On the Airdrie & Shotts by-election

Given how much of a rest we have needed since the long local elections weekend finished, you probably missed the fact that there was a by-election in Airdrie & Shotts. The results of that by-election were as follows:

Stephen Arrundale, Liberal Democrats, 220 (1.0%, -2.6%)

Ben Callaghan, Conservative, 2,812 (12.9%, -4.7%)

Martin Green, Reform UK, 45 (0.2%)

Donald Mackay, UKIP, 39 (0.2%)

Neil Manson, SDP, 151 (0.7%)

Anum Qaisar-Javed, SNP, 10, 129 (46.4%, +1.4%)

Jonathan Stanley, Scottish Unionist Party, 59 (0.3%)

Kenneth Stevenson, Labour, 8,372 (38.4%, +6.5%)

SNP hold.

This will go down in history as the first by-election involving the SNP defending one of their seats, and it only happened due to SNP rules prohibiting MSPs serving simultaneously as MPs, even though this type of double-jobbing is still legal under United Kingdom law. Given its timing coverage was unsurprisingly low, but it does show that tactical voting for a unionist party to oust the SNP can only stretch so far, and although it secured a 2.5% swing to Labour, with the Liberal Democrats being squeezed to just 69 votes ahead of the SDP, it was not nearly enough for Kenneth Stevenson to defeat Anum Qaisar-Javed, who becomes only the second Muslim woman to be elected to a Scottish seat in Westminster after Tasmina Akhmed-Sheikh (SNP MP for Ochil & South Perthshire from 2015-17 and now a member of Alba).

Unlike in Northern Ireland, the nationalist vote in Scotland is almost entirely united around the SNP (the Scottish Greens also support Scottish independence and self-determination but are of course more focused on green politics and environmentalism) and the unionist vote in Scotland is very divided between mainstream parties who because of significant social and economic policy differences cannot stand aside for each other to form unionist pacts against the SNP the way the Ulster Unionists and Democratic Unionists can in Northern Ireland against Sinn Fein and the SDLP. Although this by-election was on paper an opportunity for Labour to make a comeback in Scotland at Westminster level with only a 6.5% swing to Labour needed to gain the seat from the SNP, election fatigue meant that Labour voters in particular lost interest, especially after having failed to make any headway against the SNP in last week's Scottish Parliament election, which above all else accounts for turnout plummeting to 34.3% even though like with Hartlepool the seat was not safe by any means. In 2017, Airdrie & Shotts was a near-miss for Labour who only lost to the SNP by 195 votes that year and the swing against Labour in Airdrie & Shotts in 2019 was below average.

All in all, a by-election that if it had been held last week or been delayed to June could have been interesting, but was not.



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