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The UK General Election of 2024 in Scotland provided yet another dramatic contest and set of results, with major consequences for Scottish as well as UK politics. The long, unchallenged dominance of the SNP has now come to an end. This poses questions for both parties, the future of Scottish politics and Scotland’s place in the Union
The Scottish election campaign and results
The 2024 election saw a major shift in votes and seats in Scotland, and across the UK. Driving these two movements in Conservative and SNP votes towards Labour was anti-incumbency. A near 90 per cent (87 per cent of Scottish voters) believed it was time for a change at Westminster, while 70 per cent of Scottish voters believed the same applied to Holyrood. In contrast, a much smaller number of voters believed that Labour had positively made the case to be that change, but this still left the party in the best position to take advantage of the anti-incumbency mood, especially as the issues of Scottish independence and Brexit fell in salience for voters to 17 per cent and 4 per cent respectively.
The electoral map of Scotland: back to the future (or not)?
Yet, this is not the return of the unchallenged Labour dominance that characterised Scottish elections up to 2010. For starters, the Labour share of the Scottish national vote at 35.3 per cent was the lowest share for a winning party at a postwar election, except for Labour in 1983 when it won 35.1 per cent. The 2024 result could be a precursor of a new period of Labour ascendancy or a pause in an era of SNP competition and significant Westminster representation. Alternatively, it could be the harbinger of a period of Labour-SNP and wider ultra-competition. Indeed, the SNP only requires a small national swing to be back ahead of Labour. A nationwide swing of 7 per cent between Labour and the SNP would see the latter reassert itself as the leading party in seats, one caveat being that that ‘national’ swing would be affected by different local results and variances.
The 2024 election was a change and anti-incumbency election in Scotland with two targets: the Conservatives and SNP. Senior SNP politicians admitted this post-election. A former SNP leading figure stating [to the author] that ‘2024 was a punishment election towards us and the Tories. We deserved to be punished—unless we change course 2026 will be more of the same.’ Moreover, this was a Scottish political environment where the two issues of recent years—independence and Brexit—were reduced. Some may welcome the passing of such dramatic political controversy, but what it left in its aftermath was a rather atrophied Scottish political environment. Scotland thus became like the rest of the UK: shaped by the legacy of fourteen years of Tory governments.
The future direction of Scottish politics
Post-2024, conventional wisdom has already started to form around a view that the SNP is now on the back foot and Labour can advance in the run-up to the 2026 elections, potentially challenging the nationalists who by then would have been in office for nineteen years. Like much of what passes for conventional wisdom, this has already proven to be open to question. The first few months of Starmer’s Labour government have been characterised by a non-existent ‘honeymoon period’ with various controversies quickly emerging and a divided, ineffective Downing Street operation. A s a result, Labour and the SNP are running neck and neck for Holyrood and Westminster. In some cases, the nationalists are ahead and in a competitive place for the 2026 Scottish elections.
The two contenders to be the largest party in the Scottish Parliament will be the SNP and Labour and it is more than probable that both will be unpopular and seen negatively in the run-up to 2026. The SNP will then have been in office for nineteen years, with an even more patchy record to explain and defend, while suffering from political exhaustion. The UK Labour Party will by then be two years into office, governing in difficult times, elected on a low popular vote and with a high chance of being more unpopular. Add to this any unpopularity of the SNP and Labour is unlikely to see its beneficiaries as the Conservatives. This creates an opportunity for Farage’s Reform, the Greens and pro-independence side. Reform and the Greens could breakthrough in 2026, potentially benefitting from the disillusion with traditional parties which is widespread in Scotland.
Who can seize the strategic ground of Scottish politics?
The future dynamic of Scottish politics will be affected by how Scottish Labour and the SNP attempt to adapt and evolve. The SNP’s ascendancy at Holyrood was underpinned by the party’s strategic resetting between 2007-2014, developing a hunger to win, to recalibrate how it did politics and to present its argument in a more positive tone. However, 18 years on, this formula looks to have unravelled. SNP membership has fallen by half since its post-2014 peak of 125,691 in 2019, to 64,525 post-election 2024 and the party’s Westminster vote has halved too, from 1,454,436 in 2015 to 724,758 in 2024. But Labour’s poll ratings in Scotland indicate that the party cannot take it for granted that it will benefit in the 2026 Scottish elections from continued SNP unpopularity.
A key factor is what happens to the debate about Scotland’s place in the Union and the independence question. For now, Labour and pro-Union forces have an opportunity to reset this debate by making the case for Scotland in the Union anew. If this is to have any long-term traction, the pro-Union case must address the underlying weaknesses in the Union and embark on a fundamental and far-reaching set of reforms which overhaul and democratise the British political system. Without such reform, the Scottish question will linger. These may be marginal for now in mainstream Westminster debate, but it has not gone away; without major UK reform, it will at some point return centre-stage, perhaps alongside a renewed SNP.
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