Can Labour turn Edinburgh's yellow wall red again?
The battle for votes and Edinburgh's bellwether seat
Special Report by Matthew Leslie
There’s a steady stream of Saturday morning customers heading into Craiglockhart Post Office.
The sun seems to have put a spring in everyone’s step or maybe the friendly exchanges of ‘good mornings’ are par for the course whatever the weather.
James though is unamused.
My question about whether he has been impressed by anything he has seen in the General Election campaign has thrown the affable retiree momentarily off his stride.
“Not particularly, no.” He practically spits out his answer, such is his scorn for the very idea.
“It’s all just promising the earth and then coming back later to say ‘sorry I can’t give you the earth anymore’.
“Starmer talks a good game, but how is he going to pay for it all… steal the bank?”
He is scunnered by what he has seen of this election campaign - and judging by what I have seen during a day spent in the Edinburgh South West constituency he is not alone.
The polls might be increasingly painting a picture of a Labour landslide, but any tidal wave of enthusiasm for the apparent Government and Prime Minister in waiting was hard to detect. The over-riding sentiment veered more between weariness and disdain for politics of all hues.
Maybe it’s a legacy of the chaos and deceit of the Johnson years. Maybe it’s something more deep-rooted and far longer in the making. Or perhaps it is always much more like this than those of us who do not tend to spend days on the doorstep imagine.
If this is any reflection of the wider mood, the six-week campaign must be exhausting and feel interminably long for all the candidates and activists working on it.
Win here and win big
I am in Edinburgh South West because of what it might tell us about the bigger picture in this election.
If Labour are to secure the kind of Tony Blair-style landslide that some polls are suggesting, they will need to win in seats like this one. Only a few weeks ago, this would have been considered a safe SNP seat, but now that doesn’t seem so certain.
Failing to win in Lothian East (the new name for the East Lothian parliamentary constituency, yes, really) where former Cabinet Minister Douglas Alexander - a government minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown - is targeting a return to frontline politics would be the death knell for Keir Starmer’s ambitions. Ian Murray losing his Labour stronghold in Edinburgh South is equally unthinkable for the party.
It is also targeting Edinburgh East where Chris Murray, the son of former Glasgow East MP Margaret Curran, is challenging the SNP’s Tommy Sheppard, the founder of the Stand comedy clubs and a former assistant general secretary of Scottish Labour. Edinburgh North and Leith is another of its 150 top targets across the UK, where USDAW union official Tracy Gilbert is challenging the SNP’s Deidre Brock, a former city councillor and actress who once appeared in Home and Away in her native Australia. Taking those seats would put Labour on course for a substantial majority.
Winning in Edinburgh South West would be different.
Joanna Cherry KC, a formidable lawyer and campaigner, as well as one of the SNP’s most high-profile MPs, is defending a thumping majority of almost 12,000. Winning here would put Labour into the kind of territory they occupied in 1997 when they returned 418 seats and secured a 179-seat majority.
Labour, it is easy to forget, only recently dominated Edinburgh and the Lothians, holding all but one until Westminster seats until 2010. Today, the picture is almost reversed, such has been the SNP domination since 2015 when it virtually swept the board, famously leaving Ian Murray as Labour’s last man standing.
‘We need a change’
Matthew’s words should be music to the ears of Keir Starmer.
The 31-year-old has a good, reasonably well paid job, and counts himself lucky to have recently bought his first property with family help.
“The price of property is so high around here. It is very, very difficult to get on the housing ladder for my generation. I couldn’t have done it without major help from my grandparents. A lot of my friends are in the same boat.
“That’s a major sticking point, it’s got to change. We need a change,” he says, in an unconscious echo of the Labour Party’s main campaigning slogan.”
We are standing in one of the more affluent corners of the constituency, outside the Post Office and opposite the Craiglockhart Tennis Centre, where Andy Murray used to hone his skills. Many of the streets around us are lined with detached bungalows, but as Matthew rightly points out the price of property has rocketed across the city.
“I think trust in the Tory government has gone, especially after everything that happened during Covid. That alone will sway the vote,” he adds.
“I have a little sister who was a teenager during lockdown, and, like everyone else, she couldn’t go out. She spent so much time without social contact and she is feeling the effects now.”
Young, disillusioned with the Conservatives, looking for change, Matthew has the kind of profile that must make Labour canvassers’ eye light up. However, when asked which way he is likely to vote, Matthew is non-committal: “I don’t know. I’ve not had a proper look at it yet, I need to do that.”
