Will Labour or the SNP take the seat?

On 1 August, it was confirmed that a recall petition for the MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West had reached the threshold to trigger a by-election. The petition followed the House of Commons voting to suspend the constituency’s MP Margaret Ferrier in June 2023 in response to her breaching COVID-19 regulations in September 2020.

Under the 2015 Recall of MPs Act, constituents may recall their MP and trigger a by-election if they have received a custodial prison sentence, a conviction for providing false or misleading expenses claims, or if they have been suspended from the House of Commons for more than 10 days.

Ferrier won Rutherglen and Hamilton West for the SNP in the 2019 general election. She picked up 44.2% of the vote, with Labour taking 34.5%. That makes it a fairly close Labour/SNP marginal. The tightness of the race in the constituency is illustrated further by the seat having changed hands numerous times in recent years. While it was historically safe for Labour, the SNP won it in 2015 when they took almost every seat in Scotland. In 2017, it flipped back to Labour, and in 2019 returned to the SNP again.

Labour will be hoping they can win the by-election by capitalising on the challenges facing the SNP following Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation earlier this year.

So what do the polls tell us? So far, we’ve not had any direct polling of people who live in the constituency. Without this, elections experts have sought to use national data to model what could happen.

Polling aggregator Britain Elects has projected that Labour are on track to win the seat. According to its projection, Labour are looking to win 48% of the vote, with the SNP on 37%.

Stats for Lefties, run by occasional Left Foot Forward columnist Ell Folan, has similarly projected a Labour win. According to their model, Labour are set to pick up 47% of the vote, with the SNP trailing behind on 34%.

Keir Starmer will be hoping for this sort of outcome, with a view to illustrate that he can deliver a Labour recovery in Scotland, something that may be crucial if the party is to win a majority at the next general election.

However, we should avoid reading too much into these projections. Because parliament is currently in recess, the by-election can’t be called until September. That means the earliest possible date for the by-election to take place is 5 October 2023, leaving at least two months for the campaign. With an very volatile political environment at present, much could change between now and then.

The list of candidates so far announced for the constituency is as follows:

• Bill Bonnar – Scottish Socialist Party
• Ewan Hoyle – Volt UK
• Katy Loudon – SNP
• Chris Sermanni – Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition
• Michael Shanks – Labour
• David Stark – Reform UK
• Thomas Kerr – Conservatives

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: UK Parliament – Creative Commons

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