Scots MPs face most Twitter hostility
Teddy Taylor was the last Conservative Party victor in 1974, although Tam Galbraith was elected in 1979 in Hillhead as a Unionist, a seat lost three years later to Roy Jenkins of the SDP.
At every Westminster election since, the Tories have been persona non grata in Glasgow seats.
While the chances of a Conservative winning one of the city’s seven seats in still highly unlikely, and would provide one of the biggest shocks in the election, the party is undoubtedly gathering support.
The council elections surprised many people with eight Tory councillors winning seats across Glasgow, in a variety of wards.
The biggest surprises were in Calton and in Shettleston. In the former even the Tories were surprised to have got elected.
In Shettleston, Thomas Kerr took the Conservatives into uncharted territory and he is standing again this time in the Glasgow East seat.
Realistically, he has no chance of winning but he will be looking to convert more people to the Tory cause.
The seats where the Tories look to have the best chance of establishing themselves as an electoral force and not just also rans are Glasgow South and North West.
South, held by Stewart McDonald of the SNP is the successor to the old Cathcart seat where Teddy Taylor was MP until 1979.
In 2015 the Tories won almost 10% of the vote with 4752 people backing them.
In the council wards the Tories performed well, in Pollokshields, David Meikle was just 23 behind the two Labour candidates combined in first preference votes.
Councillors were also elected in Linn and Newlands/Auldburn.
The campaign is built on winning the support of those who voted no in the 2014 referendum and who are opposed not just to independence but to another referendum.
It is that tactic which has been FOUR Scots are among the top 10 Westminster politicians who faced the most hostility on Twitter, new research has found.
Scotland’s only Labour MP in the last parliament, Ian Murray, came third while Scottish Secretary David Mundell was fifth.
The SNP’s Mhairi Black was sixth followed by her party colleague Callum McCaig at number eight.
Conservative Tim Loughton came top of the list for facing hostile Twitter messages, which spiked after he attended the Baftas and criticised director Ken Loach’s speech as “pathetic drivel”. successful in the recent elections with two MSPs voted in by people across Glasgow in 2016.
In the last year Adam Tomkins and Annie Wells have been pushing the no to a second referendum message hard and it has paid off.
The voting system helped with proportional representation at Holyrood and the council working in the party’s favour.
The Tories still finished well behind the SNP and Labour in both the Holyrood and council elections and in 2015 they were a distant third in each of the city’s seven
Researchers at the University of Central Lancashire used machine learning software to analyse all the tweets sent to MPs between December 22 and May 9.
A total of 681,084 single @message tweets in English were examined and ranked as either positive, neutral, disagree or hostile.
They found the type of angry messages directed at Scottish MPs tended to differ from their English counterparts, broadly focusing on political issues rather than responding to a specific comment.
Mr Murray and Mr Mundell were found to face recurring bouts of extreme hostility, peaking seats In the Westminster system, it is the party with the most votes who take the one seat and the others get nothing.
So while the Conservatives are picking up support on the back of the anti independence votes and in places where they would have been laughed out of the streets just a few years ago, there is a long way to go before the party can expect to be serious challengers for first past the post Westminster seats.
So the 40-year wait for a Tory MP to be elected in Glasgow looks like it will continue for a few years yet. around the triggering of Article 50 in March.
The study found many hostile tweets aimed at Mr Mundell referenced terms including Brexit, EU, independence, union, Scotland, Scottish, unfair, democracy, and referendum.
Those aimed at Mr Murray often referenced Scotland, Corbyn, Brexit, disaster, destroying and independence.
Researcher Amy Binns said: “The hostility aimed at the Scottish MPs appears to be of a different type to hostile tweets experienced by MPs in the rest of the UK.”