Labour win marks party fight back against the SNP, it was an important victory for them, Dunfermline is the first Holyrood seat to change hands for 13 years, Scotland’s unpopular Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon can’t multi task government and indy campaign, both an omnishambles

Dear All

There is a fight back happening in Scotland, while the Scottish National Party has been sitting on its hands in government and as a party, the Labour Party has been winning seat after seat off Scotland’s unpopular Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

Dunfermline was an epic disaster for the Scottish National Party; another equally damaging open wound was the defeat in the Govan by-election. As someone familiar with by-elections, the SNP’s Govan campaign was incredibly inept.

Who runs an election campaign on the back of a dead former councillor?

It gets worse, the perceived ‘legacy’ the SNP thought was there never existed, most people didn’t know who she was.

At Govan Cross, it was amusing to see SNP Cllrs and Sturgeon cronies actually turning up to campaign which was something of a rarity from my previous experience of them.

And how uncomfortable and unhappy they looked, the SNP even managed to position a wall paper pasting table in the wrong place.

I have already covered the SNP attempt to disrupt my campaign by an angry wee Nat called Neil McDonagh who the Police told me that they would be happy to ‘lift’ if he caused me anymore trouble. A stupid little man with a massive chip on shoulder, who more than demonstrated why he is unsuitable to be a candidate for Public Office, a clown!

Back to Dunfermline and the Sturgeon defeat, Dunfermline is the first Holyrood seat to change hands for 13 years.

Many people know that the tide has turned for the Scottish National Party, the independence referendum is already lost, it is doubtful that they will get 3 seats at the European Election, and things don’t look good for Westminster in 2015.

Let’s face it, at Westminster, the SNP have proved ineffectual and lazy, which SNP MP’s Robertson and Whiteford ably demonstrated, Robertson is out of his depth on defence and Whiteford is just a Salmond crony easily forgotten. Her claim to fame is that she ‘took the huff’ and never returned to a committee where she was supposed to be standing up for Scotland’s interests.

Bags of time for shopping in London now!

Labour leader Johann Lamont said her party was back on track with its "emphatic" by-election victory, Labour has been doing well, in a number of by-elections; the SNP have been losing support.

Dunfermline wasn’t just an ordinary by-election, the Bill Walker case played a role; his imprisonment for 12 months reinforced a feeling that there was something wrong in the SNP ranks.

One SNP crony being replaced with another SNP crony and an outsider to boot!

The SNP is a party within a party and as such, they are leeching support from their activist base, many people are taking a back seat. In SNP branches now dubbed ‘Yes Scotland wherever’, the numbers coming out to work for them are very small, just a trickle. You might have gotten the impression from Alex Salmond that he has tens of thousands of activists that is correct.

Cara Hilton’s win was impressive; she took the seat in west Fife with a whacking 2873 majority.

The bottom line is that she made Dunfermline the second safest Labour seat at Holyrood.

If you are an SNP MSP that should tell you that you shouldn’t be making plans for the big house, the big car and to start saving, because your tenure at Holyrood is looking incredibly shaky.

Johann Lamont said:

"It's a very positive step. It's a very substantial result, an emphatic result. And given where we were in 2011, this is a very important stage. That's where we've got back to, being in a process where we are able to compete politically. Because the defeat in 2011 was so significant, then we know the scale of the challenge. What this does, however, is it confirms that both politically and organisationally we are able to compete and we can build on this."

Ms Hilton said:

"The people of Dunfermline have rejected Scotland being put on pause for another year. The Government of Scotland has been suspended so that a referendum campaign can be won."

She added:

"We are only here tonight because of the bravery of three women, three women who came forward to demand justice and who won that fight. Their courage and determination must be a reminder to all of us that we need to work harder to ensure that all victims of domestic violence are able to come forward and receive the justice they deserve."

Over in the SNP camp, Salmond said that if the 7% swing to Labour in Dunfermline was replicated nationally, his party would still be the largest.

Well, it is a long road to 2016 and the signs don’t look good for holding onto that SNP majority, that was a fluke, and with the tide now turning away from Salmond and Sturgeon, we are seeing the calibre of the SNP clique, it is a drone class devoid of original thinking, most people don’t know what is behind Salmond and Sturgeon.

The SNP leadership has a talent for promoting and keeping stupid people round them to make them look good. A prime example is the trash surrounding Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s unpopular Deputy First Minister. At the SNP GRA one night, I listened as two of Sturgeon’s cronies went through the Glasgow City Council 2012 manifesto, not only could the Hunter’s clan not explain what was in it, I had to stop reading because I was appalled by the very poor presentation of Mhairi Hunter, I thought, was I in an 8 year old’s reading class?

And the manifesto was crap, no big ideas, nothing of worth, just dreadful tat. 

As to the SNP loser and wannabe Yes Scotland quitter Shirley-Anne Somerville, she said her party could be ‘proud’ of its campaign which focused on the threat of school closures in the area.

That’s it!

Somerville added:

"We've run a positive campaign trying to support local parents in their schools and I hope we can come together, all of us in the party, to make sure those three schools in the Dunfermline constituency stay open."

Somerville wanted to quit Yes Scotland which is a doomed enterprise, the SNP loaded the organisation up with Team Salmond and Team Sturgeon cronies thinking that independence could be run as just another election.

And it can’t.

Also it is a mistake to do the ‘angry Nat’ bit which signal a change of course at the SNP Conference, a big mistake, that is like going full speed over the abyss, when the SNP hit the bottom in 2014, the party will try and do a unity bit, the reality is that Salmond and Sturgeon killed indy.

And SNP members shouldn’t forget that.

The Labour Party did well, Cara Hilton deserved her win; and ‘carpetbagger’ Somerville deserved to lose, she wanted to represent Dunfermline but didn’t want to live there, who is kidding who, she wanted to represent herself and the SNP.

The end is looming for Alex Salmond, the defeat in Dunfermline was a key test that he and Sturgeon badly botched.

Not so ‘brave’ now Salmond!

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University