Best way for Labour's Anas Sarwar to stay in Holyrood 2026 race is to be least radical man in Scottish politics

As Thursday’s Hamilton, Larkhall, and Stonehouse by-election approached, the First Minister was adamant that only his and Nigel Farage’s parties had any hope of victory.

A vote for Scottish Labour, said John Swinney, would let Reform take its first Holyrood constituency.

In the end, a vote for Labour turned out to be a vote for Labour and the party won the seat made vacant by the untimely death of sitting SNP MSP Christina McKelvie.

Nobody was more surprised by the result than Labour leader Anas Sarwar who had been bracing himself for his party’s defeat.

On the eve of the poll, Swinney bullishly claimed Scottish Labour could not win the seat, blaming decisions made by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

“It’s over for the Labour Party,” he said, “There’s no way they can win here, after the disastrous record of the Labour government.”

But Labour’s Davy Russell – far from slick and rather grumpy – made a lie of that after a campaign during which he focused his attention on the SNP’s record in power at Holyrood since 2007.

It turns out the nationalists’ record is considered, by many, to be more disastrous than Labour’s.

Of course, there is nothing unusual about a party of Government losing a by-election and the SNP, whose candidate Katy Loudon came second by just 602 votes, will be hopeful it can retake the seat at next year’s Holyrood election but John Swinney will have to come up with a fresh strategy if that is to be the case.

The First Minister’s rhetoric about the (latest) death of Scottish Labour and the rise of Reform was not merely supposed to get the SNP over the line in Lanarkshire last week, it was meant to set the stage for next May’s Holyrood election, when the SNP will be seeking a fifth successive win.

One party activist tells me the nationalists believed a bad night for Scottish Labour would have sent Sarwar into a tailspin.

“Anas has had a terrible year, mostly thanks to Starmer. If Labour had lost on Thursday, he’d have struggled to explain defeat away and the story that he’d never win next year would have been set in stone,” he says.

Sarwar has not suddenly become favourite to succeed Swinney as First Minister. The SNP is still on course to be the biggest party at Holyrood after the 2026 election.

But John Swinney will have to find some new narrative about the importance of backing his party.

Despite coming third on Thursday, Reform remains on track to win a significant number of Holyrood seats next May. Farage’s party took 26.1 per cent of the by-election vote, pushing the Conservatives into a distant fourth place, and has every chance of being the third largest party at Holyrood next year.

The SNP, in common with all populist nationalist parties, requires a bogeyman. For years, in Scotland, that has been Labour.

After Alex Salmond returned for his second spell as nationalist leader in 2004, he told a compelling story about a country betrayed by a party that had taken voters for granted.

By the time of 2014’s independence referendum, this strategy had been so successful that Labour politicians campaigning for a No vote were regularly subjected to grotesque abuse and threats.

The SNP’s dismissal of Labour as beyond the pale was blown up by the First Minister, last month, when he convened a meeting of political and religious leaders to discuss the dangers of the rise of the populist far right. Swinney invited Sarwar to that summit, identifying him as a fellow traveller on social issues and taking the heat out of a rivalry that has served the SNP well for years.

Just as Swinney dismissed Labour as a spent force before the by-election, Sarwar now writes off the SNP. It was, he said, “pretty obvious” that the SNP leader was on borrowed time. The nationalists campaign had been shameful, he added.

“What we’re seeing now,” he said, “is the running down of the clock. This is an SNP government that has lost its way. The balloon is burst. They’re out of ideas.”

John Swinney is not the only leader at Holyrood guilty of laughably apocalyptic rhetoric.

Of course the SNP is not done for. While support for independence remains high – a recent poll suggested 54 per cent of Scots now favour breaking away from the United Kingdom – there will always be a constituency for the nationalists.

However, beyond the constitutional question, the SNP hasn’t much to talk about. Years of ineffective government under Nicola Sturgeon, whose focus on trying to run a second independence referendum blinded her to the responsibilities of her job, have left the nationalists with a very poor record, indeed.

Oh, but what about the baby box…?

What does Swinney do, now? Does he maintain the line that only the SNP can stop Reform in its tracks or does he perform an ugly reverse ferret on the question of whether Sarwar is a fellow “progressive” and return to the “red Tories” rhetoric of the past?

While John Swinney makes up his mind who should be branded the greatest danger to Scotland’s democracy during next year’s Holyrood election campaign, Anas Sarwar should, I think, play it cool.

After years of fraught and angry political debate, with both Scottish and English nationalists, alike, demonising their opponents, perhaps there’s an appetite out there for something a little less feverish.

The First Minister tried to characterise last week’s by-election as a vital moment in the battle to save Scotland from the forces of populism but, in the end, voters chose the dull but assiduous candidate over the disruptors. They chose calm rather than anger.

Perhaps it’s time for Anas Sarwar to style himself the least radical man in Scottish politics.