Labour’s great victory
A quick analysis of the Scottish council election results, then (with Dunoon still to vote and the Cromarty Firth ward in Highlands still to declare, the two areas between them being likely to return 2-3 SNP and 3-4 independents, no Labour or Tories).
The SNP started with 15 more seats nationwide than Labour and will end up with 30-32 more, at least doubling their lead. The nationalists and Labour both gained overall control of two new councils. It looks likely that the SNP will have won the popular vote, which they didn’t manage in 2007.
That would seem remarkably good progress for a government that’s been in power for five years during a recession, is having to implement hefty budget cuts passed down from London, and has endured a large amount of recent bad press. Compare and contrast with the thrashing delivered to the UK’s governing coalition on the same day, and the SNP managing to not only hold what it had but extend its advantage and capture outright control of two councils appears a striking success.
The media narrative, however, is focusing on what the SNP didn’t win, and (not unreasonably) concentrating on the country’s most important councils, so let’s take a look at Labour’s three much-trumpeted big results, in Scotland’s largest cities.
GLASGOW
Labour lead over SNP in 2007: 23 seats
Labour lead over SNP in 2012: 17 seats
EDINBURGH
Labour lead over SNP in 2007: 2 seats
Labour lead over SNP in 2012: 2 seats
ABERDEEN
SNP lead over Labour in 2007: 2 seats
Labour lead over SNP in 2012: 2 seats
So a net gain for Labour of 4 seats in Aberdeen, no change in Edinburgh, and a net gain of 6 seats for the SNP in Glasgow. That means that in Scotland’s three biggest cities, where Labour’s performance was most spectacular, the net result when all the dust has settled is still a 2-seat improvement for the SNP over Labour.
(It remains to be seen, of course, what deals are done and who ends up in the ruling groups in Edinburgh and Aberdeen. The SNP have easily enough seats in each city to lead a coalition with other parties and freeze Labour out.)
With the nationalists suffering in Glasgow from the anti-sectarianism bill and the Rangers crisis, and in Aberdeen over the Union City Gardens controversy and the ongoing Donald Trump fiasco, we suspect the party will regard a 2-seat net gain across those cities, accompanied by a raft of substantial and significant gains elsewhere, as the kind of “defeat” it can live with pretty happily.
Glasgow, City of the Voting Dead.
Glasgow
Labour – 2003 (71) / 2007 (45) / 2012 (44)
The SNP – 2003 (3) / 2007 (22) / 2012 (27)
Doing worse than last time… Labour victory!
and in Dundee a one seat lead over Labour in 2007 for the SNP becomes 6 in 2012.
Superficially (and I mean superficially), Labour did well, no srcub that – Labour did as expected in protest against the UK government as per the rest of the rUK… but I think it all works in the SNP’s favour:
1) getting 50+ gains mid-term is fantastic;
2) good progress in Glasgow despite not ousting Labour;
3) great to win Dundee and Angus and to do well in Ayrshire;
4) it drives home that there is no room for SNP complacency;
5) conversely, Labour/BBC will probably get cocky; and
6) most importantly, Lamont remains “in charge” of Scottish Labour with added ‘credence’ that she not f@cking it up entirely (haha).
“4) it drives home that there is no room for SNP complacency;”
Indeed. If that lesson needed learning, this was an extremely low-cost way to learn it. Meanwhile, let’s remember the last time Labour were this excited about their “great fightback” beginning, a year into an SNP government – Glenrothes 2008…
As someone who has delivered leaflets etc, it is a bit disheartening to see all the good work (outside of Glasgow),be only seen through the prism of Glasgow,by the media. The people of Glasgow are free to vote as they choose,their vote and opinions are as valid as mine but oh we do need something like ‘a reporting Scotland ‘ programme or a Scottish news channel or even a channel with longer cables..
I saw your twitter about the odd figures the BBC are using.
If you go back to the 2007 local council elections on the BBC site and compare them with the results today the figures for gains and losses are:
SNP gain 61
Labour gain 46
Conservative loss -28
Lib Dem loss -95
Others gain 26
It seems the BBC are counting the electorate electing a Labour councillor in 2007 and electing another one in 2012 for the same seat as a gain if the councillor left the party in the interim as some did in Glasgow.
Even in Glasgow there may be more good news hidden away. A cursory look at the transfers in a handful of wards suggests that there was significantly more leakage of Labour voters at each stage than SNP ones. In this ward the difference was as much as 15% (75% Labour -> Labour vs >90% SNP -> SNP).
One more point. The good people of the Gorbals and Govanhill seemed to have less trouble with STV than was predicted. Spoiled ballots <4%, ballots with at least 2 preferences >>90%. Harder to work that out for “at least 3 preferences” with only 2 SLAB/SNP candidates but I’ll have a go later.
