THE Hamilton by-election result has left the SNP reeling as Labour won a surprise victory and Reform took nearly a third of the vote from a standing start.
The result will be picked over for days, perhaps weeks to come. For now. we've asked Scotland's top commentators to give their immediate post-mortems...
Robin McAlpine
When you get a surprise result in a by-election it is often the result of something that commentators and analysts have missed, a factor or mood that escaped the chattering classes. I'm not sure that is what has happened in Hamilton. I think this result, though it surprised me, probably does more to confirm our current position than confound it.
Put simply, voters feel they have no good options and are voting against things, not for them. There is a very low level of emotional attachment to political parties just now. Walking away is easy. That creates a high level of volatility. It doesn't take much to win or lose an election these days.
READ MORE: SNP activists reveal HQ silenced Reform strategy warnings
So why is the SNP the victim? From a few conversations I have had with people in Hamilton, a lot of what appears to have been on their minds is “the state of the town”. Hamilton was once a prosperous, successful town, it doesn't always feel like that now, and the things people identify as failing are mostly the responsibility of Holyrood.
Combined with the fact that Labour heavily promoted their candidate as “not a politician” and appears to have had a better ground game, it seems to have edged them in front.
What lessons can be taken from this? I've been worried for a while that all the SNP's bluster about having “turned the corner” from its declining situation was difficult to support from the data. It remains stuck on 28% in the polls and my experience of the attitude of even those still voting SNP is hardly what you'd call enthusiastic.
The SNP might wish to dwell on the fact that persuading political insiders and journalists that the “ship is steady” and persuading the public that you're worth getting off the sofa and actually supporting are two very different tasks.
Kenny MacAskill
The Hamilton result is a defeat for the SNP but it’s also a blow to the independence movement. Alba stood aside to “max the Yes vote”, it’s for the Greens to answer why they stood polling more than the small Labour majority and costing victory.
But the SNP fundamentally has to take responsibility for a campaign where they abandoned independence to pursue opposing Reform. In politics it’s always better to say what you’re for rather than against. Yet with independence at over 50% it was forsaken. What should have been the SNP’s unique selling point was abandoned.
READ MORE: Hamilton by-election results – see the full breakdown in charts and graphs
In 1967 Winnie Ewing was resolute in her demand for independence with her quip “stop the world Scotland wants to get on” resonating. Yet this by-election saw the SNP defeated by a very weak Labour candidate. The very sort of apparatchik that Winnie defeated back then and who Alex Salmond saw removed from their political hegemony over Scotland. John Swinney is now in danger of handing Scotland back to Labour on plate rather than delivering independence.
Winnie excited voters with the prospects of Scotland gaining from her natural resources and Scotland’s North Sea oil. Shamefully, that wealth has been stolen and our refinery shut. But now a renewable energy bounty is arriving. Scotland is energy rich, but Scots are fuel poor and businesses and jobs aren’t following.
It’s why the independence movement needs to come together. Next year’s Holyrood election must be a plebiscite election, and “max the Yes vote” the strategy.
Lesley Riddoch
This was a grim result for independence. The much-pilloried Labour candidate Davy Russell won – and he did so for two big reasons. First, Labour camped out in the constituency for months – but the SNP could have done the same. Second, and more importantly, Russell was a highly visible local and “not a politician”. In a constituency and an era where trust has been lost in both Westminster and Scottish governments, folk will always prefer one of their own. And much as Russell failed to loup the bar as a conventional candidate, he scored big time as a born and bred man who works for local charities, enjoys bowling at the local club and is a regular at the local karaoke. Since there was no actual polling in the constituency this local effect was completely missed by everyone.
This is a warning.
“Non politicians” thrive when politics becomes technocratic, impersonal and unengaging. That includes the “non-politicians” of Reform, whose leader successfully presents as a regular guy but owns four houses and co-owns his party. He is a disruptor, as the SNP were before becoming custodians of a devolved government.
READ MORE: John Curtice issues verdict on Hamilton by-election after 'surprise' result
Sure, they must make governance work but they must also develop strong home-grown local candidates for elections and stop drawing a polite veil over problems they cannot fix without independence.
A spark, hope, vision is needed – yet independence was apparently not mentioned in any of Katy Loudon’s election leaflets.
It was a tough night to be doing BBC commentary in Glasgow, but more depressing was breakfast in a nearby hotel where the waiter, about to graduate in naval engineering, said he’s off to London because there are no engineering jobs in Scotland. All his friends are doing the same. T’was ever thus. But it could and must be otherwise. It’s why we need independence.
