SNP ‘soul searching’ must work quick to challenge voter exodus to Labour

Good morning. I’m the FT’s Scotland correspondent, standing in for Stephen today while he takes a break this week.

Watching the unrest over the weekend in urban England and Northern Ireland, Scotland really does feel separate to the UK.

Police Scotland says it has no intelligence suggesting anti-immigrant riots could spread north of the border. But yesterday it warned of misinformation related to the stabbing of a woman in Stirling after far-right groups falsely claimed Muslim involvement in the incident.

While Scotland’s declining working-age population makes immigration essential for public services, concerns over immigration are rising — though not to levels seen elsewhere in the UK. Reform UK received 7 per cent of the popular vote in Scotland at the general election. The far right has been promoting a “pro-UK” rally for September 7 in Glasgow.

Here in Edinburgh, the streets are clogged with tourists and London’s culturati descending on the capital’s festivals, where highbrow opera rubs against Taylor Swift drag parties.

This being Britain, funding squeezes loom. The flagship Edinburgh International Festival is warning of a downgraded programme. Refuse workers have called a strike from August 14, threatening a rerun of the overflowing bins and scavenging seagulls that plagued the city two years ago.

But it is the stench of election recriminations within the Scottish National party that concerns us here.

20 months to go

Voters in Scotland delivered a withering verdict on the SNP, which lost 36 seats to a resurgent Labour, whose vote share doubled to 35 per cent, sweeping almost the entire central belt between Glasgow and Edinburgh eight weeks after John Swinney replaced Humza Yousaf as party leader and first minister.

The party, reeling from internal divisions and the police investigation into its finances, was caught in a three-way pincer movement: anti-Tory sentiment, disillusionment with the SNP’s 17-year record in government and unionist tactical voting.  

In the early hours of July 5, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar fired the starting gun on a long campaign ahead of the May 2026 Holyrood election, or, as he put it, “stage two” of delivering change.  

There is a sense that Keir Starmer, having secured his stonking majority, has handed his Ming vase to Sarwar ahead of an apparently inevitable march towards ousting the SNP from power.

After recharging at the Tiree Music Festival in early July, Swinney was back to governing while engaging in what he called “soul searching” to explain the SNP’s calamitous election result and formulate a plan to challenge the well-funded Labour juggernaut.

Given the SNP’s failure to convince voters of the “urgency of independence”, Swinney has elicited a survey to “get the approach correct”.

Members say they have been going through the “therapeutic” process of providing feedback, which the party’s national executive plans to collate for discussion at the SNP’s Edinburgh conference at the end of August.

Tommy Sheppard, who lost his Edinburgh East seat, has in a series of blogs called for the party to explain how Scotland might achieve independence and differentiate itself from Labour, both of which share a centre-left policy platform.

He thinks Labour’s timid policy platform gives the SNP scope to criticise from the left — a point echoed by activists who believe Labour’s refusal to commit to scrapping the two-child benefit cap and cuts to less wealthy pensioners’ winter fuel allowance will play badly. He also urges a “laser-like focus on service delivery”.

Insiders say ministers have already been told to trim their to-do list into a series of policy deliverables over the next 20 months.  

While Kate Forbes, deputy first minister, is a divisive figure for many within the SNP because of her social conservatism, party figures hope her pragmatic, pro-growth agenda will deliver gains while steering away from identity politics.

But time is perilously short, with many supporters fearful that Swinney does not have the time to turn things around.

Peace in our time

From festival directors to wind power executives, people are marvelling at the outbreak of peace between Swinney’s Scottish government and Starmer’s administration. Their cordial encounters are in stark contrast to the warring relations between the SNP and previous Conservative governments.

They are working together on a plan to prevent expected job losses at the Grangemouth refinery and to advance the Acorn carbon capture and storage project in the north-east towards commerciality.

State-owned GB Energy was Labour’s core offer to Scottish voters with its promise to reduce bills. It will be headquartered somewhere in Scotland. The nascent company has made progress in the rest of the UK, where Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, has unveiled a partnership with the Crown Estate — which owns the seabed — to boost offshore wind.

North of the border, it will need to work with Crown Estate Scotland and the Scottish government, which oversees consenting, to harness the country’s renewables potential and overcome resistance to the new overhead pylons required to transmit this electricity through the UK.  

Scottish ministers have been told to work closely with their Westminster counterparts to accelerate action as he seeks to turn around perceptions of the SNP’s competence.

Forbes is known to have a good relationship with Sue Gray, forged when the former civil servant was setting up freeports for the former Tory government. Gray, now Starmer’s chief of staff, could prove an important conduit for blossoming intergovernmental relations.

It’s a curious marriage, in which Swinney and Starmer both understand that a symbiotic relationship allows them to improve their chances against one another at the ballot box.

The 2026 Holyrood elections — an existential threat to the SNP’s independence ambitions — will also pose an early electoral test for Starmer’s Labour.

Yet Swinney will no doubt be mindful of the trap being laid by Sarwar, who will suggest how much more Labour could deliver if it controlled both Holyrood and Westminster.

Now try this

I’ve had Calgary-based collective Crack Cloud’s third album Red Mile on heavy rotation. The troupe of recovering addicts and mental health workers weaves a multi-instrumental, expansive tapestry of arty post-punk: 1980s new wave, jazz and lo-fi pop swirl around plaintive lyricism. Every song is a joy.

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