- 06/06/2025
The Steamie: A political podcast from The Scotsman
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00:00The Steamy, a politics podcast from the Scotsman.
00:12Hello and welcome to The Steamy, the Scotsman's politics podcast. I'm Alistair Grant, the
00:16Scotsman's political editor, and I'm joined today by David Ball, the Scotsman's deputy
00:20political editor, by Rachel Emery, the Scotsman's political correspondent, and by Alexander
00:24Brown, the Scotsman's Westminster correspondent. Labour has pulled off a surprise victory in
00:29the Hamilton Lark Hall and Stonehouse by-election, defying the bookies and political pundits,
00:34and overturning an SNP majority of around 4,500. It was a close run thing. Scottish Labour's
00:41Davy Hamilton won with 8,559 votes, with a majority of 602 over the SNP. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage's
00:49Reform UK finished third on 7,088 votes, with the Tories way far behind in fourth on 1,621
00:58votes. Here's a clip of Scottish Labour leader Anna Sarwar speaking shortly after the result
01:03was announced in the early hours of this morning.
01:06Look, it's an incredible night, and it's a tribute to a fantastic local candidate, and
01:12a fantastic local candidate, by the way, that has had to put up with pretty elitist and classist
01:17comments about him. But this man lives here. He's from here. The other candidates are going
01:21to leave this constituency tonight. And whereas Davy's not leaving it tonight, he lives here,
01:25and he'll be home to his neighbours and friends tonight who have supported him and voted for him.
01:29But let's be really clear about what's happened here tonight. And I don't want to just reflect
01:32on the result. I want to reflect on the conversations I've been having on the doorstep. And the
01:36conversation we're having on the doorstep, and the result tonight, is a demonstration of
01:40a few things. First, people want a UK Labour government to go further and faster and improve
01:44in their lives. And they want to feel that improvement in their lives. And I think that's
01:47a clear message to them. Secondly, they've had enough of this SNP government. After 18 years,
01:52they have let Scotland down and let communities across the country down. Third, they've rejected
01:56the politics of Niger-Farajan reform. And today, the people of Hamilton, Larkol and Stonehouse
02:01have laid the first stone in that pathway to a Scottish Labour government next year.
02:06Happy all?
02:07Is this game on for next year?
02:08Absolutely. Absolutely game on. We have proven the pundits wrong. We have proven the pollsters
02:14wrong. We've proven the political commentators wrong. We've proven the bookies wrong. And we're
02:18going to continue to do what we need to do to change the lives of people here in Scotland.
02:21That was Anna Sauer, the Scottish Labour leader, extremely happy in the early hours of this
02:25morning after Labour won that by-election in Hamilton. David, you were at the count overnight.
02:30I'm surprised you're still coherent. You must be kind of tying on your feet at the moment.
02:34But when did it become clear that Labour had won this? And what were folks saying at the
02:39count?
02:40Yeah, it wasn't really until the vote was announced that we were sure that Labour were going
02:46to win. We knew it was going to be close, though, because the only people talking to us
02:50were Labour as journalists. There were lots of Labour people there. The S&P, they look
02:56quite glum quite early on. They're usually quite confident at these things. They're used
03:00to winning and winning quite comfortably. There's only sort of Mary McCallan and Jamie
03:05Hepburn were the only two kind of S&P big names there. And they did look quite worried
03:10from quite early on. It then emerged that Anna Sauer was only going to come if the result
03:15was looking quite rosy. And Kate Watson, the General Secretary of Scottish Labour, kind
03:22of confirmed to us that he was kind of on his way. He was getting his suit on. So it's
03:26kind of at that point we thought, well, actually, they've got a good chance here of winning.
03:30And then we saw Jackie Bailey with a huge smile on her face just as the results were being
03:35announced. And we looked up on stage. It was quite a weird place to announce. It was very
03:40tight. It was almost like being in the front of a gig, like at the Barrowlands or something.
03:43It was very tightly crowded. And we looked up on stage and Davey Russell, the Labour
03:49candidate, they'd just been told the result was like puce. He was bright red. He obviously
03:54just found out he was going to be an MSP. And I think he couldn't quite believe it.
