“Frankly, things will get worse before they get better.” Keir Starmer’s bleak warning to the UK public arises from the belief Labour must blame the outgoing Conservatives for enduring austerity policies to uphold its own fiscal discipline and governing competence.
The prospect of more cuts and Starmer’s failure to express a hopeful vision to justify them is worrying his supporters. They say it detracts from the five governing missions Labour set out before the election: driving economic growth, green energy investment, rebooting the National Health Service, creating safer streets, and delivering opportunity for all through a new skills agenda.
Such austerity makes it more difficult for Labour to consolidate what was an equally significant victory in the UK election: its defeat of the Scottish National Party in Scotland. The SNP lost a third of its votes to Labour, which doubled its share to win 37 seats at Westminster compared with the SNP’s nine (the 2019 result had the SNP on 48 seats with Labour on one).
This was the only part of the UK where Labour actually increased its overall vote on 2019, thereby bolstering the argument that this year’s election was one the Conservatives lost rather than Labour won. The highly disproportionate first-past-the-post electoral system largely delivered Labour’s big Westminster majority on a low 59 per cent turnout and with much tactical voting.
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Scotland’s proportional representation system delivers a more equitable result and eyes are now turning to the 2026 parliament elections there. If Labour can oust the SNP as the main governing party, then it will bolster the unionist argument that Scottish independence has been seen off for another generation – thus saving the UK’s union from break-up and paving the way towards a longer-term reform of its structures.
The likelihood of that happening will turn on two main factors. The first is how the SNP and Labour deliver on their respective policies in the meantime and how those deliveries affect Scottish voters. The second is whether the continuing support for independence by 50 per cent of Scots (especially younger ones) is modified by such transactional politics.
Research shows Scots are divided between Scottish sovereigntists and British unionists, with a large undecided group in between. Many who voted Labour this July actually support independence but give priority to delivery on more pressing health, welfare and educational issues.
The politics of the left-right and nationalist-unionist cleavages could be seen playing out in this week’s announcement of £500 million spending cuts by Scotland’s finance secretary Shona Robison, made legally necessary by Labour in Westminster. “Labour austerity is as dangerous as Tory austerity” she said. Scottish Labour dismissed this as a shameless passing of the buck. But Scottish Labour MPs are joining a developing chorus of backbench disapproval for Starmer’s fiscal rectitude, mindful of their strategic electoral competition with the SNP.
The SNP leader John Swinney, fresh from his party’s weekend conference that saw a chastened and reduced membership debate its evident internal failings, undertook in his first programme for government to concentrate on reducing child poverty, grow the economy, tackle the climate crisis and improve public services. He insists Scottish independence is “the route to a stronger and fairer country”. The SNP became a catch-all party to attract support from various Scottish social and regional interests, constraining its left-wing, social democratic credentials. It is sustained by the continuing public support for independence and needs to demonstrate that can indeed deliver on strength and fairness.
Scottish Labour relies on Starmer’s government to deliver greater respect for devolution than the Conservatives’ assertive unitary unionism. But its most committed unionist theorists realise this will be difficult without more far-reaching measures to underwrite a multinational UK system in such an over-centralised state. This is made more difficult by parlous economic circumstances when Labour must also prioritise English interests and regions. It is therefore much too early to assume the SNP’s current weakness will last, so guaranteeing survival of the UK’s union. The SNP is marginally ahead of Labour in the latest polls. It follows that the 2026 elections, and by implication the constitutional question, remain all to play for.
A more realistic scenario for the next decade would see a likely two-term Labour government statecraft struggling to deliver enhanced state functionality, coherence and equality to English regions and devolved nations, constrained by economic recovery. Northern Ireland, as part of that system, and this State as it debates possible reunification, will be drawn into that transactional politics through preparations for the new Ireland that would emerge from a UK break-up or a reformed UK union.
Either outcome would have to cater for continuing functional and affective interdependencies between the two islands with new institutions and links. For these reasons, Ireland and Scotland will probably have more converging politics over this coming period.