Holyrood elections will not be a judgement on the SNP’s time in power, but a mid-term test for Labour
26 March 2025, 15:15 | Updated: 26 March 2025, 17:36
If Scottish Labour had a mountain to climb to potentially win at next year’s Holyrood election before Rachel Reeves stood up to speak today, by the time she sat down, she’d ensured that Anas Sarwar now faces a sheer rock face without a grappling hook or rope to hand.
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With every economic announcement made at Westminster since Labour won last year, Sarwar’s prospects of becoming the next First Minister of Scotland recede, while the SNP is boosted.
Universal Winter Fuel Payment cut, the two child benefit cap remaining, and now slashing the benefits for disabled people - Scots voted for change last year, but nowhere in their political nightmares did they think this was the kind of change a Labour government would deliver.
Labour sources in Holyrood had remained hopeful despite last year’s Budget, believing Starmer and Reeves were “front-loading pain”, and by the time of the Holyrood poll things would be looking up, especially in the economy with people feeling better off.
The OBR revised figures, and Reeves speech today, have destroyed that hope.
Without a doubt the next Holyrood elections will not be a judgement on the SNP’s almost two decades in power in Scotland, but a mid-term test of the UK Labour government, and of Keir Starmer.
The SNP can sail into the elections saying it will retain disabled people’s benefits - PIP is devolved and been renamed as Adult Disability Payment - and make the argument that it’s already looking at ways to mitigate the two child cap.
Of course, they will have to say how all of that will be paid for, as the welfare cuts in England will impact the Scottish Government’s block grant, but in the heat of an election campaign, that may well prove a less significant argument than labelling Labour an austerity government.
Rachel Reeves says that Labour has “inherited a broken system” when it comes to social security, but while the Universal Credit standard allowance will increase from £92 a week in in 2025/26 to £106 a week by 2029/30 the health element will be "cut by 50 per cent and then frozen for new claimants.”
That will impact Scots as well as others reliant on UC across the UK. Sarwar has also been busy wooing businesses across Scotland but perhaps to no avail as the decision to increase employer national insurance contributions has caused real anger.
The SNP, which had lost the confidence of businesses under Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf, is now more trusted than Labour - 48 per cent of 600 businesses recently polled believe the Scottish government understands their concerns, compared to just 31 per cent for Labour.
Then there’s the 15 per cent efficiency cut to UK government departments - while Scottish Secretary Ian Murray claims this will have no impact on Scotland’s frontline services, the Scottish Government thinks otherwise and will impact on future budget settlements and day-to-day-spending, including on public services such as the NHS.
Scots, like many, will be scratching their heads at the decisions being made by Reeves - especially when she says the world has changed.
Why not change your fiscal rules then, they will ask?
Why try and balance the books on the backs of the disabled and the poorest?
Why cut benefits when your own impact assessment shows it will push 250,000 people - 50,000 of them children - into relative poverty? It goes against the grain of everything Labour is supposed to stand for.
The SNP has already seen its previous fall in the polls stabilise and begin to reverse.
If it is the largest party once again after the 2026 elections, and indeed if there is a pro-independence majority in Holyrood – then the clamour for constitutional change will once again grow.
It’s hard to imagine that is the result that Starmer and Reeves hoped to achieve when they won last year’s General Election, but it is not too far-fetched to contemplate.
Of course, those who back Reeves say her economic strategy will be vindicated – but only in time for the next General Election.
The problem for Anas Sarwar is that his next election is May 2026, and right now it seems there’s little hope of him getting even a hand hold on the mountain of a challenge that now confronts him and Scottish Labour.
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