Hamilton Races: Inside a bellwether by-election

If there is such a thing as by-election fever, the people of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse may be immune.

In the words of an SNP staffer, there is a “weird, weird vibe” in the area. A Labour staffer puts it more bluntly, saying people are “pissed off”.

Despite the atmosphere, there is a fierce fight to capture a seat which has become vacant in the worst of circumstances – the death of incumbent and Scottish Government minister Christina McKelvie, who had held the constituency since its creation in 2011. With little less than a year to go until the Scottish Parliament election, the contest is both tragic and totemic.

In the same way that the 2024 by-election for the Rutherglen and Hamilton West seat at Westminster drew attention, all eyes are now on this Holyrood seat. The former contest was won by Labour in a result that predicted the party’s triumph in last summer’s general election and the result here will be seen as a bellwether. 

Press and politicos might be on tenterhooks, but the public here don’t seem to share the enthusiasm. “People are bloody depressed about the whole shebang,” a woman says, lips pursed. “I’m at the stage where I really don’t believe any of them.”

It’s hardly a novel sentiment, but the dissatisfaction is palpable and after a run of council by-election contests with low participation levels – turnout was under 60 per cent in the general election and failed to hit 20 per cent in many subsequent council by-elections – some insiders predict this result could be decided on the say of less than one third of the near-60,000 registered electors. “Voters are frustrated, and they are angry and that’s pretty much with everybody,” says a Labour campaigner.

There’s a field of 10 candidates to choose from – the SSP, the Greens, an independent, the Scottish Family Party, the Lib Dems, Ukip, the Tories, Labour, the SNP and Reform UK are all running. But weeks of campaigning have revealed a three-horse race between the latter three, represented by Davy Russell, Katy Loudon and Ross Lambie respectively. 

Labour has seized upon that image, posing Russell with leader Anas Sarwar at a Larkhall go-kart circuit and Hamilton Racecourse, which is outwith the bounds of the seat, and telling voters that “only Labour can beat the SNP”. But a reluctance to put Russell before the media in a more meaningful way has contributed to a sense that the party has lost not only momentum, but confidence. 

Labour movement

Angela Rayner joins Davy Russell to campaign in Quarter | Alamy

Labour took a battering in England’s recent local elections, finishing in fourth place, and the buzz about Scottish Labour’s chances of forming the next Holyrood administration has abated in the months since Keir Starmer entered Downing Street and made unpopular decisions like ending universal entitlement to winter fuel payments for pensioners. A win in Hamilton would change the conversation and put Sarwar’s team back on the front foot. A loss to the SNP would cast further doubt on the party’s chances of victory next year; a loss to Reform, which did so well in those English locals, would cement the idea Labour’s relevance and power is dwindling. 

Despite, or perhaps because of what’s riding on the 5 June vote, Labour has kept its candidate away from scrutiny. Russell’s campaign has been busy on social media, but his refusal to take part in an STV debate essentially torpedoed the 10.40pm programme, and while Russell explained that he would “rather be chapping doors and talking and listening to ordinary voters” instead, the explanation raised eyebrows.  “If he is chapping doors [at that time], he’s likely to get chased,” commented the broadcaster’s Colin Mackay. It seems the morning is no better for Russell, because when the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland ran live interviews with Loudon, Lambie, Tory hopeful Richard Nelson and Lib Dem candidate Aisha Mir, he was not “able to join” them.

Russell may have been dubbed “the invisible man” by detractors – his party sent a written statement to one husting and a stand-in to another – but there’s no doubting his profile in the community. His face is plastered across the former Santander bank on Hamilton’s Quarry Street which Labour has made its campaign HQ. Though the party has said Starmer will not join the campaign, a visit by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner was disrupted by SSP supporters and others protesting the government’s handling of the war in Gaza.

Plenty of others have also turned out for Russell and, on a Tuesday afternoon, Sarwar has just popped by, Inverclyde MP Martin McCluskey stands chatting outside and Oliver Milne, Scottish Labour’s head of media, is inside with a half a dozen young activists. 

On the street, one Larkhall woman says she’ll be voting for Russell because “it’s a local election and he’s going to do things locally”. Once a senior employee at Glasgow City Council, Russell was also in business with Sarwar’s brother and is known here from the bowling club circuit to the pubs – networks that can boost his personal vote, regardless of any antipathy about his party. Another shopper who backed Labour in the general election describes Russell as “the best of a bad bunch”, but says hers will be “a disillusionment vote”. “I won’t be voting for Keir Starmer, not now,” she says. 

A third is more strident. “I won’t be voting for Labour – you can see what’s in front of your eyes and you’re thinking to yourself, ‘he’s going to flush this country down the toilet’,” she says of the prime minister, railing also at the Chancellor for the change to winter fuel payments and making other social security shifts. “The man’s a downright Pinocchio,” she says. “They’ve not really got a clue how ordinary people live.”

