ALMOND VALLEY
Winner in 2016: Angela Constance (SNP)
ALMOND Valley is essentially a rebranded version of the old Livingston constituency, which for many years was synonymous at Westminster level with Robin Cook. Labour’s fondly remembered former foreign secretary won the seat on six consecutive occasions with large majorities that peaked at more than 13,000 votes just before his untimely death in 2005.
However, at local government level in West Lothian, the SNP were sometimes much more competitive – for example in 1992 they narrowly emerged as the largest single party on the district council. That left the impression that Cook’s personal vote was masking the potentially marginal nature of the constituency.
The point was proved with the advent of devolution because the SNP’s Greg McCarra came within less than 11 points of Labour in the Holyrood seat in 1999. However, in the Westminster by-election caused by Cook’s death in 2005, the SNP’s high hopes were dashed when Angela Constance was handily beaten by Labour’s Jim Devine, albeit with a pro-SNP swing of around 10%.
A TV reporter rounded off his report on the result by declaring that the SNP’s hopes of taking power at Holyrood in 2007 “lay in TATTERS” – an episode that should stand as a monument to the hubris of Scottish broadcast journalism, because of course the SNP did take power in 2007, and Livingston was one of the minorities of Labour constituency seats that changed hands along the way. Constance made up for her by-election disappointment by claiming a modest SNP majority of 870 votes.
Given that track record, it’s no surprise that Almond Valley is now a rock-solid SNP seat – indeed the only slight oddity is that the SNP margin of victory in 2016 wasn’t even higher than the 24% they managed.
On a uniform swing, Labour would need to move slightly ahead of the SNP nationally before they’d gain the constituency next week. That plainly isn’t on the cards, meaning Constance should be safely returned for a fourth term as the local MSP.
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