To be fair, the Greens did even worse.

Writing off an election in advance – by failing to fully resource the campaign – is no excuse for failure on this scale, though it surely is no recipe for success either. Acting as a ‘main party’ during the expenses row and failing to offer a real alternative on the big issues of the economy, foreign/war policy, and the major public services has left the party exposed to disillusion and disaffection. The USP of the Lib Dems – proportional representation – is a busted flush, as only a commitment to win under the existing system is remotely credible, and then only if coupled with strong candidates and well presented commitments to attractive policies. This would require outbidding the Tories to the right as well as Labour to the Left – for example, a regional ‘minimum living wage’, education vouchers, an end to public housing, a referendum on the Euro following a referendum on Europe, a clear priority for either means tested or universal benefits (but not a mix) or better yet a negative income tax, a clear statement of foreign/defense priorities, preferably a ‘no to nuclear power’ commitment, something for the motorists (e.g. phasing out of vehicle excise duty and/or road tax), and an end to airline passenger taxes (better to tax the fuel used as with cars). The mottos should be ‘no more blank cheques’ and ‘tending the home fires’ rather than radical or constitutional reform…

Demographic changes saw the Conservatives lose Glasgow Cathcart in 1979 and Glasgow Hillhead in the by-election to Roy Jenkins (SDP). They haven’t returned.

In fact the last time a non-Labour/non-Speaker candidate won in a GE was Roy in 1983 only to lose in 1987. But Glagow Hillhead had posh parts and high number of graduates.

The question on my lips is not can we win a Glasgow Westminster parliamentary seat but why haven’t we won a Parliamentary seat in Liverpool? A far easier task I would have thought.

Ah well, so long as there’s not much coverage in the _UK_ media and it will soon be forgotten, we can all safely ignore it.

Thank goodness for that.

I am a little surprised at how badly the SNP did. I suppose their dismal showing is a product of (1) the tribal loyalty Labour enjoys among almost all working-class Roman Catholics and many, many working-class Protestants, and (2) Labour’s success in painting the SNP as “tartan Tories” (I am talking of the ones who vote, of course, not those who stay at home and sit in front of the telly). Salmond can see that Labour knows how to dam the nationalist tide in its heartlands, even in the most inauspicious of circumstances. Not a good result for the “gnats”.

I am amazed that the BNP, a party that is chauvinistically English, succeeded in getting any votes at all in Glasgow. I guess they profited from the presence of asylum-seekers in a constituency already plagued by mass worklessness.

The Lib Dems had a better Scotland-wide profile when Charles Kennedy was leader. Not that I want CK back, but he did have his uses.

This byelection achieved very little coverage in the UK media, and the poor Lib Dem showing will soon be forgotten, if anyone much noticed it in the first place.

The post above saying that nobody other than Tommy Sheridan offered any kind of alternative vision is correct… but Tommy Sheridan no longer enjoys mass support anywhere in Glasgow and is something of a busted flush as his result shows. A few years back he’d have got 5,000 or more votes in this constituency.

If the Lib. Dems. ever had the people and resources to mount really effective campaigns against Labour across Glasgow then in my view there is no reason why Glasgow couldn’t go the way of Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield and all the other great cities where we’ve gained large numbers of seats through effective campaigning against rotten and often corrupt Labour administrations.

Labour fought a good campaign against the SNP. Are there any lessons for anyone else or any pointers for the General Election. Nope. This will not go down in history as one of the most memorable of by-elections.

I don’t think most of those votes ever left Labour though so it’s not at all surprising.

But it didn’t go to the SNP in Glasgow North East, did it? The SNP vote dropped by 900, or nearly a fifth. The SNP attracted just under half the anti-Labour vote.

But the most striking feature of the election was the derisory turnout. The fact that two thirds of the electorate couldn’t be bothered to support any of the parties standing should surely convey some kind of message to the politicians.

Iain, this by-election has barely touched the radars of the Scottish media, never mind the national ones, so attempting to create any sort of profile was impossible. However you do have a point about our media coverage – but it’s hard to get a media which is either staunchly Labour (Daily Record, most of the weekly local titles) right-wing (the Scotsman, the Courier, the Press & Journal) or confused (the Sun) to give any coverage at all. And as for TV, other than FMQ politics barely features at all. Bear in mind too that the coverage that Jim Wallace and Nicol Stephen had was mainly because of their positions as Deputy First Minister.

“…suggests David Cameron shouldn’t be relying on Glasgow to deliver the Conservative victory at the General Election”

A timeless classic, that, Iain!

Our party hardly exists in the Scottish news media. If even I have no idea what our distinctive policies for Holyrood are, how can we expect the general voting public to know what we stand for?

There is a failure of our Scottish parliamentary party in general, and our Scottish leadership in particular, to carve out a political identity for the Lib Dems. We have some very hard-working and energetic PPCs and campaigners in Scottish target seats, but they are not helped by our party’s near-invisibility in the media. The Scottish party leadership seems gloriously complacent about this, and it may well harm us not only in Holyrood, but more immediately in Westminster.

Our low vote in this by election is hardly a surprise, but it is symptomatic of problems that may cause us more serious upset in the near future.

The Scottish Lib Dems should be congratulated for not wasting tens of thousands on an unwinnable by-election. The money will be better spent on winning marginals next May.

I bet there are some target seats in England that would be glad of the money that has been wasted on some by-elections south of the border in recent years…

Proably due to the change in the law that allows new entrants to the register to be added during the closed ‘canvas period’ in the event of a by-election. These are people who would not normally have appeared on the published register until the annual update on 1 December.

“…suggests David Cameron shouldn’t be relying on Glasgow to deliver the Conservative victory at the General Election”

A time classic, that, Iain!

A truly shocking statistic made even worse by the state of this particular constituency, the poverty of ambition that resides there, the lack of aspiration, the constituents acceptance of their lot and the willingness to continue to vote for a party that has failed the area so miserably is an affront to those that have fought & died to give us these freedoms.

The inability to imagine change, to envision real progress and that this area can really improve has been shown to be completely missing from Glasgow North East and must surely be a matter of concern for all political parties and in particular the Labour Party who have represented these people for so long.

Will anything change, I doubt it.

It will take big ideas to change Springburn and no party offered that change during this campaign, no-one other than Tommy Sheridan offered an alternative vision to the failure of the last twenty five years and yet the voters flatly rejected that vision in favour for a campaing run negatively with no real policy content.

Waking the Dead

It would be interesting to see the demographic of those that voted, Glasgow City Council reported over 6000 registered postal votes, a rise of some 2000 over the last two months which accounts for 30% of votes cast, surely some kind of record in there too.

Equally chilling is the revelation that over 4000 extra voters have been added to the electoral register in the last month, accounting for 25% of those that voted.

Lastly, it’s been reported that the Police are investigating two alleged incidents of voting fraud in the contest. The investigation is focusing on two ‘known’ incidents at polling stations where voters turned up and when they identified themselves they were told their names had already been scored off the list – somebody had been given a vote in their name.

Officers are investigating “alleged personation”.

This alone is pretty worrying given the very low turnout, how many others may have been fraudulently used to cast votes?