There’s no New Year cheer for Scottish Labour in True North’s latest polling carried out by Survation between January 7 and 13.
Just six months ago Labour swept to an historic victory in the General Election, taking 36 seats off the SNP and creating a solid launchpad for their Holyrood campaign in 2026.
Yet Labour’s momentum in Scotland appears not just to have stalled but to have gone into reverse, with the party now polling at 24% in Westminster voting intentions and 22% for the upcoming Holyrood election next year. Polls carried out towards the end of 2024 show similar trends.
Anas Sarwar’s prospects of becoming First Minister look more remote than they did a few months ago, with his own net approval rating of -12% well below that of the current First Minister.
Over recent months he has made efforts to distance himself from the policy mistakes and political missteps of the Starmer government, but it doesn’t seem to be helping him. Rather, it has exposed his lack of influence and left him scrambling for relevance.
By contrast, there is a lot in the poll to reassure John Swinney that he has arrested the decline in the SNP’s fortunes.
The SNP shows a clear 9-point lead over Labour in Westminster voting intentions at 33% and a 13-point lead in Holyrood voting intentions at 35%. Swinney is the most popular choice to be the next First Minister, and he even almost manages to break even on net approval ratings. On these figures, the SNP would remain the largest party in Holyrood though with a reduced number of seats.
But the SNP would be well advised to avoid complacency. The support of just 33% of the electorate is hardly a ringing endorsement and it would be a big mistake to think that having steadied the ship they can continue with business as usual.
Their revival of fortunes has more to do with the absence of an inspiring alternative than with renewed enthusiasm for their performance in government. Meanwhile, the saga of Operation Branchform drags on and may yet threaten to derail the SNP’s 2026 plans, with unpredictable consequences.
The other striking finding of the latest True North poll is Reform overtaking the Conservatives in terms of Westminster voting intentions in Scotland, polling 15% to the Tories’ 13%.
For Holyrood, the Conservatives nose ahead again, polling 14% to Reform’s 13% in both the constituency and the regional list votes.
Polling at this level is likely to deliver regional seats across Scotland for Reform in 2026, and in all likelihood more than one in their areas of strongest support, Mid Scotland and Fife, Central Scotland and North-east Scotland, but if they also stand in constituencies they will make it much harder for the Conservatives to win first-past-the post seats by splitting the right-wing vote.
Together, these two parties of the right command a larger vote share than Labour, but neither is strong enough on its own to position itself as the main opposition party. The Tories should be concerned that 24% of voters haven’t even heard of their new Scottish leader Russell Findlay MSP.
As Reform continues to gain ground in GB-wide polls, with the clear aim of replacing the Conservatives as the main opposition to a besieged Labour Government, Keir Starmer may take some small cold comfort from the observation that he is slightly less unpopular in Scotland than Nigel Farage. That may yet help him shore up support among disillusioned Labour voters. Better the devil you know.