AS USUAL, in the echo chamber that passes for political discussion in Britain, comparatively insignificant events can assume a disproportionate presence. Take the recent Hamilton by-election, for example.

The result (Scottish Labour won, in case you weren’t paying attention) was treated as thunder clap from the political gods. The anointed one, Scottish Labour’s Anas Sarwar, is now to be installed in his rightful place in the forthcoming 2026 Scottish elections as Prince of Neoliberalism (First Minister) displacing the pretender that is John Swinney, who is just not managing capitalism well enough — if you are to believe Labour pundits.

Since January 2025, the Scottish population has voted in a fairly consistent way. Well, to be accurate they haven’t voted very much at all, in the nine local government by-elections that have taken place. Turnout was around 25 per cent in most and in North East Glasgow, where poverty is rife, in a by-election in March, it dropped to 13.6 per cent — barely one in ten.

What the Scottish electorate did in these by-elections was essentially to give the main political parties the bird.

Since the last local elections in May 2022 on average in Scottish local by-elections the Tories lost 5.2 per cent of their vote, Labour 5.5 per cent and the SNP a whopping 7.1 per cent.

And remember these are averages. In some cases, for example, a by-election in Clydebank in May, the SNP lost 16.7 per cent of the vote they took in 2022, very close to the number they lost in Hamilton.

Thirdly and sadly the main beneficiary of the vote loss for the mainstream parties was Reform. The polls of course had tracked this, but the by-lections, including Hamilton, confirmed it.  

From a standing start they averaged 16.2 per cent across the nine local by-elections. Again, this is an average. They were at around 25 per cent in three of those.

Given that the SNP won 46.2 per cent at the last Scottish Parliament election, despite the consistent loss of vote share in the local by-elections, reflected in Scottish polling, there was a consensus among the commentariat (that included the New Statesman) that the SNP would hold the seat, because they would hang onto to just enough support to do so.

This was reinforced by a belief articulated by an authority as significant as Professor John Curtice that Scottish Labour supporters, even more than their counterparts in rest of the Britain, were more susceptible to voting Reform.

Although detailed analysis is needed to confirm it, it would appear that former SNP supporters did vote Reform and in sufficient numbers to allow Scottish Labour to sneak a victory. Against their 2021 result of 33.6 per cent Scottish Labour lost only 2.1 per cent. The SNP lost 16.8 per cent of their 46.2 per cent 2021 winning result.  

Whereas a sizeable chunk of Reform’s 26.2 per cent must have come from Tory supporters — their vote share shrank by 11.5 per cent to a “let’s hope we save our deposit” 6 per cent — it does not account for the size of the Reform vote.

The result then is a bit like the pronouncements of the Oracle at Delphi. You can read it any way you want, and politicians are reading it in predictably self-serving ways, but the underlying politics have not changed.

Support for independence remains high, over 50 per cent in the most recent poll, but this is not reflected in support for the SNP, because independence is not seen as a priority; the cost of living, health, education and housing, by contrast, very much are.

The last three of these are the responsibility of the Scottish Parliament and under the current SNP administration they have been underfunded and badly administered and the Scottish population is angry about that.

The cost of living is largely in the hands of Westminster and Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves. There is no need to describe here what that British Labour leadership has done to the poorest in our society and the Scottish electorate is livid about that.

In the SNP there are now voices raised challenging the current leadership. Both Jim Sillars and Alex Neil, veterans SNP “lefts,” have called for a new leadership focusing on independence.

There are also younger voices in the SNP like Tony Giuliano who writes for The National newspaper, echoing that call.

Given the imminence of the Scottish Parliament elections, less than a year away, it is difficult to imagine any change taking place before then. Following that election Stephen Flynn MP, currently the SNP spokesperson in House of Commons, may well be an MSP (he has been approved to stand by the SNP) and in a strong position to challenge for the SNP leadership.

He is considered to be on the left on a number of issues, like Gaza. Whether any similar challenge would emerge in Scottish Labour will undoubtedly rest on the performance of Scottish Labour in that election and that performance will be heavily influenced by the Starmer leadership.

What is very clear is there will be no challenge from the left, any time soon, from outside Scotland’s “big two.” The Scottish Socialist Party could only manage 1 per cent of the vote share in the Hamilton by-election and the Greens 2.6 per cent. Even the most optimistic interpretation of the by-election result cannot present this result as an advance for the left.