Another week, another by-election humiliation for Starmer, as Labour lose seat to *the Greens* in historic Hillhead vote

The dubious practice we've had in Scotland since 2007 of using what is effectively a majoritarian voting system to fill local councillor vacancies, in seats that were originally elected proportionally, often leads the media to use paradoxical and misleading language about a party "holding" a seat when they actually had to overtake another party to win, or "gaining" a seat when they've gone backwards or stood still.  But what we've seen in Hillhead overnight may be the wackiest example so far.  The Scottish Green Party have "gained the seat from Labour" in what is their first by-election win in history, in spite of the fact that the Labour vote went up, the Green vote went down, and Labour overtook the Greens to win the popular vote in the ward. And yet objectively it's still a bad result for Labour. How is any of this possible?  Let's take a deep breath and go through it step by step.

Hillhead by-election result, first preferences (7th March 2024):

Labour 31.9% (+9.7) 

Greens 31.5% (-4.7) 

SNP 24.9% (-3.7) 

Conservatives 5.3% (-1.4) 

Independent Green Voice 3.3% (n/a) 

Liberal Democrats 2.6% (-2.8) 

Independent - McGinley 0.5% (n/a)

As far as I can see, Hillhead appears to be the only ward in the whole of Scotland where the Greens won the popular vote in the last local council elections two years ago.  There are a few other wards where an individual Green candidate topped the poll, but the combined vote for another party's candidates still outcounted them.

However, local government wards in Scotland are multi-member, and the Greens' triumph in 2022 still meant they only took one of the three seats in Hillhead.  The SNP in second place took one, and Labour in third place also took one.  The vacancy that triggered yesterday's by-election was caused by the death of the Labour councillor, the former MSP Hanzala Malik.  So simply to "hold" a seat they were "defending", Labour had to jump from third place to first.  They actually did just that - but still lost.  How so?  Because it's a preferential voting system, and it's therefore possible for a party that finishes a close second on first preferences to be declared the winner after transfers are taken into account.

It's important to stress, though, that the reason I'm saying this is an objectively bad result for Labour has nothing to do with their travails in the transfers - it's simply that a 9.7% increase in their first preference vote share is a bit underwhelming at a time when they're supposedly making a big comeback in former heartland areas.  That can perhaps be explained by the fact that Hillhead, just like Rochdale last week, has special demographics which mean that the local electorate is much more likely to be deeply unimpressed by Keir Starmer's apologism for genocide in Gaza.  In the case of Rochdale, it was the high percentage of Muslims, whereas in Hillhead it's the big student population.

Perhaps the most worrying thing of all for Labour is that the SNP vote has held up pretty well - a 4 point drop is not too bad in the context of the times.  And it's probably fair to say that the Greens would almost certainly have beaten Labour on the popular vote if it hadn't been for the artificial effect of the intervention from "Independent Green Voice", which is in fact the far-right party run by Alistair McConnachie (who once ignored an invitation to be interviewed on the Scot Goes Popcast!).  There's a long history of Green supporters being hoodwinked into voting for Independent Green Voice due to the name, and it's pretty obvious that's what happened yet again yesterday - there's no way McConnachie would have finished ahead of the Liberal Democrats on his own merits.  So if you see Labour trying to draw solace from their first place in the popular vote, bear in mind it was delivered to them by deceptive tactics from the Holocaust-denying far-right.

How did the Greens overtake Labour to win the seat on transfers?  Fairly straightforward - there were far more SNP voters in the ward than Tory voters or Lib Dem voters, and SNP voters were always going to transfer more towards another pro-independence party that is critical of Israel's atrocities.  The small number of Tory voters did of course transfer mostly to Labour, which pushed Labour a full one hundred votes ahead of the Greens on the fifth count.  That perhaps should give Labour-curious pro-independence voters pause for thought over just what it is about Keir Starmer that is so very attractive to Tory voters.  But once the SNP votes were redistributed, it was strictly no contest.  536 SNP voters transferred to the Greens, and only 249 transferred to Labour, leaving the Greens with a comfortable 187-vote cushion over Labour on the decisive count. 

It's obviously encouraging to see Yes supporters sensibly tranferring from one pro-independence party to another, but in truth it's fairly rare for SNP voters to get a chance to transfer to the Greens.  What usually matters much more is whether the SNP are the second-choice party for Green voters - and that's certainly what will matter in the general election as both the SNP and Labour seek to squeeze the Green vote in a first-past-the-post system.

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