SCOTTISH Labour must accept that voters see the SNP as the “default choice to protect Scottish interests”, a senior party MSP has said.
Daniel Johnson, who was Scottish Labour’s economy spokesperson under Anas Sarwar, made the remark in an article for The Daily Record in which he said the party was facing a “different” crisis to previous ones because in the 2026 Holyrood election “for the first time since 2007 we thought we could win”.
Ultimately in May, Scottish Labour returned their worst-ever Scottish parliament election result, tying with Reform UK on 17 MSPs. Their leader, Sarwar, has since resigned in order to take a life peerage in the House of Lords and a position as a UK Government minister.
A surprised Scottish Labour have been left looking for a new leader, and Johnson had been suggested as one who could stand. However, on Monday he said he would support Michael Marra – another close Sarwar ally – despite Marra not yet announcing that he will run.
The only confirmed candidate so far is Monica Lennon, the left-wing candidate defeated by Sarwar in the 2021 Scottish Labour leadership race.
There have been calls for the UK and Scottish Labour parties to split, with many within the Scottish group pointing the finger for their 2026 election loss at former prime minister Keir Starmer’s unpopularity.
However, Lennon has ruled out a divide from Labour’s UK bosses, and Johnson also argued against it.
Writing for The Record, Johnson said: “This felt like a very different loss. For the first time since 2007 we thought we could win. In 2024, we proved we could by reducing the SNP to a rump in Westminster and outperforming the UK party in vote share and swing.
“Losing when the opportunity was there raises existential questions for our party. To compound this, the SNP on many counts did not deserve to win. On the doors even veteran SNP voters were not enthused by their record. Yet against a tired and unpopular incumbent, who shed 9% of its vote share, we could not advance. We have to accept that for many voters, the SNP remains the default choice to protect Scottish interests.”
He went on: “This brings me to our main existential conundrum: we could not differentiate ourselves from the UK party. Despite rebranding, a strong leader, and picking fights with UK leadership, we suffered from the UK Government’s unpopularity rather than being judged on our own terms.
“Even if outright victory was impossible in those circumstances why couldn't we add even half a dozen seats to our relatively low 2021 tally?
“For some there are simplistic structural answers – a split from UK Labour and a new party. But form before function runs the risk of missing the fundamental question of who our party is for, what our plan is and how we tell people what we are doing.”
He went on: “Unlike the UK party, Scottish Labour has never done the soul-searching required to rebuild and win. Keir Starmer’s leadership victory was built on an unflinching reassessment of who abandoned Labour, recognising that ‘traditional’ ‘Red Wall’ voters rejected metropolitan virtue politics, which led to a focus on patriotism, service, workers' rights, and housing.
“Scottish Labour has failed to confront who our voters are, what motivates them, and how to win them over.
“We must move beyond patronising divisions, between East v West, Yes v No and urban v rural and accept that the mythical traditional workers from industrial Scotland are gone.”
