Scottish Labour as a case study in party failure: Evidence from the 2019 UK General Election in Scotland

Abstract

For Scottish Labour to be reduced to a single MP in Scotland once might seem like misfortune: that in 2019 they suffered the same fate looks like carelessness. While much focus of the 2019 UK General Election in Scotland will be on the SNP, an equally interesting puzzle is the electoral performance of the once dominant party in Scotland. In this article we explore what helps to explain why formerly successful parties fail, identifying explanations that may account for the current electoral fortunes of Labour in Scotland. To this end we rely on data from the 2019 round of the Scottish Election Survey.