Next week is a big one for John Swinney. The First Minister will both mark his first year in office and publish his Programme for Government, Holyrood’s equivalent of the King’s Speech.
Swinney is entitled to look back over the past 12 months with a degree of satisfaction, and to look forward to the next 12 with some optimism. Few, probably including the man himself, would have predicted such an outcome when he took the top job on 8 May last year.
After 18 years in power the SNP should really be heading for opposition, the Scottish punter’s boot lodged firmly up its posterior. Indeed, that’s how it looked back in 2024. Scottish Labour was ahead in the polls, and there was a mood of change in the air ahead of a general election that would see Keir Starmer installed in Downing Street. The SNP appeared destined to be swept from office at next May’s devolved election.
And not before time, many of us thought. The tail end of Nicola Sturgeon’s regime had been disastrous, her once-feted judgement having seemingly deserted her. Policies kept failing amid ministerial incompetence, there was turmoil within the independence movement at the lack of progress towards a second referendum, and the party was under police investigation over its finances. Sturgeon’s replacement by the sub-par and short-lived Humza Yousaf only added to the sense that this was a fin-de-siècle administration that deserved what was coming to it.
On taking over, Swinney therefore appeared little more than a caretaker, a tired retread fated only to guide the SNP out of office before giving way to someone younger and fresher. It was his final service, a last sacrifice, to the party to which he has devoted his life.
But instead, he has been both a lucky general and an astute one. First, Starmer’s new government repeatedly tripped itself up in its early months, creating disillusionment among many Scots who had returned to Labour.
Swinney’s calm demeanour and long experience served him well during this period. Steady John spoke of ending the divisions that have characterised Scottish politics for a generation. He put independence on the backburner. He moved the government towards the centre, foregrounding public-sector reform and economic growth. He spoke of building good relations with Downing Street, after the fraught Tory-SNP years.
And, bit by bit, he dispensed with the unpopular policies – such as gender reform, fishing bans and a vague National Care Service proposal – that Sturgeon had left behind. Perhaps the real story of his first year has been one of clearing the decks in order to create the necessary space for renewal.
While the SNP is nowhere near its previous popularity, it has at least stopped haemorrhaging support. It has been the First Minister’s good fortune that this has coincided with the rise of Reform UK, which is taking votes from both Scottish Labour and the Conservatives. With Unionist support so divided, this makes it more likely that the SNP will be the largest party next May and secure a remarkable fifth term.
Swinney has been smart on the politics, too. He has launched a plan to cut NHS waiting lists, recognising this is the electorate’s number one priority. He has presented himself as the progressive bulwark against which Reform will falter. And he has brought forward the Programme for Government (PfG) by several months, so that he can control the political narrative and have a year to redefine the “new” SNP before the election.
Critics may suggest that there has been vastly more rhetoric than delivery, and they would have a point. But next week’s PfG should be the moment that this changes – it should give shape to whatever “Swinneyism” is, and show that his government will focus relentlessly on mainstream priorities. Will the proposed pallet of bills measure up to the scale of the challenges faced by the NHS, ailing state schools and the cost-of-living crisis? Almost certainly not, but any progress on these issues would be welcome after a long drought.
Anas Sarwar, Swinney’s only rival for Bute House, is, of course, one of the critics. In a discussion for my think tank Reform Scotland last week he insisted that he remains confident he can win next year. “I’m not going to deny reality – is there a challenge we now face? Absolutely. But despite the fact that Labour’s had difficulties across the UK, despite the fact that in the opinion polls Scottish Labour’s vote has gone down, the SNP’s vote has only risen marginally, if at all.”
Labour’s lost voters hadn’t gone to the Nats, he said, but to “the undecided column” and to Reform, and could be won back. People hadn’t grown more positive about the SNP government. “I accept that John Swinney might look externally like he has steadied the ship, but he hasn’t changed the public’s views about whether they feel the Scottish government is delivering for them.”
The polls would change once voters started thinking seriously about the Holyrood election. “I think there is a moment when the public mood and the public attention shifts from one electoral cycle to the next,” Sarwar said. Scots are, he argued, still viewing politics through a Westminster prism and a “post-general election reaction to the early days of a Labour government”, but that would shift as the devolved election approached. “The sooner we can get people to think about the choice in 2026, then I think we will compete and I think we will win that election.”
Perhaps, although a straw poll of those attending our talk found that most expected the SNP man to beat the Labour one.
A more scientific test of the national mood will arrive in the shape of the upcoming Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse constituency Holyrood by-election, following the death of SNP MSP Christina McKelvie. A year out from a Holyrood election, Labour should expect comfortably to win this Lanarkshire seat, traditionally part of its Scottish heartlands. Indeed, it completed a rout of west central Scotland in the general election.
However, one pollster who has carried out focus groups in the constituency predicts an SNP hold. People were “pissed off” with Labour over issues such as the winter fuel payment and felt it hadn’t provided much, if any, improvement on the last Tory government. They weren’t particularly impressed by the SNP either, but anger was reserved for Labour. Reform seems likely to come a competitive third.
Victory in Hamilton would boost the SNP, alarm Labour, and tell us something unignorable about what’s likely to happen next year. Can lucky, astute John Swinney turn a decent first 12 months into an election-winning hand over the next 12?
[See also: Reform’s Runcorn victory is a warning to Labour]
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