Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire: winner in 2019 of predecessor seat of Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey – Drew Hendry (SNP)
EVEN before this election, the idea that the First Past The Post voting system is all about “local representation at Westminster” used to provoke hollow laughter in the Highlands.
Some MPs there already represented constituencies that were the geographical size of small European countries. In spite of that, the Boundary Commission has been ruthless in ensuring that the Highlands takes a lot of the pain from the reduction in the number of Scottish seats in the Commons.
One of the seats that is being abolished altogether is the vast Ross, Skye and Lochaber, held by the SNP’s Ian Blackford prior to dissolution and previously the fortress of the former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy.
That means three neighbouring constituencies are having to become even more enormous than they already were to absorb its territory.
Drew Hendry used to represent a constituency centred on Inverness and which stretched no further west than Loch Cluanie but in the new version of the seat he’ll be running for on July 4, the western-most part has shifted around 80 miles by road to Neist Point Lighthouse at the far end of Skye.
Although this arrangement is unlikely to work well for voters, it may work rather nicely for the SNP politically. It’s true that Labour held a seat covering part of the city of Inverness when they were last in landslide territory across the UK.
However, it’s very hard to see history repeating itself this time simply because the Boundary Commission has created a constituency with too many areas of electoral desert for Labour. In the Isle of Skye, for example, Labour took just 3.5% of the first preference vote in the 2022 local elections, finishing behind even Alba.
It’s estimated that if the new constituency boundaries had been in place in the 2019 election, Labour would have taken a mere 8% of the vote in Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire, which would have placed them 41 percentage points behind the SNP.
That means to win this time on a uniform swing, they would need to be 15 points ahead of the SNP nationally. No poll so far has shown a Labour lead of that size.
Additionally, Labour would have to jump from fourth place to first to gain the seat, which stretches credibility still further, given there will always be at least some people looking to vote tactically for parties that appear to have the best chance.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats have been done no favours by the dismemberment of Kennedy’s former seat, where they had retained residual strength and could potentially have mounted a serious challenge to the SNP in the right circumstances.
The influx of LibDem voters from 2019 into Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire still leaves the party a distant third in the new constituency, so they cannot plausibly get their campaign off the ground with the usual “Only the LibDems can beat the SNP! The Conservatives can’t win here!”
Although, as it happens, the Conservatives can’t actually win either, because they start from much too far behind and their position has been weakened further by the addition of the voters from Ross, Skye and Lochaber.
And as if that isn’t enough, the SNP have also had another boost. Former first minister Humza Yousaf spoke the language of Glasgow well, but he almost certainly would have had less appeal in the Highlands, especially in view of damning criticisms of him from SNP MSP Fergus Ewing, who has represented Inverness and surrounds in the Scottish Parliament since 1999.
The fresh SNP leadership team of John Swinney and Kate Forbes should be much more attractive to a semi-rural constituency such as this, not least because Forbes is the MSP for the overlapping Holyrood seat of Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch.
The notional 2019 General Election results suggest Hendry would have taken 49% of the vote within the boundaries of the new constituency. In line with national trends, that may well fall this time, perhaps even to somewhere in the 35%-42% range.
But any remotely likely division of support between the three main Unionist parties, should remain more than enough to return Hendry to Westminster for a fourth consecutive term.
