Ward Profile
Cause of By-Election
Continuing our lengthy run of double bills, North Lanarkshire has two elections coming up on the 10th. Both have arisen from councillors being elected to Westminster in Labour’s sweep of the Central Belt back in July. In this case it’s Kenneth Stevenson, who has made the jump from Fortissat Councillor to MP for Airdrie and Shotts.
Stevenson had first been elected in 2017, and was elected MP at his second attempt, having also contested the 2021 by-election. Fortissat won’t be unfamiliar to long-time followers of Ballot Box Scotland, as it had two by-elections in the previous term. The first pre-dated the launch of BBS but I did reflect back on it as a bonus piece before the 2022 election, whilst the second was a pandemic era vote.
Ward Details
Fortissat is one of 21 wards in North Lanarkshire, and elects 4 councillors at a full election. The centre of this ward is the town of Shotts, and there are then a string of other villages along major roads to the north, including Salsburgh and Harthill, and the south, including Allanton. There has been a very small boundary change since 2007, with the ward expanding to take in the village of Morningside near Wishaw, which alongside growth in the overall councillor tally in North Lanarkshire was enough to add a fourth seat.
In both parliaments the ward is part of the respective Airdrie and Shotts constituency. At Holyrood that remains in the SNP’s hands for now, having first won it in their big 2011 majority – the tiny segment around Morningside however is in Motherwell and Wishaw, which it took until 2016 for them to win. At Westminster it has, obviously, reverted to Labour control after being SNP held since their 2015 landslide.
Electoral History
At the first outing for STV in 2007, councillors went one each to Labour, the SNP and Independent Charlie Cefferty, who had previously been the councillor for the single-member Benhar ward which covered the Harthill and Eastfield area. Cefferty was also a senior figure in the Orange Lodge, which may explain some of the voting patterns we’ll see below. The same pattern held in 2012, though with the SNP chancing their arm on two councillors their sitting councillor (McMillan) fell afoul of the alphabet effect, electing the other candidate (Cochrane) instead.
In 2017, with an extra seat up for grabs, Labour picked up a second, whilst Cefferty (who had fallen spectacularly foul of the Lodge) lost out as voters elected a Conservative instead. “Elected” is a very carefully chosen word there: that was the verdict of voters, yes, but Sandy Thornton never became a councillor. He had clearly been a paper candidate who didn’t expect – nor want – to win. That may shock people not used to the political sausage machine, but it won’t surprise anyone with a history in a serious political party.
Usually, such accidental councillors give the job a fair shake, rather than refuse to sign their acceptance of office entirely, but not in this case. Labour won the resulting by-election, and another following Cochrane’s resignation as an Independent, having chucked the SNP in 2018. That gave Labour every councillor in the ward, which obviously couldn’t survive contact with full STV in 2022, where they re-elected the two they had in 2017, alongside one from the SNP and, uniquely, the British Unionist Party.
In 2007, although Labour weren’t far away from having enough votes for two councillors, Cefferty had crossed quota and the SNP were only just short. Notably there was no Conservative candidate that year, the only ward in North Lanarkshire where that wasn’t the case. If not for the two 2017-term by-elections, there would have been a consistent pattern of modest Labour declines (well, until a 0.1% gain in 2022) and SNP gains over the years, plus the obvious Conservative spike in 2017, though only just ahead of the British Unionists. Those by-elections did happen though, and they were both interesting in their own right.
The 2017 by-election also followed shortly after a Westminster election where the SNP had done relatively poorly, and with the BUP surging into second place I remember very well the brief Twitter storm and predictions that the SNP were doomed as a result; never mind the aforementioned, ahem, Orange nature of the area! In the 2021 by-election, much to my surprise the BUP didn’t stand at all, which cleared the way for a big Conservative bounce, even as the SNP ran Labour the closest yet on first preferences, and even the Greens doing much better (though still very weakly) relative to the first by-election.
To this day I’m unsure whether some folk involved with the BUP saw how absolutely incredulous I was that they had skipped that by-election, or whether they were genuinely just more organised, but come 2022 they made sure they were on the ballot again. Although they didn’t quite reach their 2017 by-election heights, they were almost all of the way to a quota and so easily won their seat.
Councillors and Key Stats
4 Councillors, in order elected:
🔴Labour: Martin McCulloch
🟡SNP: Margaret Hughes
🟤British Unionist: John Leckie
🔴Labour: Kenneth Stevenson
Change vs 2017: +1 British Unionist, -1 Conservative
Turnout: 38.7%
Electorate: 12104
Valid: 4559 (97.4%)
Spoiled: 123 (2.6%)
Quota: 912
Candidates
🔵Conservative: Ben Callaghan
🟢Green: Emma Cuthbertson
🟡SNP: Margaret Hughes
🟤British Unionist: John Leckie
🔴Labour: Martin McCulloch
🟡SNP: Sarah Quinn
🔴Labour: Kenneth Stevenson
First Preferences
Transfers (single winner recalculation)
Two-Candidate Preferred
By-Election
Candidates
As far as the big parties go, it’s just the Westminster 4 rather than the Holyrood 5 this time around, the Greens ending a streak of presence in the ward. They are joined, not surprisingly, by a British Unionist Party candidate and, much more surprisingly, one from “Progressive Change North Lanarkshire”, a local outfit formed by dissident SNP councillors after a chaotic period for the group.
Three returning faces out of this lot, with the BUP candidate having stood in last year’s Motherwell South East and Ravenscraig by-election, whilst the Conservative stood at the full election for Mossend and Holytown. That makes this the second double bill on the trot where the Conservatives have stood a returning candidate but not in the ward they contested in 2022 even though it’s also voting, which is a bit odd. The Labour candidate meanwhile didn’t stand in 2022 but won the 2017 Fortissat by-election.
🟤British Unionist: Billy Acheson
🟠Lib Dem: Leigh Butler
🔵Conservative: Sheila Cameron
🟡SNP: Brendan McAleese
🟤Progressive Change North Lanarkshire: Mary McIntosh
🔴Labour: Clare Quigley
Analysis
A Labour victory here is a completely foregone conclusion. Absolutely no doubt about it – they won both of the by-elections here in the previous term, they won the MP in July, and the balance of transfers will favour them over anyone else. The more interesting aspect of this one will be the spread of first preferences, though I would emphasise that will largely be locally interesting, not nationally indicative – similar to the 2017 by-election here.
I would be completely unsurprised to see a repeat of the 2017 by-election, with the British Unionist Party overtaking the SNP for second place, given the local character, the result in neighbouring Armadale and Blackridge, and the fact the BUP have presumably been able to bed their councillor in and get their party further known locally. I’m also very curious to see how the local grouping do – when a bunch of formerly Labour councillors stood as “Independent Alliance North Lanarkshire” in 2017 they actually collectively did not terribly, albeit not well enough to win any seats.
Prediction
Labour Win.
2022 Results (Detailed Data)
Transfers (full election)
Results by Polling District
Second Preferences
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