Ward Profile
Cause of By-Election
Buckle in, everyone, because you are about to be taken on the wildest ride of this project’s history. What we have in this piece is a by-election three years in the making, and which I have been absolutely dying to write about for that whole time. We’re off to Bearsden South, to replace Independent councillor Andrew Polson. Polson was first elected for the Conservatives in 2017, during which term he ended up one of the two Co-Leaders of the council in an administration with the Lib Dems. He was re-elected under that banner in 2022, before being suspended from the party later that year.
The reason for his suspension was ultimately the reason he has now been disqualified as a councillor: he was charged with several crimes, and late last year convicted and sentenced to jail. I would like to emphasise in advance that if you detect any sense of mirth here, it’s very much directed at the fact this absolute chancer thought he could get away with his misdeeds. His actual crimes are of course appalling, have caused misery for his victim, and are not funny in the slightest. But gods, what a moron.
When Polson was charged, it became apparent he was attempting an All Types of Fraud speedrun. The most serious of these was Romance Fraud. This is when someone leverages a romantic relationship over someone to commit fraud. In this case, Polson defrauded the woman in question to the eye-watering sum of around £190,000, having used the money to jointly buy a property which he claimed he would then let out and they would split the proceeds. In fact, he had purchased the property in his name alone, and did not share the rental income despite the fact his victim was paying money into an account to cover costs.
This deception seemingly fell apart after, clearly enamoured of his own cleverness, Polson reportedly encouraged his victim to watch the Tindler Swinder documentary. He then even asked her if she thought he was better than the swindler. To me, this adds an additional level of nastiness to the situation: he wasn’t satisfied with simply having defrauded this poor woman, he then had to gloat about it. Absolutely despicable.
There’s more though. In addition to the Romance Fraud, Polson was also convicted of classical Embezzlement. Specifically, he embezzled over £9,000 from a Christian radio station. That’s pretty un-Christian behaviour, to say the least, up there with (purely for example) subjecting someone to conversion therapy. Now at this point this list of convictions ends, but the list of charges doesn’t.
I’m not sure why this didn’t get to the point of conviction, perhaps they were felt to be less serious, but Polson was also charged with Electoral Fraud. In this case, he reportedly gave an address in East Dunbartonshire (you need to live or work in a council area to stand for election there), whilst actually being resident in Glasgow. As I said, this doesn’t seem to have progressed to conviction, but the suspicion he’d done so was certainly circulating amongst local political activists after 2017. His wife Aileen, a Lib Dem councillor in Milngavie, was also briefly implicated in this side of things and suspended from her party. Charges against her must have been dropped pretty sharpish, as she was re-admitted to the party relatively quickly.
There’s more oddness in this whole saga that isn’t necessarily within criminal realms. You could, for example, look up the list of 2017 Conservative councillors, and then compare who stood where in 2022, and ponder why a 2017 Conservative sitting in another ward stood as an Independent in Polson’s in 2022. Mysterious! In any case, whilst Polson is off to prison, the voters of his ward will finally get to vote in a replacement.
Ward Details
Bearsden South is one of 7 wards in East Dunbartonshire, and elects 3 councillors at a full election. As you’d guess from the name, this covers the southern portions of Bearsden between the Forth and Clyde Canal in the south and Bearsden Cross in the north, including the Westerton and Kessington areas. There haven’t been any boundary changes to the Bearsden and Milngavie area since STV was introduced, meaning this ward remains as-was in 2007.
For elections to the Scottish Parliament, the ward is entirely within the Strathkelvin and Bearsden constituency which has been held by the SNP since 2011. It had previously been Labour, except that in 2003 it offered a contribution to the Rainbow Parliament by electing Dr Jean Turner as an Independent on a platform of protecting Stobhill Hospital. At the UK Parliament it’s part of the Mid Dunbartonshire constituency that that Lib Dems won in 2024. This was previously known as East Dunbartonshire which the Lib Dems won in 2005 then see-sawed between them and the SNP in 2015, 2017 and 2019. The 2019 re-loss of the seat was especially bruising for the Lib Dems as it meant the loss of their UK-wide leader, Jo Swinson.
