With both the SNP and Labour toiling, Reform had a strong showing in the Hamilton byelection and threaten the mainstream political parties ahead of local elections next year, explains David Jamieson

The SNP’s campaign in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse has backfired badly. In the closing days, First Minister John Swinney dismissed Labour and declared a two-horse race between his party and Reform. The clear intention was to mobilise his own support through the fear of a Reform victory.

In the end this benefitted Reform, who surged to 7088 votes, or 26% from a standing start. Though Labour’s vote share came down by 2%, it took the seat on 8559 votes to the SNP’s 7957. The big losers of the night were the SNP, whose vote share fell by almost 17%.

With the caveat that byelections involve local and specific questions, and tend to reflect anti-incumbency moods, we can think of the constituency as something of a bellwether, tracking many national voting trends in recent years. Therefore, the SNP’s failure to hang on to a seat it won comfortably in 2021 will send shockwaves through the party. A backlash is already building among local activists who opposed the SNP vs Reform approach.

SNP attempts to frame the coming 2026 Scottish Parliamentary election as an anti-Reform effort have been building in recent months. In April, the Scottish government hosted a summit of Holyrood parties from which Reform were excluded. It was a clear attempt to both place the SNP as the answer to the Faragist threat, and place Labour and the Scottish Tories in the difficult position of being seen to band with the Scottish establishment against a unionist rival.

This cynical manoeuvre has had the effect of making Reform the big story in Scottish politics. However, Swinney hoped this would galvanise a voting base exhausted by years of SNP failures to advance the cause of independence, or deliver badly needed improvements in public services and the economy.

Party insiders have reportedly said now is the ‘time to hit the independence button’. This only demonstrates the kind of cynical instrumentalization of independence that has so undermined the SNP’s relationship with its voters. The truth is that the SNP has no platform for independence and no strategy to pursue it. They haven’t calibrated independence with the huge changes taking place in the world system. This would simply be a rhetorical shift for votes, unlikely to fool anyone.

Labour threw everything they had into the constituency to face a key test of Anas Sarwar’s leadership. Everything, that is, except Keir Starmer, who despite making a speech in Glasgow just days before the polls opened, stayed away from the nearby campaign. Speaking in a Govan shipyard, he laid out plans for national ‘warfighting readiness’, gutting services to pay for more arms. However, down the road, the campaign avoided the government’s record or plans. Instead it focused relentlessly on the man Sarwar called ‘Davy Hamilton’, real name Davy Russell, a local notable with extensive networks in the community. His campaign scarcely used the word Labour, and emphasised his strictly apolitical nature. He was just a local man, sick of party politics.

It’s likely this anti-political campaign helped Labour by washing off some of the stink from Starmer. It’s also possible Scottish Labour will learn bad lessons from this victory. It will be difficult to roll-out anti-political and hyper-local network politics across the country in 2026. Regardless, Labour’s vote share still fell. It’s strange to think the party is overjoyed to have scraped a win in its old central-belt heartlands.

With both governing parties toiling, Reform had a strong showing. They were helped a great deal by the focus placed on them. Just as all that glitters is not gold, all that is anti-Reform is not really about beating Reform.

To do that will require an insurgent challenge from the radical left against both Reform and, crucially, the establishment parties. Reform make no serious challenge on the cost of living, against the burgeoning war state, or the horrors of Gaza. In fact, they have little to say about the problems faced by millions across the country where their campaigning has proved successful. They are parasitic on the failures of the governing class. They cannot be defeated by propping up that failing establishment.

Volatility, and the breakdown of political deference, are the big winners in this election. They now threaten all the careful calculations of the mainstream parties ahead of 2026. This atmospheric turbulence can benefit forces on the left as well, and far beyond elections, but only those willing to break from the conventionalism, cynicism and management of low expectations so evident in this campaign.