Labour have lost Glasgow East. A seat where they had a huge 13,507 majority and gained more than 60% of the vote at the last election now lost to the SNP, with a swing of more than 22%.
When Labour is losing a seat like Glasgow East, which they really should be able to hold easily, the end is nigh for them. If this swing was repeated at a general election, Labour would be left with just one MP in Scotland - and if this were to be replicated in England as well… Of course that won’t happen, but it is an interesting statistic to look at.
Labour is now in a critical position. Gordon Brown is lucky that parliament has risen for the summer recess, or I doubt that he would have survived much longer. This was almost certainly arranged on purpose. But even so, Brown’s future as Prime Minister still hangs in the balance.
The results:
John Mason, SNP - 11,277
Margaret Curran, Labour - 10,912
Davena Rankin, Conservative - 1,639
Ian Robertson, Lib Dem - 915
Glasgow East was a good result for the SNP and the Conservatives, a bad resut for the Lib Dems and, rather obviously, a terrible night for Labour. The Conservatives leap-frogged the leaderless Scottish Lib Dems into third place. One thing that hasn’t really been mentioned with recent by-election results is that the Lib Dems, who once triumphed in these elections, really have failed miserably, their “legendary” by-election engine stalling. Three times in a row.
Is this result something from which Labour can recover? It seems unlikely when Glasgow East was such a safe seat. The end appears to be nigh for Labour.
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[...] Lib Dems standing no chance of winning. From when the result of the Glasgow East by-election was announced, no Labour MP was [...]
Many of us out in the country do indeed hope that the end for Labour is nighg, before they can do any more really serious damage to our nation — which appears to be their prime aim nowadays.