Previewing the Dunblane and Bridge of Allan by-election of 25th January 2024
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
One by-election on 25th January 2024, Burns Night:
Dunblane and Bridge of Allan
Stirling council, Scotland; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Douglas Dodds.
The winter is a slow time of year for elections, because who wants to go out and campaign or vote in the sort of weather we’ve had recently? There’s just one poll this week, for which we travel to the southern edge of the Scottish Highlands. Specifically, the western edge of the Ochil Hills: the boundary of Dunblane and Bridge of Allan ward stretches to the summit of Blairdenon Hill, 631 metres above sea level.
There’s nobody living on those wild uplands, of course. The lines of communication here instead lie along the valley of the Allan Water, a river which rises in western Perthshire and flows south through the ward to meet the Forth north of Stirling. The Allan is followed fairly closely by the Stirling-Perth railway line, and rather less closely by the M9 motorway, which terminates at Keir Roundabout to become the A9 dual carriageway.
Also down in the valley here we find a university. Bridge of Allan is home to the campus of the University of Stirling, one of the plate-glass universities founded in the 1960s. Stirling is known for excellence in sport, and the campus’ Olympic swimming pool has produced the first Briton to win four medals at a single Olympic Games: Duncan Scott, who grew up in nearby Alloa, took home a gold and three silver medals from the swimming pool of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
The Stirling campus itself is located within Stirling North ward and is just outside the boundary of this ward, but Bridge of Allan itself is very much under the university’s influence. Dunblane, a few miles to north, is another matter. This is the location of the UK’s northernmost electrified railway station, with regular trains to Stirling and beyond to both Edinburgh and Glasgow; as a result, Dunblane is very much a commuter town. It was part of Perthshire until 1975, unlike Bridge of Allan which was part of Stirlingshire.
It’s impossible to mention Dunblane without recalling the terrible events of 28 years ago, when a man whom I shall not name walked into the gymnasium of the town’s primary school with four handguns. By the time he took his own life, 16 pupils and one of their teachers had lost theirs. The Dunblane massacre led directly to the UK parliament enacting some of the tightest gun-control laws in the world, and thankfully this country has not seen a school shooting since.
Two of the Dunblane primary school pupils who survived that day were Jamie and Andy Murray, who would go on to become the brightest stars of UK tennis in the 21st century. Jamie Murray has seven grand-slam doubles titles to his name; Andy has won three grand-slam singles titles (two Wimbledons and one US Open), two Olympic gold medals and a knighthood. Sir Andy’s marriage to Kim Sears in 2015, at Dunblane Cathedral, was described as Scotland’s wedding of the year. Sir Andy Murray and his family have their main home in England now, but the Murrays still have strong links with Dunblane: Andy and Kim own Cromlix House, a five-star country house hotel within this ward which has recently been renovated. As a high-profile figure, Sir Andy Murray has previously drawn public attention for putting his political opinions on social media, which is entirely his prerogative; how he votes is, of course, between him and the ballot box.
The ballot boxes in Dunblane and Bridge of Allan have consistently told interesting stories. The ward was created in 2007, with boundaries which originally included Stirling University. Its first election returned one councillor each from the Conservatives, the SNP, Labour and the Lib Dems — who won their seat with strong transfers from the Greens. In 2012 the Lib Dem vote collapsed and the Greens gained their seat.
Boundary changes for the 2017 election, which removed the university campus, strengthened the Conservative position in the ward. That was a good year for the Scottish Conservatives, and they topped the poll in the redrawn Dunblane and Bridge of Allan with 44% of the first preferences which was good for two out of four seats. The SNP had 28% and held their seat. In the race for the final seat Labour started on 12% and the Greens on 10%, but the Greens picked up transfers from all over the place — particularly from the SNP surplus — to hold the final seat. Labour lost their seat to the Conservatives. If the SNP had balanced their candidates better and the Greens had been eliminated, the Green transfers would probably have elected Labour rather than a second SNP or (if there had been one) a third Conservative candidate.
The most recent Scottish local elections in 2022 were not such a good Conservative year. The Tories still topped the poll across Dunblane and Bridge of Allan, but the Conservative vote fell to 30% and that cost them their second seat. The SNP and the Greens easily held their seats with 26% and 16% respectively, and the final seat went back to Labour who started on 12% and picked up strong transfers from the Lib Dems at the end of the count. All four outgoing councillors had stood for another term. Douglas Dodds (C), Graham Houston (SNP) and Alasdair Tollemache (Grn) were successfully re-elected, while former Conservative councillor Alastair Majury sought re-election as an independent candidate: he polled 5% of the first preferences and was eliminated in eighth place, losing his seat to Labour’s Ewan Dillon.
