John Curtice in warning to SNP and Labour after Hamilton by-election
The SNP were second, with their candidate Katy Loudon picking up 29.4% of the vote, while Reform UK's Ross Lambie was a close third with 26.2%.
Speaking to the BBC, Professor Curtice said that the result had confirmed the 'evidence of the opinion polls', but that Reform's level of support was "a bit of a surprise".
READ MORE: Hamilton by-election results – see the full breakdown in charts and graphs
He explained: 'The revival of the Labour Party that took place in the two years running up to the General Election has indeed disappeared, the party is indeed more or less back to where it was in 2021.
'But at the same time, with the SNP vote down by 17 points, here is more than ample evidence that indeed the SNP, while it might have steadied the ship psychologically, has still made very little progress in advancing on where it was at last summer.'
Curtice said that the vote result showed that there was a 'chunk' of pro-Yes voters who had backed Labour in the 2024 General Election and 'have not returned to the SNP fold'.
He added: 'This election confirms very, very clearly that the SNP still have an awful lot of work to do to get those voters back on side, and it does illustrate that indeed, although, given, if this kind of result were to be reflected across the whole of Scotland, we'd still bet about the SNP being the largest party, they are still on relatively fragile ground.'
The University of Strathclyde expert further said that Reform UK's vote share had been a 'bit of a surprise given the national polls'.
Reform UK candidate Ross Lambie campaigning in the by-election (Image: Gordon Terris) He went on: 'That 26% almost matches their best performance in the Scottish local government by-election [in Clydebank]. It is higher than we would expect given the current polls in Scotland.
'It certainly is very bad news for the Conservative Party, who are frankly being had for breakfast, lunch, and dinner by Reform at the moment, so far as the public is concerned. They're at 18% in the GB-wide polls, they're down to 12% in the Scotland polls. The Conservative Party cannot afford for Reform to gain momentum north of the Border.'
However, he went on to issue a warning to the SNP and Labour, saying both parties 'need to think about how are they going to effectively deal with Reform'.
Curtice said: 'For all the complaints about Nigel Farage's ad [attacking Anas Sarwar], it is not clear from this result that it did any damage.
'I think I would point out to both the SNP and the Labour Party that what they ended up doing in this by-election campaign was giving an awful lot of publicity to a message that they thought was not a very good idea.
'One of the first rules in politics is to avoid scratching the itch of things you do not like because you simply end up potentially giving them airtime.
READ MORE: Angus Robertson tears into BBC coverage of Hamilton by-election count on live TV
'And the truth is that evidently Mr Farage's message was not sufficiently unacceptable for at least a body of people in Hamilton for Reform to record a quite notable share of the vote, and certainly the highest share of the vote won in a parliamentary contest by any anti-EU party in Scotland.'
Asked where Reform's vote had come from, Curtice said: 'Around one in four of the people who voted Conservative last year, diminished in number as they were, in Scotland are switching to Reform.
'But Labour also are losing somewhere between one in six and one in five of their voters to Reform of the ones they had last year.'
He added that Scottish voters who backed Labour in 2024 are more likely to switch to Reform than English voters, saying that south of the Border Labour 'are losing about 10% of their vote to Reform'.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
Mhairi Black: 'I underestimated how horrible my own side could be'
'That's been a strange thing, to learn how to relax after nearly 10 years,' she says as we sit together in the offices of The Herald. And has she? 'About two weeks ago I cracked it. I'm definitely getting there.' She certainly looks relaxed. It is late morning, July 24, and Black has come into the office to have her picture taken and to talk about her new Fringe show. Read more She is fresh-faced, accommodating (she's not in the slightest put out when The Herald's editor chases us from the room we're in because she has a meeting booked), chatty and honest. But then she's always been chatty and honest. Over the next hour she will pose uncomplainingly for photographs and talk to me about life and politics and her new Fringe show. The Fringe is the future. Politics the past. It's in our time together that she will tell me she has left the SNP (you may have read as much in [[The Herald]] the other week). How has she been spending her time since she closed the door on her career in Westminster, I ask when we sit down to talk? 'I've been enjoying the bliss of domestic life,' Black admits. 'My wife's raging because I've got more time to go on social media and see all these videos. And the algorithm clearly knows that I'm spending a lot of time in the house these days. It keeps sending me: 'Here's how to make your own bleach.' Turns out, vinegar is the basis of all cleaning products. So now my house just smells like a chippie. 