Why SNP cannot afford to be complacent despite dominant position in polls
Keir Starmer’s decision to stand up to Donald Trump over the Iran War could improve Labour’s standing among Scottish voters
In seven weeks’ time, Scotland goes to the polls to elect the parliament that will take us into the 2030s. It will be a parliament full of new faces, as the generation elected with the coming of devolution in 1999 reaches retirement age; but if current polls are accurate, there will be relatively little change at the top, with the SNP emerging once again as by far the largest party.
It’s a predicted outcome that baffles the SNP’s opponents, of course. The party has now been in power at Holyrood for 19 years, and it shows many signs both of exhaustion in terms of political ideas and creativity, and of the kind of bunker mentality that often develops in long-established governments, conflicting with the Scottish Government’s much vaunted values of openness and accountability.
The SNP has been lucky, though, in two ways. The most obvious stroke of luck for them lies in the meteoric rise of Reform, which has had the principal effect of further splitting the unionist vote, and of all but destroying the Scottish Tories, who as recently as 2021 represented the SNP’s main unionist opposition in Scotland.
The second stroke of luck has involved the collapse in popularity of Keir Starmer’s Labour government since its election in 2024, and the reactionary tone of many of its early policy decisions, which seem to have persuaded many Scottish voters that Starmer’s Labour is no better than the Tories. It has also become clear that if the Tory governments of 2010-2024 were largely tone deaf to the nuances of Scottish politics, then Westminster Labour is fully as bad.
Across a whole range of policies – from privatised water companies, through the English student loan system, to the UK Government’s sweetheart NHS data deal with controversial US digital giant Palantir, a close ally of the Trump administration – strong rebellious voices are now being raised south of the Border; and as most Scottish voters are at least vaguely aware, in each of these areas the situation in Scotland (and often also in Wales) is different – water still in public ownership, no student tuition fees, and no NHS deal with Palantir.
Yet 27 years on, Westminster and its attendant media have still largely failed to recognise the devolution settlement of 1999, far less to show any interest in the experience of differing systems and policies across the UK.
A few weeks ago, the UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting even accused the SNP government of refusing connection to the UK NHS app for “narrow nationalistic reasons”, apparently unable to grasp that they might have done so for the good social democratic reasons now being raised on his own doorstep.
And with every passing year, this Westminster failure to engage with the reality of devolved politics makes life more difficult for unionist parties in Scotland and Wales, and easier for the nationalist parties – the SNP and Plaid Cymru – who want to argue that the UK is finished as a union of equals, too sclerotic even to adapt to a measure of devolution it enacted itself, more than a quarter of a century ago.
If all these aspects of UK politics are conferring unexpected electoral advantages on the SNP, though, the party would nonetheless be unwise to approach the coming election with any sense of complacency.
In the first place, like many mainstream parties across Europe, the SNP has experienced a sharp fall in support in recent years, along with difficulties in achieving high voter turnout. Predictions are that barely half of Scots voters will go to the polls in May; and where turnouts are low, very small shifts in support can produce seismic change in outcomes.
Likewise, it would be foolish to discount the impact of the current international crisis on Scottish public opinion – a mistake made by many in the aftermath of the Iraq War, which was a deal-breaker with New Labour for many traditional Scottish supporters.
There’s no question that the more Donald Trump berates Starmer for failing to join in his Iran War, the more the average Scottish voter will warm to the beleaguered PM; and despite Anas Sarwar’s increasingly unconvincing performance as Scottish Labour leader, I would expect to see Labour support in Scotland move modestly upwards in the coming weeks, to the point where they might once again overtake Reform.
And then finally, the closer we get to the election – and to the idea of many of the same old faces once again at the top in Holyrood – the more voters may be tempted by the idea that change, any change, is long overdue.
In this case, to succumb to that mood might be a serious misjudgment for many Scottish voters; none of the SNP’s competitors is close to offering the same combination of decent budgetary management, progressive social and international policy, and protection of the rights and provisions to which devolved Scotland has become accustomed.
The attitudes of UK electorates, though, have been shaped over centuries by a first-past-the-post Westminster system that offers sharp alternations of government as its unique selling point; and the slogan “time for change” – vacuous as it often is – exerts a strong traditional appeal. The SNP, and John Swinney, have enjoyed a fortunate couple of years since 2024, not least in the poor and sometimes contemptible performances of most of its rivals.
There can be no certainty, though, that that luck will hold through a torrid seven weeks of pre-election politics, in a generally hostile media environment; sustaining it will require hard work, shrewd messaging, and an enthusiasm that often seems lacking, in current Scottish politics. And my guess is that although the SNP will still be Scotland’s largest party, come May 8, the election race may be closer than current predictions suggest, and the political negotiations thereafter both more interesting, and potentially more disturbing.
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