Every day until the election, James Kelly of ScotGoesPop is profiling Scotland’s UK Parliament constituencies.
ABERDEEN NORTH
Winner in 2017: Kirsty Blackman (SNP)
It’s easy to forget, because it doesn’t show up too well on the political map of Scotland, but the SNP do still very much have a presence in the north-east at Westminster level.
Aberdeen North was for many decades a geographically tiny Labour oasis surrounded in all directions by Tory territory, and that once-familiar pattern was suddenly resurrected in the 2017 election, but with the SNP taking over Labour’s past role. Even just a few years ago, it would have seemed highly improbable that the SNP would ever have got into that position, because in the 70s, 80s and 90s they made substantial inroads into previously Tory seats of the rural north-east, but remained well off the pace in Aberdeen North. Their best performance in the constituency during that period was in their breakthrough election of October 1974, when their local vote rose to nearly 30% – but that still left them 21 points behind Labour.
READ MORE: General Election: Will the Tories win again in Aberdeen South?
The political realignment caused by the indyref has very abruptly turned the traditional assumptions upside down. These days, past Labour strength and past Tory weakness seem to be the best predictors that the SNP are likely to win a seat, and a history of SNP strength or weakness is strangely less relevant. Aberdeen North is now the fifth-safest SNP constituency in the whole country, and is the only seat in the north-east where they don’t have to worry about the Tories being their main opponent – although admittedly there’s an outside chance that might be about to change, because the gap between Labour and the Tories was only 7% in 2017. It’s also one of only a handful of SNP-Labour battleground seats that the SNP could hold on a uniform swing if they fall slightly behind Labour in the Scotland-wide vote.
With there being precious little chance of Labour resuming their former leading role in Scottish politics any time soon, the SNP’s Kirsty Blackman looks like a shoo-in for re-election.
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