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This Is How Scottish Labour’s Catastrophic Election Night Played Out

The party suffered an electoral wipeout in the city in the 2015 general election, when the SNP took all of the seats.

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Labour lost the Rutherglen constituency which it had held since 1999 to the SNP, with mental health nurse Clare Haughey elected as the new MSP for the area.

Any hope that things could not get any worse for Labour, the party that long dominated Scottish politics, were dispelled by the results of Thursday’s elections to the SNP-controlled Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. The SNP’s dominance was not reflected in the proportional regional system where the party lost 12 of its 16 seats despite picking up over 40 percent of the vote.

So if the Scottish Greens (with six MSPs) have any sense, they’ll play hard to get – not least because their policy agenda (anti-fracking and properly redistributive in terms of income tax) is significantly more radical than the centrist SNP’s.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon called the party’s position “historic” as crowds cheered the results.

The SNP’s election manifesto said the Scottish Parliament should have the right to hold another referendum if there is “clear and sustained evidence” that independence has become the preferred option of a majority of the Scottish people, or if there is a “significant and material change in the circumstances that prevailed in 2014”, such as Scotland being forced out of the European Union against its will in next month’s referendum.

“It is also the case that the SNP won the election and the Tories, although they had a good night in the election, didn’t win the election so I think Ruth Davidson should perhaps be careful about over-reaching herself”.

While Labour’s vote crumbled, the Tories surged to their best result in three decades.

Sturgeon said: “What we’re seeing tonight, not just across Glasgow but across the central belt of Scotland, is the SNP replacing Labour”.

Mr Corbyn set up an inquiry into anti-Semitism and racism in Labour after former London mayor Ken Livingstone was suspended for claiming Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler supported Zionism.

With Scotland’s main competition now between broadly center-left nationalism and center-right unionism in the form of the Conservatives, Labour is struggling for relevance.

Labour MSPs will have a “special responsibility” to lead left-wing opposition to the SNP at Holyrood, says Kezia Dugdale.

She insisted she would remain as leader adding: ” I am proud that our campaign rose to the challenge of offering an alternative vision of what could be done in our new, more powerful parliament”.

I will always fight Scotland’s corner and I will work every single day to make our country fairer, wealthier and stronger.

“We will keep standing for our belief that we can choose to be better than this”.

Another big victory on the night went to Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie, who managed to gain the North East Fife seat from the SNP. That and Khan’s victory were bright spots for Labour, which was pushed into third place in Scotland, where it was once dominant.

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The Lib Dems retreated to their Northern Isles strongholds in 2011 with just two constituencies in Orkney and Shetland in the post-coalition backlash.

Telegraph Holyrood