We are expecting Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer in the Rutherglen shortly. He will celebrate his party's win in the by-election with a victory rally.

He will be joined by Scotland's Labour leader Anas Sarwar, the newly-elected MP Michael Shanks, deputy leader of the Scottish Labour Party Jackie Baillie and Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland Ian Murray.

Stay with us and we'll bring you all the developments as we get them.

Scotland's Labour leader has been doing the rounds on morning outlets after his party's resounding by-election win.

Speaking to the BBC's Today programme, Anas Sarwar says that in by-elections, people are sending a message to government rather than changing government - and the next general election is an opportunity to change.

Asked about the differences between Scottish Labour's position and UK's Labour position on the two-child benefit cap, Keir Starmer insisted he would not scrap it. Sarwar, however, continues to oppose it.

He says Scottish people should "absolutely vote" for Labour because the party will "reform universal credit" and challenge poverty.

Speaking about Brexit, he says it would be inconsistent to say we can't have a second independence referendum but we can have another EU referendum. "I want us to fix the mess that is Brexit," he says.

Image source, Reuters/UK Parliament

Labour should not take a general election victory in Scotland for granted, following the result of the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election, according to one SNP MP.

Alison Thewliss, the party’s representative for Glasgow Central, says that while the by-election result is positive for Labour, “there’s no guarantee that the result can be replicated in a general election”.

“Many voters I spoke to on the doorstep were soured with politics generally - some people didn’t see the point in going out to vote,” she tells BBC Radio 5 Live.

She says that while the SNP has “been through a difficult time”, party leader Humza Yousaf has received a “good reception” from the public.

“Labour have doubled their number of seats in Scotland from one to two, so they’ve still got a lot of work to do,” she says.

Labour targeting up to 28 seats at next electionpublished at 09:17 British Summer Time 6 October 2023

09:17 BST 6 October 2023

Nick Eardley
Political correspondent

Labour’s targets in Scotland have been increasing in number in recent months.

Earlier this year, senior figures were talking about 10-20 seats.

Last week, a senior figure told me a couple of dozen were now "in play”.

This morning though, figures close to Scottish Labour HQ are claiming they are in “serious contention” is as many as 28 seats.

As we’ve been reflecting this morning, that could have a really significant impact on a general election.

Scotland could have an SNP wipe-out at the next general election, according to the Scottish Conservatives.

Despite his party losing support in the by-election, Conservative MSP Miles Briggs says he is optimistic about the results.

He tells Good Morning Scotland that Labour's win was a result of tactical voting.

"When I was helping our candidate, from the conversations I had it was clear [tactical voting] was the motivation in this by-election - they wanted to make sure the SNP would not be returning an MP," he says.

He believes those against Scottish independence will react to Humza Yousaf's plan to use the next general election as a de facto referendum.

He predicts an "SNP wipe-out" is now within reach, with unionist voters pushing Labour or Tory candidates over the line.

James Cook
Scotland Editor

Labour leader Keir Starmer's eyes are fixed on the UK general election, when further gains in Scotland could ease his path to Downing Street.

This win, in which the party turned an SNP majority of 5,230 into a Labour lead of 9,446, with a swing between the two parties of 20.4%, is a huge boost.

Starmer will be doubly delighted to have seen the Conservatives collapse from 15% of the vote in 2019 to 3.9% in the by-election.

Generations of his predecessors, from Harold Wilson to Gordon Brown, could rely on a big block of Scottish support in their attempts to form a government.

Labour sent 40 or more MPs from Scotland to Westminster in every general election from 1964 to 2010.

If the swing in Rutherglen and Hamilton West were replicated across the country, the party could soon be returning to those glory days.

John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, calculates that such a scenario could mean that "Labour would have 42 seats and the SNP would be back down to six seats" - although he warns that such speculation relies on a "very simple assumption".

In the closing stages of this campaign, Starmer described the South Lanarkshire seat as a "big prize", insisting that success here would be "a milestone" on his party's "hard road" back to power.

Maybe. But the road is long as well as hard.

