The SNP vote in Aberdeen South fell from 15,213 in 2024 to 8,258. Conservative Douglas Lumsden took the seat with 14,308 votes, and the Tories had made the contest a referendum on North Sea oil and gas.
Kemi Badenoch flew back into Aberdeen the following day to celebrate. “If we can win in Scotland in a seat where we haven’t won a by-election since 1967, we can win anywhere,” she said, according to the Press Association. The BBC’s Paris Gourtsoyannis called it an unexpected win for a party that had been sliding in the polls and behind Reform UK. Badenoch, he noted, had visited the city three times in the final weeks to campaign with Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay.
A message on drilling
The seat came open when former SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn moved to Holyrood in May’s Scottish Parliament election. Lumsden, who holds a regional list seat at Holyrood, will now have to give it up.
The BBC said the Conservative campaign was built around job losses in a city where offshore drilling is in steady decline, and that it went after Labour and the SNP for their continued support for net zero. Badenoch used her victory speech to press the point. “What this means is that we have won that referendum on oil and gas,” she said. She called on the government to “let Jackdaw and Rosebank drill,” arguing the UK should “drill our own oil in the North Sea, not take oil from Russia or Norway.”
She set the result against the Makerfield by-election held the same day, which Andy Burnham won, opening a route to a leadership challenge against Sir Keir Starmer. That contest, she said, “was about one man’s job”. Aberdeen South was about “thousands of jobs”.
The losing side
Labour finished fourth in Aberdeen South. The BBC reported that it lost nearly 20% vote share in both Scottish seats on the night.
John Swinney, the First Minister and SNP leader, said he was “very disappointed” and blamed tactical voting. An SNP source told the PA that the party’s stance on oil and gas is seen as “weak”. The defeated candidate, Richard Thomson, said the Tories had “thrown the kitchen sink” at the campaign. He rejected the idea that the guilty plea of former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, who admitted embezzling more than £400,000 over 12 years, made a difference. Murrell was due to be sentenced the following week.
Flynn, now in Swinney’s cabinet, posted that it was “a tough night in Aberdeen that some will need to reflect on, quite heavily.”
The SNP held the other Scottish by-election, in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, where Lara Bird won 9,802 votes to Reform’s Bill Reid on 4,841.
Sources
- Tories pick themselves up off the floor with unexpected Scottish by-election win
- Labour obsessed with internal drama, says Badenoch as Tories win by-election | Bournemouth Echo
