Labour’s triumph in winning a decisive nationwide mandate has eclipsed — at least for voters in England and Wales — an almost greater political earthquake: the virtual extinction of the Scottish National Party at Westminster. Labour has made a comeback in Scotland to a degree that few thought possible only a few years ago. It has recaptured swathes of the country that were solidly behind the SNP’s earlier electoral dominance and reduced the number of SNP Westminster seats from 48 won in 2019 to nine — about the same as the total of independents such as Jeremy Corbyn and those campaigning over Gaza.
Losses were always expected. The SNP has been in power in Holyrood for 17 years, and, like the Conservatives, suffered from being seen as an incumbent who had run out of new ideas and whose record in office was far from successful. Falling standards in education, a failure to deal with crime and high drug addiction rates, poor transport and high taxes angered voters who saw a party fixated on the independence issue to the exclusion of all else and attempting to portray the general election as a potential mandate for a second referendum. The party’s problems also mirrored some of those hurting the Tories: the rapid turnover of leaders in recent years, scandals embroiling senior figures including Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister, and criminal charges against her husband, and a police investigation into the party’s finances and nebulous dealings.
The party also foolishly attempted to portray itself as socially “progressive”, introducing, with the active encouragement of its former Green coalition partners, reform of the laws on gender recognition and a law on hate crime that many voters saw as a dangerous encroachment on the freedom of speech. The gender law was blocked by Westminster, and the hate crime measures have been quietly ignored, but to socially conservative SNP voters the damage was done.
Some of the credit for Labour’s comeback must go to the party’s leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar. He rebuilt Labour from a base of only a single seat in Scotland to a force that has harnessed anger with the Tories in Westminster to anger with the ruling SNP. The big question now is whether Labour can use this momentum to propel it to victory in the Scottish elections in 2026. If so, the SNP’s dream of independence is likely to remain only a dream for at least another generation. That does not mean that the sentiment is dead; only that in terms of UK and European politics it would be economically ruinous and not feasible at present.
Acknowledging its devastating rejection, the SNP has admitted that it now needs a long period of internal reflection and renewal. John Swinney, a retread brought back after the resignation of Humza Yousaf, the Liz Truss of Holyrood, will hold the fort for a while but will then give way to a younger generation looking to channel Scottish feeling and patriotism into a new form of practical politics.
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What is clear is that Labour at Westminster, traditionally with strong Scottish roots and connections, will have a much easier relationship with party colleagues north of the border than the Conservatives had with the prickly SNP leadership, which defined itself in opposition not only to English but also to Tory domination.
The relief in London at the fading of a constitutional crisis that at one time threatened to split the United Kingdom apart will probably be mirrored in dealings with Wales, where Plaid Cymru was never the force the SNP was and the Tories have now lost every seat they held in Wales. Northern Ireland is a very different matter with its own challenges. But at least a Starmer government will not have to handle a constitutional challenge on top of the task of getting the United Kingdom growing again.
