SENIOR Scottish Labour figures believe the party’s first seven months in power have been a “shitshow”, reports say.
On Friday, the New Statesman magazine published an article looking at Anas Sarwar’s rapidly diminishing chances of being first minister after the 2026 Holyrood elections.
The Labour-leaning magazine played down the prospect of a fifth consecutive SNP election victory at Holyrood, quoting Labour sources who insisted that they had a chance of taking power after the 2026 vote.
One said that, during the 2024 General Election, attacks on the SNP had been effectively outsourced to the Tories and LibDems while Labour focused on attacking the Conservatives.
In 2026, an “anti-SNP alliance will be rebuilt and we will insource those attacks,” one strategist told the New Statesman.
Others suggested that the election could go either way, depending on whether the SNP or Labour manage to pick up constituency MSPs.
“If we win constituencies, Reform take seats off the SNP on the list. If the SNP wins constituencies, Reform will take seats off us on the list. So we have to win constituencies,” one senior figure said.
However, others were forced to accept that their fate was tied to an increasingly unpopular Labour Government at Westminster, whose decisions to cut the Winter Fuel Payment and not to compensate Waspi women have played particularly badly with the public.
Labour won 35% of the Scottish vote in the 2024 General Election. While this was only five points ahead of the SNP on 30%, it translated into a huge divide in seats: 37 for Labour to just nine for the SNP.
However, a Westminster poll from Electoral Calculus and communications agency PLMR, published on Friday, put Scottish Labour on just 18% – suggesting they have lost almost half of their support. Worryingly for the party, Reform UK polled at 17% while the SNP essentially flatlined, polling at 31%.
The results underscored a severe collapse in Labour support in Scotland since Keir Starmer entered government last July.
The New Statesman reported that “although the leadership accepts the current polling data is grim – and more than one senior figure has used the word ‘shitshow’ to me in reference to Westminster – they remain optimistic about 2026”.
But Sarwar has further headaches of his UK bosses’ making, as he now faces criticism for having pledged that Labour would step in to save jobs at Grangemouth, Scotland’s only oil refinery which will shut later this year.
Since entering power in London, Labour have declined to provide the “hundreds of millions” which Sarwar promised – instead backing Grangemouth’s billionaire co-owner Jim Ratcliffe in projects in Belgium and at Manchester United.
