The upcoming by-election in Glasgow East, being triggered thanks to the poor health of the serving member (David Marshall MP), is a different matter to those recently fought in Crewe and Nantwich and Henley. This is an extremely strong seat held in a Labour heartland of at least 50 years and where there is no great love for ‘those Tory bastards‘. Currently it’s held with a massive 60.7% of the popular vote and covers some of the poorest and most deprived areas in the UK. Essentially it’s one of those constituencies where the saying, “you could pin a red rosette on a monkey and it’d win”, is probably fairly apt.
It should be an interesting fight to watch as the SNP square up to make further in-roads into Labour territory … make no mistake, this is going to be a Labour-SNP head-to-head, all other applicants may as well stay at home.
During the Scottish parliamentary election last year Labour held the two Holyrood equivalents (Glasgow Shettleston and Glasgow Bailliston) with either a reduced majority or no change at all. Meanwhile the SNP made double figure percentage gains in each constituency and have consistently outperformed Labour in every way since the election.
This by-election may well be a nail in the coffin of Gordon Brown, if his party can’t convincingly hold this seat in his own ‘Scottish backyard’, then he may well find himself in a tricky position. I’d suspect that a narrow victory would allow him to scrape through … a defeat though would be devastating. I doubt we’ll see an SNP victory (although we can hope) but I do expect we’ll see that majority take a severe kicking.
This by-election aside, Gordon Brown must be sick to death with these things what with the pummelling his party took in Crewe and Nantwich back in April, which saw his party lose an otherwise strong seat that had been held with a 48.8% share of the vote. This Majority was effectively reversed by the Tories at the recent by-election and they now hold it with a 49.5% share of the vote.
That was followed by the more recent Henley by-election, triggered by Boris Johnson’s ascension to Mayor of London, which saw the Tories (not unsurprisingly) hold their seat with an increased majority (from a 53.5% to a 56.9% share of the vote). Meanwhile Labour’s share of the vote fell from 14.7% (2005) to 3.1%. This meant they lost their deposit and that they came fifth behind the widely despised ‘bastarding BNP’ … that’s a pretty poor showing.