It's arrogance

A retiree from the Eddlewood district says there’s “no way” he’ll vote for Russell, calling him words unfit to print. He hasn’t met the candidate but is unimpressed with Labour and its campaign. “He says ‘I’m the only one who can beat the SNP’ – it’s arrogance,” says the former chef.

“We’ve given Starmer our vote and the first thing he’s done is cut winter fuel payments and put up employers’ National Insurance contributions – that’s going to cost jobs. Then they’re asking us to vote for them again, saying there are too many problems. It’s like me saying ‘your shoes are rubbish’ when I’m the one who bought them for you. The Labour MP, she’s never here, people can’t get answers. I liked Sarwar, but is he an MSP or an NHS dentist? That’s what he’s calling himself, but when’s the last time he practised dentistry?”

He’s similarly unimpressed with the SNP. “Sturgeon was fantastic to begin with, then she became self-absorbed. Then we had Useless from Dundee, now we’ve got John Swinney who’s been in parliament for 17 years,” he says, narrowing his eyes. 

It’s this kind of disenchantment that Reform and candidate Lambie, a councillor for nearby Lesmahagow, hope to capitalise on. So would this man lend them his vote? “No chance,” he says, “they’ve not got the policies.” And, he says, “Nigel [Farage] could be dangerous.”

“I’m terrified of Reform getting in,” comments a Green voter. “A lot of men my age, late 20s and early 30s, their lives are bad and they’re told that’s because of the people on boats, and they’ve not got the brains to think it through.”

Reform agenda

Ross Lambie's campaign has been accused of racism over an online ad | Ross Lambie

The Reform campaign office looks down on Labour’s from a first-floor former lawyer’s office, accessed via a back court and tenement stairway.

Inside there is little buzz, but the man representing the party on the street today, who has travelled from the east end of Glasgow, is positive about the conversations he’s having with locals. He’s clutching small Union Jacks and wads of leaflets and whereas the men in the office are guarded, his enthusiasm is palpable. “I used to vote Conservative, but I just feel the party has lost its way,” he says. “A lot of people don’t want to vote or they’re not interested, and the common thing you get is ‘you’re all the same’. Well, we haven’t had a chance yet, so give us a chance.”

It’s not quite true that Reform UK hasn’t had a chance in Scotland. Indeed, it had an MSP before – Michelle Ballantyne, who, like this activist and like Lambie himself, defected from the Tories. Ballantyne left the Conservatives after being defeated in a leadership bid in November 2020 and was named as Reform’s Scottish figurehead in January 2021. She lost her South Scotland seat in that year’s election and later stepped down from her party role. 

Under Ballantyne, Reform failed to build up a head of steam in Scotland – the party managed just 58 votes in this constituency in 2021 – but in her they at least had a leader here, and there’s no such postholder now, even though defections by 11 sitting councillors from other parties have built the party a base at local authority level.

Clydesdale South councillor Lambie made the leap just over two months ago, joining a party which is yet to produce a full Scottish policy platform. On his leaflets, he presents a vote for Reform as a protest – a way to “send John Swinney and Keir Starmer a message they can’t ignore”. He’s also pushing a message similar to Labour’s on the woes of NHS Scotland, and vows that Reform will “stop the population explosion”. 

On social media his campaign has gone further, running a Facebook ad that opens with the claim that Glasgow-born Sarwar, the only Scottish political leader who is not white, “has said he will prioritise the Pakistani community”. “Only Reform will prioritise the people of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse,” it states. The post cost somewhere between £10k-£15k and was seen an estimated 500,000-600,000 times over a fortnight from May 12. It generated complaints to Facebook owner Meta from Labour and SNP chief executive Carol Beattie, who said its content “crosses the line into race-baiting and scapegoating”. 

pure political deflection

Lambie has denied that the ad is racist but admitted that quote about ‘prioritising the Pakistani community’ are Reform’s words, not Sarwar’s. The political left is trying to build a “two-tier society”, he says, based on a speech given by Sarwar about increasing political participation by those of South Asian heritage, and “people should be in positions of power based on the merit and their contribution to society, we shouldn’t be trying to foist various minority groups into positions”. Complaints about the message are “pure political deflection”, he tells Radio Scotland. 

On the same day, Nigel Farage, who is expected to visit Hamilton ahead of the vote, tells an event in Westminster that Sarwar “introduced sectarianism to Scotland”. “Nigel Farage is a poisonous man who doesn’t understand Scotland, doesn’t care about Scotland,” the Scottish Labour leader hits back.

