It’s a well-known truism that if a newspaper headline is phrased as a question, the answer to that question is always “No”.
And nothing’s changed here.
It’s a little too early to be writing Anas Sarwar’s political epitaph. It remains this site’s view that the most likely outcome of the 2026 Holyrood election is a coalition (or an effective coalition) between the SNP and Scottish Labour. There’s a lot of water to flow under the bridge in the next 14 months, and we’re pretty sceptical about the handful of recent polls showing a pro-indy majority, so he’s still in with a decent shout of being a weakling Deputy FM.
(Not least, though not only, because polling and seat projections have tended to wildly overestimate the performance of the Scottish Greens for the last decade or more. We would be astonished if the figure of 15 seats for Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater’s ragtag band of paedophiles, nappy fetishists and racists in the poll above came true.)
But that’s not the point. If Anas Sarwar is looking for someone to blame for the dizzyingly fast reversal of Scottish Labour’s fortunes, all he needs is a mirror.
Sarwar, who while a UK MP said the Scottish Parliament was “not a democratic place”, was nevertheless happy to take over as leader of Labour’s branch office in North Britain four years ago this month.
Booted out in the 2015 tsunami, he duly slunk into Holyrood via the list vote in 2016 as a consolation prize, having not even bothered to attempt standing for a constituency. (He did have a go in 2021, when Nicola Sturgeon thrashed him by 2:1.)
For all that time, Sarwar has doggedly pursued a policy platform of not being the SNP, and waiting hopefully for them to lose popularity so that he could become FM by default. For a brief period last year it looked like it might even work, as the SNP’s catastrophic reign under Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf, and in particular the SNP’s suicidal pursuit of transgender ideology, saw its support plunge into the gutter.
But as Wings pointed out consistently during the time, Labour’s lead was built on sand. Nobody had fallen in love with the party and its useless collection of time-served seatwarmers, they simply provided the most effective mechanism by which to kick the SNP up the arse.
Because as we’ve also pointed out when highlighting the possibility of an SNP-Lab coalition, there was nothing to fall in love with. In four years, Sarwar hasn’t given Labour a single distinctive policy position on anything. Other than on the constitution, it’s all but impossible to identify a single thing it actually disagrees with the SNP about.
We’ll throw that one open to you, our readers – can you name us a single substantial policy difference between the two parties? All Scottish Labour ever say is “The SNP are rubbish!” (perfectly true), “so vote for us for change!”, which in practice just means some different faces on the gravy train punting all the same ideas.
In fact, the Scottish branch office recently dumped the “CHANGE” slogan.
But its replacement, “A NEW DIRECTION”, as well as being barely any different is even more bleakly ironic, since you can’t change direction on a train. (Indeed, they’re not even getting off at a different stop. There isn’t a meaningful difference between Labour and the SNP on independence either, since neither party has any intention of pursuing it.
Anas Sarwar had four years to create a distinct identity for Scottish Labour, but the man who inherited his Westminster seat from his dad doesn’t have an original thought in his head. Like Starmer, he’s terrified to voice any opinion that might cost him a single vote, no matter how many it might win, and other than opposing independence his principles switch with the wind.
The SNP and Labour’s fortunes have see-sawed in the last 12 months, but it’s not because John Swinney has made the SNP any more popular. His party is four points LOWER in the poll heading this article (31% vs 35%) than they were on the day the hapless Humza Yousaf resigned, the joint-lowest they’ve been in the last 20 years, but Labour’s ratings have taken a much bigger nosedive.
Scotland has a rotten government and a rotten opposition, and scunnered voters are increasingly giving up on Labour even as a protest vote. They’re now looking for a party which will boot them both in the balls, and grimly are increasingly alighting on Reform as the vehicle that’ll do the job.
The day Yousaf quit, “Other” parties (comprising Reform, the Greens and Alba) were registering just 5% on the Holyrood constituency vote. That figure is now 28%.
On the list vote, traditionally far more significant for smaller parties, the like-for-like (ie now including the Green vote in the “Other”) figure is now 35%, fully 10 points ahead of the SNP and 20 in front of Labour.
In October 2023 when Labour captured Rutherglen West with a big swing but a decreased vote, we said “the real story of last night is that Scotland is sick to death of ALL its politicians, and we can’t blame it. The only surge last night was the one you get from vomit rising in your throat, and what’s coming up is pretty similar in both cases”.
Only two parties have ever supplied First Ministers of Scotland, and the electorate is calling a plague on both their houses. The SNP can at least offer the fatigue of power as an excuse, but Anas Sarwar, under zero pressure and with everything stacked in his favour, screwed up his big chance all by himself.