03:59And yeah, as you said, it's a quite remarkable victory. Everyone had written Labour off and
04:03just goes to show you shouldn't believe pollsters, journalists, anyone, really.
04:07And what do you make of it in general? Because you were on the ground reporting throughout this
04:13campaign. You were in Hamilton. You were all around the constituency for kind of several
04:18weeks now. What were folks saying to you when you were out on the ground? And what do you
04:23think have been the kind of key issues in this campaign?
04:26Yeah, I think Davey Russell has had a lot of criticism for... He's not as polished. He's
04:32not, as we would call a professional MSP. He's more like the general public. And I think
04:38we had a lot of this talk from Reform about them speaking more for the people. And they
04:44would be a better voice for the people. But we've obviously... A lot of people have underestimated
04:50their candidate. And it's just down to a lot of door knocking, essentially. Back to old
04:54school, getting Davey Russell to speak in front of as many people as they could on the ground.
04:59And the SNP have just kind of... Johnson has been at it a little bit by saying that it
05:05was a straight fight between the SNP and Reform. It clearly wasn't. And they clearly knew that
05:10as well. And they've just underestimated the anger at the... Well, not anger, just frustration
05:16at the SNP government. There's been all this talk about, well, we've had this really unpopular
05:21UK Labour government come in, but no talk about 18 years of the SNP government's record.
05:27And obviously, people have struck a chord with that. And yeah, I think it is surprising,
05:33but in hindsight, looking back, I know it's easy to do that. You can see why Labour have
05:37kind of struck a chord. They have... They've talked about local issues. They've been the only really
05:41mainstream party on the ground talking about local issues and what they'll do for the local
05:45community. It's been a national campaign, but at the heart of it, it's people electing a local MSP for
05:51their... for their area. And Rachel, this will be a kind of much needed boost for Scottish Labour,
05:56won't it? I mean, we've become used to polls showing them slipping behind the SNP, a narrative
06:01that the party is suffering as a result of the unpopular UK Labour government. That still stands,
06:06but this result suggests the picture is more complicated than that, and that any SNP recovery
06:11is actually extremely fragile. Yeah, I think the fragility within the SNP sort of standing right now
06:18has perhaps been missed by a lot of the polls as we move into this by-election. I think there was a
06:23lot more confidence in the SNP vote there. That's not to say that the victory for Labour is a massive
06:29success for the party. I mean, psychologically, they will be thinking, yeah, this has been really great
06:32for us. Let's get going towards 2026. This shows that we're ready for Labour government in Holyrood.
06:38But David Russell did get 31.5% of the vote. If we go back to 2021, Labour came second, and they came
06:47second with 33.6% of the vote. So they were actually down on what they received in 2021, even
06:52though they still won this election. So while it's a victory, and while they've come first, of course,
06:58that's a victory for them. It is actually down on their vote share from 2021. So it's, that's still
07:04something that Labour have to keep in mind here. They can't be, they are slipping back, and they can't
07:07slip back too much if they've still got this goal of winning the election. The SNP as well, though, they also
07:14perhaps didn't have a great night. In 2021, Christina McKelvey had got 46.2% of the votes, so quite a,
07:22quite a sort of a standing victory there. However, the candidates last night only got
07:2629.4% of the votes, so they have gone back quite a lot. I think John Swinney, the rest of the team
07:31behind the 2026 election campaign, will need to take that into account as they're moving forward here.