'So, yeah, driving my family demented has been a massive part of trying to relax.' Black hasn't just been waiting home for her wife Katie McGarvey to come home of an evening. Last summer she spent August at the Fringe with her debut hour Politics Isn't For Me, which she then toured around Scotland and even performed for five nights in London. And then there's a new show to prepare for this year too. Maybe things have not been totally languid after all. Mhairi Black during her Fringe show (Image: STEVE ULLATHORNE) Last year's show, Politics Isn't For Me, wasn't quite stand-up. It was more of a very funny Tedtalk, or 'Nedtalk' as she put it herself. It was an exasperated, amused discourse on why, in her experience, Westminster wasn't fit for purpose. This year's show will see her range more freely over life and politics. What that means in practice is not totally nailed down, she admits. This is, as the title suggests, a work in progress after all. 'I'd never heard of a work in progress until stepping into this world,' Black admits. 'Everybody kept talking about WIPs. I thought, 'I'd just left that world.'' (The ghost of Westminster still clearly haunts her.) 'The work in progress is basically, 'I've got a half-baked idea. Come along and help me figure out the rest of it,'' she continues. 'And that's really scary. I'm looking forward to trying something new, as in there's a bit where I don't know what's going to happen and that's half the excitement, I suppose. 'This is more talking about things I've experienced since leaving politics,' she adds. 'There will definitely still be stories I didn't tell the last time. But a lot more of me telling stories about how I'm figuring life out.' Figuring life out is what she has been doing for the last 12 months. Well, that and processing everything she's gone through over the last 10 years. Come election day last summer, I say, wasn't there even a tiny frisson of regret that she wasn't still in the fight? 'Oh, Christ, no. The minute he called that election I was dancing around the living room,' she says. (He being Rishi Sunak. Remember him?) 'Because I had already made my mind up in 2019 - I just hadnae told anybody that - so it wasn't fresh news to me. If anything, I'd been waiting for this day. Mhairi Black announced this week she had left the SNP (Image: Jeff J Mitchell) 'So, when he called the election before last year's Fringe I was like, 'Oh you dancer. Right, freedom.'' That's the word you'd use? Freedom? 'Oh, aye, definitely freedom. Freedom to be more myself.' Last year's show Politics Isn't For Me was really a show about institutional failure. She was part of that institution, of course. I wonder, does she feel she wasted those 10 years in parliament? 'No, I don't. I don't. 'It was an experience,' she adds. 'But I don't miss it. I still think I was right to leave when I did.' For all her criticisms of Westminster Black made a huge impact there. Her maiden speech was watched 10 million times on YouTube and she would go on to become the deputy leader of the SNP in Westminster. Mhairi Black at Westminster (Image: unknown) What does she think she achieved in her time in politics? 'When I think of the individuals that we helped, our little constituency team, that's what I'm proudest of, definitely; being able to put faces to these cases we had and going, 'I really did change their lives for the better, or I played a part in that,' which is great. 'In terms of actually changing laws, no. Didn't get anywhere close to it. The closest I ever got was a private members bill that was shot down in its first read.' It would presumably have been different if you had been in power? Maybe a little, she says. 'But even if in some magical world we had been in the UK government, I still think we'd have been, 'Rip this up, start again, try again.' 'The hours that are wasted doing nothing in that building is criminal. If it was any company it would be the first thing somebody would point out. 'What the hell are you doing this for?' So, the fact that parliament operates like that 'just because' was never a good enough reason for me. 'It suits the people in power. I imagine that's why it's not going to change anytime soon.' What would you now tell that 20-year-old Mhairi Black who got elected in 2015? 'Oh, that's difficult. I'd probably say don't doubt yourself as much and maybe be ready for how lonely it can be at times. I think that would probably be my two pieces of advice.' Lonely? Was that the case even within your own party? 'Oh aye, aye, because it's a very cut-throat world where there's people just always out to get each other. And that's just alien to me. I thought if you were part of a team you all work together. Mhairi Black and Nicola Sturgeon (Image: PA Archive/PA Images) 'But, of course, politics doesn't always attract team players. So, yeah, it took me a wee bit of time to get my head around that. I expected other opposition to be horrible or backstabby or whatever, but I underestimated how much of an issue it would be with your own side, definitely.' It's also worth remembering that Black was subject to death threats during her time in parliament. Perhaps it's no wonder that at the end of 2017 she had to take time off because she had effectively burnt out. 'From 2014 'til, say, 2020 even, it was just election after election after referendum. It was just constant, non-stop, and you can't maintain that level of energy and that level of responsibility at that intensity without having a proper break at some point. And that's what I got the hard way eventually. It got to the point where my body was like, 'We're making you take a break whether you like it or not.'' In the BBC documentary made about her around last year's election Black's dad Alan admitted that he feared she was drinking too much. When I bring it up she agrees. 