Result in Glasgow

What will almost certainly be the last by-election of this Parliament was held last night in Glasgow North-East, the seat of former Speaker Michael (now Lord) Martin. Labour held the seat, which was expected, but they also won it with a surprisingly large majority. Labour ended up with a majority of 8000 over the Scottish National Party on a turnout of 32%. The Conservatives came third another 3000 votes back, closely followed by the British National Party. In a very disappointing result for the Liberal Democrats, their candidate came 6th with 2.3% of the vote.

So what does this mean? Does it mean anything? Well... yes and no. Glasgow North-East is one of the safest Labour seats in the country. Anything other than a massive victory would have been truly shocking. Coupled with the Glenrothes result from last year, it appears that the Scottish vote will hold up for Labour in the General Election, which might stymie some expected gains for the Tories, Lib Dems and SNP. It could also mean less of a defeat for Labour in a General Election, since they will have a strong base of Scottish seats to fall back on.

However(!!!), there are other readings of this result. This result, coupled with Norwich North and Crewe & Nantwich, may well prove that Gordon Brown is successful in getting hardcore Labour partisans out to vote - but is disproportionally bad at keeping swing voters and casual Labour supporters to the ballot box to vote Labour. This may mean an unexpectedly bad result for Labour - since rather than a uniform fall in their support (so marginal and safe seats lose approximately the same number of votes), Labour is still winning the same number of votes in safe seats, and losing disproportionally more votes in marginal seats, which would see more of these marginal seats fall to the Tories. More importantly, most of these marginal constituencies are held by those on the right of the party. A clear out of these members could see Labour fall into the same position as they did in the early 1980's.