07:36Yeah, I mean, I was struck by something the pollster Mark Diffley said this morning,
07:40that this Hamilton result is a classic data versus narrative story, that the national
07:45polling shows the SNP support down by 15 points, Labour by two points, consensus by 10 points,
07:51that's versus the 2021 Hollywood results. And this by-election just reaffirms that. And despite
07:57that, the kind of narrative developed throughout it that the SNP was going to win, that perhaps reform
08:02would come in second place. You know, I bought into that narrative too, I'm not trying to pretend
08:06that I'm somehow saw through it. So it just kind of shows that the danger, I guess, Rachel,
08:12of getting caught up in a narrative, particularly in a by-election, which can be unpredictable and
08:17where local issues come into play and where there's no kind of on the ground polling within that
08:21constituency, we're just relying totally on this national picture. Yeah, absolutely. And we do have
08:27to remember as well that there was 10 candidates here, it's too strong, whereas in 2021 there was only
08:32four, I think. And so that, of course, will split the vote a bit more as well. I mean,
08:36to take into account the fact that the Greens, for example, they got almost 700 votes had they not
08:42stood, like they didn't, they don't think they stood in 2021, if they also hadn't stood here,
08:46presumably those votes may have gone to the SNP, maybe the vote would have then been different and
08:50would have had a different result. So the fact there's a by-election, there's so many candidates,
08:54also does come into play here as well. The voter turnout is quite interesting as well, quite often in a
08:59by-election we see very low voter turnout. I think a lot of people as well were seeing a lot of voter
09:05apathy and people just getting annoyed at the SNP and the Conservatives and Labour and translating
09:11that into, well, they're not going to vote, they're going to stay at home. The voter turnout was actually
09:1444%, which is, it's still low in the grand scale of things. I mean, the general election, I think
09:20the turnout was about 60% in this area, but for a by-election that is quite high and perhaps higher
09:26that people are expecting. So there are all these sort of things in play in a by-election that you
09:31don't see in a Scottish Parliament election or a general election. So there are certain
09:35issues that are, to take a pinch of salt, can't be translated into next year's Hollywood results,
09:40but it's nonetheless very interesting. Alex, John Sweeney repeatedly tried to portray this,
09:46as David mentioned, as a two-horse race between the SNP and reform. That turned out to be total rubbish,
09:53didn't it? Yeah. And I think any Scottish paper that put that on the front page this week would
09:59be mortified, embarrassed, and you would hope humbled. And it was not the Scotsman. Yeah,
10:05I mean, it's devastating. And I think we've all been kind of guilty of accepting that narrative,
10:09right? The idea that it was this two-horse race and that only the SNP could beat reform. But
10:15I'm reminded of speaking to a Scottish Labour MP a few months ago, who said to me that for all that's
10:22happening in Downing Street and all the issues that have been created by the way they're governing,
10:27that while they are losing votes in the polling, they've been losing them to undecideds. They have
10:32not been losing them directly to the SNP. And they said that their hope was that when it came to it,
10:39people would put aside any recency bias and look at the, you know, more than a decade of SNP rule
10:45versus the first year of a Labour government in difficult circumstances, and decide that they would be
10:50voting Labour because the SNP have been, have failed to improve standards for however long. There was
10:55that, they will just come back to us when it comes down, when it comes down to it. And I maybe, I took
11:01that with a pinch of salt. I don't know that I necessarily thought that was definitely going to
11:05happen because, you know, you hear lots of wishful thinking from people in parties. You know, the SNP
11:10before the general election were telling me that they were definitely going to be fine and no one like
11:14Keir Starmer. But actually, that has worked out. And I think it's, I think it's really fascinating what this means for
11:18the Labour strategy going forward. I mean, I was, I was stunned to hear the candidate was of a count.
11:24I mean, that must have been one of his three appearances through the whole thing. But that's
11:28worked. And by not showing up, it's worked. Keir Starmer didn't go to Hamilton. Keir Starmer didn't
11:33campaign. Obviously, they made a judgment that he's politically damaging to be there. It's not helpful
11:39for him to be there. But they've done it by just playing, doing a defensive cricket. They've,
11:44they've done it by not going out there on the attack in the same way as the SNP have. I think
11:47it's really interesting. And I, if I was Scottish Labour, I would be worried maybe what this means
11:53for the strategy going forward. Will it be the case that Downing Street will just think, well,
11:57actually, it doesn't really matter. We do because it's still the SNP in charge. So we can keep this
12:02like, Nick, don't have to worry too much about pandering to Scots or listening to concerns Scottish
12:08Labour. We can keep doing what we're doing because people hate the SNP and it's going to be fine.
12:12If they do that, it'll be very, very problematic. But going down, what, two points since 2021,
12:18in an incumbent government that basically everyone hates? I think that's very, very impressive. I think
12:24they'll be delighted with that. And holding off reform, reform vote being what, in the 20s,
12:30but the Labour vote share only going down by two. I think they'll be absolutely delighted. You know,
12:37a win is a win is a win. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right to say that obviously, you know,
12:41Keir Starmer did not go and campaign in Hamilton when he was up in Glasgow for the UK Defence Review.
