The Lanarkshire town of Hamilton occupies a special place in Scottish political folklore. It was there, in 1967, that the SNP candidate Winnie Ewing won a famous by-election. Hamilton had been a safe Labour seat for decades. No one predicted a defeat. It was the moment the Nats truly arrived on the scene, and it changed a nation’s politics forever.
Hamilton may – just possibly, just perhaps – shock Scotland again next Thursday, when yet another by-election takes place there. This time it is for the Holyrood Parliament, which didn’t exist back in 1967, and the constituency is formally Hamilton, Stonehouse and Larkhall. This time the SNP is the incumbent. And it is not Labour that could snatch the seat away, but Reform.
A year ago, the very idea would have been unthinkable, the proposition instantly dismissed. Reform was an English phenomenon – a very English phenomenon – and the party was barely making a dent in the debate north of the border. To adapt Ayn Rand: “What do you think of us?” “We don’t think of you.”
Well, Scotland’s thinking about Reform now. The party is rising in the polls, perhaps not to Westminster levels, but to a significant degree – one recent survey suggested it could even form the next opposition at Holyrood. Richard Tice has visited Hamilton, and Nigel Farage is expected to do so before the vote. In the past both would have risked being chased out.
No longer. Ordinary Scots are as fed up with their lot as their counterparts across England, Europe and the US. An enduring cost of living crisis, underperforming public services, government cuts to welfare – there are lots of reasons that people are now willing to hit the panic button. And Hamilton is a bellwether ahead of next May’s devolved election.
In an article for yesterday’s Daily Record, First Minister John Swinney described Thursday’s vote as “a straight contest between the SNP and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK”. Farage was “a clear and present danger to our country and must be stopped”, and Labour’s campaign was “in collapse”. Labour supporters who value liberal, progressive politics should therefore vote SNP to freeze Reform out, he argued.
There’s a neat symmetry to this request. When Scottish Labour was flying high ahead of last year’s general election, Anas Sarwar asked SNP supporters to lend him their votes in order to remove the Conservatives from power at Westminster. Plenty did so. Until recently, he was making the same request to secure a change of regime in Edinburgh.
But Labour’s prospects now appear grim. The mis-steps of Keir Starmer’s administration have seen many Scots lose faith in the party, and its polling numbers have slumped precipitously. Less than a year from a national election, Hamilton, Stonehouse and Larkhall is exactly the kind of seat an incoming government should be winning, but it’s hard to find anyone, commentator or pollster, who thinks Labour has much of a chance. Coming third would be a humiliation, and would surely mean there is no way back.
Of course, it suits Swinney to talk this way. Sarwar remains the only real threat to his continuing as first minister, and a narrative of Labour as declining also-rans fits the SNP’s strategy perfectly. The Nats aren’t losing many voters to Reform, so suggesting it’s a straight shoot-out may push more staunch unionists into the Farage camp, further undermining Sarwar’s position.
Suppressing Labour at Reform’s expense is not without consequence, though. Scotland has never experienced the kind of divisive racial politics that have played out in England. Reform has introduced them in Hamilton, with Farage falsely accusing Sarwar of saying “he will prioritise the Pakistani community” and questioning whether he shares British “values”. A tactic adopted by Reform in England will now be tested afresh in Scotland. Depressingly, this is likely to be just the first deployment of such racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric.
How will the voters of Hamilton, and wider Scotland, react? Those drawn to Farage do seem to support the positions he has taken on immigration, the woke agenda and net zero. Scottish voters are not exceptional or especially progressive, whatever their mainstream politicians tell them.
It’s also true that we don’t know exactly what is going on in Hamilton. There has been no constituency polling, and so most of what has come out is anecdotal – voters furious with the Labour government over its cuts to the winter fuel allowance and to health and disability benefits, disillusioned with the 18-years-long SNP administration, contemptuous towards what are seen as the distant elites at Westminster and Holyrood. Farage’s recent pivot to the left – promising to restore winter fuel payments and end the two-child benefit cap – could prove persuasive to switherers, however wonky the financial calculations behind his pledges.
The pollsters I’ve spoken to think it likely the SNP will hold on to the seat, simply because its vote is bearing up and because it is Labour that is losing people to Reform. But even they are uncertain, given the speed and sharp trajectory of Reform’s rise in Scotland. They are unclear how the race-baiting tactic will play. Turnout and the strength of each party’s ground operation will matter.
Whatever happens on Thursday, there is more to follow. Rachel Reeves’ expected cuts and tax rises, coupled with their impact on the Scottish Government’s spending capacity, which is already hugely stretched, will have consequences. There is little to suggest disillusionment with the mainstream will cool any time soon. And here comes the Holyrood election. In a sense, Scotland is providing a perfectly timed storm for Reform, and Nigel Farage, to sail into. Gulp.
[See also: How Scotland learned to love Nigel Farage]
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