The results of the Glasgow North East byelection are in and Labour have captured nearly 60% of the vote on a low voter turnout of 33%
The Guardian reports:
The margin of Labour’s victory, 8,111 votes, was higher than many expected, and allowed the party to claim it had proved its appeal to its core voters by substantially defeating the Scottish National party, which last year embarrassed the prime minister by winning the Glasgow East byelection.
Labour’s defeat of SNP candidate David Kerr is a significant blow for Alex Salmond. Scotland’s first minister last month predicted that his party would win 20 seats at the coming general election but the SNP has now lost two of the last three Scottish byelections to Labour.
I’m pleased the SNP polled only 4120 votes – fewer than many predicted. The truth is they offer little of substance to anyone, North or South of the border.
The BNP lost their deposit garnering a smidgen over 1000 votes, the former fact is good news news, but they still did almost as well as the Conservative candidate (1075) and much better than the Lib Dems (474) and the Greens (332).
And the host of vanguardists who descended on the economically-battered constituency? Tommy Sheridan scraped 794 votes; his old comrades in the Scottish Socialist Party got an even less impressive 152 and the last of he triumvirate of Trots who presented themselves to the folk of Springburn – the Socialist Labour Party – had to be satisfied with just 47 crosses on the slips.
You can’t get a more proletarian electoral demographic than the one in ex-Speaker Michael Martin’s old stomping ground, and we’re told that the current recession is as bad as anything since the 1930s: so, given their extraordinarily poor showing in what should be ideal circumstances, why do the Trots continually subject themselves to such public humiliation?
Wouldn’t they be better able to manage the cognitive dissonance of, on the one hand, holding themselves out as tribunes of the oppressed and on the other being roundly ignored by the actually existing working class, if they refused to partake in bourgeois elections at all? They could comfort themselves with the idea that every time they had a hand in organising a march which ordinary members of the public attend in some numbers it meant that said citizens are ready to follow the political leadership offered by the little Lenins – as opposed to the punters stoically putting up with the temporary presence of Trots in their lives as part of the price to be paid for making their feelings known on a single political issue.
Hey, it worked for the SWP.