Testing Times: Holding onto Rutherglen would've been a challenge for the SNP in the best of times

When Margaret Ferrier made the fateful decision that would ultimately end her political career, there was no way of knowing how important it would become for the party she once represented.

It’s now a little over three years since the former MP broke the law by travelling on a train from London to Glasgow despite knowing she had Covid. Later this week, the SNP will contest Ferrier’s old seat in a Westminster by-election which is arguably the most important since the party came to power at Holyrood 16 years ago. 

A by-election in a constituency which has never have been a safe seat for the SNP now looks to be not only a major test of First Minister Humza Yousaf’s leadership but a potential bellwether for how the party is likely to do at the next general election. While psephologists often caution against reading too much into the outcome of a single by-election, it’s now clear that the result in Rutherglen and Hamilton West will have far more significance than it would have done had Ferrier done the honourable thing and stood down back in 2020. 

The SNP’s candidate, Katy Loudon, a former primary school teacher, will take on another teacher, Labour’s Michael Shanks, for a Westminster constituency which has gone back and forth between the two parties since it was created at the 2005 general election. 

A win for Loudon would provide a much-needed boost for her party, which has been flagging in the polls of late, and help relieve pressure on Yousaf, who already looks beleaguered just six months into the job. A defeat would likely signal a major inflection point in Scottish politics, where a party apparently in decline is beaten by one with wind in its sails.

Nearly 20 years ago when the constituency was created, Rutherglen and Hamilton West was the sort of place that, come good times or bad, had always voted Labour. In 2005, it returned Tommy McAvoy, a former shop steward, who had been the MP for Glasgow Rutherglen since 1987. In 2010, Tom Greatrex, a former adviser to Douglas Alexander and Jim Murphy, was elected with a majority of more than 21,000. 

But the tectonic plates of Scottish politics were beginning to shift. In 2011, the SNP won a stunning election victory at Holyrood, securing a majority for then First Minister Alex Salmond and pledging to hold a referendum on Scotland’s constitutional future. In the year after that referendum, Ferrier would secure Rutherglen and Hamilton West, winning it again in 2019 after two years under Labour’s Ged Killen. 

Even at the start of the pandemic which would ultimately prove to be Ferrier’s undoing, the SNP was riding high in the polls with then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon generally regarded as being a steady hand at the tiller amid the unprecedented crisis that was Covid. When it emerged in October 2020 that the MP had potentially broken the law by travelling by train after testing positive, Sturgeon memorably referred to her as “Margaret Covid” and brushed aside a story that appeared to be little more than an aside during the largest public health crisis any of us had ever experienced.

Fast forward three years, however, and the by-election to find Ferrier’s replacement has now assumed huge significance. Sturgeon, a much-diminished figure since the height of the pandemic, is gone to be replaced by her former health secretary. The party he leads goes into its annual conference in Aberdeen later this month with its independence strategy in disarray and its Westminster group seemingly at each other’s throats amid bitterly fought selection contests with some sitting MPs looking likely to be deselected.

“If this by-election had taken place at the beginning of this year before Sturgeon had resigned, it still would have been a close contest,” says Professor John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde. “Basically, at any point in the last year since Labour got a boost from [Liz] Truss, having previously had the boost from [Boris] Johnson, Rutherglen was going to be a difficult seat for the SNP to hang on to. It’s a vulnerable SNP seat even in relatively good times.”

And yet despite Yousaf’s apparent unpopularity, despite the ongoing police investigation into the party’s finances, despite having to scrap major parts of its policy agenda at Holyrood, there are signs – albeit tentative – that the SNP may have come through the worst of its annus horribilis. Electorally speaking, at least. Polling published by YouGov/Times last week on voting intention showed 36 per cent of Scottish voters would vote for the SNP at the next Westminster election, compared with 24 per cent for Labour. That polling contradicted a run of recent surveys showing Labour all but wiping out the SNP’s lead at Westminster. 

If the SNP is on its way back up following the travails of the past few months, then Rutherglen will be an important test. The party’s campaign in the by-election has been disjointed with Yousaf put front and centre at the expense of candidate Loudon. Amid suggestions of flagging grassroots support, the party admitted hiring door-to-door leafleters to canvass on its behalf. It wouldn’t be drawn on suggestions those doing the leafleting were hired on zero-hours contracts. And while the party leader has made a number of trips to the constituency, MSPs were reportedly rebuked by the chief whip at Holyrood for staying away. 

