Labour eyes 2011 win after Scottish election triumphs

Scottish Labour leaders were today plotting a return to power in the Scottish Parliament after an extraordinary General Election saw the party crush all its rivals in an unexpected and almost unprecedented show of strength.

Labour candidates who expected to be defeated were elected to the Commons, others who thought they might scrape home found they had secured thumping majorities and everywhere in Scotland, the Labour vote turned out in unexpectedly high numbers.

During an election when the Labour vote across England went down sharply, it actually rose in Scotland.

Observers who had thought the Labour vote was already at saturation point north of the border were stunned to see Labour candidates increase majorities around Scotland – at a time when the rest of the UK was rejecting Gordon Brown and the Labour Government.

On the surface, the result looked identical to the 2005 return: Labour won 41 seats (it won 40 in 2005 but the Speaker also won his seat), the Liberal Democrats won 11 seats, the SNP six and the Conservatives just one.

That in itself was a shock, particularly because the Tories had expected to pick up at least two or three new seats, as did the Liberal Democrats and the SNP.

In the end, all the opposition parties were disappointed and had to settle for the same number of MPs as they secured in 2005.

Underneath the surface, though, there was an even more surprising story. Labour won back two seats it lost in by-elections: Dunfermline and West Fife from the Liberal Democrats and Glasgow East from the SNP.

But it was in the voting figures that Labour’s success really shone through.

Labour won 42 per cent of the vote, a swing of 0.1 per cent from the SNP to Labour but it was in some of the individual seats that the scale of Labour dominance was shown. Seats where the opposition parties thought they had a chance went decisively to the Labour Party.

The Liberal Democrats thought they might take Glasgow North – they were beaten by a margin of almost 4,000 votes with Labour recording a 5 per cent increase in its vote.

East Renfrewshire, which the Tories had targeted, was won by Labour’s Jim Murphy with a thumping 10,000 majority and a 7 per cent vote increase.

Dundee West was the SNP’s top target seat but Labour’s Jim McGovern won it convincingly with a 7,000 majority and another decisive swing to Labour.

One of the unluckiest candidates on the night was the Liberal Democrat Fred Macintosh who lost to Labour by 405 votes in 2005, kept at the fight in Edinburgh South and lost this time by just 316 votes.

The SNP took some comfort from coming second in the popular vote, edging out the Liberal Democrats and securing 19.9 per cent of the vote to the Lib Dems 18.9 per cent.

This was being greeted as a success for the Nationalists last night and while it is of significant psychological value for the party heading into next year’s elections, all the parties know they are now a considerable distance behind the resurgent Scottish Labour Party.

The ground had appeared to shift in 2005, with many constituencies electing Labour MPs but with reduced majorities. It appeared only a matter of time before they would start to fall to the opposition and a more even spread of seats appear on Scotland’s electoral map.

But, as the results came overnight, it became clear that the opposite was true: Labour was building its majorities back up and the opposition parties were, if anything, further away from taking the seats from Labour.

One of the only possible explanations for the Labour Party’s performance in Scotland, particularly when compared to the way it collapsed in England, is that Scots are more fiercely loyal and determined to back Labour when they see the contest as a straight fight between Labour and the Tories.

The SNP believe the fight for Holyrood will be very different next year and they are right. The Nationalists always do better for Scottish Parliament elections and there is growing evidence that many voters are prepared to see the SNP as a Scottish election choice and Labour for Westminster.

But Labour’s performance in entrenching its position as Scotland’s first party at a time of retreat i the rest of the country has given the party great heart ahead of next year’s contest.

“The momentum is with us now,” one senior figure said last night.