12:48And David Russell has been criticised for kind of turning down some media appearances, although
12:53David would, sorry, Labour would say that he has done others. But it's also true that Labour have
12:59absolutely thrown everything at this. I mean, Anna Sauer has been in the constituency pretty much every
13:03single day. They've been absolutely hammering the doors. They've been going on about how it's been their
13:07kind of largest ground campaign. They've done a lot of kind of social media stuff around it.
13:12So I don't know if it's entirely true to say they were on the defensive. I think they were
13:16on the attack. No, but I mean, they're on the defensive in the sense that they have to defend
13:20what Downing Street has done. It's not like they were having ministers go in there, you know,
13:25dozens to campaign there. They were actively not doing that. I'm not saying that Scottish Labour,
13:32they're separate entities, you know, none of this branch office nonsense. But I don't think that,
13:37it's not like Downing Street and late the UK party were doing their best to help Scottish Labour.
13:43I think they have kind of been like, we'll leave you to it. And I think Scottish Labour have still won
13:48in those circumstances. And I think that's very impressive. And I think that shows that there
13:52maybe is that divide and maybe it's okay. Maybe they can just ignore what's happening up the road
13:57because people will, you know, they can ignore what's happening in England, because people are
14:02sick of the SNP. Yeah, yeah. And I do think it is totally remarkable that Keir Starmer was up in
14:07Scotland and didn't go and campaign the constituency. I think that just says a lot about their fears
14:12around how that might have gone down and whether he's an asset or not. But David, on the SNP, there are
14:17big questions now for John Swinney. I mean, the SNP clearly needs to take another look at its strategy ahead of
14:22next year's Holyrood election. What do you think this means when it comes to 2026?
14:29I think it is wide open. I mean, it's hard to say really, because obviously they had that
14:35such a bad result last year in the general election, the UK election, and all the polls
14:40at that point were pointing to Labour being the biggest party at Holyrood. And we've just been
14:46guided by those Scotland-wide polls, which have obviously fed into a lot of that anger at the UK
14:53government. But obviously, it's not how it's turned out at a local level. And this is the thing, it's
14:58at a constituency level, Labour can now boast they can beat the SNP. And they're a party that can,
15:04whereas reform can't yet, although they are obviously a big threat, as Rachel was talking about,
15:09their vote share is a threat to both the SNP and Labour. I don't know what John Swinney does to kind of
15:15spin this or turn this around. He's got very limited choices given his record he's standing on.
15:23Not to say there'd be a terrible government or anything, but just the length of time they've
15:27been in government. That is what people associate the SNP with. The independence question as well is
15:32a tricky one, how he plays that. When he kind of launched the SNP campaign, as it were, was the one
15:38year out from the election. Not long ago, he kind of put independence back on the table. Whether he'll
15:45get cold feet about that now, given the result, and we'll have to wait and see some of the other
15:50polls that come out on the back of this, because Labour might get a bit of a wave. But again, maybe
15:55we shouldn't pay too much attention to them. Yeah, and independence didn't really play any kind of part
16:00in this by-election. It just wasn't part of the conversation at all, which will be interesting
16:05going into Holyrood as to where the SNP take that debate. But Rachel, once we talk about reform,
16:12they obviously finished third. They still secured 26% of the vote, which is absolutely extraordinary.
16:19Alongside the national polling, that's suggested on course for a breakthrough in Holyrood next year.
16:25But what do you make of that result? I mean, I know we were talking about them potentially finishing
16:29second, and they didn't. They came third. But there really isn't that much in it. I mean,
16:33the vote here, it was a three-horse race. It was quite tight between all three parties, and that's
16:38that's a big result for reform. Yeah, if you think about it, there's only about 1500 votes separating
16:45first place and third place here. And of course, the by-election turnout was lower, but the fact that
16:49there was only 1500 votes in it, that's not a lot. We see national polling for Reform UK in Scotland,
16:56and they are about 18, 19%. There was this sort of thought by some research that their ceiling in
17:02Scotland was about 20%. And that's just kind of been completely blown at the water here. They got 26%.