“It seems the BBC are counting the electorate electing a Labour councillor in 2007 and electing another one in 2012 for the same seat as a gain if the councillor left the party in the interim as some did in Glasgow.”
Yup. Even if they were only out of the party for a fortnight and still voted with Labour in the chambers anyway. It’s a really interesting, and insidious, bit of spin. When the last results are in SNP will almost certainly have gained 63 seats to Labour’s 46, or 59 to Labour’s 58 even by the distorted BBC figures. But in the crucial immediate aftermath, the Unionist media can pretend Labour have caught up (by a whole 1 seat) rather than the reality that they’ve fallen even further behind an incumbent government enduring a tough spell.
The thing is, the SNP wanted Glasgow. That much was obvious from conference. In a sense, it was almost a “go back to your Glasgow constituencies and prepare for City Chambers” moment. I’m not sure if anyone truly thought the SNP would win outright, but we can’t deny people thought Labour were imploding.
This election has been completely focused on Glasgow. This was a massive mistake. To what extent the SNP can be blamed is questionable, since the media lapped it up without much prompting, but they should have been trying to downplay the Glasgow factor a lot. This was actually a brilliant result, especially in the context of a second-term incumbent government going through some bad times in the media. But the SNP gifted Labour a get out of jail free card.
It would have been hilarious to win Glasgow from Labour, but 2011 got into people’s heads a bit too much, and pissing off Celtic fans with the sectarianism bill and the “football needs Rangers” comment set the SNP up for an own goal. Yes, it’s pretty good when a “bad” result consists of big gains, your first ever majority councils, and being by far the biggest party in the country; but that doesn’t stop the smug grins on the faces of Lamont, Sarwar and Matheson.
“I’m not sure if anyone truly thought the SNP would win outright, but we can’t deny people thought Labour were imploding.”
Oh, for sure. As I said in my blog post a couple of days ago, majority was totally impossible and biggest party incredibly unlikely, but I must admit to being disappointed and a touch surprised that Labour held onto a majority. I thought they’d drop to maybe 37-38 and there’d be a real possibility of an SNP-led coalition, but as I tweeted earlier, I think the twin football issues couldn’t have come at a worse time.
And to be fair, I can recall hearing very little from the SNP that focused on Glasgow. The media were the ones who wouldn’t shut up about it, perhaps for this very reason. (Or perhaps just because all the media are based in Glasgow.)
“And to be fair, I can recall hearing very little from the SNP that focused on Glasgow. The media were the ones who wouldn’t shut up about it, perhaps for this very reason. (Or perhaps just because all the media are based in Glasgow.)”
It’s a handy trick – raise expectations, wait for them to be dashed and hey, the SNP have peaked!
And you know the best thing about the LibDems disappearing down the plughole?
It might finally put that bloody Caron’s gas at a peep!
I can’t work out where the BBC get their figure of 57 for SNP gains from as it’s 61 when you do a 2007 to 2012 comparison.
I assume that they are counting Irfan Rabbani who was elected as a Labour councillor and defected to the SNP as an SNP loss. Then there’s Colin Deans and John McNamee who moved from the SNP to Labour but I’m not sure how they affect the figures.
It’s much better just to do a 2007 to 2012 comparison to see what the electorate wanted at that time and not count internal party fall outs and councillor defections.
Ref to Bill Pickford’s comment, I was amused to see that a penguin took more votes in one Edinburgh constituency than the Liberal Democrat.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics-news/2012/05/04/local-council-elections-2012-penguin-gets-more-votes-than-lib-dem-candidate-86908-23848088/
“Ref to Bill Pickford’s comment, I was amused to see that a penguin took more votes in one Edinburgh constituency than the Liberal Democrat.”
The Liberal Democrats were doubly detested in Edinburgh, for their role in the Westminster Coalition and for their stewardship of the trams project – hence the penguin effect.
On the subject of Professor Pongoo, this was posted on NNS:
jafurn 2012-05-04 14:00
A little light relief…
Philip Oltermann ? @philipoltermann
Breaking: Penguin who beat LibDems in Edinburgh and polar bear who beat Tories in Liverpool in coalition talks, but said to be poles apart.
Arf arf.
Doug (the Dug, as opposed to talking at myself): they have indeed taken the state of play on the 2nd May as their benchmark, and yes, this is entirely at odds with how elections are commonly compared. Convenient, isn’t it? So now, they can talk of Labour gaining four councils, when the reality is they did no such thing.
Now, everyone is pretty much agreed that counting defections as “lost” seats is pretty daft, but someone on Twitter disagreed with me that we should also discount by-elections, since they at least indicated voter opinion. But the reality is we do these losses/gains comparisons to show how the parties have progressed or regressed since the last election, and by-elections hamper that.
