Ward Profile
Cause of By-Election
When last we came to Edinburgh for a by-election earlier this year the circumstances were, we all have to admit, absolutely hilarious. In November last year, the Lib Dems had swept to a stunning victory in the Colinton and Fairmilehead ward. A week later their new councillor had already resigned, having put her house on the market and (it seems) begun a move to Dubai.Â
Unfortunately, by-elections so rarely arise from such mirthful scenarios. For this one we’re going just next door to Fountainbridge and Craiglockhart, where sadly Labour councillor Val Walker died earlier this year. She had only been elected for the first time in 2022.
Ward Details
Fountainbridge and Craiglockhart is one of 17 wards in Edinburgh, and elects 3 councillors at a full election. This is a rather oddly shaped ward, a bit like making your hand into a finger-gun, with the finger extending through North Merchiston out to Fountainbridge at the tip. Your thumb would then be Slateford, and then the bulk of your hand Craiglockhart and Kingsknowe. This is a highly affluent part of the city, with most of the ward sitting within the least-deprived SIMD decile. Fountainbridge and Slateford contain some less affluent portions, but overall let’s just say this is not a ward whose residents would struggle to pay private school fees.
There were some tweaks to the ward boundaries in 2017. The original version had a somewhat chunkier finger, but it lost the area around Tollcross Primary and everything south of the Union Canal until Craiglockhart. A small adjustment to follow the Water of Leith by Gorgie Road wasn’t much compensation for the thinner finger, but Kingsknowe was a much bigger addition.
For elections to the Scottish Parliament, the ward is currently split three ways. The smallest portion is Fountainbridge lying within Edinburgh Central, which the SNP won in 2011 and 2021, punctuated by Ruth Davidson’s shock win for the Conservatives in 2016. Kingsknowe is situated within Edinburgh Pentlands which has been SNP held since 2011. The bulk of the ward however sits within Edinburgh Southern, which the SNP won in 2011 but Labour regained and have held since 2016.
Under the new boundaries that will come in for next year’s Holyrood election, the ward is still split but much more neatly. The finger section is within the redrawn Edinburgh Central, and the rest within the redrawn and renamed Edinburgh South Western. At the UK Parliament it’s within Edinburgh South West which was SNP held from their 2015 landslide until last year. It was Labour before, when it was Alistair Darling’s seat, and has been since.
Electoral History
Changes to the ward boundary have been minimal enough we can comfortably compare across elections. This is a ward that has been consistently inconsistent: every election, at least one of the parties that had won a seat last time gets thrown out, such that no party has had unbroken representation here. At the first outing in 2007, the seats went one apiece to the three mainstream Pro-Union parties, with Green transfers being much less SNP-favourable in the pre-Referendum era. The collapse of the Lib Dems and ongoing Conservative weakness saw both lose out to the SNP and Greens.
Under the redrawn boundaries in 2017, and with Labour now on the back foot in a way they hadn’t been in 2012, it was their turn to lose out against a triumphant Conservative resurgence. Finally in 2022 the Greens were the ones left out in the cold, relatively narrowly pipped by the SNP. Their sitting councillor Gavin Corbett had resigned shortly before the election to take up a Special Adviser role in the Scottish Government (which the Greens were part of at that time, you may recall), and seemingly took a personal vote with him.
Wrong part of the city for it, but if we look at voting patterns across the period there’s something a little bit Forth Bridge-y about it. 2007 starts with relatively wide divergence between the parties, with the Conservatives out in front and the Greens not very far into double digits. 2012 then brought convergence, as the Greens topped the poll not because they won a remarkable share of the vote (though their support did more than double) but instead by scoring just 3% ahead of the fourth-placed Conservatives.
2017 then saw the spread widen back out with steep losses for Labour and the Conservatives vaulting back into a lead over the Greens, still in second. Finally, although not as tight as a decade prior, the distribution narrows once again, but this time it’s the Conservatives just shy of 7% ahead of the Greens in fourth, with Labour bouncing back.
Councillors and Key Stats
3 Councillors, in order elected:
🔵Conservative: Christopher Cowdy
đź”´Labour: Val Walker
🟡SNP: David Key
Change vs 2017: +1 Labour, -1 Green
Turnout: 49.8%
Electorate: 18284
Valid: 9028 (99.1%)
Spoiled: 84 (0.9%)
Quota: 2854
Candidates
🔵Conservative: Christopher Cowdy
đźź Lib Dem: Fraser Graham
🟡SNP: David Key
🟤Libertarian: Gregor Masson
🟢Green: Megan McHaney
🟣Family: Fraser Ramsay
đź”´Labour: Val Walker
First Preferences
Transfers (single winner recalculation)
Two-Candidate Preferred
By-Election
Candidates
This is an Edinburgh by-election, so of course it’s got a long ballot paper. In addition to the Holyrood 5 and Reform UK, party-wise we’ve got the Family Party and the Libertarians, and a total of five Independents, amongst them some serial vanity candidates. I know some will bristle at that description, but when self-appointed voice of the working class “Bonnie Prince Bob” pops up in another extremely affluent ward, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion. Ditto Marc Wilkinson, who not only joined Bob in standing in both Colinton and Fairmilehead by-elections, but is standing in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse Holyrood by-election. Not confident of his chances of becoming an MSP, eh?
