Anas Sarwar's 'problem' challenge from SNP ahead of 2026 Scottish elections

His shock was not in response to the UK election exit poll at 10pm on Thursday night, or the confirmation over the following hours that Labour had retaken its traditional heartlands in the central belt of Scotland from the SNP.

Instead, it was a week earlier, at the final First Minister’s Questions before Holyrood’s summer recess.

Mr Sarwar was stunned - or at least gave the impression he was stunned - by John Swinney's response to a question about NHS waiting times.

“A week on Friday, the issues that have been raised with me about the health service are going to be the Labour Party’s problem,” the SNP leader said.

Mr Swinney’s words were revealing, offering a glimpse into the first minister’s mindset, and of the way FMQs is likely to unfold for much of the next two years.

Scottish Labour’s finance spokesman, Michael Marra, interjected, shouting: “This is your problem. Take some responsibility.”

Mr Marra was correct, of course, that under the devolution settlement the NHS is largely the responsibility of the Scottish Government.

But in reality, the first minister’s comment was also accurate, as Mr Sarwar and Mr Marra will have known, despite their gesticulating.

Issues relating to devolved areas, such as health and education, are going to be Scottish Labour’s problem from now on - politically at least.

Every complaint to SNP ministers about a situation that could potentially be fixed by spending more money will inevitably just be returned to Mr Sarwar and his team with a suggestion that they speak to their colleagues at Westminster.

This is not new. The Scottish Conservatives have heard the same message since 2010, but the Tories north of the border have long felt comfortable distancing themselves from the policies and personalities of the likes of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

Scottish Labour, infamously described as being treated like a “branch office of London" by former leader Johann Lamont, is in a different position.

It must deal with its new “responsibility” of being closely connected to those controlling the purse-strings while at the same time building a coherent case for Mr Sarwar to succeed Mr Swinney as first minister in 2026, ending nearly two decades of SNP rule.

The Scottish Labour manifesto for Thursday’s UK election spoke of a “two step process”, the first being getting rid of the Tories at Westminster, and the second being repeating the trick with the SNP at Holyrood two years later.

The latter will involve much more work than the former did for Mr Sarwar and his party.

Professor Alistair Clark, a political scientist based at Newcastle University, said at the UK election it had been “kind of enough” just for Scottish Labour to not be the SNP, and to benefit from the “change” narrative driven by Sir Keir Starmer south of the border.

“Scottish Labour, I think, have kind of ridden on the coat tails of the Starmer wave, if you like, and the fact that the SNP over the last few years have sort of become increasingly unpopular - a range of scandals, coupled with the fact they are just a long-serving government, and this happens to long-serving governments,” he said.

The return of Scottish Labour as a significant force north of the border comes almost a decade after the 2014 independence referendum, which realigned politics in Scotland and led to the SNP surge at the UK election the following year, as swathes of traditional Labour voters switched sides.

Unlike the Conservatives and the SNP, Labour struggled to appear relevant or comfortable in its own skin while the debate was dominated by the constitutional question, but the recent demise of independence as an imminent prospect has reopened the door for Mr Sarwar.

“I think Sturgeon’s drive for a second referendum was skewered by the Supreme Court and its ruling that it needed Westminster approval to go ahead, and I think the SNP’s subsequent policy has not really been that convincing, frankly, and as a consequence independence is off the agenda,” Prof Clark said.

“And people have far more pressing issues to deal with at the moment. Cost of living issues - it’s to do with paying the bills and the mortgages and those kinds of things. Under those circumstances I think it is very difficult for the independence argument to gain traction.

“There is an opportunity there for Labour when that is off the agenda to make progress on those bread and butter issues, I think.”

Prof Clark believed that while goodwill towards the Starmer government at Westminster may prove to be short-lived, Scottish Labour can replicate the same message in the run-up to the Holyrood campaign in 2026.

"I think the honeymoon period will be fairly short this time,” he said.

“But I think there will be kind of an extension of that in some way in Scotland, because remember, they will be fighting an incumbent SNP government, so they will still be able to make that 'change' argument I think, in the Scottish context.

“It will be tailored to a different audience and so on, but the 'change' argument is still something that will have some degree of resonance in Scotland come the 2026 election.”

It is a message Mr Sarwar was already emphasising as he discussed Scottish Labour’s next steps in the wake of the election.

“I’m really determined to make sure we demonstrate that yes, getting rid of the Tories was worth it, yes that Scottish Labour is ready to deliver UK change from a Scottish Labour perspective, but also that we need change in Scotland,” he said.

To succeed, Mr Sarwar will need help from his colleagues at Westminster.

“The next 18 months are crucial,” said Alan Roden, co-chief executive of Quantum Communications and a former director of communications for Scottish Labour and adviser to Mr Sarwar.

“Keir’s team is under no illusion that Labour needs to demonstrate delivery and change in Scotland to give Anas every piece of ammunition for the Holyrood contest,” he said.

“One of Ian Murray’s key tasks will be ensuring that Scotland is a key strategic goal for the Number 10 operation.”

Labour will need to learn from mistakes made during its last stint in power at Westminster to achieve this goal.

Huge figures from Scottish politics entered government following the 1997 landslide, including Gordon Brown, Robin Cook and Alistair Darling.

But the New Labour administration increasingly came to be seen as detached from events north of the border, and complacent about its supporters, after the devolution they delivered made Holyrood the beating heart of Scottish politics.

Lewis Macdonald, who served as a Labour MSP from 1999 to 2021, including as a deputy minister and the party’s chief whip, said: “Devolution was one of Labour’s great achievements the last time we swept to power in the way we did this week, but it was by definition brand new, it was a challenge for members of both parliaments and indeed both governments to work out how they should relate to each, and what difference devolution made to the way Labour ran the country.

“I think we have learned the lessons of the last twenty-something years in order to understand how better to do it next time.”

Concrete policies will also need to be developed by Mr Sarwar and his team, with little additional spending power.

“You can see from the general election manifesto which strayed into devolved areas that work is already underway to develop 2026 policies,” Mr Roden said.

“The challenge will be the lack of public money, so rather than giveaways I would expect to see a priority placed on economic growth policies related to issues such as planning, a huge effort to reduce red tape and bureaucracy, and a focus on mental health to alleviate the pressures facing GPs, A&Es, schools and the police.”

Behind the scenes, difficult conversations will need to be had on several key issues that get little mention in the manifesto.

Former Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale recently said “something’s going to have to give” with respect to current SNP spending commitments such as free prescriptions, free personal care, free tuition fees and new child payments.

She believed Mr Sarwar would “relish the opportunity” to “fundamentally reform public services”, but the SNP would equally relish a 2026 election campaign in which it can say a Labour victory would hit voters in the pocket.

Mr Macdonald said: “I think the policy development will be based on what we’ve said to the voters this week and over the last number of months, and that will of course involve some tough decisions across the board, whether it is policies specific to Scotland or policies across the UK, because we know you can’t deliver the kind of profound change we need without making some tough decisions along the way.

“I think it’s far too early to try and predict what those changes will be, but they will be policies for Scotland, made in Scotland.”

The former north-east MSP also believed in the manifesto’s commitment to “reset” the relationship between the two governments, but added that it “obviously it takes two to tango”, and that the SNP needed to have the same “vision and dignity”.

For his part, Mr Swinney has also called for “a serious conversation” with Labour about “what lies ahead”.

The First Minister said it as he and Labour’s frontbench bickered last week over whose “problem” it was to fix the NHS.

The exchange suggested hopes of a new era of partnership working may prove forlorn, particularly as tensions rise in the run-up to the 2026 Holyrood election.