Whilst comparisons with the 2005 results may appear to indicate that no seats have changed hands, the reality of two intervening, particularly bloody, by-election losses meant that Scottish Labour emerged from the election two seats up on their position when the election was called. On top of that, Labour have increased their share of the vote in Scotland by 2.5 per cent.
So, what on earth?
One aspect of this does appear to be the level of hard work and commitment shown by individual MPs in their constituencies, with Anne Begg in Aberdeen South a particular example of an MP with a strong personal support who has been returned with an almost doubled majority. However, no doubt Labour representatives across the UK have also worked hard over the past five, thirteen, or more years, so there is obviously more to the outcome of the election in Scotland than this.
It’s clear that a major influencing factor is that Scotland simply doesn’t like the Tories. The key message pushed by Scottish Labour throughout the campaign was ‘Vote Labour or get the Tories’ and it seems that Scotland listened.
A secondary factor may have been that Gordon Brown is markedly more popular with Scottish voters than in the UK as a whole. Scottish voters don’t have the same objections to intrinsic dourness as the rest of the country, presumably for the obvious reason.
The SNP and the Lib Dems were both hoping to make significant gains in Scotland. That didn’t happen. The only seats that changed hands were Labour gains, although with a significant number of retrials, we also look forward to the prospect of a significant number of fresh, young MPs who can bring new energy to the Scottish Labour caucus.
We now face a situation where the Tories are the single largest party at Westminster and yet have only one MP in Scotland. If the Tories do form a government, what will that mean for Scotland? A reduction in public spending, over and above the cuts proposed for the rest of the country, has been indicated, but perhaps even more substantially, a pushing of the country in a direction entirely out of sympathy with the majority of Scots.
There are also implications for next year’s Scottish Parliament elections. Three years into an SNP government at Holyrood, it is clear there is no great enthusiasm for Alex Salmond and his bandwagon. The SNP, however, may seek to capitalise on the differential in voting between Scotland and the rest of the UK by pushing their separatist agenda. Perhaps those in the Labour party who castigated Wendy Alexander for pushing the SNP to ‘bring it on’ may be wishing this morning that a referendum was safely out of the way.
Iain Gray can take heart, however, that, when it came to the crunch, Scotland came up Labour. If we can do it for Westminster, we can do it for Holyrood. That is simplistic, but we have a great opportunity next year, also a responsibility, to develop and present a coherent, inspiring, energetic proposal for governing in Scotland.
It seems that Scotland wants to vote Labour – it’s up to us to be worthy of that support.
This is fantasy. The swing to Labour wasn’t because of ‘good hard working MPs’. If Anne Begg’s success is to be explained by unaccountable personal charisma, why is ukpollingreport wall to wall with commentators, many of them from Labour, proclaiming that the seat is going to go to the LD by a decent margin.
The reality is Scottish voters, who hate the Tories, voted Labour to avoid a Conservative government and the fear that the LDs would form a coalition with the Conservatives. Don’t go kidding yourself about this being some sort of vote of confidence, in Brown or on the Labour party in general. The swing is all from fear of the Tories.
I don’t think it is accidental that South Aberdeen had a BNP candidate. I think many voted against that candidate. There was also an anti-tory vote and the LD will be wise to worry about next year’s Scottish elections, now that they have chosen to ally themselves with the tories.