LABOUR and SNP have traded blows a fortnight from polling in the crucial Hamilton West and Rutherglen by-election.

Amid widespread concern in SNP ranks that disaffection on independence strategy may mean their voters sit the election out, the party’s Westminster deputy leader Mhairi Black has written an open letter urging young people to vote.

She wrote: “Young people deserve so much more than a narrow choice between red Tories and blue Tories.