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 find him, he proclaimed: "I'll go anywhere, as long as I'm always forward."
Labor is feeling inspired by Livingstone, and is moving forward after a landslide victory in the by-election of Rutherglen and Hamilton West, a conglomeration of small towns and suburbs south-east of Glasgow, and taking a very precious to an SNP that is not raising its head in the wake of Nicola Sturgeon's resignation 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 south of the invisible border for thirteen years, and the SNP for sixteen in the north, with the accumulation of errors and corruption that such long mandates generally bring everywhere. The winds of change are blowing with hurricane force in these islands.
What might be called the "Scottish paradox" is that the fall from grace of the SNP and the full-speed advance of a unionist party like Labor has not been accompanied by a decline in support for independence, which hold very firm. A poll coinciding with the Rutherglen election shows that 45% would vote yes to separation and 41% no if a new referendum (which London and the Courts refuse to approve) was held today.
But Labour's immediate concern is not to stifle sovereignty, but to secure an absolute majority in next year's election, and the triumph in the suburbs of Glasgow (a mix of affluent and poor areas) is the clearest indication yet now that is going in the right direction. He took the seat with 58.6 votes, for 26.6% of the SNP and only 3.9% of the Conservatives, who are less popular in Scotland since Margaret Thatcher's heyday than a Barça supporter 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 nationally, such as the apathy and disenchantment of SNP voters (many stayed at home) and the fact that the election was celebrated by the expulsion of the previous incumbent, Margaret Ferrier (of the Nationalist Party), after she had traveled to London on a train in the middle of the pandemic when she knew she might be sick with covid. Even with this in mind, if a similar result were to take place across Scotland in the next UK 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's the best news Labor leader Keir Starmer could have received shortly before the start of his party's annual conference in Liverpool at the weekend. "A victory of seismic proportions, a real political earthquake", he said. Labor was Scotland's alpha party until 2007, when middle-class voters flocked to Alex Salmond's SNP, bogged down by pro-business policies and tax freezes, and disgusted with Tony Blair for turn to the right and support the war in Iraq. Afterwards, they remained loyal to Sturgeon, despite the progressive turn to the left, especially recently, necessary to form a coalition with the Greens and represented in the policies that allow gender reassignment even to minors with a simple statement
The factors behind the downfall of the SNP are many (corruption, unpopular policies, cost of living, deplorable state of health, education and transport, Sturgeon's fall, lack of charisma of successor Humza Yousaf), but the main is the slab of sixteen years in power.
The new MP for Rutherglen is Michael Shanks, a professional teacher who during the pandemic walked the six thousand streets of Glasgow jogging, and documented it with photos on Instagram. Always forward, as Livingstone said.
