YOU didn’t need a degree in non-verbal communication to read the body language at the Glasgow count in the Emirates. More than an hour before the final results were declared around 4am, troops of ashen-faced Labour activists lined up at the main entrance, keeping a silent, solemn vigil. Behind them Margaret Curran sat, surrounded by her family. The look on the one-time Scottish secretary’s face said it all: Labour was doomed.
SNP supporters, buoyed further by the presence of their leader Nicola Sturgeon, were ecstatic.
And so it came to pass. In Glasgow, as across Scotland, the SNP cleaned up as Sturgeon, surrounded by the press, looked on. There were two things in common among the steady procession of candidates that passed through stage in what was the Commonwealth Games Velodrome: all the victors were Scottish nationalists, and all the majorities were crushing.
The old gags about a monkey with a red rosette winning in Glasgow can be laid to rest. No longer is the Labour vote weighed. At times the tables reserved for Labour ballots were almost embarrassingly empty. On a night that will resonate through Scottish political history, the scale of the Labour defeat in Glasgow stood out.
“The tectonic plates of Scottish politics are clearly shifting. I think what we are seeing is an historic shift in Scottish political opinion,” Nicola Sturgeon told the BBC as the results were coming in.
There really was no “I think” about it.
Scotland’s political landscape had, in a stroke, been changed, changed utterly.
In Glasgow North East, Willie Bain lost to political newbie Anne McLaughlin. That’s the same Willie Bain who won 68 per cent of the vote in 2010 with odds of 1-500 at the bookies. The Glasgow North East swing from Labour to the SNP was 39.3 per cent — a new record.
Patrick Grady was the first winner on the night, declaring it “the greatest honour to be the first SNP MP ever elected” in Glasgow.
“Scotland is speaking very loudly and clearly at this election and it is important that the Westminster parties pay attention to that,” he told The National.
When Natalie McGarry climbed onto the stage beaming from ear to ear it was clear who the winner would be. But once more the scale was overwhelming. The SNP candidate won 24,116 votes to Margaret Curran’s 13,729. No wonder Curran had looked so despondent earlier. Turnout was over 60 per cent, a significant increase on 2010. Afterwards, McGarry spoke of the huge increase in engagement since the referendum.
From there the SNP wins kept coming. A cheer came from what remained of the Labour support when Carol Monaghan said that “last September the people of Scotland exercised their democratic right” by voting to stay in the union.
But the claps ended when the new MP for Glasgow North East said that “the referendum rekindled Scotland’s self-confidence and this General Election has given us our voice”.
In the days leading up to the vote, Scottish Labour stalwarts had predicted the former deputy leader would hang on in Glasgow Central. In the end, Alison Thewliss won with well over 7,000 votes to spare.
Asked about the future of Labour in Scotland, Anas Sarwar demurred.
“Tonight’s not a night for rush comment and rash analysis,” he said.
But Ian Davidson, who lost in Glasgow South West, was in no mood for circumspection. Labour, Davidson said, ran a disastrous campaign that began by appealing to yes voters and ended up appealing to Tories. The buck stopped with one man: Jim Murphy. “Morally, as the man who has led us to the biggest-ever disaster that Labour has suffered in Scotland, of course he can’t continue,” Davidson said. “Jim has got to do the honourable thing and resign.”
Stewart McDonald polled almost double Tom Harris’s 14,504 votes. Evidently the zany dog videos had limited appeal with the people of Glasgow South. SNP activist Graham Campbell, who campaigned for Anne McLaughlin in Glasgow North East, admitted “we were not really believing our canvass returns”.
He added: “Labour voters who were Labour voters last year and had voted yes had switched. They had made their choice months ago. We didn’t even have to convince them”.
That seems to be the story of Glasgow. Former Labour supporters didn’t just vote SNP, they enthusiastically gave them a landslide.
Where Labour goes from here in their one-time heartland is anybody’s guess. Today Glasgow belongs to the SNP.
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