There are problems too in the neighbouring constituency of East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow, where the sitting MP, Lisa Cameron, appears to be the victim of a plot to oust her as the candidate at the next general election. Cameron, who has represented the constituency since 2015, has threatened to force a by-election amid a challenge from Grant Costello, who currently works for the SNP in a digital role. Costello has won the backing not only of some local party members, but the area’s MSP, Collette Stevenson, and SNP stalwart Linda Fabiani, who was Stevenson’s predecessor. 

Cameron has claimed she is the victim of bullying after speaking out in defence of the victim of fellow MP Patrick Grady. The former chief whip was censured last year by an independent panel over sexual misconduct. Cameron, a former clinical psychologist, now believes the party is trying to force her out and has spoken of a “group bullying mentality”.

“Basically, the SNP gave me panic attacks,” she told The Scottish Daily Mail. “The response in terms of the hostility I felt – not engaging with me – for many months people wouldn’t speak to me, some people when I would go into a room would just behave as though I was not there.”
There are issues also in Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy, Alba MP Neale Hanvey’s seat, and in Edinburgh West, currently held by Lib Dem Christine Jardine, where candidate assessment has been reopened by the SNP as it struggles to find someone suitable to run.

It’s clear the SNP is currently a party in flux, which is perhaps to be expected for a party that has been in power for close to two decades. A number of its MPs have announced their decision to step down at the next election, including former Westminster leader Ian Blackford and current deputy leader Mhairi Black. But there’s also been dissension in the ranks at Holyrood, where MSPs have rebelled against the government’s gender recognition reforms, its plans for Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs) and the controversial deposit return scheme (DRS).

The most outspoken on these issues has been former cabinet secretary Fergus Ewing, who was recently named MSP of the Year at Holyrood’s annual political awards. After defying his party whip and voting in favour of a Tory no confidence motion against Green minister Lorna Slater, Ewing, an SNP MSP since 1999, was last week suspended from the party for seven days. 

But while the Rutherglen by-election is a huge test for the SNP, it’s also absolutely crucial for Labour as the party attempts to position itself as a viable alternative to the nationalists both at Westminster and Holyrood. A win for Anas Sarwar’s party would help build on the momentum it has created largely by presenting itself as a united front at a time when the SNP has often looked to be unravelling. Defeat, on the other hand, would be a massive setback for Labour, which has campaigned hard in the seat, with visits from both Sarwar and UK leader Keir Starmer. 

Given the circumstances of the by-election – Ferrier was removed as the MP after nearly 12,000 local voters signed a recall petition – Labour’s chances are strong. Indeed, the bookies certainly think so, making the party the clear favourites. A win for the SNP would suggest the party of government is now in the sort of hegemonic position its rival found itself in prior to the late 2000s when voters would back it at the ballot box come what may. 

If support does hold up for the SNP it perhaps says more about voters seeing the party as the natural opposition to the Tories at Westminster than it does about independence. The most recent YouGov poll found 53 per cent of Scots would vote No to leaving the UK, compared with 47 per cent for Yes.

In determining how the upcoming by-election will help predict the outcome of the next election in Scotland, Curtice says the crucial point is not necessarily who wins but “how well they win”. 
“If we’re going to be in line with the expectations generated by most of the polls over the summer, my baseline would be for Labour, at minimum, to reverse the SNP lead in the constituency,” he says. 

While UK politics has undergone something of a reset after the post-Brexit pandemonium which led to four prime ministers in a three-year period, there are once again signs of a Conservative party winding up for a general election. So frenzied was the speculation before a recent speech by Rishi Sunak that many believed the PM was about to call a snap election. In actual fact what Sunak chose to do was row back on some of his government’s key environmental pledges which act as staging posts on the route to reaching net zero in 2050.  

Then last week it was the turn of Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who made an extraordinary speech in Washington in which she said multiculturalism had “failed” and questioned whether the 1951 UN Refugee Convention was “fit for our modern age”. While some interpreted Braverman’s comments as laying the groundwork for a potential leadership bid, both speeches showed a party likely to tack further to the right at the election, which is expected to be held next year. Incidentally, one poll showed the Tories had enjoyed a slight boost after Sunak’s speech.

Safe to say, net zero and the possible tearing up of decades-old pledges on refugees are unlikely to be at the forefront of voters’ minds when they go to the polls in Rutherglen later this week. Nevertheless, it gives us an indication of the battlegrounds on which the next general election is likely to be fought at Westminster, at least. 

The immediate concern for voters in Rutherglen and Hamilton West will be securing an MP who can best represent their interests in parliament, whether it’s the state of the pavements or the state of the NHS in their area. Just what that MP’s election will mean for the wider state of Scottish politics remains to be seen.