 | 'The Lib Dems could even struggle to hold on to Gordon, leaving the party with only rock-solid Orkney and Shetland, together with Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross and Ross, Skye and Lochaber in their hands after May 2010, the last deadline for the next general election.' David Perry in the Press & Journal, 26 th July 2008. |  |
SNP advances in the wake of its Glasgow East victory could shake up the political map across the north and north-east.
The claim by Westminster leader and business convener Angus Robertson, MP for Moray, that it signals a landslide - with the party seizing Prime Minister Gordon BrownÕs Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath and 36 other Labour seats across Scotland - must be somewhat fanciful.
By-election swings rarely translate into general election landslides because local factors and the hype of attention distort the outcome.
But sometimes they come close and changes a lot less staggering than the 22.5% that secured Glasgow East could take Argyle and Bute and Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, with the closest equivalent in the Scottish Parliament already in SNP hands, from the Liberal Democrats, and Ochil and South Perthshire, Dundee West and even Aberdeen North and Stirling from Labour.
The Tories beat the Liberal Democrats into third place in Glasgow East, but largely due to a collapse in Liberal Democrat support, and with their vote flatlining would struggle on current showing to do more than possibly recover West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine from the Liberal Democrats. Hopes of Angus seem distant and, although the SNP has Aberdeen South as its 11th-most-likely win, the four-way party mix there is such that Labour could hold on even with a fall in its vote, depending on who benefited from disaffected Lib Dem voters.
It could be LabourÕs only remaining seat in the north and north-east.
The Lib Dems could even struggle to hold on to Gordon, leaving the party with only rock-solid Orkney and Shetland, together with Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross and Ross, Skye and Lochaber in their hands after May 2010, the last deadline for the next general election.
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