Electoral History
This ward has come very close to the same pattern of councillors at every election, being one apiece for the SNP, Conservatives and Lib Dems. The one exception was in 2012, when Labour were able to dislodge the Conservatives, before Polson managed to regain the seat. Whether he was strictly legally eligible to do so was, as noted above, a matter of some speculation amongst local activists at the time. The one other disruption to patterns came early on with the resignation of the original Conservative in 2009, which temporarily added a second Lib Dem to the ward at the resulting by-election.
Turning to votes instead and this has always been a pretty evenly split ward. Were it not for the 2009 by-election, no party would have exceeded 30% of the vote, and indeed doing so didn’t do anything to help the Conservatives as the naturally more transfer-friendly Lib Dems took the seat anyway. The relative position of each party has shifted somewhat however, with the Lib Dems in front in 2007 and 2012, the Conservatives in the 2009 by-election and in 2017, and then the SNP eking the lead in an effective three-way tie in 2022. Just 17 votes separated the SNP in first from the Lib Dems in third!
Labour’s vote has tended to be respectable enough here that you could easily imagine them winning a seat most years if the ward had an extra councillor, whilst the Greens have lagged behind with what is for them a respectable but unremarkable share. Indeed, the lack of a fourth councillor in any of the Bearsden and Milngavie wards is a bane to the Greens. For those two parties, one year stands out in particular: 2017. At that point Labour weren’t even a full 2% ahead of the Greens. We’ll come back to this shortly…
Councillors and Key Stats
3 Councillors, in order elected:
🟡SNP: Ian Gallagher
🟠Lib Dem: Vaughan Moody
🔵Conservative: Andrew Polson
Change vs 2017: No change
Turnout: 57.8%
Electorate: 11099
Valid: 6370 (99.2%)
Spoiled: 50 (0.8%)
Quota: 1593
Candidates
🔴Labour: Lorna Dougall
🟢Green: Scott Ferguson
🟡SNP: Ian Gallagher
⚪Independent: Duncan Malcolm
⚪Independent: Sheila Mechan
🟠Lib Dem: Vaughan Moody
🔵Conservative: Andrew Polson
First Preferences
Transfers (single winner recalculation)
Two-Candidate Preferred
By-Election
Candidates
It’s the full slate of Holyrood parties plus Reform this time around, as well as the Family Party for some fringe outfit presence. We’ve got a few returning faces for this one, with Labour’s returning directly from 2022, and also having run for the Westminster seat in 2024. Two other candidates contested nearby wards in 2022, the Conservative in Bearsden North and the Green in Milngavie.
🔴Labour: Lorna Dougall
🟣Reform UK: John Fairlie
🔵Conservative: Duncan Evans
🟡SNP: Lynne Gibbons
🟠Lib Dem: Ben Langmead
🟤Family: Liam McKechnie
🟢Green: Emma Sheppard
Analysis
Despite the effective tie in 2022 first preferences, Bearsden South has a pretty emphatic winner when you run it for a single seat. The Lib Dems, benefitting from local strength and a huge pile of fellow Pro-Union party transfers, beat the SNP by a mighty 20%. Given the character of the area and the difficulties afflicting all of the SNP, Labour and Conservatives, I simply cannot see any other outcome here but a Lib Dem win. They’ll also be aided by the fact that this is the Bearsden ward that’s in Strathkelvin and Bearsden, which they were already working hard for Holyrood: despite the name, neighbouring Bearsden North is actually in Clydebank and Milngavie.
It’ll therefore be more interesting to look at the overall pattern of first preferences than the winner. For the SNP I’d be looking to see how far they fall and how comfortable their, presumable, second place will be. For Reform UK, this is likely to be relatively unfavourable ground, and so I’m very curious to see how they do. It’s not impossible that this ends up looking a wee bit like an Edinburgh or Inner Glasgow ward with a stronger Green than Reform result. I’m absolutely not predicting that will be the case, merely musing that it’s possible.
On which front, it’ll also be interesting to see whether Labour end up slipping behind the Greens. One thing I know about the Green candidate (who I also know personally, I should add as a matter of transparency) is that she’s very active in the local community, a real weel-kent face. With Labour really, really suffering and the Lib Dems an easy place for the well-heeled voters of this ward to take their vote, a crash into single digits is an entirely believable scenario.
Prediction
Lib Dem Win.
2022 Results (Detailed Data)
Transfers (full election)
Results by Polling District
Second Preferences
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