More than three years after the COVID law-breaking that cost the SNP’s Margaret Ferrier her job as MP, voters in Rutherglen and Hamilton West will be summoned to the polls on October 5 for a byelection to choose her successor. Why is Labour’s Michael Shanks very widely expected to win? And what would a Labour gain here mean?
The first thing to say is that this is one of Scotland’s friendlier seats for Labour. Since the independence referendum in 2014, the party has been frozen out of 52 of Scotland’s 59 constituencies, including many of its former strongholds in Glasgow and the central belt. Rutherglen is one of the few seats that it has won in that period – albeit just once and very narrowly, during the SNP’s dip in 2017. Clearly the party can win there, given a little bit of national tailwind.
How favourable are those winds these days? The most recent Scotland-wide poll gives the SNP almost the same lead over Labour (38% to 27%) as it had in that 2017 general election (37% to 27%). But the poll before had the parties tied on 35%, and generally the SNP lead has been well down in single digits for months, so the national picture points to a Labour gain.
