Hamilton by-election: How Labour 'defied the odds' and Reform ripped up the rulebook
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is on the cusp of a Holyrood breakthrough.
Anas Sarwar was buzzing. The triumphant Scottish Labour leader told journalists his party had defied the bookies, the pollsters and the pundits by winning the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, and it was now “game on”.
He had a point. Almost everyone thought the SNP would keep hold of the seat, albeit with a much reduced majority. In the end, Labour’s candidate, Davy Russell, beat his Nationalist rival by 602 votes. It was a narrow victory, but a win is a win.
On Friday, as Labour held a victory rally in Hamilton, one party spinner purchased a "humble pie" - technically, an apple flan - from the Bayne’s bakery next to their campaign HQ and used it to tease journalists who had written off Labour’s chances.
Alas, it wasn’t long before Professor Sir John Curtice, the polling guru, rained on their parade with some cold, hard numbers. The result, he said, was actually “way below” what Labour needs if it wants to win next year’s Holyrood election.
"I think the honest truth is that neither Labour nor the SNP can be really particularly happy with this result,” he told The Scotsman.
Instead, the most important development in terms of its wider implications lies elsewhere.
The Hamilton by-election was a tight three-horse race between Labour, the SNP and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. The latter came in third, but still secured a remarkable 26 per cent of the vote, outperforming its national polling.
In light of this, Sir John said, the possibility that Reform might come second next year, ahead of Labour, “is not an outcome that we can presume is out of the bounds of possibility”.
Like it or not, Reform is now a force to be reckoned with in Scottish politics, and all without having a separate leadership team in place north of the Border.
The spectre of Mr Farage dominated the by-election campaign, and his visit to the constituency on Monday received huge amounts of coverage. His rivals also spent a great deal of time talking about him.
The First Minister repeatedly portrayed the by-election as a two-horse race between the SNP and Reform - an analysis that turned out to be somewhat flawed, to put it mildly.
"Reform's performance, 26 per cent, is more than you would expect in Hamilton, if the result there were simply reflecting what the opinion polls have been telling us,” Sir John said.
"Now there are [a few] possibilities. One is that the Reform campaign in the constituency might have been particularly effective. I certainly think that Mr [Ross] Lambie was a relatively strong candidate.
"And it may well be that Labour and the SNP made the cardinal, classic mistake of giving lots of lovely publicity to your opponent's election campaign.
"Or it may be that the polls are indeed underestimating Reform somewhat. We did see Reform doing better than expected in the English local elections, and then the polls caught up with what the local elections were saying."
The polling expert added: "For those of us who weren't consumed by the day to day events in Hamilton, we were going 'hang on, the only thing that anybody is hearing about this by-election campaign is what Nigel Farage is saying, as advertised by Anas Sarwar and John Swinney’."
Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse was prime territory for Labour, and exactly the sort of seat it should be winning. Nevertheless, a narrative developed during the campaign the party was in trouble, and there was speculation it could even come third.
That did not happen, and Mr Sarwar is quite right to celebrate a hard-earned victory.
Mark Diffley, the pollster, said it was a “big win” for Labour. However, he said it was “not right” to say the party had hugely outperformed its polling.
“National polling puts Labour at 20 per cent, down two points from 2021 Holyrood election,” he wrote on social media. “In this by-election, Labour’s vote share fell by two points from the Hamilton result in 2021.”
Labour bosses credited their victory to activists rolling up their sleeves and hitting the doors.
"For a long time, people looked at the SNP and thought they had the strongest communications strategy, the strongest digital outlook and they had the strongest field operation,” Mr Sarwar said.
“I genuinely believe we beat them in all three of those areas. We ran the most significant and best ground operation in any constituency in the history of the Scottish Labour party in this by-election."
Meanwhile, John Swinney, the First Minister and SNP leader, told journalists he would “consider the implications” of the result.
“There's nothing quite like being on the doorsteps for several weeks to hear what people are thinking and feeling, and you hear it very directly,” he said.
Asked about a potential Cabinet reshuffle, he said: “Obviously I’ve got to consider all the issues about the ministerial team. [Energy Secretary] Màiri McAllan will be concluding her maternity leave soon, so these issues will be considered.”
While his rival celebrated in Hamilton, Mr Swinney took questions at the SNP’s HQ near the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. It was, understandably, a muted affair.
But spare a thought for the Scottish Tories, who secured just 6 per cent of the vote. The party will meet for its annual conference in Edinburgh next weekend, where leader Russell Findlay will have the unenviable task of trying to build some momentum.
One thing is for certain: Mr Farage’s name will, once again, be on everyone’s lips.
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