SCOTTISH Labour didn’t hold back financially in Glasgow during the Holyrood election – especially when it came to their leader.
Anas Sarwar’s attempt to win the Glasgow Cathcart and Pollok constituency seat saw more than £30,000 poured into his campaign, according to newly filed election receipts first reported by The Herald.
Of course, it didn’t work. He lost comfortably to the SNP’s Zen Ghani.
Sarwar spent £18,423.96 during the long campaign and £12,131.23 in the short sprint to polling day, bringing the total to £30,555.19.
He was, by some distance, Labour’s most expensive candidate in the city.
But what about the others? The next highest Labour spend in Glasgow was James Adams – their candidate in Kelvin and Maryhill – who came in at £17,704. Labour list MSP Pauline McNeill’s campaign cost £6650.
Rashid Hussain, the leader of the Labour group on Glasgow City Council and the party’s candidate for Glasgow South, spent £12,196.89 on his short campaign.
Across Glasgow as a whole, Labour spent £94,879.82 on its constituency campaigns. The SNP outspent them at £107,657.85. But they also outperformed them, of course – with 89,148 votes to Labour’s 50,851.
That leaves Labour paying around £1.87 per vote across the city, compared to £1.21 for the SNP.
What about Edinburgh? The most eye-catching was the spend for Edinburgh Central.
Labour councillor James Dalgleish spent a total of £25,026 between January 7 and polling day – coming in second behind Greens MSP Lorna Slater.
He did manage to beat former SNP minister Angus Robertson, mind you – who spent a lot more according to The Herald.
All of this, of course, comes after much criticism of Labour’s election strategy, with senior figures including Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander and deputy leader Jackie Baillie accused of focusing too heavily on constituency battles while neglecting the regional list.
There were even calls for Sarwar and Baillie to resign on the party’s Scottish Executive Committee (SEC) – albeit, ultimately in vain so far.
In any case, spending returns don’t tell the story of the campaign.
But they do underline a basic point, that throwing money at a contest is no guarantee of success. In this case, it just made defeat more expensive.
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