In December 2021 the ward’s SNP councillor Graham Houston died at the age of 74. The resulting by-election was held on 16th March 2023, and was the last poll held in Scotland before Humza Yousaf took over as First Minister and leader of the SNP. By this time the Scottish National Party vote was clearly on the slide both nationally and locally. A single-seat faceoff between the Conservatives and the SNP would have been very close in May 2022; it wasn’t close in March 2023. The Conservatives led on the first count with 41% of the vote against 27% for the SNP and 13% for Labour; once all other parties had been eliminated, the SNP lost their seat to the Conservatives’ Robin Kleinman by a 56–44 margin. If those votes had been cast in a four-seat ordinary election, the Conservatives would have won two seats with the SNP and Labour winning one each and the Greens missing out.
This is part of an SNP losing streak which now goes back over a year. The last election of any kind which the Nationalists won was a by-election to Moray council in November 2022; since then the party has contested thirteen local by-elections in Scotland and the Rutherglen and Hamilton West parliamentary by-election, and lost them all. Dunblane and Bridge of Allan 2023 was one of seven polls (including Rutherglen and Hamilton West) where the SNP had to defend a seat last year, and failed to do so.
The Scottish National Party do still represent Dunblane and Bridge of Allan in both the Scottish and UK parliaments, as part of the Clackmannanshire and Dunblane constituency at Holyrood and the Stirling constituency at Westminster. The latter seat has returned three different MPs at its last three elections, voting SNP in 2015 and 2019 and Conservative in 2017. The local MSP Keith Brown is the current depute leader of the SNP, although there is currently no place for him in the Yousaf cabinet. The current Stirling MP Alyn Smith has had a longer political career than his first-term status in Westminster might suggest: he was a member of the European Parliament for Scotland from 2004 to 2019, and he is the SNP’s Westminster spokesman for Europe and EU Accession.
Alyn Smith’s Stirling constituency has the same boundaries as the Stirling council area, which often has closely-fought local elections. The 2022 elections here returned eight SNP councillors, seven Conservatives, six Labour, one Green and an independent. Labour, who poll a decent vote in Stirling city, have been running the council in some form since 2012: they had a coalition with the Conservatives from 2012 to 2017, they were the junior partners in a coalition with the SNP from 2017 to 2022, and they now have a minority administration with Conservative support despite being the third-largest party on the council.
This second Dunblane and Bridge of Allan by-election of the current Stirling council term will be a Conservative defence to replace Douglas Dodds, who was the Provost of Stirling and had represented this ward since 2017. He has cited personal and health reasons for his resignation. The Tories need to hold this seat to remain as the largest party on Stirling council.
Defending for the Conservatives is Thomas Heald, a former Stirling University student who lives in the Bridge of Allan area. Four of the six candidates on this ballot paper return from the 2023 by-election, including the SNP’s Ahsan Khan: he is a former housing association chief executive who currently lectures on housing and is a member of the First-Tier Tribunal for Scotland, and he is married to the Stirling MSP Evelyn Tweed. Labour’s David Wilson, who is a local government worker and UNISON officer, will be hoping to improve on his third-place finish here ten months ago. Also standing are Dick Moerman for the Lib Dems, Clare Andrews for the Greens and Michael Willis for the Scottish Family Party. This is a Scottish local by-election, so Votes at 16 and the Alternative Vote are in use here.
I had a correspondent write to me last weekend suggesting that I list the following week’s contests in each Preview, which was perfectly-timed advice because there are in fact no contests on 1st February to list. The only polls scheduled for that date were in the City of London, where Emma Edhem and Robert Hughes-Penney were seeking second terms as Aldermen for Candlewick ward and for Cheap ward. However, when nominations closed nobody had challenged their re-elections, so Aldermen Edhem and Hughes-Penney will be formally declared elected at their respective Wardmotes on Wednesday. This column sends its congratulations to them. So Andrew’s Previews will be taking a rest next week, before returning on 8th February with polls in Crewe, Ebbw Vale, Gwynedd and Northampton.
Westminster constituency: Stirling
Holyrood constituency: Clackmannanshire and Dunblane
ONS Travel to Work Area: Falkirk and Stirling
Postcode districts: FK9, FK15
Clare Andrews (Grn)
Ahsan Khan (SNP)
Thomas Heald (C)
Dick Moerman (LD)
Michael Willis (Scottish Family Party)
David Wilson (Lab)
March 2023 by-election C 1832 SNP 1202 Lab 600 LD 399 Grn 389 Scottish Family Party 50; final C 2172 SNP 1683
May 2022 first preferences C 2134 SNP 1830 Grn 1138 Lab 842 LD 665 Ind 377 Alba 61 Scottish Family Party 50
May 2017 first preferences C 3045 SNP 1926 Lab 824 Grn 706 LD 476
Previous results in detail
If you enjoyed these previews, there are many more like them — going back to 2016 — in the Andrew’s Previews books, which are available to buy now (link). You can also support future previews by donating to the Local Elections Archive Project (link).
Andrew Teale
