𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Most eyes will be on Makerfield on Thursday night to see if Andy Burnham wins the by-election which could catapult him into No 10. It is largely a two-horse race between Labour and Reform UK with the Greater Manchester Mayor expected to be the victor.

But there is another by-election, one of two more happening on June 18, some 350 miles further north – in Aberdeen – which could provide the most unexpected result. Whisper it quietly but Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives could spring a surprise.

Confidence is growing in party ranks that they could actually win, prizing the seat away from the SNP.

They have been throwing the kitchen sink at the constituency in recent weeks after Stephen Flynn’s election to Holyrood left voters needing to elect his Westminster successor.

So why do the Tories have a chance when they’re polling so dismally nationally and the party performed so badly in the recent Scottish parliamentary elections?

The answer, put simply, is oil and gas.

The big thing in Aberdeen’s politics is not independence but the future of the oil and gas industry and the jobs it creates.

Ed Miliband’s Net Zero zealotry and SNP neglect has turbocharged the North Sea oil and gas industry’s decline and the Granite City is bearing the brunt.

Whatever the Tories’ standing in the rest of Scotland, turning this by-election into a referendum on this issue gives them a shot.

Momentum is with them, largely thanks to Mrs Badenoch’s two recent high profile constituency visits.

She is planning a third before polling day in a further sign that she feels the seat is there for the taking.

The Tory leader has claimed that people in Aberdeen have pleaded with her to “save the city” while candidate, Douglas Lumsden, says he is “quietly confident” about the result.

Aberdeen South’s recent political history is volatile.

The Tories gained the seat from Labour in 1992, before it went back to Labour from 1997 to 2015 with the Lib Dems as the major challengers.

But the SNP won it in their post-referendum sweep, only to be clawed back two years later by the Conservatives again.

Flynn turned it yellow in 2019 and was narrowly re-elected in 2024, as the Conservatives plummeted from second to fourth.

But last month they came only 1,244 votes behind Flynn in the near-equivalent Holyrood seat.

Polling guru Professor John Curtice said this week that he thinks Aberdeen South is “potentially competitive” because of the oil and gas issue.

But while by-elections “sometimes produce unusual results”, he said “it’s for the SNP to lose”.

The Peter Murrell scandal, in which the former SNP chief executive pleaded guilty to embezzling over £400k of party funds, is also likely to have an an impact on the outcome.

And much like Makerfield, where Restore Britain is syphoning votes away from Reform, Nigel Farage’s party could do the same to the Tories in Aberdeen, leaving the final result too close to call.