Other returning candidates are the Conservative (stood in Sighthill and Gorgie in 2022) and Family (Colinton and Fairmilehead at every opportunity; Edinburgh Pentlands and the Lothian list in 2021; Edinburgh South West in 2024).
⚪Independent: Bonnie Prince Bob
⚪Independent: Derrick Emms
🟤Libertarian: Lukasz Furminiak
🔵Conservative: Mark Hooley
🟤Family: Richard Lucas
🟢Green: Q Manivannan
đźź Lib Dem: Kevin McKay
đź”´Labour: Catriona Munro
🟣Reform UK: Gary Neill
⚪Independent: Mark Rowbotham
🟡SNP: Murray Visentin
⚪Independent: Steve West
⚪Independent: Marc Wilkinson
Analysis
Run 2022 as a single seat election and you get some absolutely classic transferable vote stuff. Although the Conservatives win the most first preferences (recalling that this contains very affluent areas), after transfers they end up placing third. Labour meanwhile go the opposite direction, starting from third but climbing to a relatively solid victory over the SNP of just over 10%. Not so very long ago that’d mean we could just say that this was going to be a Labour win, done and dusted, no questions asked.
Obviously, circumstances have rather changed lately. Labour have been doing appallingly badly at by-elections, and have even begun to lose wards they were the 2022 winners in. That’s not to say things have been particularly rosy for the SNP either; they’ve been piling up the wins not because they’re gaining or even holding onto votes, but just because Labour are falling that much harder and not getting the transfers.Â
That has been driven in other wards partly by the rise of Reform UK. Whilst I certainly expect them to record a relatively solid share, I don’t think it’s going to be comparable to other recent by-elections. Edinburgh is the least favourable part of Scotland for them, and it’s not the posh Conservatives in wards like this that Reform have been siphoning their votes from. Even so, the Conservatives have been doing poorly over the past couple of years as well.
In other words, in general I’d expect all of the top three to be doing worse now than in 2022. That makes this difficult to predict. On top of that, the Greens really weren’t that far behind either so should be considered in contention, but remember that their voters are the least likely to turn out at by-elections, which is a mark against them too. Plus, we can’t forget the Lib Dems. Despite relatively weak results in this ward specifically, they are the only Holyrood party clearly and unarguably on the up right now, especially in Edinburgh. I don’t know if they are making a play for this one, but they shouldn’t be written off.
Given how close the votes are, I’ve gone back and run the numbers for every matchup (ten of them) between the Holyrood 5. In 2022, Labour would have beaten everyone else, ranging from a 24.8% lead over the Lib Dems to just 1.6% over the Greens. The Greens take the second most crowns, as they beat everyone but Labour, peaking at 14.1% over the Conservatives and narrowest at 6.0% over the SNP. The SNP win two matchups, beating the Conservatives by 9.2% and Lib Dems by just 2.3%. Finally, the Lib Dems win just one pairing, beating the Conservatives by 5.0%.
It’s pretty stark that despite winning the most first preferences in 2022, the Conservatives lose a straight fight against all of the other parties. On the face of it that would suggest that of the Holyrood 5, they’ll be the ones least likely to win. However, their voters are the most likely to vote at by-elections, and voters in general have been pretty stingy with transfers lately. If (and it’s a big if) they managed a bigger first preference lead than 2022, they might just about be able to weather a lack of transfers.
All of this is a very long-winded way of saying I haven’t got a clue who is going to win, except that it’s going to be one of the established parties. One final note though: this is a by-election an already embattled Labour administration could have done without, beyond just the human tragedy of it.
Having utterly foolishly set up as a single-party administration despite winning just 13 of the 63 seats in 2022 (as required by Anas Sarwar’s politically illiterate edict against coalitions), they have been whittled down to 10 councillors. The Lib Dems had already overtaken them with 13 seats, and 10 means they are tied with the Conservatives and Greens. If either of those two parties win, Labour will be running the council from fourth place, and an already absurd situation will get even more ridiculous.
Prediction
Chaos reigns, Holyrood 5 Tossup.
2022 Results (Detailed Data)
Transfers (full election)
Results by Polling District
Second Preferences
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