Outside the Scotmid in Colinton Mains, Zad Shah has similar concerns. He is a similar age to Matthew and shares some of his disillusionment with the government as well as his hesitation about where to turn.
“I am struggling to find a way to buy a property. I can’t afford anything because of the mortgage interest rates,” says Zad, who is originally from Kurdistan in the north of Iraq.
“Whoever is going to be the new Prime Minister, whatever their race and background, needs to work on three things; bringing down taxes because they are very high; interest rates too and high property prices; and helping people who are struggling with inflation and increasing prices.
“Rishi Sunak has tried but people expected more, what he has done hasn’t been enough.
“Starmer creates a beautiful image, but is it all achievable? I really hope he can meet people’s expectations.”
Strange polling results
One of the latest polls suggests Labour and the SNP are neck and neck in Edinburgh South West. Few would have predicted that a few weeks ago, although it does appear to be in line with the general trends in national polling, suggesting impending disaster for the Conservatives and the SNP struggling to gain traction under John Swinney.
Another poll last week bizarrely suggested one in seven voters in the constituency are ready to back Reform. Yet barely anyone I spoke to was even aware the party was fielding a candidate here. Single polls on their own are of course notoriously unreliable and some seem far too quick to assume UK-wide trends will be repeated automatically in Scotland.
All the main political parties though are taking it seriously enough to suggest that it is that thing which we have grown so unused to in Edinburgh in recent years, a genuinely competitive election.
Labour and the Conservatives are fielding two of the highest profile figures within city politics, in the shape of Dr Scott Arthur, the transport convener on the city council, and Sue Webber, the Conservative MSP and former city councillor.
The SNP in turn brought John Swinney to Asda in Chesser for one of its biggest media events in a show of support for Cherry.
‘Please don’t get ill today’
On the streets there is barely a sign of an election going on. No posters on lampposts (save one reminding voters to bring their ID to the polling station on 4 July) and, street after street, no posters in windows. The front pages in the news agents are pretty much the only reminder that something of national importance is going on.
The overwhelming sentiment that came across with repeated conversations was a sense that nothing is working as it should. The idea of broken Britain is dragging down the Conservatives.
“I keep getting texts from the local GP surgery saying please don’t get ill today because we don’t have enough doctors. I think the whole of the health service is in some jeopardy,” says retired business consultant Ken Fyvie.
“It always seems to be debated but nothing gets better.”
Several others mention getting regular texts warning about the shortage of GPs at the local surgery.
Ken would like to see the NHS taken out of the political system, and run by an independent committee in a move that would echo Gordon Brown’s reform of the Bank England, to take the setting of interest rates out of the party political arena.
He is distinctly unimpressed by the government’s record but has doubts about Labour and its approach to business and tax.
Charlotte, in her early 20s, however, is one of the few to express unqualified support for Labour.
“I’ll be voting Labour to make sure the Conservatives don’t get in.”
Why? “Just because of what’s been in the news about them bringing in National Service and things like that.”
‘The least offensive of the recent ones’
Retired NHS manager Rachel is done with the Conservative government too. She chooses her words carefully, but she is absolutely clear about how woeful she thinks the recent leadership of the party has been.
“We’ve had a shocking run of Prime Ministers and Sunak is the least offensive of the most recent ones. I don’t know that he has done enough or has enough to make a difference.
“Starmer comes from a more relatable background and he did sterling work prior to becoming an MP.”
She is deeply concerned about the current state and future direction of the NHS - “I think it is shameful what they have done with NHS dentistry and I’m scared it is happening to the rest of the NHS as well” - and places the main blame squarely at the door of the SNP Government at Holyrood. Yet, she is likely to vote SNP.
“I’m not an SNP supporter, but I will probably vote for Joanna Cherry. I think she has been a good MP. She’s done good work locally, she’s high-profile, and she seems to have the best interests of the constituents at heart.
“I vote more with my head than my heart, and I’m not particularly party political. I’ve voted for Ian Murray in the past when I lived in his constituency because I thought he was a good constituency MP too.”
It is a reminder of the complex and competing considerations that can decide how individual votes are cast in a UK election in modern Scotland.
In less than two weeks, we will know how all these factors have stacked up, and whether our politics will once again be dominated by one triumphant party.