As Scottish politics resumed following a brief hiatus over Christmas, First Minister, John Swinney, and Scottish Labour Leader, Anas Sarwar, both began the New Year with set-piece speeches at either end of the M8, setting out their respective stalls for the next twelve months.
Except neither speech was about 2025 – the date both had in mind was May 2026 and the next Scottish elections, which will almost certainly herald either an unprecedented sixth term for the SNP, or a return to power for Scottish Labour after 19 years in the wilderness.
John Swinney spoke a lot about hope – something desperately missing from our politics – and how it is through hard work and consensus building that vision can be realised.
“Delivery in the present, hope for the future” is a core message that will be repeated by Swinney and his team in various forms a lot between now and May next year.
He and his deputy, Kate Forbes, have their sights firmly set on middle Scotland – she has spoken about ‘mobilising’ the middle, he about building consensus to ensure the forces of populism and ‘anti-politics’ do not win.
The First Minister also made clear his belief that that a growing economy is a force for good and that he wants to use this force to deliver his mission to eradicate child poverty and to ‘renew’ Scotland’s NHS.
Anas Sarwar also spoke a lot about hope – indeed there were large sections of his speech about Scotland’s potential that could easily have come from Swinney’s speech.
His hope for Scotland is however, unsurprisingly, coupled with a greater dose of negativity.
“The SNP has weakened every institution” in Scotland will be a core pillar of his bid to become First Minister and take the country in a “new direction”.
Sarwar concedes Scottish budget
The bigger story of the week though was Anas Sarwar’s surprise announcement live on radio that his party would abstain on the Scottish budget – effectively guaranteeing its passage before Holyrood’s first meeting of the year.
I spent seven years in government and was involved with the budget negotiations with opposition parties in each of them.
I cannot for the life of me fathom the political logic of Labour removing the SNP’s last major parliamentary hurdle of the term, while extracting nothing in return.
The SNP will have expected to have had to find well north of £100 million of budget concessions to secure a parliamentary majority from either the Liberal Democrats or the Scottish Greens.
While these talks will continue and concessions may still be made, the jeopardy for the SNP has now completely gone. If there is money going spare, they can now spend it as they see fit.
Given its contents the chances of Parliament voting the budget down and triggering an early election were slim, but nobody would have expected Labour, who have opposed every SNP budget since 2007, to allow it to pass without securing a single penny for their priorities in return.
When Swinney replaced Humza Yousaf as First Minister, Sarwar said there must be an early Holyrood election, by conceding on the Scottish budget, he has removed the chances of there being one.
If Sarwar thought he could win an early election, he would have done everything in his power to bring one about.
Long shadow of Keir Starmer
It was meant to be a slick, two-step process for Sarwar and Scottish Labour.
Win the 2024 General Election in Scotland as part of putting Labour into power in Westminster and then ride the honeymoon to Holyrood victory.
Their premise was that Scotland had two unpopular governments – one Tory, one SNP – and that Labour were well placed replace them both with a promise of change.
Given the decline in SNP support, and the party’s near wipeout at Labour’s hands in the UK election, it was not an unreasonable one.
The plan was working.
Except an unpopular Tory Government in Westminster, has been replaced by an unpopular Labour Government in Westminster.
Starmer’s first months in office have seen Labour haemorrhage support across the UK.
Winning a landslide election on 34% of the vote is an impressive feat, but when you’re left fighting on three fronts as he has been, something has to give.
The Prime Minister’s attention is far more likely to be on the electoral threat of Reform and the Tories in England, than on the SNP in Scotland.
And every step he takes to the right – on things like immigration and welfare – to see off that challenge will make it harder for the party to recover ground north of the border.
Meanwhile, Swinney has steadied the ship of both government and party.
In August the SNP were a point ahead of Labour on constituency vote and a point behind on the regional list.
A result that meant one thing for the SNP – opposition.
But in the two polls conducted after the Scottish Budget was published in December the SNP had a 16-point lead over Labour on the constituency vote in each.
If replicated, that would see the SNP returned to office and with the support of the Scottish Greens ensure another pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament.
While for Labour it would be its worst election, in terms of seats, of the devolution era.
UK economic woes
While the SNP lead looks formidable once again, the result of the election is far from a forgone conclusion.
Sarwar will take solace from the fact that he has closed a bigger poll lead already. He will believe that he can do it again.
In an interview in February last year, Sarwar put it quite bluntly, he could not afford an “unpopular” Labour UK Government if he was to win the keys to Bute House.
But with UK’s long-term borrowing costs hitting highest level since 1998 and GDP growth predicted to be lower than forecast at the October budget, there may be more painful news to come for Scottish Labour out of Number 10 and His Majesty’s Treasury.
The irony will not be lost on Scottish Labour, that the decisions taken in Government by Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves, have simultaneously undermined Labour’s popularity, while handing the SNP a big financial stick with which to beat them.
The revival of the SNP’s political fortunes since the general election is quite remarkable.
Of course, Swinney will have believed it was possible to turn things around, if he didn’t, he would not have taken on the role of First Minister. He will surely be surprised at how quickly it has happened, though.
But in an environment where a party can open up a 16-point poll lead in six months, it can be lost just as fast.
Politics in Scotland, like in much of the democratic world, has become less fixed, more flexible and far harder to predict.
And if you want some evidence for that, just look back at 2024.
