The Glasgow East by-election results look pretty bad for Labour and Gordon Brown in particular, but when the total vote of the SNP this time is less than the Labour majority at the last election you do have to wonder if this is a case of Labour voters staying at home, rather than the SNP increasing their vote. A typical mid-term protest.

Nope, not this time, I checked. Turnout is down, but only by about 6%, and the SNP vote has more than doubled.   What is most interesting is the results for the Tories and the Liberal Democrats.  Both lost votes, probably to the Nationalists.    

This is being talked about as if it is a national trend, i'm not so sure, I suspect this may be down to some of the policies of the Nationalists arround the Health Service and Education where they seem to operate more from common sense than from political dogma.  Labour must be very worried, if the Nationalists can win this seat then surely a Labour melt-down in Scotland must be on the cards at the next election.  And I wonder what that could mean for the future of the United Kingdom.

The results for the four main parties - General Election results in brackets.

Mason (SNP) 11,277 (5,268)
Curran (Lab) 10,912 (18,775)
Rankin (Con) 1,639 (2,135)
Robertson (LD) 915 (3,665)