Is Glasgow NE going to be a Glasgow East or a Glenrothes?
Is Labour good value at 8/13?
So far I’ve not got excited about the pending by-election in Glasgow NE – the seat made vacant by the resignation of the speaker, Michael Martin.
Because of the tradition that major parties do not contest the Speaker’s seat there is no direct comparison with what happened at the general election. Martin stood as the speaker not as Labour candidate. He got 53.3% of the votes with the SNP, who did stand, in second place on 17.7%. Scottish Socialist Labour came in third on 14.2%.
Clearly this is solid Labour territory – the question for punters is whether it will be a Glasgow East, where the SNP overturned a huge Labour majority, or Glenrothes where Brown’s party managed to secure even more votes than it had done at the general election.
All this makes me very nervous about Scottish by-elections of which this will be the fifth since 2005. I find it hard to call and we are still waiting for a date.
William Hill have Labour at 8/13 and the SNP at 6/5.
Victor Chandler make it Labour 4/7 with the SNP at 5/4.
At the end of the day a lot depends on the political mood after the conference season.