The Scottish Conservatives have won their first by-election since 1973, taking Aberdeen South from the SNP in a result that Kemi Badenoch said sent a message to both Labour and the SNP.
Douglas Lumsden, a former oil and gas worker, secured just short of 50 per cent of the vote – well ahead of the SNP’s Richard Thomson on 28.6 per cent. Reform came a distant third, while Labour finished fourth with just 5.4 per cent. The result represented a big swing from the last general election, turning a 4,000 SNP majority into a 6,000 Tory one.
“Tories win Aberdeen South by-election, their first Scottish by-election since 1973, on oil and gas backlash.”
The by-election was triggered when the SNP’s Stephen Flynn resigned as MP after being elected to Holyrood in the recent devolved elections. Lumsden, who cannot sit in both parliaments due to a Holyrood ban on dual mandates, will now resign from the Scottish Parliament just six weeks after winning re-election as a north-east MSP.
Speaking to jubilant party activists, Badenoch said: “I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to be able to welcome Douglas Lumsden to parliament.” She praised the positivity of Lumsden’s campaign and said the result had national significance, contrasting it with the Makerfield by-election won by Andy Burnham with 55 per cent of the vote. “The Makerfield by-election was about one man’s job. The Aberdeen South by-election was about thousands of jobs all over the country but especially in the oil and gas sector.”
Badenoch added: “Aberdeen has sent a message to the Labour government and the SNP that we will not be ignored. Aberdeen will not be ignored. The sector will not be ignored.” She said the country needed to think about national security and energy security more than ever.
Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay described the result as a “sensational victory” and said: “This was a referendum on oil and gas.”
First Minister John Swinney acknowledged why the SNP lost. “The Conservatives mobilised a campaign which was about capturing the understandable anger there is in Aberdeen and the northeast about the issues affecting the oil and gas sector,” he said. Swinney said he was trying to help the industry by urging Labour to scrap the Energy Profits Levy, which currently means operators hand over 78 per cent of their profits to the Treasury.
Flynn, now Economy Secretary in Swinney’s government, issued a statement that appeared to criticise his own party’s direction. “It was a tough night in Aberdeen that some will need to reflect on, quite heavily,” he said, adding that he believed the SNP could win the seat back “if we get things right”.
The defeat – and the scale of it – is an embarrassment to Swinney, whose SNP administration has been overshadowed by the scandal surrounding Peter Murrell, the estranged husband of Nicola Sturgeon, who has pleaded guilty to stealing £400,000 from the party and is awaiting sentence. Swinney’s refusal to allow an independent inquiry into the affair has been heavily criticised.
In contrast, the SNP could still claim a by-election win elsewhere: Lara Bird held the Arbroath and Broughty Ferry seat for the party shortly after the Aberdeen result. But in the oil capital, the message was clear. As Lumsden put it: “We said at the start of this campaign that it is a referendum on the oil and gas industry and the people of Aberdeen have given a resounding answer that we back the oil and gas industry.”