Southside Central is the kind of ward Scottish Labour needs to be winning. It’s in Glasgow, home to significant pockets of deprivation within the Gorbals and Govanhill, and has a substantial population of Scots of Pakistani heritage. If there is a path to a Labour government after the 2026 Holyrood elections, it runs through communities like Southside Central. But Anas Sarwar’s party has been rejected by the voters of this ward in favour of the SNP’s Mhairi Hunter.
North East is another ward Labour ought to be winning. Once again, it’s Glasgow, home to high levels of social-rented housing, and contains Easterhouse, whose multiple deprivations and addiction problems famously shocked Iain Duncan Smith during a 2002 visit. If Labour still hasn’t convinced voters here, it’s going to have to do a lot of convincing everywhere else. Yesterday, North East also went to the SNP, with Donna McGill elected to fill the seat.
For generations, Glasgow was the beating red heart of Scottish socialism. Yet when polling stations open next spring, it will have been 15 years since Labour won a Glasgow constituency at a Scottish Parliament election. The party was given reason to hope that Dear Green Place had returned to the Labour fold when it swept every constituency in the city at last year’s general election. What happened? Keir Starmer happened. More fully, the SNP got itself into a guddle over gender, lost Nicola Sturgeon as leader, and went into free-fall under Humza Yousaf, while Starmer offered the best chance to beat the Tories in a generation, only to get elected and suffer a cratering in his approval ratings.
A Westminster Labour government can help or hurt the Holyrood party, but never before has it gone so swiftly from helping to hurting. It’s an exaggeration to say that Starmer has blown the 2026 election for Labour – the Scottish party is owed its share of the blame – but it’s not all that much of an exaggeration. In the final five polls before the general election, Labour’s Holyrood support ranged between 32 and 37 per cent, but in the five most recent surveys that range is down to 18-23 per cent. The SNP currently enjoys an 11-point lead.
Because Scottish Labour is Scottish Labour, its natural instinct is to blame the leader. Sarwar can hardly brush off all culpability but it’s hard to see what he, or an alternative leader, could do to change this dynamic. The SNP was able to manage government at Holyrood and a large group at Westminster by always putting the interests of Holyrood first, a sensible strategy given the Nationalists are unlikely ever to find themselves in government at UK level. Labour seeks government in both parliaments but it can prioritise only one, and that is and perhaps always will be Westminster. Who would go into Labour politics in England if its chief priority was Labour’s fortunes in Scotland?
Neither Alex Salmond nor Nicola Sturgeon advanced the cause of Scottish nationalism as Keir Starmer has done
Sarwar could distance himself from Downing Street but it would only confirm that his authority does not extend to the Scottish Labour MP group. Left or right, loyalist or awkward squadder, willing to thole benefit cuts or seething mad at them, MPs will direct themselves to the parliament they serve in rather than the parliament their comrades hope to recapture at some point in the future. Politics is about power and the opportunity to influence how it is exercised. It does not alter Labour MPs’ access to power one skerrick whether Anas Sarwar or John Swinney is in Bute House.
It would be churlish not to acknowledge the success of the current SNP leadership team in rebranding their party and government as mainstream and moderate. John Swinney and Kate Forbes have managed to avoid a reckoning over gender ideology, independence, and any of the other issues that divide the SNP simply because none of the factions wishes to reopen these wounds. That uneasy peace will only last so long, but until it breaks down the Nationalists are united by the opportunity to win a fifth consecutive term in power next year. Twelve months ago, when everything was falling apart, it scarcely seemed possible that the Nationalists could sustain themselves in office until 2031. Today, it seems entirely feasible that the SNP could spend a quarter-century continuously in power, if not longer, before Labour (or someone else) is in with a credible chance of ousting them.
And, yes, Swinney and Forbes deserve credit for that, but not as much as the Labour pairing of Donald Dewar and Keir Starmer. The absurdly hallowed Dewar, the author of devolution, gave the SNP the platform upon which to transform itself from a protest vote of eternal opposition into the natural party of government in Scotland. No one, neither Alex Salmond nor Nicola Sturgeon, had done more to advance the cause of Scottish nationalism — at least, that is, until Starmer. He is a fundamentally unlikeable character and his inadequacies as a prime minister and as a strategist could yet impede Labour’s return to power in Scotland.
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