It was my duty this week to record the water level at my local nature reserve at Duddingston Loch.
Despite the recent rain, the water level had hardly changed from last week. There is no river running into the loch so all of its water comes from wells deep underground. The level of the loch thus changes slowly but surely, depending on the rainfall over time.
As I walked through the trees and meadows and heard the birds singing, I became aware of deeper time, of seasons and years and the long-term progress of life. Yes, I was thinking of changes in my life, but also of climate change and political change. A by-election, like Thursday’s in Hamilton, is a small event in itself, like a shower of rain, and it may or may not tell us something about the underground water table which will eventually determine the level of the loch.
So the victory for Labour should not have come as a surprise, although it did. It comes, after all, less than a year after Labour’s landslide victory in the Westminster general election. The ups and downs of the opinion polls had given hope to the SNP that they might retain this Scottish parliamentary seat but in the end they were proved wrong.
The real surprise was the cheeky intervention of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party which turned the election into a three horse race. Labour 8,559, SNP 7,907, Reform 7,088. The out-and-out losers were the Conservatives who only got 1,621 or 6 per cent of the votes.
The post-industrial towns of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse are traditional Labour strongholds which have only lent their vote to the SNP in recent times. The party’s candidate Davy Russell is a well-known local personality who, interestingly, has never stood for election before and says he’s “not a politician.”
Campaigners on all sides said there was a large “scunner” factor in this election. People are fed up with politicians and fed up with the way they’ve let the NHS and all public services slide into disrepair. The turnout in the election was just 44 per cent.
The SNP definitely suffered from being the government of the day and, after 18 years in power at Holyrood, John Swinney will have an almighty job on his hands to persuade the voters to give the party a fifth term of office at the Scottish general election in May next year.
In a way, Labour was lucky to get away with this victory in Hamilton. The Starmer government at Westminster has not made it easy for Scottish Labour under Anas Sarwar to win votes in places like Hamilton. The u-turns on the winter fuel payments and the two-child benefit cap came only just in time. But “austerity” in the public services continues, trapped by the manifesto pledge not to increase income tax or VAT.
As for Reform, it barged into the campaign in its usual chaotic fashion. It spent a lot of money on posters and social media posts but had little presence on the doorsteps. Nigel Farage made only one brief visit to Scotland during the campaign, spending most of his time hiding from protestors. And then, to add to the entertainment, the party’s UK chairman Zia Yusuf, resigned in a row over banning the burqa. We now wait to see if Reform is here to stay in Scotland or whether it is just a passing shower.
It’s been a bitter and disappointing by-election. Bitter, because Reform always seems to cause unpleasantness wherever it goes. Accusations of racism and classism and poisonous politics were flying around. Disappointing, because none of the other main parties challenged Reform’s policies or explained how they would pay for better schools and hospitals.
It’s also comes at a time when there are expert warnings of troubles ahead – slow economic growth, rising child poverty, councils and colleges running out of money, violence and falling standards in our schools. And yet none of the main political parties have the courage to admit that we can’t have a high standard of public services without higher taxes.
None of this is a great example to the next generation who are struggling through the current exam season at university. They’ve had to battle through the Covid years and the cuts in university funding. Behind them are the 132,000 school pupils who have just finished sitting their exams – in no fewer than 50 subjects. They too are victims of the Covid lockdowns and education cuts. When the results are published in August we will how much damage has been caused to attainment levels and to the gap between the performance of students from rich and poor backgrounds.
I wonder what the long-term effects of all these current troubles are going to be. Young people, like nature itself, are surprisingly resilient but I can’t help worrying that my generation has poisoned the well from which the waters of the future will flow.
