Hamilton gives Anas Sarwar some hope – but there is still a mountain to climb

In the days running up to the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, Scottish Labour was quietly confident.

Internal data suggested support for the party was ever so slightly ahead of the SNP, and victory was in touching distance so long as it managed to convince those minded to back candidate Davy Russell to actually go out and vote for him.

But unlike the Rutherglen by-election of late 2023, the result of which felt inevitable from the moment it was called, a win in Hamilton was not so assured. And so the party largely kept its powder dry, gently correcting those who suggested Russell was out of the running but never making any predictions of how well (or badly) it would do.

In the event, it seems the party was right to do so. Russell did indeed emerge victorious, but only by the slimmest of margins. He secured 8,559 votes to the SNP’s Katy Loudon’s 7,957. And far from a stunning show of support for Scottish Labour, the story of this by-election is once again about how far the SNP has fallen. Comparing the result to the 2021 vote, both parties saw a reduction in their share – but the SNP’s fell by 17 per cent, while Labour’s only dropped by two per cent.

The people of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse have laid the first stone in the pathway to a Scottish Labour government

Ballot Box Scotland’s Allan Faulds describes Labour’s win as a “cause for relief, not really celebration”. The by-election, he says, proves what the national polls have already been saying – that Labour has lost the ground it had made ahead of last year’s general election, while the SNP has somewhat steadied the ship from its post-Sturgeon woes but crucially has failed to increase its support back to previous levels. That means “poor Labour performance is helping to mitigate… what is a much worse loss of support for the SNP,” Faulds explains.

Even so, the result gives a much-needed and well-timed boost to Labour 11 months out from the 2026 Scottish Parliament election. Many in the political bubble, including the bulk of the media, had already written the party off, both in Hamilton and across the country, and thought that leader Anas Sarwar’s days were numbered. There seemed to be little that he could do to improve his standing in the face of a faltering UK Government.

This shock victory – and it was a shock, with suggestions Labour may even place third behind Reform UK – helps build a narrative that Sarwar is still in contention for Bute House. Most voters will see that Labour won an all-important central belt seat, not that it did by so few votes.

^{Davy Russell being sworn in as an MSP | Alamy}

“The people of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse have laid the first stone in the pathway to a Scottish Labour government next year,” Sarwar said shortly after the declaration in South Lanarkshire Council’s HQ in Hamilton. “It’s absolutely game on for next year. We’ve proven the pundits wrong, we’ve proven the pollsters wrong, we’ve proven the political commentators wrong, we’ve proven the bookies wrong.”

Driving that last point home, the party presented some humble pie – literally, an apple pie – to journalists as they gathered for a huddle the following day.

Party strategists now feel the momentum is very much with them. Insiders tell Holyrood that they are less concerned with the state of the current polls because volatility in politics means the SNP’s lead could be wiped out at the drop of a hat. Recall that in 2011 Labour was consistently polling ahead of the SNP – until a difficult campaign knocked it out the water.

What Hamilton also does is prove the strength of Labour’s ground game. Its data was clearly more reliable, and it was able to mobilise activists in the constituency in a way the SNP just hasn’t in recent years. Much of that is to do with the fact Russell, sworn in as Scotland’s newest MSP last week, is locally very well-known.

Reform isn’t us, it isn’t Scotland

The party is aware that this could be what swung it. It is in the middle of picking candidates for next year and considerable thought is being put into picking the right person for the right area – in some cases that will mean a local personality, in others it will be about choosing someone who speaks to the right values. I’m told not to be surprised when several doctors are selected, for example, given fixing the NHS will be a key message.

But the party also acknowledges weakness in what it calls its air campaign – the overarching narrative pushed through national and social media. Russell was notably absent from a televised debate and was repeatedly criticised for declining media interviews throughout the campaign. While that didn’t matter here, it will next year. A strategy will be shaped in the coming weeks on how best to deliver those broader messages.

^{John Swinney has suggested the by-election was a two-horse race between the SNP and Reform | Alamy}

Over in the SNP camp, the defeat was a blow. The party had expected to retain the seat it has held since 2011, partly because Labour support has tanked and also the rise of Reform felt like less of a threat to them.

Its own apparatchiks got caught up in the alleged battle between Labour and Reform for second place, with John Swinney even framing it as a two-horse race between him and Nigel Farage. “People face a simple choice in this by-election. They can either vote for the SNP – elect an SNP MSP – or they will end up with a Reform MSP,” he said the day before the polls opened. Now that confidence only looks like complacency.

The reaction to defeat has also been telling. Swinney initially seemed to accept he had not done enough to restore the party to its former glory, tells journalists that while the party was “back in contention” after its general election performance, there had not been “nearly enough progress”. “We still have work to do, and we will do it,” he said.

