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From wikipedia.org<\/a> \/ \u00a9 Scottish Government<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019ve always had an unhealthy obsession with politics.\u00a0 Lately, however, I\u2019ve written less about the subject on this blog because my obsession was becoming literally unhealthy \u2013 ruminating on politics and politicians in 2026 was filling my head with dark and depressing thoughts.\u00a0 Nonetheless, I\u2019ll now make some comments about the election for the Scottish Parliament, which happened on May 7th<\/sup>. That day also saw elections for the Welsh Senedd and for various local authorities in England, but I\u2019ll only mention those in passing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you\u2019re not a political anorak, you might want to skip this.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So: the results were 58 seats for the Scottish National Party (down six from the previous election in 2021); 17 for Scottish Labour (down five); 17 for Reform UK (up 17); 15 for the Scottish Greens (up seven); 12 for the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party (down 19); and ten for the Scottish Liberal Democrats (up six).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Despite securing six seats less than their 2021 total, and seven seats short of a parliamentary majority, the result was impressive for the SNP in that this is the fifth election in a row where they\u2019ve ended up as the biggest, government-forming party.\u00a0 Keir Starmer\u2019s Labour government at Westminster, which hasn\u2019t been in power for two years yet and is already as popular as a fart in a spacesuit, would kill for such longevity and \u00a0durability.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It’s also quite a comeback for SNP leader John Swinney.\u00a0 Originally Swinney served as SNP leader from 2000 to 2004, when his party was in opposition in the Scottish Parliament.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t a happy experience for him.\u00a0 In the 2003 Scottish election his party dropped from 35 to 28 seats and the following year he resigned.\u00a0 He later described<\/a> being opposition leader as \u201cthe worst, most awful, most sapping, most soul-destroying job in politics\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Having enjoyed spells as a cabinet minister and Deputy First Minister, Swinney was planning to retire at this year\u2019s election.\u00a0 However, \u00a0in May 2024, after the affable but hapless Humza Yousaf resigned as First Minister, Swinney surprised everyone by standing unopposed for \u2013 with his famous negotiating skills, he managed to sweet-talk the formidable likes of Kate Forbes into not running against him \u2013 and winning the leadership again, 20 years after losing it.\u00a0 And this time, he became First Minister of Scotland too.\u00a0 Many assumed he would act as a \u2018caretaker\u2019 FM, until someone younger and with more chutzpah came along, but thanks to this election result he\u2019s likely to be around for a while.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n While I\u2019d never describe Swinney as someone who sets the heather alight, and if he got a fiver every time someone likened his demeanour to that of a bank manager he\u2019d probably be a billionaire by now, I have to say I think he\u2019s a decent guy and I\u2019d rather have him in charge of Scotland than most other Scottish politicians.\u00a0 I\u2019m biased in this regard.\u00a0 As I wrote on this blog before, I encountered him a couple of times during my youth, via my old schoolmate Roger Small, who was best friends with him at university, and I liked him.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not just me.\u00a0 Most people, political friends and foes alike, seem to like Swinney.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Even the world\u2019s most horrible man, Donald Trump, has a soft spot for him.\u00a0 In 2025, Trump declared<\/a>, \u201cJohn Swinney is a terrific guy \u2014 and loves golf and loves the people of this country, and we really appreciate it.\u201d\u00a0 Yes, I know that Trump thinks Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un are the bees\u2019 knees, so being liked by him isn\u2019t necessarily a ringing endorsement of your character.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n More recently, when Trump announced the removal of US tariffs on Scotch whisky, Swinney claimed<\/a> this was due in part to a meeting he had with the US president last September.\u00a0 He was criticised for saying this by the UK government\u2019s Secretary of State for Scotland Douglas Alexander, who argued that trade agreements weren\u2019t in the remit of a leader of a devolved administration.\u00a0 But after the election result, Trump messaged<\/a>, \u201cCongratulations to John Swinney on winning his Re-Election for First Minister of Scotland.