Keir Starmer, leader of the UKs Labour Party, and Victoria Starmer, his wife, arrive at the partys annual conference in Liverpool. (File photo via Bloomberg)
UKs Labour Party has won a bigger-than-expected victory in Scotlands parliamentary by-elections, signaling the declining popularity of Prime Minister Rishi Sunaks Conservative Party.
"This is a seismic result. People in Rutherglen and Hamilton West have sent a clear message - it is time for change. And it is clear they believe that this changed Labour Party can deliver it," Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said in a statement on Friday.
The Labour Partys candidate Michael Shanks bagged 17,845 votes in a landslide victory against his rival from the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) with 8,399 votes, raising expectations that Starmers party could unseat the Scottish nationalists and go on to win a UK-wide vote against the Tory.
Opinion polls show Labour is currently on track to win the general elections next year -- and after an absence of more than a decade -- return to No. 10.
SNP leader Humza Yousaf, in the meantime, described the loss of a parliamentary seat in the by-elections as a "disappointing night" for the Scottish nationalists.
Once the dominant force in Scottish politics, Labours influence declined at a national level after Gordon Browns government surrendered the PMs office to David Cameron, the then-leader of the Conservative Party, in 2010.
Meanwhile, the current leader of the Conservative Party, Rishi Sunak, finds himself in hot water, grappling with high inflation and a cost-of-living crisis since taking office last year.
UKs most prominent pollster, Sir John Curtice, Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University, said the recent win is a "remarkably good result" for the Labour party.
"Its well above the kinds of swings weve seen in the opinion polls in Scotland. The Labour vote is up to nearly 59 percent, thats 24 points," he noted.
"That means the Labour vote in the constituency is almost as high as it was in 2010 before the tsunami that swept the Labour party from virtually every constituency in Scotland."
Curtice added the swing of about 20 percent was more or less twice what has been showing in the opinion polls.
The polling guru predicted that if this kind of swing were to be replicated across Scotland as a whole then Labour would "quite clearly" be the dominant party in Scotland again.
LINK: https://www.ansarpress.com/english/27519
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