No political party is happy with eight months to Holyrood 2026

Less than eight months out from the Scottish Parliament election, not one political party is where they want to be. The SNP remains the favourite to win the most seats in May, but support for the party is far from its peak. Scottish Labour is still weighed down by decisions being taken in Downing Street. The Scottish Conservatives continue to haemorrhage support and look likely to be the biggest losers of the election. And Alba is barely making a mark.

Even among those pleased by recent polling, there are problems. The Scottish Greens just elected two new co-leaders but on a very low turnout, hinting at internal issues. And Reform, while set to make a major breakthrough, still has little by way of a policy platform.

The Scottish Liberal Democrats are perhaps the only party feeling truly buoyant, but since their hopes of entering government are closely tied to Labour, even their optimism will be limited.

On the bright side for politicians, most voters won’t yet be paying attention. Autumn conference season is a chance to gee up support among their bases (though it could also mean internal rifts are laid bare). Now is the time to lay the groundwork for the issues they want to talk about on the campaign trail.

Indyref back on the table

For the SNP, that is the constitution. While independence did feature in the party’s 2021 campaign (Nicola Sturgeon pledged to hold an advisory referendum, later ruled out as an option by the Supreme Court), more prominence was given to the then first minister’s leadership through the pandemic and post-Covid recovery.

Now with John Swinney at the helm, the party is talking up the prospect of another referendum.

At an event to mark a year until the election in May, Swinney said a “significant SNP win” would make it harder for Downing Street to refuse to hold another vote. Earlier this month, he clarified a parliamentary majority is what’s needed – a tall order under the proportional electoral system, but as 2011 proved, not impossible.

Question of judgement

Somewhat ironically, Scottish Labour is also looking to 2011 for inspiration. Fifteen years ago, Labour had a 20-point lead over the SNP right up until the turn of the year, when things started to go wrong. This time around, Anas Sarwar is hoping to be the one to upset the current trajectory. Party strategists are hopeful that once voters start turning their minds to May, and who they want to form the next Scottish Government, support will rise.

However, the unpopularity of the Labour UK Government looms large, and the woes of early September won’t have helped. Angela Rayner was forced to resign as deputy prime minister after a report concluded she had breached the ministerial code for not paying enough tax on a house purchase. Less than a week later, Keir Starmer was forced to sack Peter Mandelson as the ambassador to the US over his links to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

The former sparked an emergency reshuffle that saw Scottish Secretary Ian Murray unceremoniously dumped from government. Perhaps equally damaging as the front pages was the rift this move caused internally. Plenty in Scottish Labour hold Murray responsible for bringing the party back from the brink and view his sacking as poor reward for those efforts. One parliamentarian told The Telegraph: “It just seems so unfair. It’s been a real blow to morale.”

That impression wasn’t helped by the pictures of a gloomy Murray, sat at Edinburgh Airport, drafting his response. “I am hugely disappointed to be leaving government, with so much done and so much more to do,” he wrote.

Others, though, would describe him as a legacy hire, only in office because he was for years the party’s sole representative in Scotland. Consecutive leaders had little choice but to have him on the frontbench if they wanted a Scot in the role  of shadow Scottish Secretary – indeed, Jeremy Corbyn twice had to appoint English MPs after Murray resigned. In Douglas Alexander, they argue, the Scotland Office has a seasoned campaigner and experienced minister. He was also appointed co-chair of the 2026 election campaign, alongside Scottish deputy leader Jackie Baillie, at the start of the month, pre-reshuffle.

In what can only be seen as an attempt to smooth some of the ruffled feathers, Murray was later offered a more junior role in government, working within the Departments for Science, Innovation and Technology, and Culture, Media and Sport.

The Mandelson row, though, is likely to have more far-reaching implications for Starmer. The prime minister is under pressure to explain what he knew and when about the New Labour grandee’s relationship with Epstein.

The fresh revelations came after the US House Oversight Committee issued a legal summons for the release of a number of documents from Epstein’s estate, including a so-called ‘birthday book’ in which Mandelson had referred to him as “my best pal” and letters written after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor urging him to “fight for early release”.

The close relationship between the two men was already known prior to Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador. Starmer’s political leadership and judgement is now being called into question at a time when his hold on the party was already tenuous.

While he’s not expected to be ousted imminently, Labour figures are now publicly and privately saying he has until May to turn things around – not the discussion the party thought it would be having as it prepares to meet for conference next week. The cabinet hopes Starmer’s conference speech will be a turning point.

But poor electoral performance in Scotland (as well as the Senedd’s election Wales and local elections in England) could be the final nail in the coffin for his premiership. Bute House is not the only residence that hangs in the balance next year.

Nigel Farage's 'biggest weakness'

With each Labour misstep comes a chance for Reform UK to talk itself up as the UK Government-in-waiting. North of the border, that is not where the party is – no one is expecting Reform to do so well as to be able to form a Scottish Government next year – but it is feeling optimistic about returning a large group of MSPs, maybe even becoming the third largest party.

Yet for the moment, it is not clear what it offers beyond broadbrush statements on reducing immigration and maximising oil and gas opportunities, ditching net zero along the way. Neither of these are devolved issues, and the party has little to say on how it would manage the devolved NHS, education or the justice system.

