UK

Labour eyes control of Scotland’s parliament after routing SNP in election

Scottish Labour completes Lazarus-like comback, securing 37 of 57 seats in constituencies north of the border

Scottish Labour Party leader Anas Sarwar with jubilant Labour parliamentary candidates after the general election results were confirmed. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Mark Paul London Correspondent
Fri Jul 5 2024 - 18:25

The rout by Scottish Labour of the Scottish National Party in the Westminster election has sent the separatist party back to the drawing board in the pursuit of its independence dream.

SNP first minister of Scotland John Swinney said his party had “failed to convince people of the urgency of independence” during the six-week campaign, which culminated in the party losing at least 38 of the 48 seats it won five years ago.

“We need to take the time to consider and to reflect on how we deliver our commitment to independence, which remains absolute,” he said. “We need to get that approach correct in the forthcoming period.”

Scottish Labour, which won just a single Westminster seat in the last election, completed a Lazarus-like comeback in Thursday’s vote under local leader Anas Sarwar. Labour won 37 of the 57 Scottish Westminster constituencies, reclaiming a swathe of seats from the SNP across the highly populated central belt between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

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Mr Sarwar said on Friday that Scottish Labour’s success in the Westminster elections would spur it on for the next vote in 2026 for the devolved Scottish parliament. Labour aims to topple the SNP from devolved government in two years and reclaim its old dominance in Scotland.

Jack McConnell, the former Labour first minister of Scotland between 2001 and 2007, said it was now a “completely new phase” in Scottish politics that would be more focused on the economy and public services, and less on the independence question.

The Conservative party won five seats in Scotland, including three in its traditional heartland just over the border from England and two in the northeast of the country in Aberdeenshire. One of the SNP casualties included its Northern Ireland spokesman, Richard Thomson, who lost his Gordon and Buchan seat near Aberdeen to his Tory rival, Harriet Cross.

The Liberal Democrats won one seat, while one of the Highlands constituencies, Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire had yet to declare by Friday late afternoon after a recount was ordered due to “discrepancies” discovered in the vote totals.

The SNP would hope to take the delayed Highlands seat, which would take its total of Westminster MPs to 10, a stunning reversal of its fortunes from the Nicola Sturgeon era when it established itself as the third-largest party, securing it valuable speaking rights each week during prime ministers questions.

The SNP in Scotland has now been driven back into the mostly rural Highlands and western areas of Scotland, and also into the northeast in and around Aberdeen, where its natural rival is the Conservative party in the relatively wealthy region that is dependent on the North Sea oil economy.

Labour under Keir Starmer had long plotted to reclaim its Scottish dominance as part of a strategy to win back control of the UK government in Westminster. Until recently, it had been thought that a Westminster majority for Labour would be impossible unless it won back about half of the seats north of the border with England.

Mr Starmer and other senior Labour figures, including his deputy Angela Rayner, visited Scotland frequently over the last 18 months in an attempt to buttress the party’s position there. In the end, its Scottish seats were not strictly necessary for Labour to assemble a majority given the scale of its UK-wide victory.

In his victory speech on Downing Street on Friday, however, Mr Starmer still chose to reference implicitly the Scottish question in his comments about UK’s “four nations, united”. Party officials also ensured that many of the Labour activists who were on hand to cheer Mr Starmer into Downing Street waved Saltires as well as union jacks.

Mark Paul

Mark Paul

Mark Paul is London Correspondent for The Irish Times

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