Hamilton election

[tammienorrie]

Labour 31.6% (down 2% since last Scottish election)
SNP 29.4% (down 16.8%)
Reform 26.1% (up 26.1%)
Conservative 6% (down 11.5%)
Green 2.6% (up 2.6%)
Lib Dem 2% (down 0.8%)

Reactions? Bit of a shocker really as Swinney has been telling us for a week it's a straight fight between SNP and Reform and Labour are nowhere and that's clearly not the case. Rise of Reform a real concern as they are clearly taking some of the voters who would previously have voted Conservative AND a good chunk of the SNP vote. This is something the SNP has really not addressed at all.

So looking forward to the Scot parliament election next year I am thinking probably no overall control, Labour single biggest party but with a fair number of Reform MPs too. Would be delighted to see SNP taking a kicking although I'm sure their bots will be on shortly saying these sorts of elections are always a blip yadda yadda yadda.

I think the SNP are in trouble
The have been a total disaster for education,the health service ,housing for starters
The ferry fiasco sums up their ineptitude

And they bring policies that they don’t think through properly and then have to abandon

They will keep their core support but I think will lose badly at the next election

And their only counter argument still seems to be that it’s Westminster’s fault and Scotland would be run so much better with independence. At least that’s the argument Hannah Bardell was using on the radio yesterday, when asked why SNP had done so badly her reply was it was because of not having fiscal levers for borrowing which could only be solved by independence! The more they do this the more the public see they are completely failing to take in board that their policies are unpopular.

Totally depressing but that's Scottish politics generally.

I think it’s genuinely interesting, I can’t remember a time where Scottish politics was in the balance so much.

It will be difficult to call the majority of seats.

The Scottish Parliament was always intended to run by consensus and not majority (or near majority).

Will be good to see what can be achieved when they’re all actually forced to work together.

I wonder when we’ll ever get to an honest debate anywhere that around the rich countries, low growth means more spending on x is either less spending on y or tax rises…

100% and I say this as someone who has never supported Reform UK

The type of rapid and fairly drastic change in communities which has pushed people to reform in England is now affecting Scotland - it just didn’t experience it in the same way as England did until now.

The SNP have peddled Scottish exceptionalism far too long and assumed Scots won’t tire of their inept attempts at governing. They’ve tried to make out wrongly, that Scots have a vastly different set of social values to England. It’s just not true.

Totally agree - the SNP overarching narrative is that people in Scotland are fundamentally different to those in England/Wales. Different priorities, different opinions and attitudes.

It's clearly nonsense but it's the basis of their independence schtick.

SNP emergence started out as very much a protest vote against the old Labour and conservatives.

They have ridden on a ticket of being in power but being in opposition ( in Westminster): best of both worlds were no one held them to account and the media were quite lazy using the SNP as an easy tool to criticise
Westminster, Brexit and Covid.

I have read commentary/opinion saying that Reform are a protest vote now, but in contrast the media are quite vocal against Reform; much more so than the SNP ever were or still are today.

@tammienorrie Interestingly there is an article in The Sunday Times detailing the masses of Englanders moving to Scotland and making it their forever home.

there are regularly articles on the high skilled/high paid Scot’s moving to England for lower taxes

I’d love to see data on who is moving in and out - perfectly possible that some cohorts are net exiting and other cohorts are moving in. That doesn’t mean that it’ll all balance necessarily.

@Stanley1409 yes I thought that too and I remember looking at the data for young graduates where it supports young people leaving Scotland. I think it’s largely active pensioners and those with a good pot of money making the move.

@Arrearing50 The data is on the National records of Scotland website (up to 2023) but I can’t seem to access the excel documents which contains the details
-I just get the headings of the excel sheet and the rest is blank, I was able to access before though?!

www.nrscotland.gov.uk/publications/migration-flows/#:~:text=Between%20the%20years%20to%20mid,other%20parts%20of%20the%20UK.

This is anecdotal of course but three of my colleagues in a not very big office in Edinburgh have moved to Berwick over the last few years. The pay lower income tax, lower stamp duty, cheaper council tax, etc and they get the train to the office twice a week, it takes 45mins

If the housing market around Glasgow South is anything to go by it’s mostly young people in their late 20’s/30’s who have been priced out of London and are looking for something similar.

You can thank certain newspapers for declaring Shawlands/Strathbungo the ‘coolest’ neighbourhood in the UK.

Ironically they’ve now priced most young buyers out of these areas.