Tides

Happy May day!

On Thursday night past I went to the selection conference for the next Labour Candidate for the Westminster constituency of Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East. In some ways it was an absurd event. Speeches and then questions and then a vote. One member of the audience had decided that she was going to ask the same question of every candidate. "Was it acceptable that people who were working had to resort to foodbanks?" A fair point, except that having announced that she would ask the same question of every candidate, she asked it of one candidate who had made "it is ridiculous people who are working have to resort to foodbanks" a central element of her, already delivered, speech. But the same question had to be the same question, even as the chair knew it would be the same question and yet called it again in preference to others in the room with their hands up. 

And that's not even to get me started on the guy who suggested to one aspiring candidate that the solution to the NHS was more private provision. An arguable point hardly one you would anticipate being advanced by a member of the Labour Party. 

As to the candidates themselves? THey were genuinely all more than adequate to for the position they sought. not just of Labour candidate but Labour MP. Mind you, one of them thought it was a point in his favour that he was proud to have the support of ASLEF, the CWU and Unite. He might as well have sung "Oh, Jeremy Corbyn!". Again a view but hardly one to endear him to anybody who knew the remotest thing about the membership of Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East CLP. Or indeed Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill.  Unsurprisingly he got gubbed. 

Since this was a "twinned" selection, gubbed by Frank McNally, who will be our candidate for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill. And almost certainly the MP for that seat come the next election.

But my point here is not about Frank's seat. It is about my own. Which was regarded as the consolation prize. For while we should get Coatbridge etc back from the Nats, indeed we did 2017-19, Cumbernauld etc is supposedly a much harder nut to crack. 

Except for something said by the candidate I voted for on the night, Katrina Murray. The old constituency, Cumbernauld and Kilsyth,  was always a bit marginal between us and the SNP. But when the Kirkintilloch East bit was added in it became, at the time, altogether safer. When Greg McClymont succeeded Rosemary McKenna in 2010 he could not unreasonably have concluded he had a seat for life. Except that he went, in a single election, from being 14.000 votes ahead of the SNP in 2010, to being 14.000 votes behind five years later. Through no fault of his own. A swing is a swing. 

But as Katrina observed on Thursday, when you are swept in by a rising tide, you are at least as easily swept  out again as that tide recedes.

The press continue to flog the idea that Scottish Nationalism remains a live thing. And, in advance of that thesis, to maintain that while SNP might suffer some losses to Labour in the 2024 General Election, it will continue to be a live thing. I have written elsewhere why that reporting brings with it a substantial element of self interest but that is not my point  here. It is that the next General Election will not just be about Scottish Labour, if we appear to be on the way to being the UK Government, and particularly if the Nats stick with Useless, picking up 10 to 15 seats from the SNP. Rather it might easily be about us picking 30 to 40. Including Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East . As I readily concede the Nats did to us the other way round in 2015. As even we did not think that possible, in much safer seats  than Cumbernauld etc,  before that traumatic event. For first past the post is brutal for the SNP. Just as at a certain level it has been brutal for us since 2015. Two facts not to lose sight of. In 2015 we still got 24.3% of the popular vote but only one seat out of 59. But in October 2074 the SNP got 30.4% and 11 of 71 seats, while Labour, with just 36.3%, less than 6% ahead, got 41. Because their vote was everywhere, whereas ours was overwhelmingly just in the central belt. Indeed the Tories with considerably fewer votes than the SNP nonetheless got more seats (16) because their vote was also concentrated, albeit, obviously, elsewhere

Could that happen again? Perhaps at least that possibility should be starting to be reported? That the SNP seats might melt away as rapidly in 2024 as comprehensively as ours did in 2015. Perhaps it finally will be after the Rutherglen by election? Bring it on.