But certainly, defections above all should not be counted as “losses” and “gains”. That’s just obvious. Too obvious for the BBC, obviously.
It was a solid result for the SNP despite the best efforts of unionists and media combined. Lamont’s little victory jig last night as shown on channel four shows she still doesn’t understand which way the wind is blowing. The fact is that slavour rejoicing that they ‘kept’ Glasgow shows just how low both they and their expectations have sunk. They can’t plug this particular leak and the ship is definitely sinking – although no doubt Lamont will continue to rearrange the deck chairs.
They can crow all they want, they still don’t get that Scotland doesn’t need their low rent ‘with you in hard times’ (without actually doing anything) nonsense anymore. It’s also easy to want and expect a sweeping across the board type of election every time, but the reality is it’s going to be more of a slog. It’s still incredible that the SNP have been so successful that slavour need to hail this as a victory and shows how far we’ve come.
Objectively this was a great result for the SNP, particularly given the pan media onslaught that they suffered over the last week.
Labour will have noticed that mud sticks, even when thrown by a turd, so I suspect you will have to wait a bit longer for the positive case for the union.
This is shocking manipulation of figures I have already complained to bbc all we can do is put the real figures in the comments section of every lying report/blog and congrats to SNP
Doug’s post at 8 11 is interesting. Sure there seems to have been spin from BBC here. From the pro independence SNP leaning side there also has to be some reflection. It was a victory, but why do so many still cling to Labour. Why didn’t the SNP win Glasgow? Was it the turnout – are the more hardcore voters actually Labour? Was it anything to do with the football factor – Rangers or Celtic fans? How much did the Murdoch factor turn people off.
I am going to speak to people who I know switch between Labour and SNP at different elections to find out more. I also know from the experience of my mother that she received phone calls from the Lib Dems and personally from Archie Graham. Labour was fighting hard. She didn’t receive anything from the SNP which strikes me as strange – as Doug says it was a prize which the party wished to win.
Sorry to say but I also think the SNP leader was weak. I might not like my namesake in Labour nor his party cohorts but she came across very weak (I know people say she was a good organiser etc but the you tube gaffe for example made me wonder how she is in front line politics) and in politics at EU, Westminster, Holyrood or local level you need to be a bit stronger than that.
“Was it anything to do with the football factor – Rangers or Celtic fans?”
I tweeted yesterday that I thought it was a huge factor. The anti-sectarianism bill wasn’t popular in Glasgow for obvious reasons (that being where all the sectarians are), and Salmond’s one albeit-innocuous comment on the Rangers crisis somehow managed to enrage BOTH sides.Clearly there are all sorts of reasons, including local ones that I know nothing of, and while Hunter is very highly spoken of in SNP circles she’s something of a public liability. But I suspect the football factor was very big this time round, and certainly far more so than anything to do with Murdoch. The Sun does very well in Glasgow.
“and Salmond’s one albeit-innocuous comment on the Rangers crisis somehow managed to enrage BOTH sides”
Just fuel on an already roaring fire as far as Rangers fans are concerned. From stuff I’ve seen by Rangers fans on Twitter etc, I’m utterly convinced that all Rangers fans are die-hard unionists. I certainly don’t know any that aren’t, and even if you ignore the indoctrination young Rangers fans must go through as they grow up, it’s entirely in keeping with the mentality of someone who would support such a club to be in favour of the UK. Well, if they want to sing GSTQ and salute the union jack, then they can go fuck themselves, quite frankly.
There now must be serious concerns over the postal vote. I seen earlier ‘reports’ that there was a software glitch at the Glasgow count. And an ‘investigation’ was underway in North Lanarkshire? Ballot boxes left overnight and the count starting next morning?
Scanning North Lanarkshire’s website reveals that turnout in Cumbernauld North and South turnout was 40%+ … This I find highly suspicious… As I voted there and the turnout was nowhere near that!
The Scottish Government hold all the cards regarding the Independence vote in 2014. They have to sort these electoral anomalies out!
Re – the football factor I think we should be in listening mode (that’s not the same as agreeing or even tolerating) to why those people voted or didn’t vote the way they did. We’ll see in one year or two whether the football bill will make any inroads into some of the more blatant offensive chanting we will see. We will also see if people still feel their freedom is being threatened 2 years on. Of course sectarianism doesn’t just exist in Glasgow or even in the West of Scotland even if it is more ingrained there than any where else. I feel the comments regarding rangers fans are too broad brush. I wouldn’t put all the emphasis on comments seen on Twitter etc… I’m not sure that is scientific enough. Certainly, in recent years there seems to be a hardening of attitudes but I don’t think that tells the whole story. I believe there are plenty of Rangers supporters who are not ‘die hard unionist’ – like Celtic or other clubs I think there is a mixture – although I grant you there may be more hard core unionists amongst them. Sometimes in situations of poverty people cling to totems, symbols etc however wrong or out of date.