• Read more here

Image source, PA Media

Dame Jackie Baillie, deputy leader of the Scottish Labour Party, calls the party's victory in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election a “seismic result” that shows that Scotland, like the rest of the UK, is “crying out for change”.

“We’ve been very clear there is no route to a majority Labour government that doesn’t run through Scotland,” she tells BBC 5 Live.

"No-one expected [the result] to be overturned on the scale that it was," she says.

If you are just getting going this morning (we recommend a breakfast of eggs, a hash brown and some pineapple for all-day energy) here's the latest after Labour stormed to victory in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election with 17,845 votes:

• The result was a swing of 20.4% from the SNP to Labour, which meant the party's candidate Michael Shanks received more than double the votes given to the SNP's Katy Loudon

• Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has told the BBC his party can be the "vehicle" for change at the next election
• The SNP's Westminster leader Stephen Flynn has said the party must swiftly reflect on the lost, after acknowledging they had been "heavily" beaten by Labour
• Polling expert Prof John Curtice has said he was surprised by the scale of Labour's victory, which he says likely puts them "on course for victory in a general election"

• Scotland's first recall by-election was triggered after constituents voted to oust former SNP MP Margaret Ferrier, who breached Covid rules

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar says Scotland will "lead the way in delivering a UK-wide Labour government".

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, he says Labour's by-election win shows people want to "move away to reject the politics of division".

Political commentator and independence campaigner Lesley Riddoch tells BBC Radio Scotland the by-election should be a "kick up the backside" for the SNP and the Yes movement.

"People want guarantees that the Conservative government will be got rid of," she says.

"The question is whether you get rid of them for one term with Sir Keir Starmer, with variable issues of how exactly different he is able to be, or whether you take the power back to Scotland to run the country ourselves."

She says open disagreement within the SNP since Nicola Sturgeon's resignation as First Minister earlier this year had not helped the party.

"Clearly the Labour party did draft enormous resources into this," she says.

"You can't do that in a general election, you can't do that in every seat."

Lots of analysis of the by-election result this morning, but let's take a closer look at the newly-elected MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, Michael Shanks. Some of you may recognise him as "the teacher who ran all of Glasgow's 6,000 streets".

Back in January 2022, BBC Scotland News told how the high school teacher finished an ambitious challenge to run every street and lane in his home city.

“There’s nowhere left to visit in Glasgow – I’ve been literally everywhere”, he said.

He started the mammoth task as a way to make the most of the limited exercise hours during the first coronavirus lockdown in March 2020.

Shanks documented his adventures along the way, gathering pictures of everything from street signs to subway stations to graffiti art.

You can read more here: The man who ran all of Glasgow's 6,000 streets

Talk of Scottish politics being at crossroads on the risepublished at 07:43 British Summer Time 6 October 2023

07:43 BST 6 October 2023

Nick Eardley
Political correspondent

The result overnight was a big win for Labour. Bigger than many people had expected.

But for weeks, senior figures in the Labour Party have been saying that they thought things had changed in Scotland.

For the first time in decade, since the independence referendum, they thought Labour had the chance to make a major comeback at the expense of the SNP.

This result will only increase that talk. Labour will now believe that large parts of its old heartlands in Scotland are back in play at a general election.

This could be really significant for a general election. If Labour win a significant chunk of the seats in Scotland, it makes victory - and perhaps a majority - more achievable. Remember the last Labour general victory saw the party win 41 seats in Scotland.

General elections can play out very differently to by-elections.

The SNP think the sacking of the last MP here - for breaking Covid laws - hurt them. So, they argue, did the police investigation into party funding.

But talk of Scottish politics being at a crossroads is only going to increase. It will be one of the key general election battlegrounds.

Image source, Reuters/UK Parliament

Stephen Flynn, SNP leader at Westminster, says "we've been quite heavily beat" in this by-election and the party needs to reflect on that "quickly" before the next general election.

