories and are obsessed with pleasing the markets and big business.
To say Labour hasn’t done good things in the past would be idiotic – but to say they’re doing good things now is equally idiotic.
The Scottish government is made up of smart people with smart policies with the people of Scotland as their absolute priority as their reason to be in government.
This seems to be a very reasonable thing to expect but is so far away from where Labour is that no comparison is possible.
Leave Labour, join us and together we’ll have a socialist Scotland that encourages business with the aim of making a better society, not just a more ‘competitive economy’.