Why 2026 may be a truly pivotal moment for Scottish politics – and Reform UK
The Scottish Parliament election in May may produce a result the likes of which we have not seen before
The coming year offers the possibility of being a truly pivotal moment in Scottish politics. On current polling and historical precedent, including the fact there is a thoroughly unpopular Labour government making inflammatory decisions that give the public cause for buyers’ regret, we can expect the SNP to achieve a record-breaking Holyrood election triumph.
It is doubtful the SNP will achieve the 2011 surprise of having an outright majority, but it currently looks like Labour support is receding, the Conservatives are not benefitting from this and both Reform UK and the SNP are picking up the spoils. On balance the SNP should be the largest party yet again for a record-breaking fifth election in a row.
Depending on what happens with the Greens and Liberal Democrats, the prospect of an electoral arrangement between the SNP and Greens could keep the SNP in power for another five years until 2031. For all the reasons I’ve rehearsed regularly in this column, never would such an incompetent, wasteful, spendthrift and divisive administration have escaped accountability and be so well rewarded. Yet politics has a habit of turning such reasonable probabilities on their head.
Labour misrule at Westminster
Try as they will, I cannot see a great deal of scope for a revival by Labour and certainly not the Conservatives. Anas Sarwar faces three political challenges, firstly from the pathological left of the Greens pushing what are effectively gross-zero growth and trans-rights policies across the whole of the UK – with Scotland being more advanced than England in the corrosive impact on its vote.
Labour continues to face the traditional loss of support when the SNP positions itself as the logical opposition to its Westminster misrule, which the SNP will use shamelessly to distract attention from its own appalling record.
Recent polling, focus groups and the real tests of council by-elections point to Labour experiencing significant loss of vote share to Reform UK. There’s nothing now or over the horizon that suggests any of these three factors will change before the May election.
The economy is continuing to worsen and Scotland will not escape the inevitable pain of either Labour or the SNP’s high-tax, incompetent and over-zealous regulatory approach. The US economy recorded an astounding 4.3 per cent growth in the third quarter of 2025 but both our ruling parties prefer to adopt the stifling anti-growth business model promulgated by the technocrats of the terminally ill EU, which exists on state life support.
Maybe I’ll be surprised and we’ll see the prosecution of the SNP’s former chief executive, Peter Murrell, on charges of embezzlement going ahead before the May election, which may dent the SNP’s fortunes, but I think it more likely any trial will take place after the election.
Wishful thinking
There is always the possibility that the momentum of Reform UK will slow down or be reversed, but I see that more as wishful thinking by opponents. With the recruitment of successful Scots businessman and experienced politician Malcolm Offord, I believe more Scottish voters will see Reform as a credible alternative to both Labour and the SNP and give the nascent party a chance.
Expect Reform to offer strong condemnation of shared Labour and SNP policies towards job-destroying, net-zero energy restrictions, taxes and levies – with new initiatives on energy to revive Scottish industry and show the rest of the UK how it can be done. Expect to see Labour and the SNP condemned for risking women’s rights and new protections put in place so that faith in our institutions and the safety of personal spaces can be assured.
With Reform focussing on the SNP’s many failures, not least in education where our young people face growing international competition and restrictions in opportunities, there is the real prospect the SNP will, for once, be forced to defend its lamentable record rather than deflect attention away by talking up the constitutional issue that was settled in 2014’s referendum.
In the event of the Holyrood election becoming a fight between the ruling SNP and the new challenge of Reform, it would not surprise me if Labour, pushed into a poor third place, could enter into a post-election anti-Reform arrangement with the SNP. After all, the policy differences between either party at Holyrood are often wafer thin if not purely performative.
Starmer may be forced out
Be it a formal or informal coalition, any straw for the drowning Labour party to grasp could provide much-needed political relevance in the remaining years running up to the UK general election. This could coincide with the fallout from the other May elections in English councils and Welsh Senedd that could provide the catalyst for a probable change in Labour’s UK leadership.
Starmer and Reeves are well aware they could be forced out of office on the initiative of disconsolate Westminster backbenchers who will calculate they have nothing to lose and everything to gain from a supposedly more acceptable face of their party’s offering of national self-harm. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the results would most likely be worse with more extreme application of the tried and failed policies that put redistribution of wealth before its actual creation.
This brings us to then consider what may come of an election result the likes of which we have not seen before in Holyrood – the emergence of a genuine opposition putting forward an alternative vision rather than simply acting as a bulwark against constitutional change. That could place Reform in a position to form a Scottish administration in 2031 – if it comes to pass, you probably read about it here first.
Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments and editor of ThinkScotland.org
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.