Asked by the BBC Today programme what needs to change, Flynn says "we can't shy away from the fact this is a very challenging set of results" and emphasises the need to outline how to re-inspire those voters who "stayed at home and didn't vote SNP".

He says the party has had multiple internal difficulties such as when previous MP, Margaret Ferrier, broke Covid rules when she took a train home from London after testing positive for Covid.

Flynn says turnout was particularly low for the by-election, and "six out of ten didn't vote... which is a reflection on us as well as everyone else".

Image source, PA Media

Scotland will "lead the way and deliver a UK-wide Labour government", Anas Sarwar tells the BBC.

The Scottish Labour leader says the party are targeting "significant gains" at the next general election.

Sarwar says Scottish Labour is the "vehicle for that change", adding that their campaign has not happened over the last few months, but rather been a years-long process.

"This is one stage in a long journey back, but we're determined to do that hard work."

Asked how a 37% turnout could be a "seismic" win, Sarwar says Labour had not won a Westminster by-election in Scotland in 12 years, and highlights the significant swing from the SNP to the party

Professor John Curtice tells BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland he was "absolutely" surprised by Labour's result in Rutherglen.

The outcome is almost as high as the 60% Labour won in this constituency in 2010, before Labour's support collapsed in Scotland in the wake of the independence referendum, the polling expert from the University of Strathclyde says.

He adds that by-elections can be an opportunity to protest but you "cannot ignore the direction of travel".

Wins by opposition parties on this scale are historically "on course for victory in a general election", Curtice says.

"If indeed the SNP were unable to motivate their folk to go out [to vote], that is not an excuse, that's part of the problem the party faces."

Image source, ALAMY LIVE NEWS

Labour has won the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election - but it's been at the centre of a political storm for some time.

The constituency in South Lanarkshire, south of Glasgow city, was created for the 2005 general election. It has bounced between the SNP and Labour at every election since 2015.

The starting gun on this by-election was officially fired in August, when the then-MP Margaret Ferrier was forced out by a recall petition.

But many felt a vote was inevitable since September 2020, when Ferrier took a train from London to Glasgow despite testing positive for Covid, a decision which led to her expulsion from the SNP and a criminal conviction for breaking lockdown law.

Read more here.

A thunderbolt of a resultpublished at 06:56 British Summer Time 6 October 2023

06:56 BST 6 October 2023

Chris Mason
Political editor

This result transforms the Scottish political weather – and in so doing the forecasts some will make about the next general election.

Yes, there are limits to what can be read into any one by-election - let alone one brought about by the previous MP’s egregious breach of the Covid rules, but it is the scale of Labour’s victory that is so eye catching.

At every general election since the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, Labour’s Scottish representation at Westminster has been small, even tiny - and it still is.

But this result suggests that could change, and change big time at the next general election, and therefore potentially make Keir Starmer’s path to Downing Street so much more navigable.

By-elections are often the mood makers of politics.

This thunderbolt of a result will leave Labour chipper; the SNP and the Conservatives gloomy.

James Cook
Scotland Editor, BBC News

Image source, PA Media

A decade ago, it was fashionable for opponents of the Conservatives to scoff that Scotland had more pandas than it had Tory MPs.

In recent years that taunt could have been directed at the Labour Party. Not any more.

With a resounding victory in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, Sir Keir Starmer has now met, though not yet exceeded, Scotland's political panda threshold.

There are two of the monochrome mammals in Edinburgh Zoo and, as soon as Michael Shanks and his Dr Martens boots can make their way to Westminster, there will be two Scottish Labour MPs in the UK parliament.

But panda parity is not the limit of Labour's ambition.

Read more from James here

Nadia Ragozhina
Live reporter

Good morning and welcome. We continue the live coverage of the fall-out and reaction to Labour's win in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election.

They defeated the SNP after Labour's candidate, Michael Shanks, took the Westminster seat with 17,845 votes.

It doesn't stop there though, as the BBC's morning outlets will shortly hear from Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, SNP leader at Westminster Stephen Flynn and many more.

Stay with us as we bring you the latest updates and political analysis.