In Blantyre, about ten kilometers from Rutherglen, is the house where the explorer David Livingstone was born, and a document recalls how, before he disappeared for four years in Africa and Henry Stanley was sent to look for him, he proclaimed: “I will go anywhere.” , as long as it is always forward.”
Labor is inspired by Livingstone, and is moving forward after its landslide by-election victory in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, a cluster of small towns and suburbs south-east of Glasgow, and snatching a prized seat from an SNP that is not raising its head following the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon and the financial scandals that have since come to light.
The political cycles of England and Scotland favor Labor as an alternative to two parties exhausted of ideas and energy. The Conservatives have been in power for thirteen years south of the invisible border, and the SNP for sixteen years in the north, with the accumulation of errors and corruption that such long mandates generally entail everywhere. The winds of change are whistling with hurricane force on these islands.
What could be called the “Scottish paradox” is that the fall from grace of the SNP and the rapid advance of a unionist party like Labor is not accompanied by a decline in support for independence, which remains very strong. A poll coinciding with the Rutherglen election indicates that 45% would vote yes to separation and 41% would vote no if a new referendum were held today (which London and the Courts refuse to approve).
But Labour’s immediate concern is not to quell sovereignism but to win an absolute majority in next year’s elections, and its victory in the Glasgow suburbs (a mix of prosperous and poor areas) is the clearest indication yet that is going in the right direction. He has won the seat with 58.6% of the votes, with 26.6% of the SNP and only 3.9% of the conservatives, who since the heyday of Margaret Thatcher are less popular in Scotland than a Barça fan in the stands of the Santiago Bernabéu .
It is true that in Rutherglen and Hamilton West a number of factors have come into play that will not be at national level, such as the apathy and disenchantment of SNP voters (many stayed at home), and the fact that the election It was celebrated by the expulsion of its previous leader, Margaret Ferrier (of the nationalist party), after having traveled to London on a train in the middle of the pandemic knowing that she could be sick with Covid. Even taking that into account, if a similar result were to occur throughout Scotland in the next British general election, Labor would go from having a single seat in the country to a haul of around forty, an enviable platform for an absolute majority in Westminster.
It is the best news Labor leader Keir Starmer could have received ahead of the start of his party’s annual conference in Liverpool this weekend. “A victory of seismic proportions, a true political earthquake,” he said. Labor was Scotland’s alpha party until 2007, when middle-class voters flocked to Alex Salmond’s SNP, cajoled by its pro-business and tax-freezing policies, and disgusted with Tony Blair for his turn to politics. right and support for the Iraq war. They then remained loyal to Sturgeon, despite the progressive shift to the left, especially lately, necessary to form a coalition with the Greens and represented in policies that allow gender change even for minors with a simple declaration.
The factors behind the collapse of the SNP are many (corruption, unpopular policies, cost of living, deplorable state of health, education and transport, fall of Sturgeon, lack of charisma of her successor Humza Yousaf), but the main one of all It is the burden of sixteen years in power.
The new MP for Rutherglen is Michael Shanks, a teacher by profession who during the pandemic jogged the six thousand streets of Glasgow, leaving evidence with photos on Instagram. Always forward, as Livingstone said.
