Election 2019: Ian Murray holds on to Labour's only Scottish seat
- Published
Scottish Labour's Ian Murray is the party's only MP
Scottish Labour's Ian Murray has held on to his seat in Edinburgh South as his party lost all of its other MPs.
The other six seats it was defending, including shadow Scottish secretary Lesley Laird's, all fell to the SNP.
Mr Murray said the country had "been badly let down by the Labour Party", and criticised UK leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Mr Corbyn retained his seat but said he will not lead Labour into the next election, following a "very disappointing night" for his party.
Mr Murray was elected with a majority of 11,095. This is a drop from the majority of 15,514 he secured in 2017.
In Scotland, the party lost the other six seats it held:
Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath
Rutherglen & Hamilton West
Midlothian
East Lothian
Glasgow North East
Coatbridge, Chryston & Bellshill
What now for Jeremy Corbyn?
Jeremy Corbyn retained his seat but said he will not lead Labour into the next election
Some of the party's candidates hit out at Jeremy Corbyn. Speaking after retaining his own seat, he said he would not lead Labour into another general election.
The only Labour MP to be re-elected in Scotland, Mr Murray, said it had been a difficult night.
He said: "This party must listen and this party must respond, or this party will die.
"For the sake of the Labour movement, for the sake of the Labour party, but more importantly for the sake of the country, not only does the person have to go, but the policy and the ideology has to go as well."
Ian Murray has been a constant critic of the UK leader but said the party should "wait and see" the full election results before deciding whether there should be a new leader.
Earlier in the night Mr Murray tweeted, external: "Every door I knocked on, and my team and I spoke to 11,000 people, mentioned Corbyn. Not Brexit, but Corbyn.
"I've been saying this for years. The outcome is that we've let the country down and we must change course and fast."
Ged Killen lost the Rutherglen and Hamilton West seat for Scottish Labour
After the declaration for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, defeated Labour candidate Ged Killen echoed Mr Murray's comments saying that on Brexit and on independence, voters were not clear on where Scottish Labour stood.
He told the BBC: "We can't escape the fact that Jeremy Corbyn was a divisive figure in this election.
"His name came up on just about every single door that I went to, particularly among traditional Labour voters who were struggling to get on board with what he was putting forward in this election.
Asked what he wants to hear from Mr Corbyn, he said: "I want to hear him accept his responsibility for his part in this defeat."
Lesley Laird lost her Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath seat to the SNP
Labour's shadow Scottish secretary Lesley Laird also missed out.
She said she was "really disappointed" to lose her Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath seat - which was once held, with a majority of over 50%, by the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
She lost to Neale Hanvey, a candidate who is suspended from the SNP for using anti-Semitic language.
Ms Laird said the "fundamental issues" had not been resolved in the election, adding: "In the middle of a constitutional wrangle, I believe it's very important that we don't lose sight of our core value and principles just to be popular.
"Because constitutional politics are not good. And we can see that history tells us that in the long run."
Richard Leonard: "We have to look at what we said about Brexit and about the whole constitutional question in Scotland"
When did it go wrong for Scottish Labour?
In 2010, Scottish Labour won 41 seats and a 42% share of the vote.
But the SNP's popularity has rocketed since the independence referendum in 2014.
In 2015, Scottish Labour was left with just one MP north of the border - Ian Murray. They suffered heavy losses at the hands of the SNP, who won 56 of the 59 seats in Scotland.
Labour's UK leader Ed Miliband stood down the next day. The party's Scottish leader Jim Murphy lost his seat, and stepped down a month later.
Two years later, the story of the night was the SNP losing a third of the 56 seats it sensationally won last time.
The Scottish Tories secured 13 seats and Scottish Labour's total was seven.
And Ian Murray's vote increased from 19,293 to 26,269. He gained more votes than the party gained across the other 58 seats in Scotland added together.
In fact, of the 9,860 votes Scottish Labour gained across the country, 6,976 of them came from Ian Murray's constituency.
In 2017, the SNP lost about half a million votes. This is widely attributed to SNP voters not turning out to vote, allowing Tory and Labour candidates to be elected in Scotland.
Labour and the Lib Dems gained two seats each that year where they actually lost votes - they just didn't lose as many as the SNP.
For a nationwide breakdown of results, see our results page, external, which will be updated throughout the night.
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