In 2015, all seven Glasgow seats were taken by the Scottish National party in the electoral tsunami that wiped out Labour across Scotland. Two years later and with another bloody nose from the May local elections, Labour was not expected to reverse its fortunes at the ballot box on 8 June.

But turn the tide Labour did. It won just one of the seats, Glasgow North East, but it was back in the fight. It came within 75 votes of victory in Glasgow East, one of the constituencies the Guardian has been following for the Voices and votes series.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The SNP’s David Linden, elected MP for Glasgow East, on the campaign trail in the run-up to the election. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

That resurgence might pale in comparison with the Conservative party’s gains across Scotland. But it came as a shock to the SNP candidate in Glasgow East, David Linden, who looked on anxiously as the Labour ballot papers mounted up, centimetre by centimetre, to match his own as the count went on in the Emirates Arena.

A passionate and committed 27-year-old, Linden had been pulling 12- to 14-hour days as the election approached, canvassing on the streets to advance the nationalist cause.

Although he managed to clinch the seat, the slashing of the SNP majority from 10,387 votes in 2015 to a wafer-thin 75 in 2017 was a surprise to many, including Labour, which may now regret not having sent the cavalry north of the border.

And yet the Labour surge was barely detectable in the five weeks of the Guardian’s reporting. We heard little but criticism for the party, which represented this sprawling working-class constituency from the 1930s until 2008 when it was taken by the SNP.

In deprived wards such as Shettleston or Easterhouse, people such as Moira Quigley, 60, and her aunt Cathy Reid felt Labour had abandoned them, and had switched to voting SNP. Pauline Skinner, whom we met outside the Forge shopping centre, said she had received no help from the council when her daughter’s disabled son died at the age of 13. She too switched to the SNP in 2015. “I voted Labour all my life. I think Labour just got stuck,” Skinner said.

Elizabeth Steele, one of 12 children, had seen six of her siblings die (five of them owing to drugs or alcohol) and had been left looking after three of their children. She had received no help apart from child benefit, despite frequent requests to the council. Politicians never showed up at her doorstep unless they wanted something. “What is the point in voting?” she asked. “Nothing will change.”



After reading of her plight, Linden said he would make visiting Steele one of the first things he did after the election. “Work starts now,” he said in a text sent at 7.38am on Saturday.

He didn’t say it, but no one had predicted how close Labour could come to toppling the SNP. But perhaps there were some signs. A week earlier, the Guardian had joined the Labour candidate, Kate Watson, on an evening of canvassing. She was detecting a change on the doorsteps in Baillieston, one of the wards in Glasgow East.

The launch of the party’s manifesto appeared to be the gamechanger, with several millennials and some in the Guardian’s focus group conceding they liked Jeremy Corbyn’s plans, even if they weren’t too confident about him as a leader.

“If people can see there’s a possibility of a Labour government and there’s momentum behind us, maybe they can see a way to voting for us,” said Watson.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jason Irvine, 20, a teacher from Glasgow. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

This was borne out by young people interviewed by the Guardian before and after election day. Jason Irvine, a 20-year-old teacher who was leaning towards Labour but was ambivalent about Corbyn, did ultimately vote for the party. “If I could identify a turning point, it was the manifesto,” he said. “It was all Corbyn and not Kezia Dugdale [the party leader in Scotland]. Once Corbyn got more positive airtime, it made more sense to vote Labour.”

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But in the end it was a win for the SNP. On a drive around the constituency, Linden took me past the Cranhill flat he had grown up in; the water tower that hadn’t been painted in decades; the patch of grass where gangs fought; the street where someone had been murdered when he was young; and the many abandoned brownfield sites left derelict after the demolition of tenements or high-rises. “My first experience of politics was at six years of age on a Mothers Against Drugs march,” he said.

There were shoots of regeneration in the shape of a small community allotment behind a tower block, but there is a long way to go for this constituency, which scores so low on the Scottish index of multiple deprivation.

“For a number of reasons, I am going to be a constituency MP,” Linden said. “I don’t see myself as going on select committees and pandering to the media. The reality is there are a lot of vulnerable folk here and advocacy is what they need.”