Labour seeks to win over disaffected voters in Glasgow’s wealthy suburbs

In leafy East Renfrewshire, where Scotland’s best state schools lure better-off Glaswegian commuters, voters have a fickle history. 

The constituency, once the safest Conservative seat in Scotland, got solidly behind Tony Blair’s New Labour under former Scottish leader Jim Murphy. In recent years, the blend of wealthy suburbs and rural moorland has been held by Labour, the Tories and, most recently, the Scottish National party. 

As the cost of living crisis reaches into such affluent parts of greater Glasgow, Labour is targeting the seat again — even if it remains a reach — with the party needing to leapfrog over the Conservatives, who came second in 2019 and whose candidate is Sandesh Gulhane, an NHS doctor and MSP.

Labour’s hopes of a glorious march through the populous central belt between Glasgow and Edinburgh would be crowned by dislodging the incumbent, the SNP’s Kirsten Oswald, who won in 2019 with 44.9 per cent of the vote and a 5,426 majority over the Conservatives.

Labour, which used to send dozens of Scottish MPs down to Westminster, only sent one in 2019. It is once again eyeing Scotland as the foundation for a healthy majority in the House of Commons. 

The SNP, beset with scandal and disunity, has been in power for 17 years at Holyrood, the Scottish parliament. Voters — dismayed at the party’s record in devolved policy areas such as healthcare and education, a fragile economy and rising taxes — look likely to punish the SNP’s representation at Westminster. The leaders of the four parties with Scottish seats — the SNP, Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats — will take part in a debate on STV this evening.

“Glasgow is going down the toilet. We are taxed to the hilt, but where is the money going,” said John Millar, owner of a mechanical workshop. “I will vote tactically against the SNP — all these years in power and they turned my city into a shithole.”

Labour candidate Blair McDougall, director of the unionist campaign in the 2014 independence referendum, said East Renfrewshire’s homeowners were upset with the Conservatives because of the higher mortgage rates triggered by former prime minister Liz Truss’s “mini” Budget. Concerns about healthcare had also turned voters away from the SNP, he added. 

“When times are tough, things that used to provide reassurance, like the NHS, are now a source of anxiety and they blame the SNP for that,” he said. “There is a coalition of people deeply unhappy with their economic circumstances.”

The story is being played across Scotland, where recent polling put the SNP on 31 per cent, down 14 points on the 2019 election, and Labour up 18 points on 37 per cent. Pollster Mark Diffley said this could translate into Labour winning about 30 seats across Scotland, including 20 to 25 from the SNP across the central belt.

“Labour now have a clear lead in Westminster vote intentions for the first time since the 2014 independence referendum”, said Sir John Curtice of Strathclyde University.

“I don’t want Scotland to send a message to Westminster. I want Scotland to send a Labour government,” was UK Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s message at his campaign launch at the Glasgow headquarters of City Facilities Management, the multinational founded and run by Labour peer Lord William Haughey, a major donor and supporter.

Labour’s aim is to show Scots that a collaborative relationship between Scotland and Westminster — in contrast to years of feuds — could quickly deliver jobs, better public services and infrastructure.

“Interdependence becomes key — we could see a generative dance between Westminster and Holyrood. Rather than competing parliaments, which is what we have at the moment, we could see co-operating parliaments,” said Chris Carter, a professor at the University of Edinburgh Business School and close associate of Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.

Initiatives such as the creation of Great British Energy, a green energy utility headquartered in Scotland, could boost Sarwar ahead of the 2026 Holyrood election, allowing him to say “if we can deliver this in opposition, imagine what we could do in government at Holyrood”, said Carter.

For the SNP, however, preventing Labour taking more Scottish seats than them would be a “win”, keeping the flame of a second independence referendum alive, said Stewart Hosie, campaign director for the SNP. 

The SNP is hoping that veteran John Swinney, who took over as first minister from Humza Yousaf last month, can appeal to the half of the country who remain in favour of independence. 

Oswald, East Renfrewshire’s SNP MP, said the experience of a veteran such as Swinney had been welcomed on the doorstep. “It’s reassuring to people to have him there when the world is in a state of flux.” 

Swinney, at the party’s campaign launch in Glasgow, attacked Labour as Tory impersonators who wanted to privatise the NHS, extend Conservative spending cuts and accept the economic cost of Brexit.

“The only substantive change Labour seem to be offering is to change their own core principles,” he said.

Oswald said voters also valued Scottish government measures tackling the cost of living crisis, such as lower train fares and free university tuition for their children. 

“We need to go hard on ABC — austerity, Brexit, cost of living,” said Hosie. “The truth is that only independence brings change,” he said.

Yet the link between desire for independence and SNP support is loosening. The latest polling showed fewer than two-thirds of those who would vote to leave the UK in a referendum intended to vote SNP, said Curtice. “The party badly needs to try and persuade Yes supporters to return to the party fold,” he said.