Scotland Has No Escape Route From Britain’s Political Crisis
The Scottish National Party won its 5th consecutive term in office last week. But the party’s tepid brand of centrism still looks worn out, and the only big advances came for Reform on the right and the Greens on the left.
John Swinney has made ominous noises about the “honest” need to tackle Scotland’s £5 billion budget black hole. Meanwhile, a raft of long-standing social problems remain unresolved nineteen years after the SNP first assumed office in Edinburgh. (Jane Barlow / PA Images via Getty Images)
In the end, Scotland’s election last week played out largely as the polls had said it would. John Swinney’s ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) went into May 7 as the country’s primary political force and emerged in the same position, albeit with slightly fewer seats (fifty-eight) than it held during the last session of the devolved parliament (sixty-four).
Reform on the far right, with seventeen seats, and the Greens on the left, with fifteen, surged. In the center, Labour and the Conservatives slumped, while the Liberal Democrats — Scotland’s forgotten party, a relic of late-Victorian Highland liberalism, for some reason still extant — unexpectedly gained a handful of constituencies.
In the weeks leading up to the vote, the national mood ranged from unenthusiastic to indifferent and back again. The public never engaged with the campaign, and the campaign, devoid of detailed policy debate, never caught fire.
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