SNP stroll to big landslide win in Fife by-election

It's the middle of the night as I post this, but I'll just briefly give you the by-election result, because it's a second impressive win for the SNP in as many weeks.  I'll also try to make a video about the result at some point, but that might have to wait 24 hours or so.

Buckhaven, Methil and Wemyss Villages by-election result (6th November 2025):

SNP 42.6% (-4.9)
Reform UK 28.9% (n/a)
Labour 20.8% (-19.5)
Liberal Democrats 2.6% (+0.4)
Alba 2.2% (+0.9)
Conservatives 1.7% (-4.8)
Sovereignty 1.2% (n/a)

What leaps out at first glance is the following - 

* On a uniform swing, the result is consistent with the SNP having a mammoth nationwide lead over Labour of around 26 percentage points - although of course Labour would no longer be in second place anyway due to the surge for Reform, who appear to have scored their best ever result in Scotland.

* Alba are on their customary 2% of the vote and are clearly going nowhere.  We've seen this type of result enough times by now to know what the propaganda line from Alba HQ will be, ie. "we've increased our vote, we've beaten the Tories", but it doesn't really matter a damn if you occasionally get the better of a larger party on a localised basis - all that matters is whether you are polling strongly enough to win at least one list seat somewhere, and Alba clearly aren't and never have been.

* However, the fact that Alba were able to run a candidate at all in this by-election is of some significance, because it means Chris McEleny has not yet rescinded the letter of authorisation (or email of authorisation, or whatever it was) that he sent to the Electoral Commission at some point before he was expelled from the party in order to allow Corri Wilson to deputise for him as the party's Nominating Officer.  The million dollar question is whether he has insisted on remaining as Nominating Officer since his expulsion (and remember the Alba leadership have no power to sack him) because he intends to withdraw Wilson's authorisation between now and the Holyrood election, thus blocking Alba from running any list candidates, or whether he's just sort of trolling his former party by making them sweat and leaving them to guess what his big plan is.

* In a sense this by-election was also a rare test for the Barcelona-headquartered Liberate Scotland alliance, aka "Greater Prism".  Although there was no candidate running on the Liberate Scotland label, the far-right component of the alliance (Sovereignty) stood under their own name.  However they performed even more poorly than Alba and took just 1% of the vote.

* .* .*

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