Five elections and counting: can anyone break the SNP's stranglehold on Holyrood? |
As the dust settles on the 2026 Holyrood election, Scotland’s political parties are variously celebrating their gains and licking their wounds. In the former camp are the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, and Reform UK. The Liberal Democrats’ strategic focus on a small number of constituencies plus the ‘peach’ list vote (supported by Alex Cole-Hamilton’s appearance in a peach suit on polling day) paid off.
They more than doubled their number of seats, finally starting to restore their fortunes after disastrous losses in 2011 – a consequence of public anger over the 2010-2015 Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition at Westminster. The Scottish Greens not only won their first two constituency MSPs, having stood in just six seats, but increased their regional vote by six percentage points compared with 2021, returning 15 MSPs – their highest ever tally. Meanwhile, newcomers Reform UK enter the Scottish Parliament as joint second (with Labour) on 17 seats.
Wondering where it all went wrong are the Conservatives and Labour. The Conservatives, who finished second in 2021, lost more than half their seats and also saw their vote share almost halved. However, the party that appeared most surprised and disappointed by the election result was Scottish Labour. Having insisted throughout the campaign that they could beat the SNP, in spite of discouraging indications from polling, in the end their vote share dropped to its lowest ever level in a Scottish Parliament election.
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