Yet later he seemed to lose sight of some of that humility, telling Sky News: “If you look at the result on Thursday, all the pollsters say that if that was applied across the wider electorate in Scotland, the SNP would remain by a country mile the largest political party in the Scottish Parliament.”

The hope comes in our politics from Scottish independence

Despite the first minister just a month ago telling Holyrood that he had “healed” the rifts in the SNP, the loss in Hamilton caused some of the anger under the surface to bubble up once more. Former MP Tommy Shepherd wrote in The National that the party had got its messaging wrong, labelling the decision to focus on Reform was a “disaster”.

Suzanne McLaughlin, a former candidate and party loyalist, turned her ire on deputy first minister Kate Forbes, tweeting the result had “everything to do with the place of a homophobic/transphobic/anti single mum regressive woman at the heart of power within the SNP”.

And former minister Alex Neil blamed Swinney, saying “the current SNP leadership needs to be replaced urgently”. A few agree with him, with reports of a secret meeting of party figures to discuss how to oust Swinney.

Swinney, for his part, appears unperturbed by such rumours and carried on with business as usual, even conducting a government reshuffle. While this had long been in the offing – Christina McKelvie was a serving minister when she died in March, while Mairi McAllan returns from maternity leave – what was hoped to be a refresh to provide a sense of preparedness ahead of next year instead came across as a lacklustre attempt to hit the reset button. That impression was not improved by the minimal changes.

So what next for the SNP? With the 2026 campaign starting to heat up, the party has so far turned its fire on unpopular decisions of the UK Labour government – namely winter fuel payments, reforms to disability benefits, and the failure to lift the two-child cap. But the Hamilton by-election proves that even though voters are not impressed by these decisions, nor are they returning to the SNP en masse.

Focusing an election strategy on the performance of a government that is not being elected at that moment could prove fruitless, and especially when Labour may even outmanoeuvre them.

The recent U-turn on the winter fuel payment is an example. Changes announced by chancellor Rachel Reeves will see the least well-off pensioners in England and Wales receive up to £300 this winter – while the Scottish Government, having already announced it would stick to a universal payment of its equivalent devolved benefit, will pay £100 to all pensioners.

There is always the golden goose that the SNP has previously fallen back on: independence. Polls continue to show support for separation from the UK has remained high despite falling support for the main pro-independence party. The SNP may calculate that it needs to move that item up the agenda for voters if they wish to benefit.

Swinney seemed to be floating this in a clip of a BBC interview he posted on social media early last week. “What I’ve got to do now – and I acknowledge this, and it’s always been part of my plan – is to set out where the hope comes from in our politics. The hope comes in our politics from Scottish independence,” he said.

But the lessons of the general election suggest voters are not interested all that much in talking about independence while other issues feel more pressing. And the SNP’s seeming lack of ideas on how to tackle those issues will continue to weigh against them.

^{One in four votes cast were for Reform | Alamy}

The other big story of the Hamilton by-election was the success of Reform. Far from Davy Russell’s claim in his victory speech that voters had “sent a message to [Nigel] Farage and his mob” that “Reform isn’t us, it isn’t Scotland, we don’t want your division here”, candidate Ross Lambie secured 7,088 votes – a whopping 26 per cent. It is no wonder that deputy leader Richard Tice was crowing about having made the seat a “three-way marginal”. It means the party will almost certainly make a breakthrough next year.

Yet Farage remains a highly divisive figure. The party ran a controversial campaign ad in the weeks before the vote, claiming: “Anas Sarwar has said he will prioritise the Pakistani community”. Sarwar said no such thing, and both Labour and the SNP described it as a “racist” attack. But it did not seem to harm Reform’s chances.

Just days before the by-election, when Farage himself was due to appear in Hamilton (he did not, in the end visiting Larkhall instead), protesters positioned themselves outside the party’s HQ only to be met by anger from locals who supported Farage and did not view Reform as racist.

Reform’s support may have been inflated by the fact it was a by-election, which generally attract more protest votes than full elections. Activists from both Labour and the SNP report feeling considerable anger on the doorsteps.

But it would be naïve to assume that all those voters will return to a mainstream party next year when a government is hanging in the balance, and it is clear that simply dismissing the party as a threat or dubbing it antithetical to Scottish values is not enough. Both the SNP and Labour will need to get to grips with this.

On the matter of Bute House, voters in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse have shown that the path to next May could yet be full of surprises.

Sarwar still has a mountain to climb if he is to become the next first minister and his greatest obstacle, it seems, is his own party at Westminster. But neither can Swinney afford to sit back and relax, safe in the knowledge that Keir Starmer will be his greatest electoral asset.

Away from the media narrative and away, even, from the pollsters, 2026 is all to play for.