SNP pivot pays off in Scotland as Labour support sinks

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Good morning. I am standing in for Stephen, who is attending a wedding in Sri Lanka this week. Donald Trump has suggested that Britain could avoid damaging US tariffs. 

The US president suggested trade issues with “out of line” Britain can be “worked out”, adding that his real concern is with the EU’s position, which he described as “an atrocity.” His comments came after he had imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China.

Trump’s position should also offer hope to Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, who has in conversations invoked the president’s familial and business ties to Scotland in a bid to avoid tariffs that could inflict harm on exports, especially Scotch whisky.

It’s another positive sign for Swinney, who has been basking in the glow of a successful budget negotiation and favourable polling. More on that in today’s newsletter.

Inside Politics is edited by Georgina Quach. Read the previous edition of the newsletter here. Please send gossip, thoughts and feedback to [email protected]

Show, not tell

Five months ago, Swinney convened his Scottish National party conference in the aftermath of his comprehensive general election defeat to Labour, pledging to re-engage with the “people’s priorities”.

From set-piece speeches to the contours of the budget, he’s woven the threads of the economy, tackling child poverty and public services into everything he does.

And while avoiding lingering on the constitutional question, support for independence is ticking up alongside the SNP’s opinion poll numbers, as his government seeks to divert from the era of former leaders Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf by prioritising delivery over dogma.

The draft budget splurged on the NHS and housing, while also tripling investment in the country’s net zero industrial future, bolstered by his deputy Kate Forbes’ pro-business message.

Swinney, who has long experience in achieving cross-chamber consensus, last week sealed agreements with the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and nationalist offshoot Alba, all of which could claim concessions for pushing the budget through in time for the new financial year in April.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar had earlier, somewhat inexplicably, said he would abstain on the budget, which should deliver a £2bn funding boost to the health service thanks to UK chancellor Rachel Reeves’ record financial settlement for Scotland.

“The whole mood has lifted — Sarwar asked for nothing. Now he has got nothing and is on the naughty step with the Tories,” said one SNP insider.

The Swinney-Forbes reset and Labour’s troubled start at Westminster has eaten away at the lead enjoyed by Sarwar in the exuberance of the general election victory.

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As the long campaign ahead of the May 2026 Holyrood election begins, an opinion poll over the weekend for the Herald newspaper showed the SNP on course to remain in power as the largest party after May 2026 Holyrood elections with 51 seats, down from 62 in this parliament.

Polling guru John Curtice told the Herald: “The SNP finds itself where they are basically because Labour support has imploded.”

The poll forecast the opposition making up the remainder of an atomised Scottish parliament, with Labour on 16 seats and the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens each on 15 seats; the insurgent right-wing Reform party would debut with nine and Alba would take eight.

In last week’s scratchy First Minister’s Questions, Swinney characterised Sarwar as “high on rhetoric and low on delivery”.

The guffaws in the chamber — from Swinney’s opponents who launch weekly attacks claiming government incompetence — may well echo with the public.

Can Scotland ‘do better’?

Labour figures still think that the inauspicious start to Keir Starmer’s premiership can be offset by relentlessly probing the record of an SNP government that will have been in power for 19 years by the time of the next election.

Alongside the police investigation into the SNP’s finances, this disenchantment looms over Swinney given his central role in nationalist administrations spanning right back to 2007.

“The contest will be about another five years of an SNP government,” said one Labour adviser. “Scotland can do better — their record is poor.”

Despite five NHS recovery plans launched since the coronavirus pandemic, hospital performance in Scotland has lagged behind England.

The SNP’s latest NHS plan, unveiled last week, envisions 150,000 extra appointments and procedures, while also reducing the radiology backlog during the next financial year. Measures to achieve this include expanding capacity at national treatment centres and diverting frail patients from accident and emergency wards to specialist services.

“It’s not about the quality, because experience of the NHS is often good,” said the SNP strategist. “It’s about access through lowering waiting times.”

Every week, the opposition rails against the government’s handling of the NHS, only for the SNP to counter with its own data about improvements or similar problems elsewhere in the UK.

Come next year, Swinney will have self-imposed targets that the electorate can use to judge whether delivery has surpassed rhetoric.

Now try this

Bristol’s shape-shifting Home Counties last week crammed the stage above Sneaky Pete’s tiny dance floor on Edinburgh’s dungy Cowgate. The crowd lapped up the band’s funky, angular post-punk — no more so than their satirical take on tax, indie-disco banger “Back to the 70s”. They seem destined for larger venues: each time a poppier track underwhelmed me, my teenage son declared it “the best song yet”.

Top stories today

  • Starmer steps up EU engagement | EU governments are exploring ways to include the UK and Norway in a “coalition of the willing” dedicated to expanding the continent’s defences, while circumventing militarily neutral and Russia-friendly capitals. Keir Starmer and Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte will join EU leaders in Brussels today to deliberate how to share the vast costs of rearmament and of increasing military capabilities.

  • ‘Serious tooth removal’ required | The prime minister is resisting pressure from business and some within his own party to tear up a new workers’ rights bill, even as government officials conceded that details of the policy were still up for grabs.

  • Ofsted new regime dismissed | Moves to overhaul the way schools are inspected in England have been criticised by headteachers and teaching unions as “demoralising” and worse than the system they are aiming to replace, the Guardian reports.

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