Back in the Game

Great result for the Tories. Alright result for the SNP. The Libs did well where they needed to do well. Labour got gubbed.

That's the conventional narrative about Thursday's election but I'm not sure it is entirely accurate.

One curious feature about the volunteer's custodianship of the Scottish Labour Party has been her continued willingness to talk down her own Party's prospects. But over the last 48 hours this has gone further. She has talked down our actual result.

You see, we went into this election fearing that Labour might disappear as a serious political force in Scotland and that simply hasn't happened. Certainly we lost Glasgow but only to no overall control and, no disrespect to the Tories, while we remain distinctly challenging for power there, they are still well off challenging us for second place. Despite the double handicap of Kez and Jez, Frank and Anas not only got our horse round the track, they have it safely stabled for the next outing. And that's quite an achievement.

And that pattern has been repeated elsewhere across much of urban Scotland. Labour remains the single largest Party in East Lothian, Midlothian and Inverclyde. We are tied for first in North Ayrshire and are only one seat short here in North Lanarkshire, as well as in West Lothian. Excepting, I concede, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, we otherwise remain the second largest Party in practically all of Scotland's urban authorities.

Now, all of this is poor fare compared to the dominance we once had but it is hardly indicative of a Party that is "finished".

Two weeks past, Kez had no ambition at all except to hold Edinburgh South, have a tilt at East Lothian and, apparently, fund a frankly quixotic attempt to regain East Renfrewshire, where we came third on Thursday past. Indeed it appears the only benefit of the Labour vote holding up at all there would be to allow the SNP to hold on. Why would she want that, I wonder?

Thursday has however changed that, no matter how much she might be about to use her best efforts to obscure it. In 2015, Labour was blown away, by massive margins, in most of our heartland seats. But on Thursday, in terms of first preference votes, we were back to being the largest Party in a good few of these seats. And the Tory revival vote, capable of being embraced risk free in an STV election, is there for the unionist squeezing in places where these voters know they have no chance under first past the post.

The current received wisdom is that based on their 276 Councillors, the Tories might get ten Parliamentary seats. Well, here's the thing, despite everything, Labour has still got 262 Councillors. So why shouldn't we be looking at a similar number of Parliamentary seats as the Tories?

Over to Kez to explain that.