\u00a0 He is a good man, who worked very hard along with the King and Queen of the United Kingdom, with respect to Tariff Relief for Great Scottish Whiskey \u2013 and deserves this Big Electoral Victory!\u201d\u00a0 So now, Dougie Alexander looks a bit of a chump.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Trump, being a low IQ individual, misspelt \u2018Scottish whisky\u2019 as \u2018Scottish whiskey\u2019.\u00a0 The stuff spelt with an \u2018e\u2019 is actually made in Ireland.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From wikipedia.org<\/a> \/ \u00a9 Scottish Parliament \/ youtube.com <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Elsewhere, Scottish Labour and the Scottish Conservatives had their worst ever performances in a Scottish parliamentary election.\u00a0 Labour leader Anas Sawar hit the headlines back in February when he demanded that Keir Starmer resign<\/a> as British Prime Minister: \u201cThe situation in Downing Street is not good enough. There have been too many mistakes.\u201d\u00a0 Sarwar\u2019s resignation-call distanced him and his branch of the Labour party from the wildly unpopular Starmer and it generated \u00a0a lot of publicity at the time.\u00a0 But when Starmer said no, he wouldn\u2019t be resigning, it looked less like a political earthquake and more like a mild political bowel-movement.\u00a0 It highlighted Sarwar\u2019s place as Scottish party leader in the great scheme of things \u2013 not high.\u00a0 It also meant Starmer was embarrassingly conspicuous by his absence in Scotland when Labour started campaigning for the election there.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Scottish Tories have been reduced to a rump, their number of Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) barely in double figures.\u00a0 Their leader Russell Findlay has tried to talk them up in the Tory-friendly pages of the Scottish Daily Mail, describing them as the \u2018Dynamic Dozen\u2019.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t describe any dozen that includes such numpties as Murdo Fraser, the man who once asked Donald Trump if he\u2019d consider buying Glasgow Rangers Football Club<\/a>, as \u2018dynamic\u2019.\u00a0 Maybe \u2018dysfunctional\u2019 or \u2018dystopian\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Following a near-extinction event caused by their coalition with the Conservatives in Westminster in the early 2010s, the Liberal Democrats have enjoyed something of a revival.\u00a0 The passing of time has clearly detoxified their reputation a little in folk\u2019s memories.\u00a0 That said, I don\u2019t know how anyone can stomach their Scottish leader Alexander Cole-Hamilton, who to me comes across as being insufferably arrogant.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And the Scottish Greens have almost doubled their representation in the parliament.\u00a0 Without wishing to downplay this achievement, I suspect they enjoyed the best of both worlds in relation to the English and Welsh Greens \u2013 a separate party \u2013 south of the border.\u00a0 They benefited from the wave of enthusiasm, and publicity, that their southern counterparts experienced earlier this year.\u00a0 Simultaneously, as a separate party, they were distant enough from them to escape the more recent backlash against the English \/ Welsh party\u2019s leader Zack Polanski, who stupidly retweeted<\/a> something about the attack on two Jewish men in Golders Green<\/a> and then suffered an all-out assault from the right-wing media determined to portray him as an antisemite.\u00a0 (This despite Polanski being Jewish himself and despite some of the media\u2019s caricatures of him being\u2026 hideously antisemitic<\/a>.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Scottish Greens are co-led by Gillian Mackay and the chirpy Ross Greer.\u00a0 I know Greer is a \u2018Marmite\u2019 politician for many, but I like how he puts the wind up gammons like Piers Morgan<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From youtube.com<\/a> \/ \u00a9 ITV<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n With the SNP on 58 MSPs, and the pro-Scottish-independence Greens on 15, 73 MSPs now support Scotland leaving the United Kingdom, as opposed to 56 unionist MSPs who don\u2019t.\u00a0 It\u2019s the parliament\u2019s biggest ever pro-independence majority.\u00a0 Of course, you won\u2019t have heard much about that fact from Scotland\u2019s (unionist-owned) mainstream media, who instead have obsessed on a different fact \u2013 that the parliament suddenly has 17 far-right Reform MPs.\u00a0 Nigel Farage\u2019s extremist party had representation there before, thanks to one MSP defecting to them from the Conservatives.\u00a0 But today, with Labour, they\u2019re the joint-second biggest party.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This has prompted journalists like the Times<\/em>\u2019s Kenny Farquharson to declare \u2018the death of Scottish exceptionalism<\/a>\u2019 \u2013 Scottish exceptionalism being the idea that Scottish voters are more community-orientated, more considerate of their fellow citizens, more leftwing and, generally, nicer than voters than those elsewhere in the UK, especially in England.