The British general election of 2024, part 4-Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland

The 2024 United Kingdom general election proved just as remarkable in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as it did in England.

In Scotland, the SNP's drubbing was one of the main undersold stories of this election; in light of scandals that led to the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon and Scottish independence looking like a more distant prospect, especially with Scottish voters more concerned about the cost-of-living crisis like everywhere else in the UK, the SNP dropped from 47 seats (notionally) to just 9, and more importantly they did not win any seats south of the River Tay, being driven back to the Highlands and north-eastern Scotland where prior to the SNP's shift towards social democracy their strongest bases used to be (before the 2015, the majority of SNP seats in Westminster were north of the River Tay). In some seats anti-SNP swings exceeded 20%, with one particularly outspoken SNP MP, Joanna Cherry, losing Edinburgh South West on a 23.4% swing to Labour, the highest swing ever recorded in a seat held by the SNP at the previous election, with Labour's gain of Na h-Eileanan an Iar (which set the previous record for a swing against the SNP back in 1987 when Donald Stewart retired) on 22.6%, exacerbated by Angus MacNeil's run as an Independent. Labour decisively recovered after 9 years their status as Scotland's largest party once again, easily sweeping Ayrshire, Glasgow, and most of Lanarkshire, the Lothians, and every seat in Edinburgh except Edinburgh West, winning 37 seats in total to the SNP's 9, the Liberal Democrats' 6, and the Conservatives' 5. Douglas Alexander, who had sensationally lost Paisley & Renfrewshire South in 2015 to Mhairi Black (then the first MP elected under 21 since 1695; Ms Black stood down at this election aged only 30) easily returned to Parliament via Lothian East with a majority as high as 13,265, and Pamela Nash returned via Motherwell, Wishaw & Carluke with a respectable majority of 7,085. They also ran the SNP close in both seats in the city of Aberdeen but failed to take either despite the collapse of the Conservative vote in both. Anti-unionist tactical voting also helped the Conservatives hold as many as 5 seats (all 3 in the borders, 2 in north-eastern Scotland) against SNP challenges and achieve net swings against the SNP in all 5. However, the Conservative vote collapsed in the majority of seats where they had taken the runner-up spot from Labour in 2019, most of all in the once safely Conservative seat of East Renfrewshire, and furthermore Douglas Ross, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives who initially planned to step down to concentrate on the Scottish Parliament but decided to run again after David Duguid was deselected, lost the new seat of Aberdeenshire North & Moray East in a rare deviant swing to the SNP (notionally; notional results from new constituencies must be treated carefully at best, especially in heavily redrawn rural constituencies) of 4.3%, whereas all the seats they notionally held saw swings to the Conservatives despite the Conservative vote share decreasing in all 5 instances. However, Scotland also featured the highest number of lost deposits for the Conservatives by region or nation; notably every Conservative candidate standing in Glasgow lost their deposit. Meanwhile, in Orkney & Shetland, the Conservatives achieved their joint-worst (with Bethnal Green & Stepney) placing in a British constituency-6th place. The Liberal Democrats faced no such problems at all, easily holding all the seats they held in 2019 and winning back 2 seats of former Liberal Democrat leaders (or which would have been held by the Liberal Democrats in previous elections had they existed prior to 2024), Mid Dunbartonshire (the successor to East Dunbartonshire) and Inverness, Skye & West Ross-shire after a recount making it the final seat to be counted (they eventually won it by as many as 2,160 votes though). Despite the SNP's loss of 38 seats, the SNP still did not finish lower than second in any constituency, not even Edinburgh South, and they only slipped from largest party to second largest party in Scotland. The Scottish Greens had their best ever result, despite losing support following their withdrawal from their previous coalition with the SNP in Holyrood, although they finished no higher than 3rd in any constituency; interestingly their best results were in Glasgow this year rather than Edinburgh. Reform UK, like the Brexit Party and UKIP before them, got nowhere in Scotland although they overtook the Conservatives in many constituencies due to the Conservatives' collapse (whether for tactical voting or other reasons) more than anything else. Alba, in their doomed attempts to replace the SNP as the main nationalist party in Scotland, failed spectacularly even though at the time of the election they had 2 MPs; both the MPs in question, Neale Hanvey & Kenny MacAskill, not only lost their seats but lost their deposits as well, with Mr Hanvey finishing as low as 7th in Cowdenbeath & Kirkcaldy and Mr MacAskill finishing even worse-8th place-in Alloa & Grangemouth (partly because his seat at the time was Lothian East, over 100 miles away!)-the lowest placed-finish any incumbent MP has ever achieved in British electoral history. Both Corri Wilson and George Kerevan, SNP MPs from 2015 to 2017 who later joined Alba, as well as former SNP MSP Jim Eadie, polled just as badly as Messrs Hanvey and MacAskill. Most Alba candidates came bottom and in no case did they make any impact on the constituency's overall result.