'The way that parliament is, you can't leave the building because votes could be called at any point. So you're like, 'I'm stuck in here until 10 o'clock at night, but it's six o' clock and I've finished all my work. Do you want to go and get a pint?' 'And you'd sit and have one or two. I wasn't getting steaming every night … But you start to recognise, 'Oh, wait a minute I've been for one or two pints four days this week.' 'And I could see it even in my own colleagues or folk from other parties. This is how you end up in a state, or this is how you end up with a real problem. You can see it happening around you. 'I suddenly realised if I'm seeing you in here all the time it means I'm in here all the time.' 'That definitely got nipped in the bud pretty quickly.' And then of course she was given her ADHD diagnosis in the midst of all this. At the time she said it was a real positive for her. She still feels that way today. 'I see it as a real strength. I feel like someone's given me the map to the maze in my own head. 'I'm learning more about myself as it goes on. And this is the longest stretch of time I've been home for a good few years. I'm in the process of making new habits. It's quite fun and exciting, I have to say.' In the documentary you mentioned you were also being tested for autism? 'I've not had anything back officially yet, but … Given that my family is riddled with it everybody seems to be like, 'Yeah, you probably do have it.'' As for the world today, well, she's not hopeful. 'The speech that I'm proudest of giving is the one where I talk about facism. As time rumbles on I desperately want to be proved wrong.' But she's not seeing any evidence. 'We're still in this horrible, right-wing, creeping, authoritarian style of governance. 'Even when you're seeing just how much tech companies are being allowed to run wild and how inept our governments are at understanding the problem, never mind having a grasp on 'here's what we need to do about it,' it's terrifying. It's really terrifying.' We are speaking the day before President Trump arrives in Scotland for his private visit. Why, she asks, is the Scottish Secretary going to give him a warm welcome? 'This guy is a fascist. He is literally locking up children and people are dying on his watch and we're warmly welcoming him.' 'Why are we all pretending that we're in this cosy almost 1960s comic book world where we can rely on America to look after us? The world is changing and nobody's keeping up with it.' As for the SNP, she is largely circumspect today, but in last year's Fringe show she was, if anything, harder on her own colleagues than anyone else. 'Funny that,' she says, laughing. You're still a member of the SNP though? 'No, I'm not anymore.' Ah. 'Basically for a long time I've not agreed with quite a few decisions that have been made,' she explains. 'There have just been too many times when I've thought, 'I don't agree with what you've done there,' or the decision or strategy that has been arrived at. 'To be honest, I'm looking around thinking, 'There are better organisations that I could be giving a membership to than this one that I don't feel has been making the right decisions for quite some time.' 'The capitulation on LGBT rights, trans rights in particular.' She says, instead, she is going to back organisations such as the Good Law Project who are willing to fight on these issues in court. 'That's what I want to throw my money behind. She is still, she says, fervently pro-independence, though. There's another former big beast of the Scottish National Party in Edinburgh this month. Nicola Sturgeon will be appearing at the book festival. What does Black think the party's former leader's legacy will be? 'Time will tell. Undoubtedly no one can take away that she reached levels of influence and popularity and fear that I don't think anyone else has in recent memory … I can't think of anybody who has had that kind of impact, certainly on UK politics.' When you say fear …? 'Having been in Westminster at the height of Nicola's leadership, they were terrified of her, absolutely terrified. When she was in the building it spread like wildfire. You could see they're actually quite shaken at the very fact that she's here in person. 'So, there's no taking away from that. I've always said I think she is possibly the best politician I can think of UK-wide as to competency and being able to answer a question. I've never seen her shaken. She was always unflappable and I know from experience how difficult that is to do. 'So, as a politician I thought she was shit hot. 'As the leader of a political party, I thought she could have done so much better. The same is true of Alex Salmond when he was in charge and even John Swinney now. The actual structure of the party has never grown or adapted to that influx of membership, which I think has actually played a role in why a lot of folk have turned away from the party. It's because the structure just wasn't there to give people the kind of membership they were craving. 'So, there's definite failings and as time goes on I'm sure those failings will become much clearer. But I think for all the negatives that might be associated with Nicola Sturgeon I do think there are a hell of a lot of positives and there are a lot of folk who are now gunning for Nicola Sturgeon who at the time were clinging onto her coat tails for dear life. I'm not without cynically noticing, 'Oh, you've changed your tune all of a sudden.' 'Whereas there were people who had legitimate concerns and queries that were ignored for years, but they don't take it to the front pages of newspapers.' As for Black, does she have any idea of what she's going to do with the rest of her life? 