Tommy Sheppard
When it’s this close you could plausibly argue that any number of things might have altered the result. There are always a myriad of push and pull factors that play on an electorate’s mind and determine how it will settle.
More important is the overall narrative of the election; the stories parties tell and which are believed.
In this by-election this electorate chose not to believe the SNP’s story. We need to ask why – and we need to get a better one.
The central theme of the SNP’s campaign was to argue the contest was a two-horse race, between them and Reform UK. Only the SNP could beat the buoyant new far-right insurgents.
READ MORE: Angus Robertson tears into BBC coverage of Hamilton by-election count on live TV
From the off, this is an unusual play to make in defence. The two-horse race line is usually deployed by a challenger to mobilise opposition to an incumbent.
Doing it in this context results in a number of unfortunate and unintended consequences. First it necessarily portrays the SNP as the status quo. With an electorate boasting many reasons not to be cheerful that is always going to be a tricky ask.
Second, in defence the argument has the reverse effect on your opponent that it might in attack. The other party, in this case Reform, are presented as the second most important party. The message to anyone flirting with Reform is that they are a serious contender, best placed to upset the SNP. We make their argument for them.
But the two-horse argument only works if it is plausible and resonates in the real world. Despite tens of thousands of leaflets and thousands of knocked doors repeating the line, most people simply didn’t believe it.
Kelly Given
It is becoming so tiring to watch the SNP make these same mistakes over and over again. The party can go one of two ways here: we can continue down this road of drab, uninspiring middle-of-the road, careful politics; of campaigns that are centred on the unimpressive fact that we’re not fascists, alternatively known as the utter depths of the bare minimum; of peddling the dream of a “steady ship” in the hope that the prospect of safety might inspire an angered electorate baying for change.
Or we can rise to the occasion.
What this moment requires, the only thing that will serve as an antidote, is a radical alternative. Policy that not merely berates the status quo, but that presents as its opposite. It’s time we put on our armour and pushed back with all of our might – because it is coming for us. We can either continue to dither in the nothingness of our “steady ship” or we can rise to the challenge and offer the unshakeable hope that this party was built on. That we know it can offer.
Strategically, this campaign was a farce and it is the same flawed strategy that has been rinsed and repeated time and time again. The SNP needs fresh perspective, fresh ideas – not the same tight circles servicing the same machine so that it can perform in the same way it always has done. For as long as those at the top ignore that reality, treading this line of mediocrity is the future that awaits us. If we fail to meet this threat where it demands to be met, we will be relegated to irrelevance – and it will be deserved.
Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp
Hundreds of SNP activists hit the streets of Hamilton and worked their backsides off for independence and I am gutted for them. They are motivated by independence but the SNP leadership has let them down by inexplicably, once more, refusing to make independence the key message of the campaign. As I and many others predicted, the indy motivated voters sat on their hands and did not vote SNP.
I have said publicly and in private meetings with the SNP leadership and their advisors, to campaign on a platform of good governance when you are only allowed to govern through a system that limits your powers, limits your budgets and limits your nations ambitions is tantamount to political suicide. The only way the SNP have to motivate their vote for the 2026 Holyrood Election is to commit to a new national conversation through the Citizens’ Convention plan from Believe in Scotland and start listening to those in the wider grassroots independence movement that have been trying to help them focus on independence for years.
At this point the SNP must now realise that even forming the next Scottish Government will be an uphill battle unless they stop ignoring the series of wake-up calls and stop pushing the snooze button on independence. The only reason that independence doesn't seem to be the defining idea of Scottish politics right now is because the SNP have failed to define how they will deliver independence.
Ellie Gomersall
I won't pretend this result didn't come as a surprise. Having spent time chatting to voters in the constituency, I thought the SNP would win this time, and that Labour would struggle to place second. In fact, it ended up being the other way around.
What didn't surprise me though, was the result for Reform. People across Scotland are fed up with successive governments in both Westminster and Holyrood who have implemented austerity at worst, and managed decline at best. Our public services have been eroded by a lack of ambition to tax the rich and redistribute wealth – simply put, voters have tried the SNP, they've tried Labour and they've tried the Tories, and none of them have managed to materially improve people's lives.
What's clear is that voters are fed up. They're bored by a stale SNP government which refuses to be bold after 18 years in power, and they're feeling betrayed by a Labour government which isn't offering the change it promised. Instead, they're turning to Reform, but their offer is nothing but snake oil. They're solidly in the pockets of the millionaire class and the city bankers who bankroll their project. Nonetheless, this result confirms that next year's election will see Reform MSPs in the Holyrood chamber – and it's the responsibility of all of us on the left to take the fight directly to them and make the case for real change to improve the lives of ordinary people.
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