Labour isn’t doing enough to win over Scotland

Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney began 2025 in the traditional manner – with a chorus of Auld Lang Syne. Speaking at Edinburgh University on Monday morning, Swinney called for unity across the political divide and urged opposition leaders to get behind his government’s budget. Failure to do so, said the FM, would ‘feed the forces of anti-politics and of populism’. Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, however, was in no mood to clasp hands with Swinney and sing along about bygones correctly placed. As the First Minister spoke in Edinburgh, Sarwar delivered his own state-of-the-nation address, 50 miles west at his alma mater, the University of Glasgow. While Swinney was reaching out, Sarwar was reciting a litany of SNP failures.

The Scottish Labour leader used his speech today to describe – accurately – the miserable state of public services in Scotland after almost 18 years of SNP government. Not that his audience received all that much detail about how Scotland might differ under Labour. In fairness to the Glasgow politician, his reticence about detailing policy indicates an awareness that anything vaguely workable proposed by an opponent pre-2026 is liable to end up in the nationalists’ next manifesto. The SNP is tired and out of ideas.

After almost two decades of political dominance in Scotland, the next election is not looking especially promising for the nationalists. The decision by former first minister Humza Yousaf last year to end the SNP’s coalition with the Scottish Greens leaves the government without the majority it needs for its 2025-26 draft budget to pass smoothly through Holyrood next month. Success made SNP ministers arrogant and so the humility Swinney is now attempting to display in his dealings with opponents represents quite the shift in tone.

A blink-of-an-eye ago nationalist ministers would have had us believe that a vote for Labour was exactly the same as a vote for the Conservatives. Now, Swinney wishes us to accept he is part of some kind of progressive alliance alongside politicians who, until he needed their support, the SNP treated not merely with disdain but with naked contempt. The first step in this new journey of unity would be the passing of his party’s budget. This would boost confidence in the political system and act as an ‘antidote’ to the forces of populism. So, the age-old ‘vote for our crappy budget to save civilisation’ pitch, then.

If Swinney cannot muster enough support for the SNP’s budget and MSPs vote it down on 25 February, a Holyrood election will be required. Spoiler alert: this will not happen. No party at Holyrood is ready for an election right now. In any case the signs are that the Scottish Liberal Democrats are willing to help the nationalists get the numbers they need. Furthermore, the draft budget is littered with landmines – the retention of the winter fuel payment, the abolition of the two-child benefit cap – laid with Labour in mind. Can Sarwar really lead opposition to these policies, unfunded though they may be? No, he cannot.

Not that the Scottish Labour leader’s troubles end there. Early decisions by Sir Keir Starmer’s government such as the abolition of the universal winter fuel payment for pensioners and the u-turn on support for compensation for women campaigning over pension inequality played into the SNP’s hands. And so Sarwar – affable and quick-witted – is currently engaged in an attempt to show Scots he is very much his own man.

But the Scottish Labour leader needs to do more to stand out and show how a government led by him might differ. He’s not yet managed to convince Scots that his lot deserves to seize power. This is despite the chaos caused by the departures of Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf plus a voter backlash against plans to reform the gender recognition act. All that combined with the scandal of an ongoing police investigation into allegations of impropriety involving party finances should have been enough to knock the SNP out of the running, even this far out from the next election. Instead, although polls show Labour back in the game, the nationalists maintain a lead.

Labour’s failure to capitalise on the nationalists’ difficulties appears entirely down to decisions taking by Starmer. Before the general election, the inevitability of his victory was devastating to the SNP – whose claim that only a vote for them would get rid of the Conservative government was rendered nonsensical. Since then, Starmer has turned into Swinney’s little helper, making decisions that undermine Sarwar’s insistence he’s his own man and not merely Labour’s branch manager in the North.

While John Swinney is all but certain to see the SNP’s budget pass next month, he leads a party worn out by scandal and divided over strategy. All things considered, Anas Sarwar should be the runaway favourite to become Scotland’s next First Minister. Thanks to Sir Keir Starmer, however, the SNP – weakened though John Swinney may be – aren’t done for yet.