Scottish Constituency Target Seats

Party target seats » Con Lib Dem SNP 1 Eastwood - Read 2 Aberdeen South - Read 3 Edinburgh Pentlands - Read 4 Ayr - Read 5 Stirling - Read 6 Inverness East - Read 7 Dumfries - Read 8 Aberdeenshire West and Kincardine - Read 9 Tweeddale, Ettrick and Laud - Read 10 Edinburgh West - Read 11 Gordon - Read 12 Perth - Read 13 Tayside North - Read 14 Galloway and Upper Nithsdale - Read 15 Moray - Read 16 Glasgow Govan - Read

Party seats pre-Election 2001 Party target seats » Con Lib Dem SNP 17 Ochil - Read 18 Kilmarnock and Loudoun - Read

The 1997 General Election in Scotland was a disaster for the Conservative Party. Opposing devolution and deeply unpopular in the nation, the party lost all of its 11 seats. More importantly, the Conservative Party's share of the Scottish vote dropped below that of the Scottish National Party, effectively challenging the position of the Conservatives as the main opposition party to Labour. In terms of votes, the main beneficiary of the Conservatives' demise was the Labour Party, increasing their vote share from under 40% in 1992 to over 45% in 1997. In terms of seats, the Labour Party made six gains from the Conservatives and one from the Liberal Democrats, taking their total to 56. Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats gained one seat overall taking their total to 10 while the SNP took two seats from the Conservatives to increase their seat share to six.

Much has happened in Scottish politics since 1997, most notably a referendum in favour of devolution and the creation of a Scottish Parliament and Executive. Following the outcome of the referendum, the Conservatives have accepted devolution and have been trying to reclaim lost ground. Although multi-faceted, their strategy has been populist in character and includes a volte-face of position on some of their least popular policies such as university tuition fees, and a hardening of position on high-profile populist issues such as asylum seekers, family values, Europe and law and order. This populist approach has been developing in response to perceived Labour Party weaknesses at Westminster as well as perceived Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition weaknesses in the Scottish Executive. Devolution for Scotland may have created an additional layer of governance for Labour to prove itself, but the down-side of this is that parties such as the Conservatives and the SNP now have an additional layer of governance at which they can level criticism. In short, the new multi-layered system has created a situation in which criticisms and disillusionment with a party in power can be magnified. The next general election will be interesting from this point of view because we have no prior experience of the potential impact of magnification.

Consequently, any analysis of the results of the 1999 Scottish Parliament Elections has to be treated cautiously. Prior to the elections the public could only base their judgement of Labour on the performance of the Westminster Government. In terms of Scotland, performance was most evident on constitutional issues. In particular, Scotland had voted for devolution and the main party to thank on this front was Labour. Emerging unease over mismatches between promises and delivery on key policy areas such as health and education was largely inconsequential in the case of Scotland because these were the very issues that the Scottish Parliament would now be able to address itself. In short, things could get better post-devolution. With the exception of a few marginal seats such as Ayr and Eastwood, the Conservatives posed no real threat to Labour in the Scottish Parliament Elections. Opinion polls showed little evidence of a Conservative revival and support wavered between 10 and 15%. According to the polls the main threat for the Labour Party in Scotland was the SNP. Indeed, on several occasions in the year prior to the 1999 elections the SNP appeared neck and neck with Labour at around 40% support. The Labour Party has been somewhat surprised and concerned over the level of support that devolution has created for the SNP, and at the Holyrood level at least, the SNP look capable of taking numerous key seats in the future.

