While the SNP is defending the constituency with a majority of around 4,500 votes after the death of MSP Christina McKelvie, you might have tipped Labour to comfortably take the seat from a tired, scandal-struck party. But Labour seems to have vanished from the fight, its candidate, Davy Russell, dubbed \u201cthe invisible man\u201d for refusing to debate.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Party\u2019s absence seems to signal something deeper than just a lack of care, though: more emblematic of the party\u2019s abandonment of the communities that once built it. This was where miners, steelworkers and trade unionists lived and voted. But during Labour\u2019s long drift to the centre from Blair to Starmer, voters watched the Party deliver only managed decline. And that legacy lingers. While the SNP offered a national identity to believe in, Labour is offering little at all. <\/p>\n
There is scant enthusiasm for the party outside Labour HQ this week \u2014 only crude signs and a growing anger. \u201cMigrants adored pensioners ignored\u201d, reads one, flapping desolately in the wind as trucks whizzed by. \u201cFree Lucy Connolly\u201d, proclaimes another. These are seen daily in Parliament Square and at anti-immigration protests across England. But here, just 10 miles from Glasgow, they reveal a new front in Scottish politics. As Davy avoids hustings and botches media appearances, the SNP and Reform feel like the only real choices.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Labour Party have completely sold us out \u2014 they absolutely hate the indigenous people of Hamilton,\u201d one of the men securing the banners to the railings tells me, explaining he belonged to the far-Right group Patriotic Alternative Scotland, who have also spied an opportunity here. There is little other opportunity. While Labour clearly spent money refurbishing its campaign office, the rest of Hamilton town centre paints a dreary picture. Part of the main street has been dug up by construction workers, with heaps of concrete left blocking the pavement. Litter languishes in the ditches, exposed pipes poke out. Many of the baronial crow-stepped gables that frame the main drag have been left to rot. It all shouts of neglect.\u00a0<\/p>\n
None of this surprises me: I grew up 20 minutes away. But what I hear next does. The man from Patriotic Alternative spoke of a \u201cwhite genocide\u201d coming to Scotland \u2014 the sort of Trumpian rhetoric rarely heard in these parts. Scotland, after all, has far lower levels of immigration than England. But politics here is becoming increasingly racialised. The culture wars have left no place untouched. Another of the banners \u2014 \u201cScotland too white Anas?\u201d \u2014 refers to Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar who, in an eerily similar speech to former first minister Humza Yousaf, bemoaned the \u201cwhiteness\u201d of the Scottish establishment. It all points to an unexpected division, ready to be harnessed by Farage, who is already in trouble for a Facebook ad which claimed Sarwar was prioritising Scotland\u2019s Pakistani community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That division echoes through the normally quiet streets of Hamilton, as an anti-Farage protest makes itself heard. \u201cNigel Farage! We see you! You\u2019re a racist through and through!\u201d The socialist banners and keffiyehs are on show. I speak to a man called Sean Clerkin, a trade unionist. He had been screaming that Farage was a \u201ccrypto-fascist\u201d and should \u201cfuck off back to London\u201d. Even so, Clerkin understands why some here might go for Reform. \u201cThe mainstream parties are neoliberal, only for the rich and the powerful,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople feel completely betrayed. So they\u2019ll turn to Reform because it offers them rage, anger, blame.\u201d Arguments break out, tensions rise, and the police close in. Each side screams that the other is full of liars. An older woman called Margaret tells me she\u2019d never seen anything like this in her life for a by-election. \u201cThe [2014] referendum was horrible enough,\u201d she says. \u201cWe cannae go back there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the end, the anti-Farage protest succeeds. The Reform UK leader changes his plans, avoids volatile Hamilton, and instead goes for a walk around Larkhall with his candidate Ross Lambie. A councillor, architect and farmer, Lambie has proven himself to be a competent communicator on the streets and online, something that\u2019s helped his party scoop up working-class support on what was formerly known as Red Clydeside.<\/p>\n
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Will Reform break Scotland\u2019s two-party system? Photo: Max Mitchell.<\/p>\n
