1989 Glasgow Central by-election


The Glasgow Central by-election, in the Glasgow Central constituency, Scotland, was held on 15 June 1989. It was caused by the death of the sitting Member of Parliament for the constituency, Bob McTaggart.
The Scottish National Party had high hopes of repeating their victory from the previous year at the by-election for the Glasgow Govan seat, and they chose as their candidate a close associate of their Govan victor, Jim Sillars in Alex Neil. However, the hoped for victory did not transpire for the SNP, as Mike Watson retained the seat for the Labour Party with a 6,462 majority, despite a 20.3% rise in the SNP share of the votes cast. The day after the election, The Glasgow Herald described the result as "the revenge" Labour sought for their by-election defeat in Govan a few months earlier. The SNP blamed opinion polls in the latter stages of the election campaign which showed them trailing Labour, arguing these stalled their momentum. Winner Mike Watson argued that the result showed that "The SNP bandwagon is off the rails", although SNP spokesman Chris McLean denied that the result was a setback, pointing out that they had significantly increased their vote share.
The Liberal Democrats fell to fifth place, the worst position achieved by a major party in any British by-election since the 1976 Walsall North by-election. This was equaled in the Henley by-election in 2008, when Labour also fell to fifth, and surpassed in the Glasgow North East by-election in 2009, when the Liberal Democrats came sixth. Their 1.6% vote share remained the lowest percentage vote for the Liberal Democrats until they entered the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition in 2010, and in fact was not beaten until the South Shields by-election three years into their time in government.
This was also the only parliamentary contest engaged in by the Scottish Socialist Party that existed at the time. Their candidate was Bill Kidd.

Results