17:08That's a massive victory for them. And they're very happy. If you see some comments from Richard Tice,
17:14for example, the deputy leader, and from Thomas Kerr, who's one of the Scottish councillors, they're very
17:18much saying, no, we're not disappointed. This was really, really good. And it shows that we are now here
17:22as a force in Scottish politics. So that is really interesting. Now, they are clearly taking votes
17:29from the Conservatives. The Conservatives, their vote share went down about 18% down to six. And
17:34they did have a really, really bad night. And I think about one in four Conservative voters have now
17:40in this area have moved on to reform. So it's a big problem for the Conservatives going forward. But
17:45the fact that they can get such a big share of the vote is a problem for the SNP and Labour as well.
17:50So while they came third, and on paper, third doesn't look maybe as good as perhaps some were
17:56thinking, they've done way better than polling suggested. So they are very, very happy for
18:01themselves. And I think that other parties will be looking at that this morning.
18:04And Alex, we should touch on the Scottish Tories and their kind of result. I mean,
18:10obviously, as Rachel said, they just collapsed. And a lot of their vote presumably just went to
18:15reform. I mean, they've been absolutely eaten alive by reform. The national polling suggests the same will
18:20happen at the Scottish Parliament next year. Russell Finlay, the Scottish Tory leader.
18:24It's sort of, his language is sort of mirroring some of the stuff that reforms say. You know,
18:29his kind of talking points, his talk of the kind of Holyrood bubble and these kind of political
18:33elites that don't understand the kind of common sense of middle Scotland. But people just don't seem
18:39to be, don't seem to be listening to them. They just don't seem to really care about the Scottish
18:43stories anymore. No, and it feels like it's the same thing that the Conservative Party in
18:48Westminster is doing as well, where they are, you know, Kemi Badenoch is aping the language
18:52of Nigel Farage. And the problem with that is, much like the Labour Party has found, you know,
18:58people want to vote for reform. People who are on those, who have some of those views, they do not
19:03trust government, or they are incredibly anti-immigration. Or, you know, they just think that all
19:09governments should be cut and it doesn't really work. Those reactions, that sort of reactionary
19:14politics doesn't really belong in the main, it didn't normally belong in the mainstream, but it's
19:18becoming it. And I don't think dressing up as another party, you know, in an attempt to win
19:23their votes is what happens. You know, it's always been about ideas. I mean, the best, the strongest
19:28Conservative parties were like these broad coalitions. I mean, Boris Johnson was making pitches to,
19:34you know, he was a lot more progressive on immigration than any of his,
19:39anyone who followed him. You know, there was this broader appeal, or like small C Conservatives,
19:43and David Cameron, it was, you know, we love Europe, and we want to work with our international
19:47allies, but at the same time, we don't believe in having a welfare state. I mean, it's obviously not
19:51quite that, but there was this coherent plan. And I'm not sure what the Scottish stories are,
19:57you know, I don't know, I've not seen a big policy announcement, you know, or some campaign they've
20:02pushed during this that you go, oh, that's really going to get some attention. And you can say
20:07common sense as many times as you like, but they're just saying it, you're saying it,
20:11they're saying it because it's a word, I think it's popular phrase, I think it's popular, whereas
20:14reform like, we don't believe in this, we've never believed in this, we're going to do that,
20:18and you're rubbish. And I don't really see a route back for the Scottish stories. And I'm not,
20:24obviously, that they've always been written off, right? I mean, I think when I, when I first started
20:28this job, when I was meeting, you know, the numerous Scottish story MPs, I say numerous, as many as
20:34seven or eight, and they were saying that actually, they've always been in the doldrums,
20:39it's always been really hard, but they're fighters, and they consistently outperform expectations.
