Scottish nationalists have to win big against Labour party, while hoping Labour succeed south of the border,but it is unlikely the result will be so close.
In 2017, the Scottish National Party held off an insurgent Labour challenge by just 75 votes in Glasgow North East.
This time around sees the incumbent SNP MP, David Linden, take on Labour Party‘s Kate Watson.
With less than three weeks until the election, there are few signs here of it taking place at all. The usual placards and posters are yet to be placed.
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Activists have suggested it is common sense Glasgow’s famously hospitable weather would likely obliterate anything not nailed down, while most voters are wary about voting at all, or have already made up their minds.
Despite the current political ennui, Glasgow East has become a bellwether seat as well as one of the country’s poorest constituencies.
For decades it was safely Labour, as was common among Scotland’s working-class communities. But 2008 saw a shock by-election win for the SNP which confirmed their entry into mainstream Scottish politics.
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Labour regained the seat in the 2010 general election, before voters flocked to the SNP in 2015 a landslide win for the nationalists. Margaret Curran, a veteran stalwart of the Labour Party in Scotland, lost by more than 10,000 votes in a result which became an emblem for its decline in its heartlands.
New Labour’s third-way politics were designed to appeal to wealthier voters, typically in more affluent constituencies in England.
While their plan successfully paved the way for Blair and Brown’s administrations, it neglected the concerns of voters in seats such as Glasgow East, whose Easterhouse estate had been memorably described as “a desert with windows”.
Labour Party has perhaps the most ambitious manifesto seen in decades, but it has little traction here. “This election is all about Brexit nothing else,” local said.
It has become harder for UK parties to draw on right-wing support in England without a trade-off among liberal voters in Scotland.
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The SNP has positioned itself as the vanguard of Scotland’s anti-Brexit public. The country voted by a 62-38 margin to remain in the European Union, and the SNP has spent the past three years capitalising on the image of a Tory-run Westminster government tearing Scotland away from the EU’s financial prosperity.
Scottish nationalists have to win big against Labour party in Scotland.