'Genuinely I don't and for me that's half the excitement at the minute. I'm in a lucky enough position where for a year now I've been able to make a living out of just having a laugh. And I'll do that for as long as it suits me and as long as I feel that I can. 'But it's not like I've decided to do stand-up all my life. It's just trying on different hats and seeing what fits.' Next year she will be writing a book. Beyond that, who knows? 'I could see myself ending up in college lecturing, so maybe that's something that will one day come along. But for the time being I'm just enjoying sleeping in my own bed and being able to have a laugh because so much of that was missing for a good chunk of time there.' Mhairi, you've been in politics for a decade and now you're at the Fringe. It does suggest you might quite like a bit of attention. 'I know,' she says, smiling. 'That's what my wife says to me all the time. 'Do you not get enough attention? Was the theatre of people applauding you not enough? You need my praise?' 'Yes, I do.' Mhairi Black: Work in Progress, Gilded Balloon at the Appleton Tower, August 10-24, Midday Mhairi Black on Nigel Farage: 'He's the British Trump. Poisonous. I have absolutely nothing nice to say about him. How far have we fallen as a society when all it takes is a millionaire in a cravat holding a pint and suddenly we're like, 'Oh, yes, you must have my interests at heart?'' Mhairi Black on Keir Starmer: 'The guy believes in nothing. I've no doubt that he goes home and convinces himself that he's a very practical, reasonable set of hands who is guiding us through a very turbulent time. I just think it's rubbish. Naw, you don't believe anything. In order to guide people you've got to have an end goal and end destination. Keir Starmer cannae even make up his mind what that end destination is, so the idea that this guy is the saviour is nonsense.'
The National
an hour ago
- The National
History will judge monsters who enabled a genocide
Keir Starmer's announcement that Britain will recognise the State of Palestine in September if Israel doesn't agree to a ceasefire and a two-state solution sums up his political project. Starmer himself is an empty vessel, a mere frontman for Labour's most reactionary and self-serving political faction: his own advisers briefed that he thinks he's driving a train, but they had placed him in front of London's driverless District Light Railway. This faction is defined by its cynicism, lacking not just a vision for our disunited kingdom, but a moral core. They saw that growing numbers of MPs were demanding Palestinian recognition, including some of the drones they parachuted into the parliamentary party, whose blind loyalty has been frayed by the realisation they're heading towards electoral apocalypse. READ MORE: Gaza detainees 'tortured and raped' by Israeli forces, United Nations hears The SNP were preparing to force a parliamentary vote on statehood, which would leave Labour exposed. And indeed other European states, like Spain, have already taken this step, with the likes of France making clear they will too. But all Starmer's aides care about is political game playing, rather than what happens to be the right thing to do. And here's the thing – they're not even good at it. They scrapped the universal Winter Fuel Payment because they thought it would win respect as a 'tough decision'. Alas, they project their lack of a heart on to the electorate, who shocked Labour goons by being averse to freezing their grans. They decided to wage war on disabled people with cuts which would drive hundreds of thousands into hardship, and were again shocked at being stopped in their tracks by the consequent revulsion, including from the malfunctioning androids who benefited from their rigged parliamentary selections. In this case, their ruse is as cackhanded as it is morally bankrupt. Any move which recognises the humanity of Palestinians is going to provoke the pro-Israel lobby, who long sank into a sewer of genocidal depravity, and so it proved. What about everyone else – that is, popular opinion, given the polling shows overwhelming public support for recognition of a Palestinian state, an arms embargo on Israel, as well as the arrest of its leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes and crimes against humanity? Starmer's team are essentially arguing that if Israel tones down its genocide, then it will withdraw support for Palestinian statehood. The inalienable right of a people to be free is reduced to a crude bargaining chip, a chess piece on a board to be discarded for a greater strategic cause. So who is this supposed to please, exactly? Here's the gruesome truth. Obviously, Britain should have supported Palestinian national self-determination many moons ago. But there won't be any Palestine left to recognise at this rate. Here is the most symbolic gesture on offer, and even that is reduced to a cynical ploy. There is growing pressure on the Government, because they are facilitating what the former UN aid chief, Martin Griffiths, calls the 'worst crime of the 21st century'. Here is an attempt to deflect from action they could be taking, like ending all arms sales to Israel, including crucial components for F-35 jets that are exterminating Palestinians, or imposing sweeping sanctions on Israel. Indeed, earlier this year, Britain joined other Western states in imposing sanctions on two particularly extreme Israeli ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. They are both genocidal maniacs who belong in jail, sure, but it is easy to make them the bogeymen in order to absolve the wider guilt of the