Anas Sarwar has admitted Scottish Labour is 'hurting' as the party suffered another humiliating defeat in this year's local elections. Conceding after just seven of Holyrood's 129 seats had been declared, the Scottish Labour leader stated that Labour had 'made an argument for change' but ultimately it was 'an argument we lost'. He added that there is 'a national wave of disappointment' that Scottish Labour had failed to overcome.
While Keir Starmer said on Friday morning he is 'not going to walk away' after a bruising set of results across England, Wales, and Scotland, Mr Sarwar reiterated his calls for the Prime Minister to step down. 'My party is hurting today and it's my job to hold it together,' he said. 'We will continue to fight for the change we believe Scotland so desperately needs.'
Just hours after his speech, Mr Sarwar lost to the SNP by more than 5,000 votes in his bid to win a constituency seat. He held his seat on the regional list in 2021 but had hoped to win the Glasgow Cathcart and Pollok constituency. Mr Sarwar has in recent months been trying to distance Scottish Labour from Sir Keir's Westminster operation. He remained the only senior Labour figure to call for Sir Keir's resignation in February, when the PM came perilously close to being ousted over his appointment of Peter Mandelson as US envoy.
Capitalising on Labour's implosion and the redrawing of Scottish constituency boundaries, the BBC is now forecasting that the SNP will win up to 63 seats but fall short of an overall majority. John Swinney, Scotland's First Minister and leader of the SNP, was re-elected to his Perthshire North constituency with 16,414 votes, giving him a majority of just over 6,000. Speaking at the election count in Perth, Mr Swinney said his victory came as a 'moment of enormous, enormous significance' to him personally. He said his retaking of the Perth seat was a sign of more gains to come as he predicted the SNP would become the largest party in the Scottish Parliament.
In the biggest upset of this election so far, the SNP swiped Shetland from the Liberal Democrats—a constituency Mr Swinney's party has long targeted but has been held by the Lib Dems for nearly 30 years. SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn also won a seat in the Scottish Parliament, taking the constituency of Aberdeen Deeside and North Kincardine. Flynn came in ahead of the Conservatives, with a slim majority of 1,244. The Aberdeen South MP—known for his hard-edged attacks on the Prime Minister in the Commons Chamber—will have to step down from Westminster to take up his seat at Holyrood.
But the SNP also fell victim to a Green Party surge, with former Scottish Greens leader Lorna Slater taking Edinburgh Central. Speaking ahead of the count, Ms Slater said the Greens were 'hoping for a record result'. This pushed Angus Robertson, an SNP minister, into third position.