Wales was notable in this election primarily for 2 reasons: first, the Conservatives losing every seat in Wales, even Montgomeryshire & Glyndwr (where the Conservative MP, Craig Williams, had been disendorsed after being implicated in a betting scandal) and Monmouthshire, and secondly, it was the only nation or region in the UK where the Labour vote decreased overall; this was primarily due to dissatisfaction with Labour's governance in the Senedd. Although Labour gained 8 seats notionally and lost none, they came within just 1,504 votes of losing Llanelli to Reform UK, where surprisingly Plaid Cymru could only finish 3rd despite increasing their vote share and the significant numbers of Welsh speakers in Llanelli, which has been held by Labour since 1922. Two notable successes for Labour in Wales were Kanishka Narayan easily winning the Vale of Glamorgan from former Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns, becoming the first ever MP for Wales who comes from an ethnic minority background (Mr Narayan was born in India), and gaining Montgomeryshire & Glyndwr, meaning that every part of Wales has now had a Labour MP at some point in history; prior to 2024 Montgomeryshire was the only constituency in Wales to never have elected a Labour MP. With the Conservatives losing all their Welsh seats and the Liberal Democrats only competitive in a few Welsh constituencies at present, Plaid Cymru became the second largest party in Wales by default, winning 4 seats out of 32 and achieving their best ever result with only 3 lost deposits, the 3 in question being in Alyn & Deeside, Brecon, Radnor & Cwm-Tawe, and Monmouthshire, none of which have ever seen a saved deposit for Plaid Cymru and which have some of the lowest Welsh-speaking populations in Wales. Their best achievement was Llinos Medi winning Ynys Mon from Virginia Crosbie although the swing to Plaid Cymru was only 4.5%, reflecting the importance of incumbency in Ynys Mon once again, although Ms Crosbie nevertheless became the first incumbent MP to lose Ynys Mon since 1951 when Liberal MP Megan Lloyd George (daughter of the more famous David Lloyd George) lost that seat to Labour (ironically, she later became a Labour MP herself by gaining a Liberal-held seat, Caerfyrddin/Carmarthen in a 1957 by-election). The Liberal Democrats gained Brecon, Radnor & Cwm-Tawe but due to adverse boundary changes much more narrowly than expected and their vote share only increased by 0.3% notionally, and elsewhere in Wales they only even finished second in Cardiff East and Ceredigion Preseli, and a distant second in both cases; in Montgomeryshire & Glyndwyr, most of which they had represented from 1880 to 1979 and again from 1983 to 2010, they finished 4th. Reform UK performed best, just as the Brexit Party did in 2019, amidst the former coalfields in Mid Glamorgan and Gwent but were notably absent from Blaenau Gwent & Rhymney (they had performed best within Wales in Blaenau Gwent in 2019) after their candidate, Stewart Sutherland, withdrew following allegations of him reposting racist content on social media sites. Wales Green Party reported its best ever set of results although all of their saved deposits came in either Gwent or Glamorgan, primarily because in many Welsh constituencies the "soft green" vote tends to vote for Plaid Cymru.

Northern Ireland saw in particular a heavy fragmentation of the unionist vote, not only due to the scandals surrounding the DUP (especially its former leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson) but also a perceived failure of the DUP to keep the Northern Irish devolved Parliament, Stormont, functional. The DUP lost 3 seats, bringing them down to 5, their worst result since 2001 when the more moderate UUP were still the main unionist party in Northern Ireland, and Gregory Campbell came within 179 votes of losing East Londonderry, the last unionist-held seat west of the Bann, to Sinn Fein. Notably Ian Paisley Junior lost North Antrim to Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV, the most hardline and most conservative unionist party in Northern Ireland) leader Jim Allister (who back in 1983 narrowly failed to win East Antrim for the DUP himself); North Antrim had been held by the DUP since 1970 when Ian Paisley Senior won it from the UUP. Incidentally, in winning it on only 27.1% of the vote, Mr Allister, aged 71, is the oldest first-time MP elected to Parliament this year. The UUP, thought to be in terminal decline before this election, surprisingly managed to gain South Antrim; even though it is still their strongest seat in Northern Ireland partly due to the middle-class commuter vote, this same middle-class commuter vote had been shifting significantly towards the Alliance Party in the last decade; the latter found their vote substantially squeezed in a tactical anti-DUP vote. The subpar performance of the APNI is surprising given the advances they have made in recent elections especially in an increasingly secular Northern Ireland; they lost North Down to Independent, ex-DUP unionist Alex Easton even though the UUP were standing again and managed to increase their vote share with a less experienced candidate than in 2019. They kept their presence in Parliament by notably capturing Lagan Valley, which like South Antrim has seen a long-term shift towards the Alliance at local and national level, from the DUP, but Naomi Long for the third consecutive time failed to recapture Belfast East which she had been MP for from 2010-2015. Sinn Fein kept their seat total at 7 and notably achieved a 4% swing in ultra-marginal Fermanagh & South Tyrone, with Pat Cullen's credentials as former Chief Executive of the Royal College of Nursing being a significant factor, and only in Belfast North, where the SDLP refused to renew their 2019 pact, did they lose vote share and in any event it made no difference due to the DUP vote being hit harder by the TUV's candidature. The SDLP held both their seats but unlike the UUP were unable to make progress anywhere against Sinn Fein, with their biggest setback being once again in South Down where Sinn Fein obtained their largest ever majority, and they lost their deposit in all the seats they had not stood in 2019, 2 of which were the weakest seats for nationalist parties in Northern Ireland and where Sinn Fein decided not to field candidates at all (Belfast East and North Down). Aontu's failure is another notable story in Northern Ireland-they lost vote share in every constituency they stood in, even rural nationalist constituencies such as West Tyrone, a sign that even the nationalist and traditionally Catholic population of Northern Ireland is turning against pro-life beliefs just like the Republic of Ireland has.

Coming up in part 5-overall conclusions.