The Hamilton By-Election: Two Winners and One Bad Loser

If the parties Reform now threatens do not grasp their contribution to its advance, they will make the same mistake as the Democrats in the USA

The Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election had two winners, and one bad loser. The result was loaded with potential consequences, but not a political earthquake. One major casualty: John Swinney, whose manifest failure to read the street shows a man with a tin ear and poor judgement, unfit for the leadership role the misguided SNP membership put him in.

I can only wonder about the SNP membership. They had no choice when Alex Salmond crowned Nicola Sturgeon, which he told in later years was the biggest misjudgement of ability and character. But they had a choice between Humza Yousaf and Kate Forbes, and in choosing the former went for someone whose record in government, as distinct from hers, was poor. The inevitable happened. Once Humza went Joh Swinney stepped forward, and the membership breathed a sigh of relief He was going to steady the ship, seemingly unaware it was not in full political sale, but on the political rocks on which its army of MPs perished in2024.

The membership seemed oblivious to the fact that he as Nicola’s deputy was there with her in every wrong policy, including the suicidal pursuit of Alex Salmond, and had been engaged in the one she made a priority, but which failed, education. Not only that, he had already been tried and failed in leadership when in charge between 2000 and 2004.

In embracing him as leader the membership seemed blind to the obvious. I have known John for 45 years. Always been a good No. 2., loyal to the leader, and doing what he was told. He has never had what is required to step up to No. 1. His is a staid, dull, cautious, unimaginative personality better suited to the role of a mid-level civil servant than leader of a party and movement that, to succeed its aim of independence, needs to be dynamic.

The questions posed and answered

But back to the by-election. These are the questions Hamilton had to answer: was this to be one of those seminal moments when a party, Reform, came from nowhere and turned Scottish politics upside down by winning; if not winning does it have traction in Scotland as in England; is Scottish Labour damaged by its association with the Starmer government; how much trust and enthusiasm is there for the SNP as it heads towards a general election next year?

Those questions were posed against a background of dissatisfaction, and anger, with the wider UK situation where “broken Britain” and “nothing works” are frequently quoted, along with 18 years of SNP government with the last ten years in particular seeing ferry fiascos, failing NHS, declarations of a housing emergency without emergency action, falling school standards, universities and colleges in financial crises, and more time spent politically in the Holyrood Parliament on trans identity and dodging the definition of a woman than on child poverty.

Reform didn’t come first, but accomplished its two objectives: find out if it could pass the acid test of significant support via the ballot box in Scotland, and if so become a serious participant in the Scottish political scene. On that score it is one of the winners, with its 7,088 votes only 869 votes behind the SNP. Its 26.1% share of the vote confirms recent local government by-election results.

Reform now enters the fray for the 2026 Scottish general election in the position of having a base, no government record to be attacked on, and opposition parties not understanding that it has risen because of their failures allied to their woke agenda, and so are clueless on how to combat it.

A sea change is underway in our politics

There is a sea change taking place in America, Europe, UK and Scottish life. People have had enough of the virtue signallers; they are Mega fed up with lectures about what they can and cannot say; they have come to despise spin as a substitute for action; they are no longer afraid of being labelled bigots and racists for strongly opposing illegal immigration. They are no longer prepared to be required to swallow the proposition that a person with XY chromosomes, via self-declaration, can become one with XX chromosomes.

An important example of the sea change is some recent comments on the European Convention on Human Rights, previously stoutly defended against Right wing critics. Just this week Steve Reed a Labour Cabinet Minister floated the idea that its rules might need “tightening”, and the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, in response to expressed anxieties from some European states about how it is being interpretated and implemented by the Strasbourg judges, said it might need to be “re-examined”, with “adaptation” adopted, and that “there is no taboo.” On Saturday morning, on radio, I heard a Labour MP talk about changes in the Convention in relation to handling immigration, without the interviewer fainting.

Reform has caught that tide, and their Hamilton by-election and local equivalents is the result.