In the event, little changed at the constituency level during the 1999 Scottish Parliament Elections. Labour managed to hold onto seats such as Ayr, Eastwood, and Govan and only two seats exchanged parties. Labour lost Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber to the SNP and Aberdeen South to the Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives again failed to gain any constituency seats although they came within 25 votes in Ayr a seat that they have subsequently taken from Labour in a by-election held on the 16th March 2000. While the SNP and the Conservative Party did well out of the proportional allocations from the regional lists, at the constituency level the main advances were made by the SNP. In 51 out of the 71 constituencies that are comparable the SNP managed to increase their number of votes in 1999 compared with 1997. This represented a remarkable achievement given that turnout was only 58% in 1999 compared with 71% in the 1997 General Election. Meanwhile the SNP's percentage share of the vote also increased in 63 out of 71 constituencies and they increased their number of second placed candidates from 44 to 51.

These advances are even more surprising given the widespread media hostility that greeted the SNP's leader Alex Salmond during the 1999 campaign. The 1999 election took place in the midst of the Kosovo conflict and Salmond was heavily criticised for expressing concerns over the NATO campaign. The SNP also campaigned for a 1p tax increase, the 'penny for Scotland', contributing to damaging portrayals of Salmond as a Teletubby character living in 'La-La Land'. Both incidents helped take the edge off the SNP momentum for the 1999 election. If the SNP can keep a more polished image they should prove more of a threat to future Scottish Parliament Elections. However, Westminster appears to be another matter. ICM polls in June 2000 show that while the SNP are still capable of matching Labour support at the Holyrood level (36% each among those intending to vote), support for the SNP is much lower at the Westminster level (26% compared with Labour's 42%).

In the June 1999 European Parliament Elections, Labour's share of the vote in Scotland dropped to less than 30%. Although it still came first, the SNP came a close second and the Conservatives nearly managed 20% of the vote. Under the new proportional system, Scotland's eight constituencies were combined into one Scottish constituency. Labour lost three of the six seats it had held in the 1994-99 Parliament. Two of these losses went to the Conservatives and one went to the Liberal Democrats. Meanwhile, the SNP broke even with two seats. Held a month after the Scottish Parliament and local government elections, voter fatigue helped contribute to a very low turnout of just 25%. Consequently, the results are not particularly helpful in providing clues about behaviour at general elections when turnout is usually over 70%. Moreover, past practice suggests that voters often vote against the UK government in European Parliament Elections. Such 'second-order' elections represent an opportunity to warn those in power at Westminster of the need to improve performance before the next general election.

So how do the parties fare in Scotland? At the Westminster level, it would seem a case of plus a change. The Labour Party will have to defend the records of two administrations, one in Scotland and one in Westminster. However, despite Labour's inability to convince the electorate that it is fulfilling policy commitments on the improvement of health and education, the position of Labour in Scotland is still holding strong. Their main opponents, the SNP and the Conservatives, have witnessed their own troubles. Both the SNP and the Conservatives have faced damaging internal rows over party organisation matters and the Conservative's drift to the right on issues such as asylum seekers have contributed to party defections, most visibly, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh who was the Conservative candidate for Glasgow Govan in 1999. The Labour and Liberal Democrat commitment to scrapping Section 28 may come back to haunt them if the issue is kept alive by businessman Brian Souter's threat of supporting candidates who back family values.

In any event Labour will do well indeed if it can hold Inverness East, Eastwood, Aberdeen South and Glasgow Govan. If things go wrong for Labour the seats to watch include Ochil, Edinburgh Pentlands, Ayr, Stirling, Dumfries and Kilmarnock and Loudoun. Following a by-election, Hamilton South is now technically Labour's most marginal seat, and might also be a contender for the SNP, although it is unlikely that the Nationalists will be able to replicate the degree of support that they achieved on that occasion. If the advance of the SNP at the Scottish Parliamentary level can be reproduced at the Westminster level, then a number of additional seats could be viewed as marginal. Other seats to watch that are not profiled in more detail below include Dundee West (Labour majority over 30% in 1997 but just 0.4% in 1999), Aberdeen North (2.0% Labour majority in 1999) and three constituencies where Labour was just 89% ahead in 1999: Renfrewshire West, Linlithgow and Dundee East.

In particular, the Dundee seats might be interesting as Labour lost control of Dundee Council in the 1999 local elections for the first time in two decades.

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