Now that there has been some time to allow the result of the Glasgow East by-election, I feel like posting some thoughts that are less drunken and kneejerk than my previous post. Originally this was going to be one post, but I ended up blabbing for almost 3,000 words so I have split this into three separate posts which will appear one-by-one over the coming days.

First of all, I’ve spotted a few people south of the border wondering about the impact of the result on the union. For instance, Jennie at The Yorkeshire Gob, Jonathan Calder at Liberal England.

I might be on my own here, but my impression is that people in Scotland simply are not asking that same question. I must say that, as far as I can see it, the Glasgow East by-election result could hardly mean less for the union. Although the SNP are proud — and rightly so — of their victory last week, the reality is that this was much more of a Labour loss than an SNP win. Deep down, I think the SNP know that too.

I read (or heard, I can’t remember) a good analysis of Labour’s current woes. I have completely forgotten where I saw this, but the analysis was this. While the people of England and Wales have fallen out of love with Gordon Brown, the people of Scotland have fallen out of love of the Labour Party.

As regular readers may remember, I have from time to time been quite exasperated at how much people (perhaps particularly people south of the border) are still prepared to give the Labour Party the benefit of the doubt time and time again. I think now I understand why. The Labour Party in Scotland acts differently to the Labour Party in the rest of the UK. It’s certainly perceived differently.

Here in Scotland, voters smell the stench of corruption in the Labour Party. When you bear this in mind, as Holyrood Watcher points out, it’s not so difficult to understand why Labour lost in Glasgow East.

It is not just financial wrongdoings either — it’s a sense that Labour took its core voters for granted. There is a mega mega backlash against Labour in its core constituencies in Scotland.

Take my part of the world, Fife, as an example. Until recently, Fife was completely red apart from in the slightly more rural north-eastern part where Menzies Campbell enjoys a healthy majority.

That changed in 2006 when the Liberal Democrats took the Dunfermline and West Fife seat in a by-election, overturning a significant Labour majority. That was an election that Labour shouldn’t really have lost. But the loss was just blamed on Iraq, or whatever, and people shrugged their shoulders and carried on.

Then last year in the Scottish Parliamentary elections the SNP pulled off a surprise by winning Fife Central. It wasn’t the safest of Labour seats, but it was still a sign that Fife wasn’t quite the Labour heartland it used to be.

That was in the Scottish Parliamentary election. But if I remember correctly, the SNP are fairly confident that they will win the roughly corresponding Westminster constituency of Glenrothes. I have relatives in Glenrothes and apparently there is a lot of support for the SNP there.

Assuming the Lib Dems cling on to their two other seats in Fife, that would leave Labour with just one seat in Fife — Gordon Brown’s in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, where I live. Given the massive unpopularity of Gordon Brown at the moment, any “halo effect” there might have been will probably have vanished, and who is to say that the SNP cannot win here? Come the Westminster election I am planning to vote for the SNP to get rid of Labour.

And here is the thing. The SNP can probably count on much of its support for this reason. It is an anti-Labour thing rather than a pro-SNP thing. That can be seen from the fact that (according to my line of events anyway — your mileage may vary!) the ball was started rolling by the Lib Dems.

For a while I thought that the significant anti-Labour vote would mean that whichever party was in the best position to beat Labour in a particular constituency would grab the votes. Come the Scottish Parliamentary election it didn’t quite work out that way and the only real beneficiaries were the SNP.

I guess in the end the Lib Dems were unable to gain in the same way for a number of reasons. First of all, the media coverage made the election into a Labour vs. SNP battle pretty early on. Also, the Lib Dems did not run a great campaign from what I could see, and I never thought Nicol Stephen was up to much as leader.

Also, the Lib Dems were tainted by association. It was difficult for them to capitalise on the anti-Labour vote when they were having to spend the election campaign defending their record as part of a coalition partnership with Labour. That’s why the SNP capitalised on the Labour backlash and the Lib Dems didn’t.

