For the first time in more than half a century, the Scottish Conservatives have taken a Westminster seat from the SNP – a victory their leader Kemi Badenoch called “significant” and one that her party’s new MP immediately framed as a message to Labour over oil and gas.
Douglas Lumsden, a Tory MSP who had won re-election to Holyrood just six weeks ago, defeated SNP candidate Richard Thomson by more than 6,000 votes in Aberdeen South. The seat was vacated by the SNP’s Stephen Flynn after he was elected to the Scottish parliament. Lumsden must now resign from Holyrood because of a ban on so-called dual mandates.
“Scottish Conservatives win first Westminster by-election in over 50 years, taking Aberdeen South from SNP. SNP wins Arbroath.”
The by-election, triggered when Flynn and his SNP colleague Stephen Gethins left the House of Commons after being elected to Holyrood, saw the Conservatives take almost half of all ballots cast in the Aberdeen constituency – a city chosen by the UK government as the home of its fledgling public energy company, GB Energy.
Lumsden, a former oil and gas worker, said his constituents had sent a message that “the destruction of the oil and gas industry must stop now”.
Badenoch highlighted the contrast with the Labour by-election win in Makerfield, where Andy Burnham triumphed. “Makerfield was about one man’s job,” she said. “Aberdeen South was about thousands of jobs in oil and gas across our country and the future of an entire city.” She promised to “never stop fighting” for the constituency’s residents and noted support from those who had “never voted Conservative before”, adding that her party “is working to earn the trust of the country again”.
But Amy Cameron, from Greenpeace UK, said “false promises” from the Tories would not deliver a prosperous economic future for people in Aberdeen. She argued that a just transition has to be strong enough for people to “let go of the industry that built their community” and “trust that the new economy will be ready to catch them”.
Shortly after the result in Aberdeen South, the SNP claimed its own by-election victory in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, on Scotland’s east coast. Lara Bird, a qualified lawyer who has worked as an SNP researcher and adviser at Westminster, held the seat for the party with a majority of more than 5,000 votes over the Conservatives.
Both by-elections were triggered by the same cause: sitting MPs leaving Westminster after winning seats in the Scottish parliament, a reshuffling that has now given the Tories a rare foothold in Scotland’s political landscape.