THE SNP should consider a coalition with Labour after the next Holyrood election, according to an ex-MP.
Stewart McDonald, the former Glasgow South MP until the 2024 General Election, said that a partnership between Scotland’s two “centre-left parties” wouldn't be easy but could happen after a “messy” result in 2026.
Writing in The Spectator on Wednesday – on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Scottish independence referendum – McDonald said: “Over the 25 years of devolution, we’ve seen many different manifestations of government: minority administrations, a majority administration and formal coalitions.”
He added: “Yet we’ve never seen the most obvious. A coalition between the SNP and Labour, Scotland’s two dominant centre left-parties — similar to the Irish model that saw Fine Gael and Fianna Fail rotate the office of taoiseach — is one we might want to consider in the event of a messy result in 2026.”
McDonald said it would be a “breath of fresh air”.
“I don’t suggest for a moment of course that this would be easy. It would take compromise and continuous effort to make it work. But it would, overnight, transform a political culture that has grown more interested in having an argument than winning an argument,” he wrote.
It comes off the heels of several polls, including a Survation survey commissioned by Angus Robertson’s firm Progress Scotland, which found that support for Scottish Labour has plummeted since the General Election in July.
On the issue of independence, McDonald went on: "Whilst all parties have a job to do in tidying up our political dialogue over the coming time, the case and campaign for independence must be reimagined totally if it is to succeed in the future.
"This is not to be underestimated. It will require those false prophets who advance clever wheezes and shortcuts to be given no quarter.
"Those who labour under the falsehood that we can just declare independence on the back of an election, or that the international community can be invited to solve what is a peaceful domestic debate, are not serious."