20:43And we all wrote off Douglas Ross's leadership during the last Hollywood election, and thought
20:49that he wasn't particularly charismatic, he didn't do very well in debates. But there was a real message,
20:54and then the message cut through, and they became the opposition. But I, I don't see that now. And
20:59obviously, you know, you'll all know better than me, following Hollywood a little bit closer. But
21:04I feel like both in Westminster and in Scotland, I don't know where they're speaking to, I don't know
21:10what avenue they get in. And I think there is like really fertile space for them to be going into. I
21:16think they are probably, they want to spend more than the SMP do on issues like health. There are,
21:21no, there isn't, there isn't avenue of going on. Well, we're common sense, we want to spend more on
21:24public services, they can be outflanked on that. And also, we hate wokery, right? It's that
21:29we think everyone should have a better life, but maybe, you know, the country is full. There is
21:34an avenue for doing that if they're so inclined, but it just doesn't seem to working and reformer
21:38hoovering them up. And I, I would be fascinated to know, I mean, this is really no one will know this,
21:43but I would, lots of people said that reform ran a vaguely racist campaign with that video,
21:47right? Everyone said that video was racist. I would love to know the polling on whether that video made
21:53people vote reform or turn them away. Because I think that will have played a big role in either
22:00galvanizing or perhaps turning people off the party, which could have made them do even better.
22:05I'd love to know anyone's thoughts on that. Well, I mean, I think, I mean, the thing about
22:09reform, we've talked about it before on this podcast is that they are a protest vote. And I don't mean
22:14that in a kind of flippant way. I mean that in the sense that they are offering an alternative to the
22:18mainstream parties and that people can kind of read into that any number of different things. People
22:22obviously know who Nigel Farage is, they know what he stands for. But people are so disillusioned that
22:27they're willing to take a punt, or at least some people are. And reform have never had a record
22:32in government to defend. I mean, things get complicated when you've got a record in government
22:35because you inevitably get criticized for the things you've done or didn't do. You're not going to come
22:41out of that without scars. And we saw that with the Tories, we're seeing it with Labour, we've seen it
22:46with the SNP. Reform don't have that. They can be anything you want, essentially, with this kind of
22:52anti-walk agenda, which obviously... Yeah, I suppose they're really anti-government spending, but at
22:56the same time, they're going to end the two-child benefit cap and restore fully the winter fuel
23:01allowance. So they do that, but when there's no concept of where that money is coming from. And I
23:06think the IFS afterwards said that that would be, that would cost billions. And the sums don't
23:12add up, but there hasn't been any blow to them in the polls because it doesn't matter. People are like,
23:17oh, I agree with that. So sure, it's fine. Well, yeah, I mean, I don't think you need the...
23:21I necessarily need the sums to add up when you're putting these things forward as political ideas.
23:25You can just... I mean, Nigel Farage just kind of waves the airway towards, you know, getting rid of
23:29net zero or whatever, money coming from various things. But yeah, I mean, people are disillusioned.
23:36They are extremely disillusioned with politics. And that is going to be a problem going forward. And we should also
23:42talk about, and I know we're kind of potentially criticising ourselves here, but the kind of
23:47failure, I guess, of commentators and pundits when it comes to this by-election should be touched on.
23:52I mean, it is an issue. Having said that, you know, it's not that people were completely wrong.
23:58It's, I think most people thought the SNP would win it, but by a narrow margin. They didn't expect
24:03the SNP to trance home with this. They just thought the SNP would just get over the line because of
24:09all the different factors affecting Labour. But there was a lot of talking up of what reformer do.
24:14Again, they did do really well. I mean, what do we think? Do we think that this was,
24:18we're talking about a three-horse race and, you know, Labour just nosed it and actually it was kind
24:22of all to play for? Or do we think that political pundits, the bookies, there's a problem there?
24:28They're not kind of tuned in with what's actually sometimes happening on the ground?
24:32Are the silent minority Labour voters? You know, it's not the people coming out
24:38to vote for reform, it's the people going out to vote for the Labour Party. I mean,
24:42it's easy to criticise ourselves and criticise political journalists and pundits and I think
24:46often we should. But I do feel on this, the SNP literally said it was them that only they could
24:54stop reform. I think we are guilty of perhaps believing a political party who we could presume,
25:03or maybe we would be right to believe, has polling which reflects what they're saying. So when they
25:08said only they can beat them, I don't think it's that illogical for us to believe them because it's
25:13quite a big thing to say when there will be data, there will be a result where we will be able to
25:18see if it is only the SNP can beat them. Yeah, I'm not sure that people did believe that though.
