The Scottish National Party (SNP) have won their fifth successive election to the Scottish Parliament.
The party came first with a total of 58 seats, short of the 65 needed to have a majority, while Anas Sarwar’s Scottish Labour Party and Malcolm Offord’s Reform tied with 17 seats.
This is despite declines in support for John Swinney’s party, with its lowest constituency vote share since 2007, at 38.3 per cent, suggesting that the win was shallow.
The Scottish Greens won a record 15 seats, including their first two constituency ones — one of them Lorna Slater’s win over SNP’s Angus Robertson in Edinburgh Central, where many University of Edinburgh students cast their votes.
Scottish Labour’s lack of popularity and loss of heartlands, despite limited support for the incumbent SNP, has been partly put down to the performance of the national Labour government.
Anas Sarwar had an eye on this threat, calling for Keir Starmer’s resignation back in February, despite his supposed political closeness to the Prime Minister.
Reform’s success in Scotland may come as a surprise to many, outweighing any support that UKIP or the Brexit Party were able to garner.
A fourth year Politics and Economics student said: “John Swinney should be credited for steadying the SNP’s ship after a turbulent four years.
“Ironically, while Starmer refused to go for the sake of the local elections, he might well be forced out because of them.”
He continued: “The success of Reform should not be understated. 13 years ago Nigel Farage was forced to shelter in an Edinburgh pub in order to avoid unhappy Scots. Now his party is the second biggest in Holyrood.”
In his election victory speech, Swinney said that he will hold discussions with the leaders of the main Scottish parties, excluding Reform.
Image by Ulia Makoveeva for The Student.