Support for pro-independence parties increases in the Linn by-election - but Labour still take the seat

First of all, the normal disclaimer that I'm taking this result from a Twitter post, so I can't 100% guarantee its accuracy.  When I've manually checked Twitter reports of local by-election results in the past, it's amazing how often there have been major discrepancies in the percentages.

Linn by-election result on first preferences (17th November 2022)

Labour 43.4% (+11.3) 

SNP 33.2% (-0.2) 

Greens 8.0% (+1.9) 

Conservatives 6.4% (-5.1) 

Liberal Democrats 5.7% (-0.6) 

Alba 1.8% (+0.5) 

SSP 0.9% (n/a) 

UKIP 0.4% (n/a) 

Freedom Alliance 0.4% (n/a)

If you do the sums, the first thing you'll notice here is that Labour have overtaken the SNP in the ward since the local elections six months ago.  But in the strange world of STV by-elections, this will still be classed as a Labour hold, not a Labour gain, because the vacancy was caused by the death of one of the ward's two Labour councillors.  The good news is that the combined total vote for pro-independence parties has increased from 40.8% in May to 43.9% yesterday - although that may be partly due to a sizeable chunk of votes for an independent candidate in May becoming freshly available.

The result is actually strikingly in line with what you would have expected from the recent Scotland-wide opinion polls.  Labour have made gains that are significant but hardly of biblical proportions.  The extra Labour voters have come to a substantial degree from the Tories and not from the SNP, whose support has held up since May - when remember they won an all-time record high share of the vote in local elections.

Linn was a particular test for my own party Alba, who were standing in a by-election for the first time ever.  Our result can be viewed in either a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty way, because we did slightly increase our share of the vote in the ward.  However, I suspect the general feeling will be one of disappointment.  A by-election removed some of the disadvantages faced by Alba in previous elections - our resources weren't stretched too thin, with activists able to pour in from across the country, and Alex Salmond was there to campaign in person.  The leadership probably hoped that would be enough to get us out of the frustrating 1-2% zone, but unfortunately that hasn't proved to be the case.  

This is merely the first in a double-header of by-elections Alba are standing in, and if we get a better result in two weeks from now, it'll be entirely reasonable to 'split the difference' and conclude that a little progress has been made.  However, taken in isolation, the Linn result supports the observation I made a few weeks ago that Alba's current coalition of support appears to be too narrowly-based and will not be sufficient to win list seats at the next Holyrood election.  There are still three-and-a-half years to go, so it's entirely possible list seats could yet be won, but that will depend on using that time to grow our support rather than contentedly flatlining in the 1-2% zone.  It looks like we've pretty much maxed out the 'furious at Nicola Sturgeon, let's destroy the SNP' vote and that we'll have to move out of our comfort zone to find the considerable extra support we need.

As I said after the local elections six months ago, the people who assume Alba will shortly cease to exist because of repeated poor electoral results are missing the point.  Defeats played a part in the demise of parties like Change UK, but that was only half of the equation - the other half was that the people involved had alternative political homes (such as the Liberal Democrats) to turn to.  Alba will continue to exist for the foreseeable future, irrespective of election outcomes, simply because we do not have an alternative home in the SNP under its intolerant current leadership.  But that doesn't mean that we should settle for mere existence without non-trivial support at the ballot box.  We can choose to actually do something with our continued existence, but achieving the elusive breakthrough will mean being brutally honest with ourselves about the fact that, as currently constituted, we're too narrow a sect.  We've been lulled into a false sense of security by the knowledge that we genuinely represent a substantial proportion of the independence movement, and we've assumed that's bound to be reflected sooner or later in a similar proportion of pro-independence votes.  But the wider pro-independence Scotland - made up of the vast swathes of people who aren't members of political parties and aren't involved in Yes groups and don't go to public meetings - is a very different universe.

Towards the end of my year on the Alba NEC, I became concerned that - paradoxical though it may seem - a sense of complacency was creeping in about the party's chances in 2026.  That was generated in part by some truly heroic assumptions about the voters who gave their third preference votes to Alba in May behind two SNP candidates.  The thought that people who don't actively hate you are bound to vote for you on the Holyrood list is seductive when you're looking for glimmers of hope, but I'm afraid political reality is a lot harsher than that for small parties.  Non-hate is not support.  We don't yet have the support we need and we're going to have to earn it.  We need to pitch our tent on the radical end of the pro-independence mainstream, with mainstream being the operative word.  That means, I would suggest, no longer pandering (albeit in a deniable way) to ethnonationalists, and massively toning down the near-homicidal rage at the SNP and senior people within it.  Putting a decisive end to the constant dark hints that we might try to sabotage a plebiscite election with a revenge mission against the SNP would be an extremely positive first step along that road.

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