Okay, this is my first politics / amateur psephology post in a while. Brace yourselves!

Professor John Curtice has been making predictions, and I think the clearest message there is that Labour are in big trouble. I really like this cute Labour quote though:

However, a Labour spokesman dismissed Prof Curtice’s forecasts yesterday.

The spokesman said: “These elections are 12 months away. Next year, people will be voting on a Scottish Labour record that has seen our strongest economic performance for a generation and dramatic improvements in NHS waiting times and in fighting anti-social behaviour and crime.”

So today the Scottish Labour record is not of a strong economic performance, improvements in NHS waiting times and fighting crime — but in twelve months it will be? Uhhh.

Meanwhile Alex Cole-Hamilton, who often stands as a Lib Dem candidate round these parts, has his own over-optimistic spin on Curtice’s projections.

Personally, I buy the idea that in Scotland there is a clear anti-Labour vote and that whichever party between the SNP and the Lib Dems is in the best position to halt Labour will pick up the votes.

That’s what happened at the Dunfermline and West Fife Westminster by-election where the Lib Dems picked up all of the anti-Labour votes because they were in second and the SNP were third.

And it’s also what happened at the Moray Holyrood by-election where the SNP were leading in the first place and extended their lead at the great expense of Labour, while the Lib Dems increased their vote a bit.

While we’re at it, can everybody stop trotting out the old line about the Conservatives being dead in Scotland? They’re not. I still occasionally hear the odd person slip up, saying the Conservatives don’t have any MPs in Scotland, when in actual fact they do. John Reid was the last person I heard doing that.

The Tories might only have one Scottish seat in Westminster, but that is under the obscenely warped Labour-Past-the-Post electoral system. In Holyrood, where there is a degree of proportionality, the Conservatives are actually the third-largest party, ahead of the Lib Dems. So it’s a bit rich for any Lib Dems to be going on about how dead the Conservatives are north of the border.

What’s a worse problem for the Tories is that they couldn’t conceivably form a coalition with anybody in Holyrood. Apart from that pensioner bloke, every party and independent MSP could be described as left-of-centre to some extent or another. The entire chamber is opposed to the Conservatives. Literally. Is it a coincidence that a beam detactched and dangled precariously like a Sword of Damocles above the Conservatives? I think not. One of the Tory MSPs joked that all the other parties wanted the beam to fall on top of the Tories, but nobody in the hall laughed — they just nodded.

Anyway, I think the bottom line is that Labour are in trouble, and the SNP are probably in the best position to gain from that. Constituency by constituency the party best placed to dethrone Labour will have the best chance of doing so, but the SNP need fewer gains than the Lib Dems need to threaten Labour in the chamber. Even if the Lib Dems make more gains, the SNP will almost inevitably be the big winners at the Scottish Parliament elections next year.

Curtice reckons the Greens will have the balance of power. It’s plausible. The Greens and the SNP have been flirting with each other recently, but not too long ago the election of Nicol Stephen as Scottish Lib Dem leader was seen as a bit of a step towards better Lib Dem–SNP relations. So is an SNP–Lib Dem–Green coalition likely? I think a Labour minority administration is more likely — to start off with, at least.

Update: Well I should learn to keep my mouth shut because my attention has just been drawn to this:

In the interview, [Nicol] Stephen also all but ruled out a coalition deal with the SNP following the election. SNP leader Alex Salmond has insisted that, if in government, the party would hold a referendum on Scottish independence within its first term.

As Holyrood’s voting system makes it near-impossible for a party to gain an overall majority, he would almost certainly need the support of other parties to carry this out. However, Stephen said:

“I cannot envisage the circumstances in which that [an independence referendum] would be in a partnership agreement.”

Via The Skakagrall.

Apparently, Dunfermline is not a traditional Labour seat! Aahahahahahahahahahhahahah!

Aww wibble. Labour lost an election so they’re off on the huff. I wonder why people don’t vote for them…

The Scotsman reveals that it was even worse for the SNP than we thought!