Only a few months ago, Labour won the most votes and a majority of seats in Scotland for the first time since 2010. A 16-point swing from the Scottish National party yielded a harvest of 37 Westminster Labour MPs. The SNP, which had changed leaders twice in little over a year, plummeted from 48 Westminster MPs to a mere nine.
Yet if anyone assumes Labour is now in the driving seat of Scottish electoral politics again, they have not been paying attention. A poll last week showed Labour facing its worst Holyrood election result since devolution began, with only 18% of Scots planning to vote for Anas Sarwar’s party when the Scottish parliament comes up for election in 2026. The SNP, meanwhile, is on course to be the largest party at Holyrood again, potentially enabling the current first minister, John Swinney, to form the nationalists’ fifth consecutive devolved administration.
