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Scottish Labour defied predictions to defeat the ruling Scottish National party in a key Scottish by-election where Reform UK finished in third place.
Davy Russell took the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse seat for Labour with 8,559 votes, beating the SNP’s Katy Loudon by 602 votes on a turnout of 44 per cent.
Labour secured a vote share of 31.6 per cent, with the SNP on 29.4 per cent and Reform on 26.1 per cent. The Conservatives were down at 6 per cent.
The contest comes less than a year before the next elections to the Scottish parliament, when the SNP will seek to extend what will by then be a 19-year stay in power.
The by-election, triggered by the death of sitting SNP MSP Christina McKelvie, was dominated by the rise of Reform, which has been garnering increasing support in council by-elections in Scotland, albeit at lower levels than in England and Wales.
John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, had described the contest as a “two-horse” race between the SNP and Reform, calling for voters to back his party to prevent the Reform leader Nigel Farage getting the party’s first representative in the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh.
Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, said the outcome demonstrated the depth of feeling against the SNP, which faces discontent over the state of public services.
“If you want to get rid of the SNP, the only party that can do that is Labour,” Sarwar told the BBC, saying he expected to become the next first minister after the 2026 elections.
The result — in a central-belt constituency vital for any national victory — injects much-needed momentum into Sarwar’s bid to lead Labour into power in Holyrood next year.
His strong ratings after Labour’s UK general election victory last year have come under pressure.
“Labour’s win is a major boost for a party which was written off as the main challenger in this seat by the SNP and much of the commentariat,” said James Mitchell of Edinburgh university. “It is more a blow to John Swinney than Nigel Farage.”
While opinion polls have indicated that the SNP has lost support since the last Holyrood election in 2021, Reform’s surge tends to take more votes from the Conservatives and Labour.
A national Norstat poll placed the SNP on 33 per cent, with Labour and Reform UK on 19 per cent and 18 per cent, respectively.
Support for independence is at 54 per cent, rising to 58 per cent if Farage were to become Britain’s prime minister.
Swinney, responding to the result, said the SNP still had “work to do”.
The Hamilton campaign was overshadowed by a racism row sparked by a Reform UK advert that incorrectly claimed the Labour leader, who is of Pakistani heritage, had pledged to “prioritise” that community.
Reform, which just hours ago saw its Muslim chair, Zia Yusuf, resign after one of its MPs called for a ban on the burka, described the by-election as an “historic” three-way result.
“It was too close to call, just a few hundred votes between us and the SNP,” Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice told the BBC. “This is a massive boost for us.”
