What SNP's landslide win means

📣 You’re reading the weekend edition of The Early Line. Today’s edition is slightly different: rather than the usual, deliberately eclectic weekend mix, this weekend’s talking points are all election-related, and all are available to all readers. Too much happened yesterday - some of it only apparent rather late on - to ignore. Usual service will be restored next week.

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🍸 The SNP has won a landslide victory in the Scottish elections. The party secured 58 seats, but fell short of their target of a 65-seat-plus overall majority at Holyrood. That threshold, SNP leader John Swinney had promised, would have triggered immediate demands for a second independence referendum. Yesterday he said the party had won “emphatically”, despite it winning six seats fewer than last time, and a sharp drop in vote share

Demands for Indyref 2 have already been made by Neil Gray, a senior figure in the SNP, on the basis of the scale of the SNP’s win. And, given that the independence-supporting Scottish Greens had their best-ever election, winning 15 seats - including their first-ever constituencies - they may grow louder in the days ahead: the Scottish Parliament again has a clear pro-independence majority.

The election concluded only in the wee hours of Saturday morning, when the Highlands council finally completed its regional list count, leaving Reform UK and Labour tied in second place on 17 seats each. The two parties will now share in the lead role of questioning Swinney at First Minister’s questions every Thursday.

🍸 Labour failed, utterly, to shake off the taint of its London woes. Anas Sarwar had wanted this to be a referendum on the SNP’s performance in power: voters either didn’t hear that framing or didn’t accept it, and instead gave their firm views on Keir Starmer’s performance in number 10.

“The Prime Minister was the father of the SNP’s latest win and he deserves the blame,” writes Paul Hutcheon (£). “After Labour’s general election triumph, Anas Sarwar was the overwhelming favourite to become First Minister. But Starmer’s disastrous premiership, angering voters with needless blunders and failing to set out a positive vision, torpedoed the Scottish Labour boat.”

Sarwar doesn’t escape blame - his 38-seat strategy was branded too ambitious, because it left resources stretched, and his squabbles with Reform - while heartfelt - distracted from the party’s core messages. But, notes Hutcheon, “Sarwar could have promised voters 20 grand each and they still would have shouted at him about the Prime Minister and voted SNP or Reform.”

🍸 Reform’s rise is the third big theme of this election. Malcolm Offord, its Scottish leader, was pilloried through the election but despite that did well enough to ensure he will now share leader of the opposition duties with Anas Sarwar.

One of Reform’s senior Scottish figures, Thomas Kerr, said the party’s 17 seats were a “stepping stone” to eventually winning in Scotland, despite it not winning a single constituency vote. They came closest - within 364 votes - of winning in Banffshire and Buchan Coast, but leader Offord came third in Inverclyde and Kerr second in Glasgow Baillieston and Shettleston, relying on list votes to see them into Holyrood.

“We are the new kids on the block, we are shaking the political establishment,” said Kerr. “I have just beaten Labour into second place in the East End of Glasgow. If you’d asked me that months ago, it would have been laughed at.” (Daily Mail)

🍸 The UK picture is more of the same. In Wales, Plaid Cymru secured a stunning victory to ensure it has the best chance of forming a government in Cardiff. The Welsh nationalists also fell short of a majority, but pushed Labour, in power since the National Assembly was formed in 1999, and winners of every general election in Wales since 1922, into third place.

Across England, with a few councils still to declare at send time, Reform has been a huge winner, picking up more than 1,400 council seats. The Greens and Lib Dems have also made big gains. Labour has lost 1,300 seats and 25 councils - albeit from an historic high at the last local elections - and the Conservatives have shed another 500.

Inevitably, Keir Starmer is under huge pressure to go - but he is resisting. At least 25 Labour MPs, some senior, have already called for the Prime Minister to set a timetable for his departure after a crushing defeat which is, in any analysis, historic.

🍸 We’ll read a lot about the “fracturing” of politics in the days ahead. Brian Taylor, the veteran political reporter who spent much of the day on BBC Scotland dissecting results as they came in, uses the term in his Herald analysis today (£).

Of Reform, and the collapse specifically of the Conservatives, he writes: “Folk are fed up with mainstream, established politics. They are discontented and angry. There have been sundry attempts to compare Reform with other parties in history. Not always to their liking. I think they most resemble the Poujadistes of France in the post war period. They were a shopkeepers' party, hostile to taxation, standing up as they saw it for small business and ordinary folk, beset by the Parisian elite.”

The Guardian finds fracture too. “Fragmentation is no longer the future of British politics. In many places it is its present,” it says in a leader. “After a quarter-century in which Labour and the Conservatives dominated electoral life, both parties suffered heavy losses in their traditional strongholds. Politics since the turn of the century has been upended.”

But one slightly contrarian analysis comes from The Economist: in Wales, it notes, Plaid Cymru consolidated the centre-left vote with “stopping Reform” the second most-cited reason for voters to lend it their support. “If centre-left voters across Britain can similarly be persuaded to co-ordinate to stop Reform, Mr Farage’s current support would be insufficient to form a government—a dash of hope for Labour on a bleak day,” the newspaper notes (£).

🍸 Stephen Flynn will add a dash of ability - and intrigue - to Scottish politics. The SNP’s Westminster leader, who gained recognition and praise for his attacks at Prime Minister’s Question Time in London, will now need to resign his Westminster seat. But in return, he will gain an immediate high profile in Holyrood.

Nobody who saw his confident acceptance speech as newly-elected MSP for Aberdeen Deeside and North Kincardine yesterday will imagine he will be content with a low-profile role in the new SNP government, and his immediate note of strong support for the North East’s oil industry could make life interesting should John Swinney again seek the support of the Greens for key votes.

The expectation is also that Flynn will seek to replace Swinney one day. He pledged his loyalty yesterday, of course. But the day will come - and exactly when it should, or exactly when Flynn thinks it should, will be a source of intrigue for as long as Swinney’s in the job.

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