I eventually track them down at a brick factory on the outskirts of the constituency. Three black Mercedes and bearded men with Barbour jackets mill about outside. Farage emerges, grinning, lapping up the approval of the workers gathered around him. His expression shifts to a studied concern, though, when I ask if he believes that Scottish politics has moved on from the anti-Englishness of 2013. \u201cIt\u2019s really unpleasant,\u201d he says, almost enjoying an assumed victimhood. \u201cI think it\u2019s a small part of the nationalist movement, to be honest, but it is there, undeniably. What was amazing about being assaulted, was that Alex Salmond refused to apologise. If any of my people behaved like that I\u2019d be ashamed. And yet they\u2019re the ones that call me the nasty names.\u201d It\u2019s classic Farage, a punchy mix of grievance and performative fairness, suggesting he is the one on the side of the angels. And did he really think Anas Sarwar was a racist who would prioritise his own ethnic community? \u201cI just think many in the Scottish political class are obsessed by race and gender,\u201d he says, sidestepping intimations of race-baiting. \u201cI think we should just treat everybody the same.\u201d He is ready to talk unity. But only on his terms.<\/p>\n
If the political disenchantment in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse shadows the sort of thing we\u2019re seeing south of the border, though, that\u2019s because there is a greater unifier than identity politics: poverty. Once astonishingly wealthy \u2014 first off slaves and sugar, then from building 20% of the world\u2019s shipping tonnage \u2014 the Dear Green Place, as Glasgow is known, has had a torrid few decades. Deindustrialising at speed, it has struggled to transition to a service economy. The persistent poverty rate<\/a> is the same as it was in 2010, while half of the top 20 areas<\/a> in the UK with the highest proportion of working-age people claiming out-of-work sickness benefits are in or around the city. That\u2019s partly the SNP\u2019s fault, with its quixotic focus on trans rights and other culture war manias over basic services. But the numbers equally speak to a Labour Party, on both sides of the border, bereft of radical economic ideas.<\/p>\n In a town that\u2019s lost its purpose, it is perhaps not surprising that Glasgow would become the epicentre of Scottish independence. Like Brexit for many voters in the red wall, the 2014 vote was seen as a chance for a fresh start and a clean break from post-industrial decline. Other than Dundee (post-jute, post-jam, post-journalism), Glasgow and the surrounding areas recorded<\/a> the highest percentages of \u201cyes\u201d votes, though \u201cno\u201d still won in most councils. Yet given Britain actually left the European Union and Scotland remained part of the UK, both the legacies of Brexit and Scottish independence are defined by unfulfilled promises made by their parliamentary masters. In Hamilton and Larkhall, voters feel let down by both SNP and Labour \u2014 and into the gap slips Farage, tapping into the disillusionment with political elites of every stripe.\u00a0<\/p>\n For some, these failures have prompted apathy. Many I spoke to say they were never voting again. \u201cThey\u2019re [politicians] aw just in it tae line their pockets,\u201d says Jim, a 35-year-old plumber, with a nonchalant grin after a draw of a cigarette. A gale picks up and the rain begins beating down. \u201cThat Farage might be saying different \u2018hings, but does he really care aboot people like me?\u201d <\/p>\n Yet even though there is despondency, there is no escaping the fierce political tradition of the Glasgow suburbs. Here, nationalism brushes up against some of the staunchest unionism in the country. In Hamilton, but especially in nearby Larkhall, sectarianism remains a way of life. Union Jacks flutter and many Orange walks start from here in the summer. The traditionally Protestant football team, Rangers, is sacrosanct, and anything green is associated with \u201cOld Firm\u201d rivals Celtic. The Subway sandwich shop is painted black<\/a> and even green traffic lights have been vandalised.\u00a0<\/p>\n But now, political tribalism is displacing these former religious loyalties. A Rangers man once might have quipped that there would be \u201csair hearts in the Vatican\u201d after a win \u2014 but today the divide cuts through politics: Palestine flags in Celtic Park; anti-woke banners at Ibrox. \u201cIt\u2019s not about religion anymore,\u201d explains David, a local marketing director. \u201cBack then it was more fights and that. It\u2019s political now. I\u2019m Hamilton Accies [the local football team] so I\u2019m no caring. But it\u2019s Palestine and Kneecap and everything else now.\u201d It has become custom and feeling.<\/p>\n \u201cPolitical tribalism is displacing these former religious loyalties.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Hamilton decline. Photo: Max Mitchell.<\/p>\n