Israeli state. Notably, the sanctions were justified on the grounds of their incendiary comments, rather than their actions, because the latter implicates the British government. Nothing our government has done remotely meets the scale of the crime. A consensus of genocide scholars – including Israeli scholars – long ago concluded this is genocide. B'Tselem was one of two Israeli human rights organisations to reach the same conclusion this week, alongside Israeli author David Grossman, who won Israel's top literary prize in 2018. Gaza has been plunged into deliberate famine by an Israeli state which repeatedly broadcast to the world that it was intentionally starving the strip. More hungry Palestinians have been massacred at aid points alone since late May than the total number of Israeli civilians and soldiers killed on October 7. And even the BBC is now having to report that Palestinian children are being systematically shot in the head or chest – evidence which points in only one direction: that the Israeli army is deliberately shooting kids. The depravity is so extreme, documented and confessed to, that it is difficult to know either where to begin or end. The British government had a choice when confronted with an incontrovertible criminal reality: to make itself complicit in this historic abomination, or to abide by the most rudimentary building blocks of international law. It chose the former, and now it seeks to wash away its guilt by publicly agonising over Israel's crimes while making tokenistic gestures about a Palestinian nation it has literally helped to massacre. You would have to be either terminally gullible, or a dupe, to be beguiled by this. Throughout history, monsters didn't realise that that is what they are, but they were still monsters. The same applies to Westminster's rulers – and that will be the definitive conclusion of history and, we can hope, the courts, too.
Daily Record
an hour ago
- Daily Record
SNP Government making 'glacial progress' on removing cladding from homes after Grenfell Tower
Willie Rennie said Nationalist ministers had "no excuse" after works were completed on just 0.2 per cent of potentially affected buildings. The SNP Government has been accused of making "glacial progress" in removing potentially dangerous cladding from residential buildings in the wake of Grenfell Tower fire. Willie Rennie said Nationalist ministers had "no excuse" after official figures showed remediation work had only been completed on just 0.2 per cent of potentially affected buildings. The Lib Dem MSP said the removal of potentially dangerous cladding was an issue "where Scotland simply cannot afford to fall behind". The Scottish Government has estimated up to 1,450 residential buildings may need remediation work - including about 250 high-rises. But full surveys are needed to establish what needs to be done on a case-by-case basis, a process known as Single Building Assessments (SBAs). The Lib Dems today warned that just three SBAs have been completed, while there are only two buildings with active remediation work. A further 12 SBAs are underway. The slow pace is despite Government's Cladding Remediation Programme having received 600 expressions of interest, which allows those responsible for buildings to ask for them to be assessed. The MSP said the lack of progress in Scotland contrasts sharply contrasts sharply with the situation in England where 2,490 buildings identified with unsafe cladding have started or completed remediation works. Rennie said: "In the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower disaster, there can be no excuses for making such glacial progress, but this SNP Government continues to blunder their way through in slow motion. "This is an issue where Scotland simply cannot afford to fall behind; by moving so sluggishly with the necessary building works, the SNP government are only increasing the risks to peoples' lives. "That's why I am imploring ministers to urgently step up the pace in fixing at-risk buildings and keep homeowners, residents and local authorities informed on developments." The Scottish Government has brought forward legislation which could see a tax charged on the construction of certain new residential properties, in line with equivalent legislation in England. The bill seeks to raise about £30m a year to help fund work to fix residential buildings with unsafe cladding which have no linked developer. Ivan McKee, the Public Safety Minister, previously said: "The Scottish government is committed to doing what is right and necessary to address the challenge of fixing buildings affected by unsafe cladding. "That includes putting the appropriate funding arrangements in place to ensure that the associated costs of cladding remediation do not fall directly onto affected homeowners. "I know that developers share our determination to keep people safe and this levy will ensure they make a fair contribution to these costs, just as they will be doing in England." He added: "I also welcome the continued co-operation of developers who have accepted responsibility for the assessments and any required mitigation and remediation of their buildings." The UK Government has already agreed in principle to devolve the powers needed for a Scottish Building Safety Levy. Labour ministers announced their intention to speed up efforts to inspect and repair buildings in response to the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London that killed 72 people. The 23-storey tower's cladding is believed to have contributed to the rapid spread of the fire. The Record asked the Scottish Government for comment.
