The UK’s main opposition Labour Party will face a test of its growing strength in Scotland after voters ousted a sitting Member of Parliament in a seat won at the last general election by the Scottish National Party.
(Bloomberg) — The UK’s main opposition Labour Party will face a test of its growing strength in Scotland after voters ousted a sitting Member of Parliament in a seat won at the last general election by the Scottish National Party.
Margaret Ferrier — who has sat as an independent since being suspended by the SNP in 2020 for breaching Covid-19 rules — was ejected on Tuesday after more than 10% of electors in her Rutherglen and Hamilton West district put their names to a recall petition. The decision triggers a by-election in the seat, the date for which will be announced when Parliament returns from its summer recess.
The contest will be closely watched for signs of whether Keir Starmer’s Labour is making in-roads in Scotland, a major battleground where his party needs to gain seats to boost its chances of a winning an outright parliamentary majority at the next general election.
Opinion polls show Labour has been gaining in Scotland — a YouGov survey in May said the party would increase its Scottish lawmakers to 24 from just one if a vote were held at that time. Labour once dominated the electoral scene in Scotland, winning 41 of its 59 parliamentary seats as recently as 2010, before suffering a near-wipe-out five years later.
Labour’s improving poll position has coincided with a turbulent period for the SNP under new leader Humza Yousaf, who took the helm after the resignation of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon. She was arrested in June during an investigation into alleged financial misconduct, but hasn’t been charged.
Starmer’s party has already made progress in by-elections this year, overturning a huge Conservative majority in the district of Selby and Ainsty last month and almost claiming former Tory prime minister Boris Johnson’s seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip.
On the same day, the Liberal Democrats also took the seat of Somerton and Frome from the Tories, highlighting the uphill battle faced by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives to win the next general election. They trail Labour by about 20 points in recent national polls.
Ferrier won her seat in 2019 with a majority of 5,230 votes over the second-placed Labour candidate. In September 2020, she broke Covid rules by traveling by train from London to Scotland after testing positive for the virus. She was eventually convicted last year after pleading guilty, and the House of Commons voted this June to suspend her for 30 days, triggering the recall petition.
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