9 May 2026

The SNP are still in power – but Scotland has changed

The insurgent politics sweeping the UK has arrived north of the border

Five more years. A quarter-century of Nationalist rule. The SNP have emerged from yet another Holyrood election undefeated, seemingly undefeatable.

After an underwhelming campaign that failed to capture the national imagination, Scotland has got what Scotland seemingly wants. John Swinney back in Bute House, but without the majority he set as the trigger for a second independence referendum. An enlarged and empowered group of radical Green MSPs. A chunky presence for Reform. A fresh humbling for Labour and the Conservatives.

There will be those who say the SNP didn’t do as well as they should have, but they have still won 58 of the Scottish Parliament’s 129 seats – only six down on their 2021 result. After so long in office, and with some years of high-profile scandal and significant policy failure behind them, this is no mean achievement. For the insurgent wave that is sweeping the UK also arrived in Scotland. Reform won 17 seats, while the Greens secured a record high of 15. At the very least these extremes of left and right promise a parliamentary chamber of some rumbustiousness.

Reform emerged in joint second place with Labour, also on 17 seats. For Anas Sarwar and his party, the result is a disaster. It wasn’t so long ago that they looked odds-on to win this election. Instead, they went backwards on the 22 seats of 2021, and in the end were steamrollered by the Nats. Most of the central belt seats that had turned Labour in the 2024 general election returned to the SNP.

The result largely mirrored the polls, and so perhaps should not have come as much of a surprise. But Labour campaigners are still gutted. The campaign, run by Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander, was the best funded and had the sharpest online presence. But it failed to catch fire. There will be questions now about whether centring the campaign around Sarwar, for all his charm and energy, was the right strategy. On policy, too, Labour’s manifesto was a damp squib, containing little to seize voters’ attention.

Of course, the main difficult for Labour was the chronic unpopularity of Keir Starmer and his Westminster government. Starmer has crashed the Labour car across the UK. There is now a decision to be made about the party’s leadership, not just in London but in Edinburgh too. Sarwar explicitly based his leadership on unseating the SNP in this election and has failed, whatever the reasons. Can he face another five years in opposition, in reduced circumstances, having to go again and promising victory in 2031? It feels unlikely. The same question faces Russell Findlay, leader of the Scottish Conservatives. The Tories won only 12 seats compared to 2021’s 31, the main victims of Reform’s extraordinary surge.

For Swinney, there is a different set of calculations to be made. He must appoint a new Cabinet. He has lost Angus Robertson after the Lib Dems took his Edinburgh seat. Kate Forbes, the impressive deputy first minister, has stood down, as have a fair number of long-serving ministers. Will he promote junior ministerial talents such as Ben Macpherson and Tom Arthur? Will he find space for Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader who is now MSP for Aberdeen Deeside and North Kincardine? What about experienced ex-MPs such as Stephen Gethins, Alyn Smith and Alison Thewliss, newly arrived at Holyrood? There are now some big characters he must keep happy.

He must decide on his parliamentary strategy, too. Swinney seems likely to want to govern as a minority administration, He has sought to move his party to the centre, compared to the more left-wing administrations of Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf. Lacking a majority, he will have to do deals with other parties to pass legislation. The Greens are a fellow pro-independence party, but have greater sympathy for the Sturgeon worldview. Can Swinney do an informal deal with the more centrist Lib Dems? Is there any prospect of working with arch-rivals Labour?

On policy, the First Minister must decide whether some of the more eye-catching policies from his manifesto are worth the trouble. In particular, the pledge to force supermarkets to provide low-cost dietary staples, which has attracted huge controversy and not a little derision, would be a battle likely to use up a large amount of political capital. Will we ever see a free schoolbag for every child starting primary one? We are, after all, still waiting for the free bikes and free iPads previously promised by the Nats.

And now the election is out of the way, the fiscal reality will have to be confronted. A £5 billion gap between what the Scottish government spends and what it brings in is looming. This is the key issue facing politics north of the border, even if the politicians sought to ignore it during the campaign. The £1.5 billion worth of efficiencies so far promised by the SNP look to be insufficient, even if they are delivered (which is far from certain). Can the Nats really sustain the more generous levels of welfare spending, universal benefits, and public sector pay they have previously adopted, above Westminster levels? Having failed to confront Scots with the need for hard choices during the campaign, how does Swinney find the language to do so now?

Finally, there is the matter of independence – there is always the matter of independence. By his own metric of securing a majority, Swinney has failed to secure a mandate for a second referendum. The SNP and the Greens, when their seats are added together, have that majority, but those were not the terms set out by the First Minister, and would not be accepted by the UK government. That does not mean Swinney will go quiet on what is, after all, his party’s raison d’être. He is likely to push for a formal agreement with Westminster about a process for agreeing another plebiscite, and complain wildly if one is not forthcoming. He is likely, too, to use the success of Reform south of the border, where it is significantly more successful (so far) than in Scotland, to paint a picture of the two nations growing further apart. And the sting of Brexit remains a powerful recruiting force.

It has been said that, given the scale of the challenges facing the incoming government, this might have been a good election to lose. John Swinney is about to find out.

[Further reading: Nothing suggests Plaid Cymru can save Wales]