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Observers from the Scottish National Party watch as votes are counted for the 2026 Holyrood elections, at Dewars Centre in Perth, Scotland, May 8, 2026. (PA VIA AP)<\/p>\nObservers from the Scottish National Party watch as votes are counted for the 2026 Holyrood elections, at Dewars Centre in Perth, Scotland, May 8, 2026. (PA VIA AP)<\/p>\n
The Scottish National Party secured a record fifth straight term in government but fell short of the majority that leader John Swinney said would have given him a mandate for a new referendum on Scotland leaving the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n
The SNP won 58 seats, seven short of a majority. Labour, which after the 2024 UK general election had high hopes of mounting a serious challenge, was tied at 17 seats with Reform UK, for whom support surged north and south of the English border. The Greens won a record 15 seats and could form a powerful pro-independence bloc with the SNP.<\/p>\n
Swinney, so far, has evaded questions as to whether he would partner with another party to ask Westminster for the right to hold a referendum about quitting the UK union.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have won emphatically,\u201d said Swinney, who took over the party leadership in 2024 after a series of scandals and missteps led to the resignation of long-time leader Nicola Sturgeon and her successor Humza Yousaf.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiving in a democracy is something that all of us should cherish and I would like thank everyone who voted in this election,\u201d he said Friday. \u201cHowever you voted today, I promise that I will be a First Minister for all of Scotland.\u201d<\/p>\n
Completing the 129-seat setup in Holyrood, the Conservatives had their worst-ever result to finish with 12 MSPs, and the Liberal Democrats got 10.<\/p>\n
Largely expected by a series of polls, the result extends the SNP\u2019s term in power to more than two decades and heaps further pressure on UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. His Labour party suffered a string of losses in English local elections, ceding ground to Nigel Farage\u2019s populist Reform UK. Labour\u2019s leader in Scotland said the party had lost the argument.<\/p>\n
The SNP has only achieved a majority once before \u2014 in 2011, under former leader Alex Salmond. That outcome forced then Prime Minister David Cameron to concede to demands for a vote on independence in 2014. Scots rejected the idea of secession by 55% to 45%, but some recent polls suggest the nationalists would win another referendum.<\/p>\n
As in the rest of the UK, the Scottish results emphasized just how deeply British politics has splintered. Reform and the Greens made up ground on the right and left, splitting apart a Tory-Labour duopoly that dominated for more than a century. Scotland\u2019s labour leader, Anas Sarwar, was early to concede defeat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe made an argument for change and, ultimately, it\u2019s an argument we lost,\u201d Sarwar told reporters in Glasgow. The elections \u2014 supposedly based on local and devolved issues \u2014 \u201cbecame about a national mood, and a national dissatisfaction,\u201d he said. Sarwar has previously called for Starmer to stand down. \u201cI stand by that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Scotland\u2019s mixed voting system, which includes an element of proportional representation, means smaller parties gain seats on the list vote as the counting continues. The Highland and Islands list, containing seven seats, completed the Holyrood lineup shortly aftter 1 am on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The electoral maths in Scotland this time around was complicated by the emergence of Reform UK, a party that had only one of Scotland\u2019s lawmakers in the previous parliament, a defection from the Conservatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Observers from the Scottish National Party watch as votes are counted for the 2026 Holyrood elections, at Dewars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7408,3495,94,7970,408,3497,3934,5,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-32093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-humza-yousaf","9":"tag-john-swinney","10":"tag-keir-starmer","11":"tag-nicola-sturgeon","12":"tag-reform-uk","13":"tag-scottish-national-party","14":"tag-snp","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116543796281990360","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}