If you cock an ear, that gnashing of teeth you can hear is coming from inside Scottish Labour’s HQ. The party, which had seemed on course to win the next Holyrood election, suddenly finds itself in a much more precarious position.
Recent polls suggest the SNP is once again ahead in the race, which is almost unthinkable after 17 years of government and two years of almost relentless bad press and scandal. John Swinney was supposed to be a caretaker First Minister, a reverse Moses guiding his wounded party away from the promised land, out of office and across to the opposition benches. There now seems to be every chance the Nats could win an astonishing fifth straight term.
What is happening? There are a few things to consider. First, Keir Starmer’s government has hit the ground like a dead weight. A stuttering first few months followed by a tax-borrow-and-spend Budget have quickly taken the sheen off the administration. Anas Sarwar was promised that by helping Starmer into office the favour would be returned in 2026. Sarwar ably delivered his part of the bargain – Starmer, already a deeply unpopular Prime Minister, is not on course to do the same.
Second, Swinney has stabilised the SNP. It might be put no more strongly than that, but it is having an impact. He has moved them towards the centre, if only a little, and jettisoned much of Nicola Sturgeon’s divisive social tinkering. The rhetoric on independence has been dialled down. And last week’s Scottish Budget was political enough – in promising to abolish the two-child benefit cap and increase NHS spending – to have caught the electorate’s attention.
And third, there is the looming spectre of Reform UK. Nigel Farage’s party broke through at Westminster in July’s general election, and the polls suggest it will do the same at Holyrood. It may take the majority of its votes from the Conservatives, but Labour and even the SNP stand to lose ground to it as well. “Reform are taking a bite out of everyone’s backside,” a Labour shadow cabinet member said to me. “It’s a global, right-wing phenomenon, and anyone who thinks Scotland is immune is frankly mad.”
Despite all these challenges and a clear loss of momentum, Sarwar remains upbeat. Labour’s performance in local government by-elections in Glasgow and elsewhere has been positive, which insiders believe paints a more accurate picture of the facts on the ground. They insist the current state of the polls was “anticipated”. “The dynamics driving all this are not a surprise,” one told me. “There’s dissatisfaction with the UK government but that’s because it is taking difficult decisions, doing the hard stuff over the first 18 months or so.”
Perhaps, but that timeline is not particularly useful for Sarwar. When the new year arrives, Scotland will move into a long and effectively full-blown election campaign ahead of the Holyrood vote in May 2026. There can be no doubt that continued disillusionment with Starmer et al would spill over.
Nevertheless, Scottish Labour thinks the election is still there to be won, and of course it is. There is an argument, as one leading SNP MSP put it to me recently, that the Nats “still haven’t learned how not to talk about independence”. With the constitution low on voters’ priorities list at present, it remains to be seen whether Swinney – as ardent an independence supporter as has ever existed – can resist banging on about the subject in the heat of a campaign. A Labour source said: “We want this election to be about the state of the NHS and schools, but given their record they still want it to be an argument about the constitution.”
The SNP will have to find a balance, certainly, and its track record on the public services is pretty woeful. But key figures accept that, and it’s interesting that the party’s sharp-eyed public finance minister Ivan McKee, a close ally of deputy first minister Kate Forbes, has promised that a robust programme of public-sector reform lies ahead. If ministers can begin this process, it suggests a political scrap over the nature and depth of reform lies ahead, which can only be to the nation’s benefit.
Labour, meanwhile, views the new year as the moment to hit the accelerator and try to regain control of the narrative. “The Scottish Budget was nakedly political, but the longer-term challenges are still not being addressed in any meaningful way,” a shadow cabinet member told me. “If you give someone £5.2bn to spend [the extra money for Scotland in Rachel Reeves’ Budget], you expect them to buy a few things, but we believe that the NHS over this winter, sadly, will eat up a lot of that.” From the turn of the year, Labour intends to “tell a better story about what change will look like, and contrast that with the SNP’s record”.
Senior party figures remain bullish about having kept their powder dry on the policy front, the risk being that good ideas will simply be co-opted by the current government. But they also admit there remains “lots of work to be done” on fleshing out that policy agenda, especially on public service reform. In a tight fiscal climate, the work of improving systems, delivery and outcomes is more essential than ever.
Sarwar and his team had better get on with it. As things stand, Swinney, Farage and others are licking their lips.
[See also: Labour is heading for disaster in Wales]
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