Former SNP Cabinet Secretary Alex Neil has urged First Minister John Swinney to “grow a backbone” and support North Sea drilling after the party’s humiliating by-election defeat in Aberdeen South. Neil warned that voters are furious at politicians on both sides of the border for treating the oil and gas industry—which supports more than 60,000 jobs in the north east—as a “sacrificial lamb”.
Scottish Conservatives win historic by-election
The Scottish Conservatives secured a shock victory in Thursday’s by-election, billing the vote as “a referendum on the oil and gas industry”. Former MSP Douglas Lumsden won a thumping majority of more than 6,000 votes, defeating the SNP’s Richard Thomson. This marked the Tories’ first Scottish by-election win since 1973.
The SNP’s vote share plummeted from 15,213 when Stephen Flynn won the seat in 2024 to just 8,258 on Thursday. Flynn, who resigned as MP to stand for Holyrood and is now an MSP and economy minister under Swinney, described the result as a “tough night” that “some will need to reflect on, quite heavily”. Former SNP special adviser Kate Higgins responded: “I do hope that ‘some’ includes you… the by-election was, after all, caused by your choices.”
Neil calls for end to ‘economic madness’
Neil, who served in SNP Cabinets under both Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, called on Swinney to renounce the “economic madness” of Sturgeon-era opposition to new oil and gas projects such as the Rosebank oil field and Jackdaw gas field. He told the Sunday Mail: “It’s about backbone. Swinney needs to stand up to the Greens and to Sturgeon because he’s sitting on the fence and that’s the worst of all possible worlds. If you sit on the fence, you don’t please anybody. You’ve got to come off the fence, especially when Scotland’s economy demands it.”
Neil added: “Now the people are demanding it. A clear majority of people in Scotland think that we should continue to develop our oil and gas fields as long as we possibly can, as long as they’re profitable, as long as they’re producing good, high earning jobs. There’s public support for this, but I think John’s feart. We are making ourselves the sacrificial lamb when no one else in the world is contemplating such a stupid policy. I just think we’ve got it completely wrong on oil and gas and we’re going to pay a much heavier political price in the future if we don’t get it right.”
Background on oil and gas policy
Under Sturgeon and her successor Humza Yousaf, both of whom ran power-sharing administrations with the Scottish Greens, the government opposed the Rosebank oil field, with Sturgeon branding it “environmental vandalism”. Rosebank, located 80 miles off Shetland, is the largest untapped oil field in Britain, containing an estimated 300 million barrels. It has yet to gain consent for drilling at Westminster after previous approval by the Tories was thrown out by the courts as unlawful.
A draft energy strategy published under Sturgeon said SNP ministers could adopt a symbolic “presumption against” new oil and gas drilling in 2023. The final strategy has still not been published, and Swinney is seen as having softened the government’s North Sea stance.
Labour’s stance and potential Burnham premiership
Meanwhile, the Labour government under Keir Starmer and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has introduced a controversial ban on oil and gas exploration in the drive for Net Zero. Following Andy Burnham’s seismic by-election win in Makerfield, the former Greater Manchester mayor is strongly tipped to oust Starmer from No 10. Attention is turning to his possible Cabinet picks, with Miliband, a close Burnham ally, currently the frontrunner with bookies to become Chancellor.
Neil, 74, said: “The worst possible thing Andy Burnham can do is make Ed Miliband the Chancellor of the Exchequer because he’ll then be in an even more powerful position to destroy the oil and gas industry. It’s quite clear that is on his agenda and that has huge implications. He couldn’t care less what happens to Scotland, the Scottish economy, or the people in Aberdeen and the northeast of Scotland. He just doesn’t care because he’s ideologically obsessed with getting rid of the oil and gas industry. My strong advice to Andy Burnham is not to touch Miliband with a barge pole, don’t let him near the Treasury, because that will be Burnham’s downfall. Make him foreign secretary and let him go and travel the world as much as he likes. But don’t give him a say in economic policy because he’s absolutely out of tune with the people.”
Industry and union reactions
Figures from the North Sea industry and trade unions have said the result in Aberdeen South must be a “wake-up call” to politicians to back oil workers. David Whitehouse, chief executive of industry body Offshore Energies UK, said: “The debate around oil and gas has become too toxic, too polarised. It is wrong to divide our workforce into ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ labour, into good jobs and bad jobs. That kind of dismissive language helps no one. This is not a choice between oil and gas or renewables. It has to be both. I hope this moment creates space for a reset.”
Louise Gilmour, GMB Scotland secretary, said: “It was entirely predictable that a Tory would win this by-election by promising to protect the North Sea. The only thing more predictable is ministers at Westminster and Holyrood continuing to promise green jobs tomorrow while thousands of well-paid, highly skilled workers in oil and gas are being abandoned today. Their rushed and needless rundown of the North Sea is continuing despite an industrial catastrophe unfolding in plain sight.”
The union warned a Westminster committee last week of a cliff-edge “calamity” for jobs in the industry, with the pace of redundancies increasing at an alarming rate. GMB said it has been involved in 28 redundancy consultations so far this year compared to 11 in the same period in 2025, and pointed out that for every worker formally made redundant, another two jobs are quietly lost offshore and in supply chains, such as casual workers. A previous Robert Gordon University study forecast 200 jobs being lost in oil, gas and related industries every week for the next five years.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “The Aberdeen South result is a direct result of Labour policies on oil and gas, which have been an abject failure. The tin-eared approach to the concerns of workers, by letting go of one rope before we have hold of another, has been absolutely shameful. Unite will not accept a jobless transition. Until there is a credible plan for jobs the anti-North Sea policies must be consigned to the bin.”
