Starmer: Labour’s Scottish by-election win ‘big step’ towards becoming PM
Sir Keir Starmer said Labour’s Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election rout of the SNP was a “big step in the right direction” towards becoming prime minister next year.
The Labour leader hailed the result as a springboard for his party winning dozens of Scottish seats in next year’s general election.
Speaking ahead of the start of his party’s conference in Liverpool at the weekend, he said his path to Number 10 “runs through Scotland” and that the by-election had been “a must-win for us”.
Addressing a victory rally alongside Michael Shanks, the constituency’s new MP, he said Labour “blew the doors off” by achieving an astonishing 20.4 point swing from the SNP compared to the 2019 general election.
Sir John Curtice, the UK’s most eminent psephologist, said a similar swing throughout Scotland would see Labour win 42 seats – up from just one at the last election.
He said it was now “possible” that Labour would regain the dominance over Scottish politics it enjoyed before the 2014 independence referendum, and that would mean the SNP being reduced to “the rump of half a dozen seats that was once repeatedly its lot”.
It was Labour’s first parliamentary by-election win in Scotland in 12 years and the first time it had ever taken a seat off the SNP in a Westminster by-election.
Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, said the result had “sent shockwaves through the SNP” as senior nationalist figures criticised Humza Yousaf’s leadership and political strategy.
Mr Sarwar added: “There was a time when Labour feared elections in Scotland, the SNP relished them. I think that’s flipped on its head. I think it’s the SNP that now fears elections, and Labour are relishing the next general election.”
Sir Keir was asked whether the result made it more likely that he would become prime minister next year.
He said: “It’s a big step in the right direction and an important one – this was a must-win for us. And the size of the win, I think vindicates the positive campaign that we ran. But we accept this humbly. This is a step on the journey.
“They said that we couldn’t change the Labour Party and we did it. They said that we couldn’t win in the south of England and the north of England, and we did it. They said ‘you’ll never beat the SNP in Scotland’ – and Rutherglen, you did it. You blew the doors off!”
The by-election was Mr Yousaf’s first major test at the ballot box since replacing Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader and First Minister in March, but party insiders raised the prospect of him being replaced before the 2026 Holyrood contest.
He now has to face SNP members at the party’s annual conference in Aberdeen on Oct 15. SNP insiders conceded defeat as soon as the polls closed at 10pm on Thursday, amid widespread reports that activists had struggled to convince their supporters to get out and vote.
The scale of Labour’s victory exceeded even the most optimistic predictions by party insiders, with Mr Shanks getting 17,845 votes. This equated to an extraordinary 58.6 per cent of the popular vote – a 24.1-point increase compared to 2019.
The SNP’s Katy Loudon was a distant second with 8,399 votes (27.6 per cent) – a 16.6 per cent drop in vote share – while the Tories’ Thomas Kerr attracted only 3.9 per cent of the vote and lost his deposit.
The Conservatives said their supporters had voted tactically for Labour to give the SNP a bloody nose and predicted that they would return to the fold at the general election.
Arguing that Labour was the “party of change”, Sir Keir said voters had “turned their back” on the Tory UK Government and the result was a backlash against “years and years of non-delivery” by the SNP.
The by-election was triggered after voters in the seat sacked SNP MP Margaret Ferrier over a serious breach of Covid rules in Scotland’s first recall petition.
Ms Ferrier won the seat from Labour in the 2019 election with a 5,230 majority, but was suspended from the Commons for 30 days after travelling from Scotland to Westminster and back by train while suffering from the virus in September 2020.
Sources close to Mr Yousaf attempted to blame Ms Ferrier and unionist tactical voting for the size of the defeat, but Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, warned that the party could not carry on with “business as usual”.
Alex Salmond, the ex-SNP leader who now leads the Alba Party, claimed his former party “had been asking for” the drubbing after running an “incompetent campaign”.
“I see that Humza says it’s disappointing. Well, I don’t think that quite gets the enormity of what he’s facing,” said Mr Salmond. “In my view, Humza’s got days to save his First Ministership.”
Sir Keir insisted it was a “big mistake” to assume the result was a one-off backlash against Ms Ferrier and the SNP, saying that people had felt “compelled” to turn out in “appalling” weather to vote for change.
Referring to the SNP, he said: “Their record is catching up on them. What’s happened in the last six months is that more and more people have looked at their record. So this isn’t just a question of what’s happened in the last few months, it’s a question of what’s happened over many years – and their appalling record.”
Meanwhile, the Scottish Tories claimed the result showed a widespread tactical voting campaign could lead to an “SNP wipeout” at the next general election.