Women take all the seats in the area
Council leader hails result
Council leader John Ross hailed an “unbelievable” election result as a win for equality after three women were elected to represent South Lanarkshire.
SNP MPS Angela Crawley and Dr Lisa Cameron held their seats in Lanark and Hamilton East and East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow with increased majorities while Margaret Ferrier won back Rutherglen and Hamilton West from Labour.
That means all three of the constituencies fully within South Lanarkshire are represented by women, and Cllr Ross praised residents for helping to increase diversity at Westminster.
Cllr Ross said: “I think we are absolutely very, very lucky to have very strong women right through from our MPS to our MSPS. I think it’s great, I absolutely think it’s great.
“We’re going to call a meeting in January where we can all sit down and see how we can take forward South Lanarkshire to the best of our ability.”
The SNP gained 13 seats at the election on Thursday, December 12, as they increased their vote in 58 of the 59 constituencies across the country.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is now calling for a second independence referendum and Cllr Ross felt the vote north of the border would be difficult to overlook.
He added: “It’s very hard to ignore the mandate.
“Our plan is to put it to Boris [Johnson].
“Boris is full of big ideas where he doesn’t accept this or doesn’t accept that, but this is the third time we have put it forward and the Scottish people have responded [by saying] we want to do things in Scotland.
“I’m sure he’ll have to respect that.
“He can’t go against it all the time, so we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Rutherglen and Hamilton West – the first constituency in Scotland to declare – signalled that it was going to be another good night for the SNP, but Cllr Ross didn’t expect it to be quite as good as it turned out.
He said: “It’s an absolutely fabulous, unbelievable result. We expected or hoped to win two of the seats [in South Lanarkshire].
“We were a wee bit dodgy about Angela’s seat because we had heard so much about the Conservative revival, but it was just overwhelming.
“I spent all day getting out the vote and by this afternoon (Thursday) it was very clear that the results we were getting on the doorstep pointed towards the type of thing we could see tonight.
“I never imagined it would be big. To find we’ve gone from Angela’s with a 260 majority to a majority of over 5000, the same in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, and 11,000 from a 3000 majority for Lisa Cameron is unbelievable.
“It was beyond our wildest dreams.”