Passing the small businesses of Gateside Street, a salesman from Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), newly arrived in Scotland, has been paying attention to the discourse. He moved to Lanarkshire because his partner is a nurse here and is genning up on politics ahead of the by-election. Reform’s message, and that of the Labour government, on reducing immigration initially worried him – but that was “before I saw that they are talking about irregular migration, not regular migration”. For that reason, he doesn’t think messaging about a ‘population explosion’ includes him, but he hasn’t yet decided who to back. “I’m still observing,” he says.

And there is plenty to observe as the faultlines in our politics shake and shift. Labour has moved into traditionally Conservative and Reform territory with a crackdown on immigration, with Reform trying to appeal to Labour waverers by championing the return of fuel winter fuel payment universality and the end to the two-child cap – although no Reform MPs voted against its continuation.

The realignment is well illustrated by one of Lambie’s campaign videos, which shows former Tory councillors leafleting for him to a soundtrack of New Labour anthem Things Can Only Getter Better. “Quite a dancy wee tune,” reads the tongue-in-cheek caption.

The question is whether any of this really sets in for the long term, or if our politics and systems can recover from the economic, structural and geopolitical stresses they are under and reset. 
Taking up the front page of the Daily Record, First Minister John Swinney is aiming for the latter. One week until the polls open, the headline, based on an open letter by the Swinney, reads: “Dear voters, Labour can’t win this by-election so if you want to beat Reform the only way to stop them is vote SNP.”

SNP push

Jenni Minto MSP snaps SNP candidate Katy Loudon as John Swinney looks on | Alamy

The SNP’s Loudon certainly hopes her party can retain the seat it’s held for 14 years. She’s used to by-elections, having lost out in that Rutherglen contest, and has been branded a ‘failed candidate’ by rivals. “I don’t know if people expected me to curl up in a ball and never stand for election again,” says the two-time councillor. “Previous elections have been under extremely difficult circumstances for our party. People can see that.”

Indeed, Loudon’s Rutherglen race started after former SNP MP Margaret Ferrier was removed from her seat under new Commons rules for breaching Covid travel restrictions, a matter for which she was also prosecuted. And it played out after ex-FM Nicola Sturgeon was questioned as part of the Operation Branchform investigation into the SNP’s finances. No further action has been taken against Sturgeon, but her now-estranged husband Peter Murrell faces embezzlement charges. 

Loudon stood again as an MP candidate last year in a contest staged weeks after John Swinney became SNP leader, and in which the party’s bloc dropped by 38 seats to just nine. One of those to lose their seats, Alison Thewliss, is in Loudon’s campaign office today, as is former Scottish Government children’s minister Fiona MacLeod, who stood down in 2016. 

The Townhead Street base is in a former Yes hub and Loudon, who sits in the office between scheduled interviews, says she is making herself “as available as I possibly can be”. “It’s really important people get to hear from the candidates who want to represent them. I’m not shying away from anything,” she says.

Does that include voting against a multi-million-pound town centre regeneration push, or the claim from Labour that she, a councillor for Cambuslang, has been “parachuted in” to the contest? “Tell that to my husband, who was born here, and all my family that are here,” she says about her candidacy. “If people want to say that, they just don’t know anything about me. I’ve been knocking about Hamilton for about 25 years. I’m really proud of my record at council level.”

The town centre cash was proposed by the council’s Labour group for pre-planning and consultancy, she says, not delivery. “People just don’t believe it from Labour any more. The most common conversations we have on the doorstep are about the points we’ve highlighted on our leaflets, so either they have memorised our leaflets or we are getting it right. We are talking about people who have voted Labour their entire lives. Almost this time last year they were promising £300 off energy bills, then it went up three times. I completely get why people are scunnered.” 

I want someone who is able to hear you and help you

What about those scunnered with the NHS, which has long been under SNP control? As many as one in six Scots are on waiting lists. “We are hearing about people’s good experiences and also hearing about where things have gone wrong,” she says. “To be able to sit on somebody’s garden wall with the first minister, as I have, and be able to say, ‘we understand that, we are putting in 100,000 extra GP appointments’, that’s delivery.” 

Outside, it’s delivery that care worker Laurence is focused on. Originally from Nigeria, he says he wants “a good representative for my area” – someone, he says, like Christina McKelvie. “I want someone who is able to hear you and help you. When I came to this country I had problems with my documentation – I made a call, she got me an appointment and provided everything for assistance.”

While he’s preparing to vote in the by-election, it turns out that he doesn’t know why it was called. He puts his hand to his mouth when he is told. “I’m sorry to hear that, she was such a nice woman – so helpful,” he says.

In her office, Loudon – referred to by Lambie in one interview as “the SNP lady” – says that’s happened a few times and led to “emotional” moments. “Christina was a great friend as well as a colleague,” she says. “She was a wonderful champion for the community and that’s at the forefront of my mind.”