History is always repeating itself, but each time the price goes up.

Last Thursday, at the Scottish Parliament elections, the history of the unionist political parties at Holyrood repeated itself once again, as Anas Sarwar’s Scottish Labour felt the full force of the electorate’s anger at the Westminster Labour government.

Less than two years on from measuring the curtains for Bute House, after defenestrating the SNP at the Westminster election of 2024, fewer than one-in-five people voted Labour. In fact, accounting for turnout, only one-in-ten eligible voters got up last Thursday morning and voted for Scotland’s traditional centre-left standard bearers.

Reports abound that the result took Mr Sarwar by surprise. I don’t buy that; he is an astute politician and a clever man, and he would have seen what everyone else saw. Labour at Holyrood paid the price set by Labour at Westminster.

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History is always repeating itself. The 2011 Holyrood election will forever be remembered for Alex Salmond’s majority, but unionists should have in their minds what happened to Tavish Scott’s Liberal Democrats.

Happily bounding along with 16 seats and well over 300,000 voters, the perfectly competent Mr Scott witnessed his Westminster party enter a governing coalition with the Conservatives, and discovered a year later what the Scottish electorate does in a Holyrood election to parties in power at Westminster. A vote cut in half, and a cohort of MSPs small enough to fit in a........

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