\u00a0 Reform\u2019s showing proves that, no, the Scots are just as right-wing and awful as everyone else.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Well, I find it nauseating that the\u00a0 parliament contains 17 MSPs who, if their party ever came to power, would enact Trump-style authoritarian and racist policies.\u00a0 One of them, Senga Beresford, representing the South Scotland region, has already caused controversy by expressing admiration<\/a> for fascist lout Stephen Yaxley-Lennon on social media.\u00a0 But I derive some comfort from the fact that none of those MSPs were elected through the parliament\u2019s first-past-the-post, constituency-based voting system<\/a>, responsible for deciding 73 of the 129 MSPs.\u00a0 Reform\u2019s 17 sneaked in afterwards, via the additional, regional-based \u2018list\u2019 system.\u00a0 Also, the Conservatives won 31 seats at the previous election, but have been culled to 12, and that number plus Reform\u2019s 17 puts the total number of right-wingers \u00a0at 29 \u2013 two less than before.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I certainly don\u2019t see Scotland as being exceptional, i.e., better than anywhere else.\u00a0 I\u2019ve met plenty of Scots who\u2019ve been arseholes as much as arsehole-y people from other places.\u00a0 But Scotland is still different from other parts of the UK.\u00a0 If it wasn\u2019t different, it wouldn\u2019t have its own languages, literature, music, sports teams, legal system, educational system, etc.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t have been scunnered by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s while people elsewhere were proclaiming her the new, handbag-wielding messiah.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t have voted heavily against Brexit when people in England and Wales voted for it.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t have its own independence movement with, now, a 57% majority in the Scottish parliament.\u00a0 I know that sticks in the craws of unionist politicians and journalists who\u2019d have you believe that Scotland is absolutely indistinguishable from the rest of the UK, that a punter from Elgin is identical to a punter from Ely.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Talking of journalists, the coverage of the election in the Scottish mainstream media was woeful.\u00a0 The unionist newspapers (i.e., nearly all of them) spent half the time wailing \u201cEverything in Scotland is shite!\u201d and the other half wailing, \u201cHow dare anyone suggest doing anything even vaguely radical to improve things!\u201d\u00a0 Swinney\u2019s proposal that, in an emergency, the Scottish government should put a cap on the price of essential food products<\/a> so that poor people could still buy them, was met with hoots of derision \u2013 and the sneering observation that the UK government would never allow it.\u00a0 (A Labour government \u2013 \u201cFor the many, not the few\u201d \u2013 denying someone the right to keep essential foodstuffs affordable for the nation\u2019s poorest people?\u00a0 Not a great look.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I thought the recent opinion-piece by Scottish journalist Stephen Daisley in the Spectator<\/em>, calling on the Labour and Conservative parties to get rid of the UK\u2019s devolved parliaments (\u201cDr. Frankenstein would understand that it was his duty to put down the hideous creature his foolishness and vanity unleashed on the world\u201d), was bad enough.\u00a0 But the articles<\/a> that his fellow Scottish journo Chris Deerin penned about Scottish Reform leader Malcolm Offord, for the supposedly left-wing New Statesman<\/em>, went to arse-licking extremes where no article has gone before.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And now, with Plaid Cymru\u2019s Rhun ap Iorwerth<\/a>\u00a0the First Minister in Cardiff, and Sinn Fein\u2019s Michelle O\u2019Neill the First Minister in Belfast, all three devolved governments in the United Kingdom are helmed by people who see their nations\u2019 futures as being outside that supposedly united kingdom.\u00a0 Interesting times indeed\u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But you won\u2019t ever read about that in the newspapers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From wikipedia.org<\/a> \/ \u00a9 User Colin<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From wikipedia.org \/ \u00a9 Scottish Government I\u2019ve always had an unhealthy obsession with politics.\u00a0 Lately, however, I\u2019ve written less about the subject on this blog because my obsession was becoming literally unhealthy \u2013 ruminating on politics and politicians in 2026 was filling my head with dark and depressing thoughts.\u00a0 Nonetheless, I\u2019ll now make … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/ASwr-in-Sc-Parl.png\")
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