Why next year's Scottish elections could get messy

2026 is five months away, but already, battle lines are being drawn for elections across the country.

The Senedd (Welsh parliament) will be electing new members, along with council elections in various parts of England, including London, Birmingham, Newcastle, Sunderland, and Bradford.

Electoral Dysfunction listener Marianne sent in a question to the podcast about one of the other major votes taking place next year - the Scottish parliamentary elections.

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The SNP will be defending 60 seats, with Reform taking part in their first Scottish parliamentary elections, and questions over whether the Conservatives will be able to remain the official opposition.

Marianne said that, in her view, Sir Keir Starmer speaks regularly in interviews about work his government has done in England, and asked whether this was a potential disadvantage for Scottish Labour's chances in the elections.

Former Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson, and former deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman had plenty of thoughts - here's what they had to say.

Ruth says...

The thing that the SNP have done brilliantly for decades now is they don't run on their own record, and they don't run as a party of incumbency.

They run as an insurgency against Westminster. They have pulled off a fantastic trick in Scotland - and this is part of why their political gravity has sort of been defying gravity for as long - is that they set themselves up as a counterpoint to Westminster.

The SNP would never measure themselves against [the Westminster government]. They'd measure themselves against where Labour's been running health in Wales for the last 26 years and say, "Wales has consistently had the worst numbers on X or Y or Z." Anas Sarwar [leader of Scottish Labour] is going to have to be fleet of foot.

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One of the things that's really interesting about Holyrood and the way it works is that, up until now, it's always been a five-party parliament, run along the additional member system, which is a form of proportional representation.

If Reform do well, it will become a six-party parliament. It makes it almost impossible for there to be a majority government - in all the parliaments that the Scottish parliament has had since 1999, there's only been one majority government. They've always either been minority or coalition.

Where, then, do alliances happen, and therefore, what does the policy platform become? Who will do deals with others? There are a lot of parties in there who are avowedly unwilling to deal with particular other parties, that have already counted each other out from forming a coalition.

It could be quite a messy election next year in Scotland.

Harriet says...

Labour want to be contesting with the SNP in these elections coming up next year on the basis that the SNP have failed on those issues which are devolved to them - on education, on health.

And so really, when Keir Starmer is saying, "look at the good things we've done, for example, getting waiting lists down in England," that's not because it doesn't matter about waiting lists in Scotland.

It's to show, "in England, where Labour is running things, waiting lists are coming down and getting better, but in Scotland where they're being run by the SNP, things are staying very bad indeed".

The incumbents are the SNP, and Labour wants to be focusing on the things that they've got responsibility for in the devolved administration - Scottish Labour don't want it to become, "who do you prefer, the SNP or Keir Starmer?"

They want to make it, "do you want the SNP with their encumbrances, letting things go from bad to worse, or do you want Anas Sarwar to come in as a Labour administration instead of the SNP in Holyrood?"

Electoral Dysfunction unites political powerhouses Beth Rigby, Ruth Davidson, and Harriet Harman to cut through the spin, and explain to you what's really going on in Westminster and beyond.

Want to leave a question for Beth, Ruth, and Harriet?

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Additional writing by David Chipakupaku, Electoral Dysfunction social media producer.

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