WITH all the noise from the General Election, it’s excusable not to have heard the starting pistol being fired on the 2026 Holyrood election.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar was clear on the campaign trail he was viewing last week’s poll as a jumping off point for a Bute House bid in just under two years’ time.
The scale of the SNP’s defeat means they have now woken up to this reality.
Many in the party feel that gaining an unprecedented fifth term in office after this spectacular defeat requires a real reset.
One MP, who managed to hold onto their seat, pleaded for calm. “The first thing we’ve got to do is not panic, not get desperate and not feel like everything is doom and gloom,” they said.
With the party around six points behind Labour, it could find that the first two years of a Keir Starmer (above) government could give the SNP a boost into 2026.
The MP added: “Things change really quickly and things move on. We’ve got a very fluid political situation in Scotland.
“A lot of things are in play, we have a lot of people who haven’t made up their minds conclusively about their future voting intentions.”
Some fragments have been shored against the ruin, with some SNP figures picking out nuggets of optimism from the wreckage.
One MP who lost their seat believed this defeat could sow the seeds of future success – and said they were “quite happy to take a step backwards to come forward again”.
They also highlighted high levels of support for independence as a reason for hope. “I believe the movement is there waiting to be energised”, they said.
This would involve making sure “we have the best possible team going into that 2026 election because it will be absolutely pivotal”.
There will be more like this defeated former MP. Others will be eyeing up seats in Holyrood. Their years of experience in the bear pit of Westminster will be high on their CV.
Another MP, who kept their seat, said: “Constituencies will make choices if they feel that current members of Parliament aren’t doing the job then choose somebody else, that’s always been the case.”
And they put a positive spin on some of their defeated colleagues finding themselves out of Parliament after nearly a decade in Westminster. “They’ve got a lot to offer,” they said.
“Isn’t that brilliant for the SNP? That we’ve got all this available to us now.”
They added: “I see that as an advantage.”
Others have made a pitch for unity within the fractured independence movement. A former MP said: “We need to seriously look at how we take our movement forward.
“If we want to be at the forefront and lead that movement then we need to bring everybody into the tent who is willing to work.”
According to Ballot Box Scotland’s Holyrood poll tracker, the SNP are projected to be neck-and-neck with Labour at the 2026 election – with 45 seats projected for John Swinney’s troops versus 44 for Sarwar.
Even with a predicted 10 seats for the Greens – and who is to say whether they would get back into bed with the SNP – that falls short of the 65 needed for an overall majority.
The heat is on for Swinney to take stock of his defeat and fashion a plan for what comes next.
