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WESTMINSTER by-elections are a bit like buses, you wait ages for one and then three come along at once.
Yes that’s right, not only will we have the delight of watching Andy Burnham make his bid to return to the House of Commons in Makerfield for the next four weeks – there will also be two Scottish Westminster by-elections on the same day.
June 18 will see voters in Aberdeen South and Arbroath and Broughty Ferry go to the polls to pick their new MPs, while voters in Makerfield will pick their replacement for Josh Simons (who let us not forget said that smuggler gangs should be put on a barge and sent to a Scottish island and was at the heart of the Labour Together spy scandal).
Spare your thoughts for those of us in the newsroom who are still recovering from the six-week Holyrood election campaign and the never-stopping news agenda.
But while all eyes south of the Border will be on Burnham, in Scotland we will be turning our attention to who is going to replace Stephen Flynn and Stephen Gethins now that they have both entered Holyrood and John Swinney’s Cabinet.
In Aberdeen South, Richard Thomson is set to defend the seat for the SNP. The former MP for Gordon and Buchan, between 2005 and 2024, who lost his seat to the Tories’ Harriet Cross at the General Election, is definitely a seasoned politician who the party will be hoping will give a steady presence amid likely attacks from the Tories and Reform UK.
Expect Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage’s parties to ramp up their pro-oil and gas rhetoric to the extreme in a bid to claw an extra seat in the Commons.
It will certainly be interesting to see how Thomson sets out the SNP position on the policy, which while reserved did play a large role in the Scottish Parliament election.
Douglas Lumsden, the Tory candidate, announced he would be standing just days after winning re-election as an MSP. If Lumsden wins the by-election, he will have to resign his Holyrood seat, but as he is a North East list MSP there won’t be another by-election to replace him. Aberdeenshire councillor James Adams, who is next on the Tories' regional list, would be made an MSP in his stead.
Jo Hart is running for Reform UK, her bizarre LinkedIn posts have already resurfaced, while David Ballantine is the candidate for Alliance to Liberate Scotland, and Nurul Hoque Ali for Scottish Labour.
The SNP won the seat in 2024 with 32.8% of the vote, with Labour in second place with 24.7% and the Tories on 24.4%. But you never can tell in by-elections, which tend to defy the odds.
In Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, SNP staffer Lara Bird is a fresher face on the scene, but is well known in the halls of Westminster. Bird works as a senior policy adviser for the SNP’s Westminster group, as well as a qualified barrister and PHD student at King’s College.
Not all the candidates for the by-elections have been confirmed yet, but Heather Dorans, a local councillor in Angus, has been selected to stand for Scottish Labour.
In 2024, Gethins won the seat with 35.3% of the vote, but it was right with Labour in second place on 33.4%. Another close contest may be on the cards.
While Westminster’s eyes will be on Makersfield and the potential second coming of Burnham, the SNP will be throwing all of their might at holding these two Westminster seats.
After all, if they don’t, they’ll be left with only seven MPs.
Whatever happens, the results of all three by-elections will certainly have an impact on Westminster.
