Aberdeen South has been a difficult by-election to watch. It is a contest about the cost-of-living and while few areas have escaped the economic hardships of recent years, Aberdeen South has been hit particularly hard.

The downturn in oil and gas, compounded by the Net Zero agenda, has pummelled the local economy in what were some of the most prosperous parts in Scotland, if not the UK.

Over the last 15 years, the city’s economy has lost 18,000 jobs. It is a literal decimation: one in every ten posts has vanished. Aberdeen house prices have dropped by an average of £7,500, the biggest fall-off of any area in Scotland.

Family finances built up over years of hard work suddenly precarious. Skilled engineers and experienced roughnecks dumped on the dole. A once-booming industry hollowed out.

It’s a damnable business.

Each party in the by-election claims to have the answer though, truth be told, many in Aberdeen South have simply stopped listening to politicians. One party after another has sold them out and let them down.

What this will mean for the result is anyone’s guess but I wouldn’t be surprised if turnout is low. Cynicism is a natural response to repeated betrayal.

The SNP, who once proclaimed ‘It’s Scotland’s Oil’, turned against the fossil fuel sector during Nicola Sturgeon’s tenure. She was more interested in courting the support of the Greens than in backing oil and gas workers at a fraught and frightening time in their lives and that of their industry.

Under Alex Salmond, the Scottish Government had pursued a balanced approach of supporting North Sea exploration while investing heavily in green energy, pledging to make Scotland ‘the Saudi Arabia of renewables’.

Sturgeon, his successor, opposed the development of the Shetland oil field, Cambo, while her successor, Humza Yousaf, was vocal in his hostility to another drilling project, Rosebank.

Two SNP leaders appealing to a Westminster Tory government to block Scottish jobs and economic growth. Whatever else might be said of the old SNP, at least it fought Scotland’s corner.

Not that the opponents of today’s SNP can claim the moral high ground.

Since coming to power in 2024 Labour has spoken out of both sides of its mouth, posing as pro-worker and pro-jobs even as it shows no urgency on Rosebank or the Jackdaw gas field.

That is unlikely to change while Net Zero fundamentalist Ed Miliband is Labour’s Energy Secretary.

And energy workers remember only too well the 14 years in which an allegedly Conservative government pushed Net Zero policies barely distinguishable from those advocated by the Left.

Now all these political chancers are clambering to get away from their past positions and pretend they have always had energy workers’ backs.

There are only two categories of people who lie habitually and without conscience: politicians and psychopaths, and at least psychopaths don’t believe they’re saving the world. The by-election is an opportunity for the voters to send a message — but to whom?

They could punish Labour and the Tories by sticking with the SNP, but that would let the Nationalists off the hook. There is a reason their candidate, Richard Thomson, formerly the MP for Gordon, inherits a vote share of 33 per cent. That is all his predecessor Stephen Flynn could manage in 2024 and doubtless played as much of a part in his decision to jump ship to Holyrood as his leadership ambitions.

Aberdeen South voters know the SNP is no friend of the North East. If it’s north of Stirling or south of East Kilbride, the SNP isn’t interested.

Labour came second in the constituency at the general election, though only narrowly, just 155 votes ahead of the Tories. This time Labour is standing Bridge of Don councillor Nurul Hoque Ali while the Conservatives are pinning their hopes on North East MSP Douglas Lumsden.

Lumsden is a seasoned campaigner who can offer himself as an alternative to Labour at Westminster and the SNP at Holyrood. What might scupper his chances is Reform, which took 3,000 ballots last time and could split the vote enough to hand victory to the SNP.

Each party faces its own test. Can the SNP memory-hole its anti-oil stance of recent years and win a by-election amid the fallout from the Peter Murrell scandal? Can Labour recover the ground lost since the general election and overcome both the Prime Minister’s unpopularity and dissatisfaction with its own Janus-faced posturing on oil and gas?

Will the Conservatives find a way to unite the anti-SNP vote and convince Reform supporters to hold their nose this one time? Will Reform manage to eclipse the Conservatives as they did in the Holyrood elections, further cementing their position as Scotland’s main centre-Right party?

That’s the politics of it, but this by-election is about something more important than politics.

It’s about the livelihoods of thousands of people and whether those livelihoods should be sacrificed on the altar of Net Zero fundamentalism or whether government should reach a climate compromise that moves us towards greener energy without devastating entire communities.

There is a pungent irony in the frequency with which Margaret Thatcher’s name is invoked in infamy in Scottish politics. The Iron Lady is damned for the socially destructive consequences of her economic policies by politicians visiting similar ruin upon the workers and communities of the North East.

Ah, but Maggie did it for bad reasons and they’re doing it for noble reasons, so that makes it different. It’s progressive P45s being handed out to oil and gas workers, you see.

I can’t claim to care all that much about party politics when skilled and experienced workers are being dumped on the scrapheap in the name of faddish ideology. Everyone knows Britain still needs oil and gas and will for some time to come, but the political class pretends otherwise and speaks in apocalyptic tones as that is the only way to convince the public to go along with mass immiseration and impoverishment.

Climate goals, which are undoubtedly important, can be met without wrecking an entire industry, but MPs and MSPs are in a destructive mood. It’s always those who have never built anything who are most eager to tear things down.

This week’s by-election is a chance to put these wreckers on notice, to attach a painful electoral price to their neglect and mistreatment of Aberdeen, its businesses and its workers.

Aberdonians should not limply resign themselves to their city’s decline and hope for some regeneration cash a few years hence to make up for it. 

The Granite City’s prosperity can be restored by ditching the dogma, drilling Rosebank and Jackdaw, and using the revenue generated to invest in renewables and the greenest energy of all: nuclear.

The political class will only learn this lesson the hard way. By ousting the SNP in favour of an unapologetically pro-drilling, pro-prosperity, pro-Aberdeen candidate, locals would prompt some hasty reassessments of policy and positioning in a number of parties.

The Net Zero fundamentalists believe job losses are a price worth paying. Only when the jobs being lost are theirs will they reconsider.