A bit of history for Farage

There is one Scottish lesson for Farage and Reform to learn. The majority up here don’t like anyone playing the race card. Muslims in Scotland are not outsiders. They are Scots. Right from the start of South East Asian immigration to Scotland, becoming Scots and engaging fully with Scottish life was the aim of their community leaders. Anas Sarwar and Humza Yousaf are exemplars of that “we are Scots” ideal. Among those early leaders was Bashir Mann, who came from Pakistan in 1953. He, as did those who came with him and later, joined wholeheartedly into Scottish life, sometimes wrestling with his Muslim principles and aspects of public policy, such as same sex marriage, as do those of the Catholic faith who wrestle with issues of public policy such as abortion, not to miss the Wee Frees who have their own differences with many public policies and public practices.

Bashir’s engagement, like that of Anas and Humza, was not token. He joined the Labour Party and won election as a Councillor for the Glasgow Kingston ward. He was a Justice of the Peace, Magistrate, Convenor of Strathclyde Council’s Joint Police Board. His public service to his fellow Scots was recognised by a CBE. The gelling of an immigrant Muslim community, guided by Koranic principles, and a host nation grounded in Calvinist Presbyterian history and as a centre of the Enlightenment, calls for great delicacy when engaging in public life by the former, and a willingness to accept some significantly different views on what are regarded a cultural norms by the latter.

Scotland is by no means a perfect example of cultural and ethnic blending. Racist attitudes against immigrants with coloured skins still exists, as the experiences of Anas Sarwar and Humza Yousaf (and many others) show. But, in looking at other places in this island, we should all take some pride in what has been achieved.

Do the mainstream parties know how they have helped Reform?

But, If the parties Reform now threatens do not grasp their contribution to its advance, and stay with their by-election tactic of denouncing it as “racist” and “poisonous,” they will make the same mistake as the Democrats in the USA who, in demonising Trump as the answer to opposition of what they saw as the progressive norm, failed to realise that they had substituted lecturing to the people instead of listening to them. Perhaps the Greens will look at their derisory 695 votes at Hamilton, and reflect on the role they have played in the lecturing game at Holyrood.

(The election advert reckoned to be one of the most devastating, and vote winning, in the history of USA elections was the one used by the Republican party in the 2024 campaign: “Kamila is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”)

Let us not ignore the Big winner and the Big loser

The big winner of course is Labour, who took the seat. The announcement of the result must have been sweet music to the ears of Anus Sarwar and Jackie Baillie, given all the pundits fell for the John Swinney claim that they were being outclassed and heading for a poor third place. Being umbilically attached to the unpopular UK Labour government was thought to be their fatal weak point. That proved not so. Even with a candidate who, as his reading of his victory speech showed, is not exactly inspirational, they took a safe SNP seat.

What makes Labour’s win important is that Hamilton is smack in the middle of the central belt, where lies the seat of Scottish political power, and where the SNP-Labour contest will be settled. A repeat of Hamilton in 2026 and Labour will be, at least, a minority government or the largest party in coalition with the LibDems who are likely to continue to hold all they have elsewhere, with some even believing they can take down Kate Forbes in the Highlands. There is nothing like a win to bolster confidence and reinforce belief, and that is the gain Labour now has from Hamilton.

At the 2024 UK election, the SNP was thrashed, not on what its MPs did or did not do at Westminster, but on the failures and incompetence of the SNP Scottish government. John Swinney asserted his position as leader and fronted that campaign, although not a candidate, and it was fought on issues for which his government was solely responsible. He avoided the electorate’s verdict on him and his government at that time by claiming the Scots ditched the SNP for Labour to get the Tories out. It was a plausible lie which he and the party told themselves, and were happy to believe in.

But there is no self-constructed lie for him and the party to escape into after Hamilton. This was a very bad result. Their 7,957 votes at 29.4% share of the vote was down by 16.8%, and much lower than the 33% they have been getting in opinion polls. The reality of the real poll as opposed to the opinion polls matters. At 33% SNP in 2026 would still be the largest party, and the government. But if they go below 30% next Year, it will be a mini-2024 disaster with no chance of forming a government.

The old adage you reap what you sow remains true. The Sturgeon legacy of elevating mediocrity above talent turned the SNP government into a calamity for Scotland. In Hamilton there was little John Swinney and his candidate could claim to be a success. On every issue that matters to the people, tax, jobs, education, housing, health, roads not built, and child poverty they are failures. They got the defeat they deserved. Under the dead hand of Swinney there is more of that to come.

Given that during the by-election Independence was hardly mentioned by it, there must now be a question against the party’s previously accepted position as the lead political instrument to take us there.