25:23They just reported it because that's the first minister saying it and, you know, it's a news story.
25:28The first minister saying there's a two horse race between the SNP and reform, you'd report that as
25:31a news story. You're not necessarily saying that you think it's true.
25:38I don't know. I mean, I would have been inclined to believe it because I just perceived the
25:41party in the past got polling. I mean, obviously the politicians do say things, but with that sort
25:45of statement, you think, well, maybe that is the case, especially with the Labour candidate.
25:49It all fit into a narrative where the Labour candidate wasn't doing as many events as some
25:53of his rivals. So we thought, okay, maybe he is hiding. Maybe the prime minister isn't going to
25:58Hamilton because it's not because he's toxic. It's because he thinks they aren't going to win and
26:03it would be damaging if he does. I think it's not, it wasn't just one thing. It all fit into a narrative
26:07that Labour did not think they were going to win. And actually, if you spoke to Scottish Labour MPs,
26:12and I'm sure you spoke to some MSPs, they didn't think they were going to win. It wasn't like,
26:17oh, I think we've got a good chance. I think there was genuine concern about coming third.
26:22It wasn't guaranteed, but there was a real, like, they did not know what was going to happen.
26:27And so I think we reflected what we heard with more certainty from the SNP.
26:32But yeah, I mean, for years, polling and punditry has been rubbish, aside from the Scotsman.
26:40I mean, I have to admit, I totally bought into the narrative that Labour were not going to do,
26:45well, certainly not going to win this, and that they were not running a particularly,
26:49or that their campaign was not as successful as they might have hoped. I thought that they were
26:54suffering because of the unpopular UK Labour government. I thought some of Davey Russell's
26:59appearances in the media maybe hadn't helped them. There was that kind of excruciating interview
27:04he did with STV where he was asked 11 times whether he backed the removal of the cut to winter fuel
27:09payments and kind of kept trying to dodge the question. But ultimately, I suppose when you
27:14actually spoke to people behind the scenes in Labour, and you're right, some of them didn't expect to
27:19to win, but others weren't, they weren't distraught, you know, they weren't thinking,
27:22God, this is all falling apart. And then maybe political pundits, journalists, commentators
27:29should plug into that a bit more. I mean, what do you think, David? Because you were, you were the
27:33kind of closest to the campaign itself. I mean, I was actually, I was off for quite a lot of this,
27:38this kind of by-election period, but you were the one that was on the ground. What do you think about this?
27:42David Haynes Yeah, I think,
27:45well, basically, Labour were quite calm about this. Insiders last night told me for the last couple
27:53of weeks, probably three weeks, they've kind of known it was going to be close. Maybe they haven't
27:57got that message across, maybe they didn't need to, to the media, that it was like, very tight.
28:04But ultimately, they've kind of just played it well at ground level. And I do think that maybe we
28:11shouldn't listen to the national polls, when we're just looking at a very narrow, local constituency.
28:18And it is easy to get swept up in the narrative. I think you're right, when John Sweeney says,
28:22this is a two horse race, that gets reported on, and people kind of believe it. And that's why he
28:26does it. So I do think we should maybe rethink how we, how we take what politicians tell us,
28:33to be honest. And Labour have just been quite calm about it. We're obviously confident in their numbers
28:37on the ground, and to have kind of quietly pulled this off. And that's, that's all they were after,
28:43to be honest. Well, I'm sure there'll be lots to chew over in the days and weeks to come. We'll
28:50certainly have full coverage in the Scotsman throughout today on the website. Also pick up a
28:55copy of tomorrow's paper, please, because I'm sure there'll be lots to dig into there. David is going
29:01off to a Scottish Labour event later on this morning. I'm just about to go to a thing with John Sweeney to
29:07hear what he has to say. So there'll be lots more to come out of this. But thank you very much for
29:11listening. We'll be back at the same time next week, or at least we'll be back for a podcast
29:16next week. In the meantime, stay tuned to the Scotsman's website. Thank you very much.
29:24The Steamy, a politics podcast from the Scotsman.
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