Why John Swinney should gamble on a snap Scottish election

Amid the general amusement and relief when Yousaf blew up both the “Bute House Agreement” between the nationalists and Scottish Greens and his own brief tenure as First Minister, there was one big nagging question: how will the SNP get its Budget through?

Back in April, that was a problem for another day, but that day seems to be coming around fast. John Swinney will need to do a deal with another party to secure the support of the majority of MSPs needed to pass his government’s Budget on December 4.

Will Swinney bend the knee to Greens?

After 17 years in power, there is surely nothing he could offer Labour, the Tories or even the Liberal Democrats to persuade them to keep the SNP in government. Meanwhile, seething on Holyrood’s back benches, the banished Greens have had time to draw up their terms.

These include the kind of unpopular policies that drove Yousaf to dump the Greens in the first place, although clearly he could have wrapped it up a bit better than he did. It was the right call, badly executed. The Greens demand that Scotland should shoulder an even higher tax burden and that ministers abandon “climate-wrecking road expansion projects”, which would presumably include the chimerical dualling of the A9. Swinney has already opened the door to a private jet tax, telling the Greens last month he was “very much in the spirit” of investigating the levy.

But the First Minister has many more metaphorical bridges to build if he is to win the Greens’ favour, with the government under his watch accused of having backtracked on off-peak rail fares, free school meals and generally saving the planet. Should a penitent Swinney really suffer the indignity of approaching Harvie and Slater on bended knee to seek their forgiveness? It could be an embarrassment too far for a political veteran with already so much to be embarrassed about.

Madcap vote-losers

There is little doubt Swinney could bring about some sort of rapprochement with the Greens to persuade them to back his Budget, but then what? Having won their pound of flesh, how long would it be before the Greens began agitating for all the kind of madcap vote-losers that caused the SNP so much trouble during the coalition, such as gender self-ID, highly protected marine areas and a ban on log fires, to name just a few?

And while cosying up to the Greens might get Shona Robison’s Budget over the line, a rekindled relationship with the SNP’s unpopular former partners would surely make defeat in 2026 all the more likely. Which leaves just one option: tell the Greens to take a hike and call a snap Holyrood election.

Based on Labour’s haul of 37 Scottish MPs at the general election, which saw the SNP reduced to just nine seats, this might seem reckless, but recent polling tells another story. Labour’s success in July indicated the party could well have won the council by-elections in the Dundee wards of Lochee and Strathmartine last week. Instead, the SNP managed to hold them. Polling since the general election on how Scots would vote in a 2026 election shows the two parties are nip and tuck.

Labour’s bad politics

Sir Keir Starmer may have won a landslide, but it was a loveless one. Labour’s biggest selling point with the electorate was that they were Not The Tories. Since coming to office, the party has seemed rudderless, buffeted by events rather than making the weather.

For Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves to make the axing of winter fuel benefit for the vast majority of pensioners one of the first acts of the Labour government was staggeringly bad politics. Since then, Starmer has become embroiled in a scandal over freebies, and the saga that led to the ousting of Sue Gray as the Prime Minister’s chief of staff has only added to the impression of a government that is already floundering.

Polling this week for YouGov found Starmer is now even more unpopular than Nigel Farage – which is quite something for someone who was elected with a huge majority just three months ago. Starmer has a favourability rating of minus 36, with the Reform UK leader on minus 35. No one in the Cabinet has a net-positive rating.

At this point, the biggest obstacle to Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar becoming Scotland’s next First Minister is not Swinney, it is Starmer. For Sarwar and his fellow Labour MSPs to have to sit on their hands during a vote on reversing the winter fuel payment cut this week makes them look weak and helpless.

Five more years

“Read my lips,” said Sarwar during the general election campaign. “No austerity under Labour.” No wonder the former dentist has admitted to “teething problems” in the Labour government’s first 100 days in power.

Swinney should strike while the iron is hot and pensioners’ homes are cold. He should use his difficulties in passing his Budget as an excuse to call a snap election that could take place over the winter before Labour has time to get its act together.

Under the current rules, this would be an extra election rather than an early one – we would still have to go again in 2026 – but Swinney could make changing that one of his first tasks in the new parliament. He could then hand over the reins to a chosen successor – Kate Forbes or Stephen Flynn, perhaps – for yet another five years.

And then he could get back to the semi-retirement that was so rudely interrupted by the bungling antics of a predecessor with a far less safe pair of hands than his.