‘I’m utterly convinced that all Rangers fans are die-hard unionists’
There are quite a few Rangers Fans that vote SNP Doug ………..me for one.
Also what indoctrination are Rangers Fans subjected to in their formative years?
A very poisonous Post, but judging by it’s content, all too worthy of you.
Just on the off chance anybody’s still reading this thread, do look at the breakdown of last week’s results compared to the 2011 election.
http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg715/scaled.php?server=715&filename=scotsmay11vsmay12votesh.png&res=landing
Scottish Skier probably did this to counter Braveheart and others who were banging on about the SNP’s share of the vote having gone down since last year. But the analysis is actually more relevant even than that, and completely destroys the thesis that the SNP didn’t do as well last week because voters are deserting the party.
Rangers fans indoctrinated from youth and they dont vote nationalist…..nice broadbrush stereotyping there. Must be quite a few Queens Park and Thistle fans voting SNP with postal votes then. Personally I think politicians and political blogs should steer clear of football as in Scotland politics of a different degree are involved.
You’ll automatically put off as many people as you draw in by any action and football fans are more loyal to their club than their political parties…..so when you do something bad they will stay with the club before they’ll adhere to the party……you’ll find it much easier to find someone who switched party than one who switched team.
I’m a Rangers fan and have historically voted SNP with some tactical dips into voting Labour
BTW Doug, next time you look in the mirror , think about your own prejudices and see how close to the wind of sectarianism you are flying….naturally like all nutters you’ll forgive it as your cause is just…..well in your world.
“Just on the off chance anybody’s still reading this thread, do look at the breakdown of last week’s results compared to the 2011 election.”
“Breakdown” is what I nearly had trying to understand what the heck that graph was about…
“Rangers fans indoctrinated from youth and they dont vote nationalist…”
Oh, come on. Most fans of ANY club are indoctrinated from youth by their parents (read: father), but in the case of Rangers fans that indoctrination is steeped in Unionism too. Like all generalisations there are exceptions, but pretending that spending hours every week surrounded by Union Jacks and thousands of lunkheads singing “God Save The Queen” and “Rule Britannia” isn’t likely to make someone a little bit more Unionist is daft.
I’m going to hazard a guess that there’s only the one team in Scotland with a picture of Her Majesty hanging on the back of the home dressing-room door.
“Breakdown” is what I nearly had trying to understand what the heck that graph was about…
Oh come on, it’s obvious. And the final answer to anyone who claims voter support for the SNP may be judged as failing, on the basis of last week’s results.
pretending that spending hours every week surrounded by Union Jacks and thousands of lunkheads singing “God Save The Queen” and “Rule Britannia” isn’t likely to make someone a little bit more Unionist is daft.
I used to sing (in the choir) at the Last Night of the Proms every year. I got more and more independence-minded every time.
RevStu that is a typical answer from someone who hasn’t lived the dream and who’s knowledge is based purely on being on the receiving end at a football match …..the background to all this isn’t how you view it at all and although the symptom is what you’d expect, the disease is not what you imagine it to be.
Its based on politics from elsewhere and I base my view on it on of nearly 40 years of following the team and being pretty much ‘indoctrinated’. I have discussed it at length with my father and grandfather and their contempories and the idea of Britain and Westminster being viewed positively neither matches what they in the most told me, their politics or how they behaved in certain circumstances. The root of all this is not a desire to be British but a desire to keep out the influence of the Irish in Scotland.
This was reflected on both sides in an echoing of the colours/actions of respective sides in the NI situation. All this nonsense about Unionism at Rangers has its heart not in British Unionism as you view it from Scotland but in Ulster Unionism in the face of Irish nationalism and a percieved influx of Irish workers to the West Coast. This ‘Irish’ problem was reflected in the West as we had similar communities but of course a differnt polticial situation.
Scottish Nationalism is a relatively new force on the political scene of Scottish Football. Now I’d agree that some Rangers fans have even in my time changed their prejudices and all that supporting England rubbish while in some ways was linked to the English influence in the team also had a darker force behind it. I would however say that it never really caught on in the mainstream. I’m not saying there are no unionists at Ibrox, just that flags and chants don’t always directly match politics, especially when the roots of the ‘regalia’ are linked to a different era and politcal landscape.
My family were predominantly left wing(not that pretendy left wing from today) and I can assure you that there were few if any supporters of the monarchy.
If Rangers fans are all Unionists , where are all the Tories they should have voted in ? Are you seriously saying that Rangers fans don;t vote nationalist….come on that is a statistical impossibility given they have the largest fan base…..