Insiders admit it is not where it needs to be in policy terms, and it has only in the past few months been getting its structures off the ground. That, it is believed, will soon change.

I hope to be at the heart of helping Reform shape that offer to the people next year with policies drawn up in Scotland

A lack of experience is one challenge the party is keen to overcome. The dozen councillor resignations in England speaks to the problem, with many of those elected having underestimated the amount of work involved, as Farage admitted at the Uphall press event he did over the summer.

This is Reform’s “biggest weakness”, Farage told Laura Kuenssberg the same weekend his party conference was in full swing in Birmingham. The announcement that Nadine Dorries, a former culture secretary, had joined the party was welcomed as part of an effort to professionalise.

He continued: “You can ask me lots of questions about policy and personnel and all the rest of it, but if you ask me ‘how are you going to do this?’, I can’t really give you an answer because I haven’t got anybody in the senior team that’s ever been there before. Nadine came yesterday, she’s the first and there will be others.”

A few days later, Danny Kruger MP – a Tory frontbencher – defected and has been tasked with leading the new ‘preparing for government unit’.

The defection of former Tory MSP Graham Simpson helps to fill the knowledge gap in the Scottish branch. He was a councillor for a decade and at the time of the election will have 10 years under his belt at Holyrood. In his statement, he explained he had joined Reform because he sees the party as an “opportunity to help create something fresh”. “I hope to be at the heart of helping Reform shape that offer to the people next year with policies drawn up in Scotland, for Scotland, and designed to fix the mess that we’re in,” he added.

Asked whether that means his role after May, if re-elected, will be supporting new colleagues to get to grips with how parliament works, he said: “There will be a pretty healthy cohort of Reform MSPs. Hopefully I’ll be one of them – but I’ve been around in politics long enough to know that it can sometimes be difficult to manage people. One of the skills of leadership… is to manage folk. I think I’m pretty good at that.”

Talk of Simpson ascending to a leadership position has put a few noses out of joint within the fledgling party. Glasgow councillor Thomas Kerr – previously the highest profile defection – is known to be ambitious, while there are also rumours about former MP Ross Thomson making a return to politics.

Downward spiral

Still, none of the issues appear to be putting a stop to Reform eating into the support of other parties. The Scottish Conservatives are most at risk, with polling showing Reform gaining as many seats as the Tories are set to lose.

That perhaps partially explains why the Conservatives have not yet announced where leader Russell Findlay will be standing. Findlay is a West of Scotland MSP, but between the drop in support for the Tories and the fact Jackson Carlaw could hold his Eastwood constituency, the party may win no list seat in the west. Findlay could reasonably move to the Glasgow list, as he lives in the city, though that’s not a guaranteed win either. Anywhere else would likely not go down well among colleagues he’d end up displacing.

And it’s not like the Conservative group needs more reasons to be unhappy. Findlay has never quite managed to put a stop to the internal struggles that started under Carlaw’s short-lived leadership and continued under Douglas Ross. That culminated this year in three departures – first Jamie Greene, who left for the Lib Dems, then Jeremy Balfour, who now sits as an Independent, and finally Simpson’s defection to Reform.

The fact that all three left for slightly different reasons demonstrates the very difficult choices the party is having to make; some believe it should be channelling the Ruth Davidson style of politics which saw the party soften its image away from the ‘nasty party’, while others view the threat of Farage as a sign it should be moving to the right.

Findlay, for his part, appears to believe the latter. His language around ending the “left-wing consensus” at Holyrood, challenging “the blob”, and even using a debate earlier this month to call for the end of asylum hotels is straight out of the Reform playbook.

Professionalising and infighting

On the other side of the political spectrum, the Scottish Greens are undergoing a change too. MSPs Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay were elected co-leaders in August, taking over from Patrick Harvie, who stood down after 17 years, and Lorna Slater, who the pair defeated in the internal election.

Greer spoke at length during the contest about needing to create an electoral strategy, something he pledged to do before the end of the year. It is part of a plan to become a more organised and professional outfit, which he believes is vital if the party is to grow.

However, this move towards professionalisation has not been wholly welcomed by all members. To talk about ‘professional politics’ is to betray its grassroots beginnings and is anathema to what the Greens stand for, it is argued.

Both Greer and Mackay reject that argument, insisting that it is only by growing that the Greens will be able to have any influence on government decisions.

They will also have to face down those in their party who believe the MSP group made too many compromises as part of the Bute House Agreement with the SNP. That deal was brokered by Greer and shepherded in parliament by Mackay as business manager, but a vocal minority of the membership are critical of it for failing to deliver more of the Greens’ aims. Those tensions failed to surface as part of this leadership election but haven’t gone away.

Whether and how each political party will handle these issues will be answered over the coming months. The deep malaise of the electorate will also need to be overcome. The scenes witnessed in London two weekends ago speak to a disaffected and angry public – not all will have been far-right activists who support Tommy Robinson. Scotland’s leaders would be wise not to dismiss such protests as an England-only problem. Anti-immigrant protests in Falkirk and Aberdeen, and the flying of Saltires mirroring the hoisting of the St George’s Cross down south, suggest there is a problem with people feeling let down by politics here too.