Anas Sarwar’s achievement in leading Scottish Labour to a seismic defeat of the SNP in the UK election is immense, but is only the first step on the road to him becoming First Minister in 2026, writes Labour Hame editor Duncan Hothersall. Scotland has woken up to a new political reality today. Across the country, to an extent nobody predicted, the message of change, of moving on from the constitutional deadlock of the last seventeen years, has finally delivered a huge Scottish majority of Labour MPs as part of the UK landslide which has sent Keir Starmer to Number 10. Every new Scottish Labou ..read more

Robert Hoskins (@hoski67) of Cathcart CLP says after years of the SNP driving wedges, one of the biggest benefits of electing Labour MPs and MSPs will be to heal the unnecessary rifts between the Holyrood and Westminster parliaments, and between Scotland and the rest of the UK. Despite the loss of the 2014 referendum on Scottish Independence, the SNP-led Scottish Government often acts as if Scotland is already an independent country. It delivers this charade through the adoption of three long term aims with regards to Scotland’s relationship with the UK. It tries firstly to amplify to Scots e ..read more

John Ruddy takes a look at recent Scottish polling against the backdrop of Labour’s continuing surge across the UK, and sees hope and ramifications. The latest polling for Labour in Scotland is excellent news, and shows that having strong, competent leaders, both at Westminster in the form of Keir Starmer and at Holyrood with Anas Sarwar, is key to the revival of Labour fortunes north of the border. But there is more to come. The latest slew of Scotland-only polls shows Labour clearly in second place in Scotland, and gaining 6 seats for a total of 7 if an election were held now. Alongside the ..read more

Graeme Downie, Scottish Labour’s candidate for West Fife and Coastal Villages in May’s local election, compares the values exposed by the last two years of Tory and SNP government to those by which the Labour Party seeks to serve. “Adversity does not build character, it reveals it” said the novelist James Lane Allen, and this applies about as clearly to the years of Covid political decision making as it does to any time of the past. It is therefore worth reflecting on what government responses over the past two years tell us about the character, and indeed values, of Scotland’s two ruling par ..read more

Labour Hame editor Duncan Hothersall says third sector organisations in Scotland are doing their noble causes untold damage by remaining hitched to one side of the constitutional debate. Saturday’s edition of The Herald carried an opinion piece from Dr Richard Dixon, the director of Friends of the Earth Scotland, which opened with a bold claim: “There is no doubt that being part of the UK has been a problem for Scotland’s ambitions on climate change and energy.” With the slick choreography which is depressingly familiar to observers of Scottish nationalism, Dr Dixon listed a series of policy ..read more

John Ruddy recently drove to Glasgow. It’s fair to say he did not have a good time. I apologise to any Glaswegians reading this, but your city is fucked. Specifically, your transport system, the lifeblood of any city, is completely screwed. It may be something only a visitor from outside the city can tell you, but what you perhaps have ended up accepting as just the normal, unavoidable situation for a city of Glasgow’s size is, in fact, not normal, not unavoidable, and definitely not healthy. Last week I had occasion to travel to Glasgow by car for the first time in many years. Before the pan ..read more

Over the last three weeks Scottish Labour members have been voting to elect their representatives on the Scottish Executive Committee. With results in today it’s looking like a big win for the Scottish Labour leadership as moderate candidates were returned across the country. Labour Hame understands the results from the CLP section to be as follows: Lothians / South of Scotland: Sheila Gilmore and Scott Arthur elected. Highlands & Islands / North East Scotland: Lynn Thomson and Deena Tissera elected. Central Scotland / Glasgow: Suzan King and James McPhilemy elected. West Scotland / Mid S ..read more

In his third article, John Andrews, a past SNP and independence supporter looking again at Labour, considers the stories independence supporters on the left tell themselves about Scottish radicalism compared to the rest of the UK, and finds them unconvincing. One of the most frequent arguments put forward by pro-independence supporters on the left is that Scotland could choose a more radical government than the UK. There have been moments of radicalism in Scotland in pockets of the country throughout history, such as the Glasgow rent strikes or the Upper Clyde shipbuilders’ work-in. But so to ..read more

The second article in a series from John Andrews, an SNP and independence supporter looking again at Labour, sees the latest pensions gambit as part of a wider picture of a party and a movement with all the power but none of the answers. When the SNP announced their pension policy shift, arguing now that UK taxpayers would pick up the bill for Scottish pensions post-independence, it reminded me of two things. First, the moment during the 2014 independence campaign when the baffling currency union policy of sharing the pound and Bank of England post-independence was announced. And second, an o ..read more

John Andrews was a Labour voter in the nineties and noughties, and since then has voted for the SNP and for independence. In the first of a series of articles for Labour Hame he puts that journey into its context and sets the current Labour leadership a challenge. While we were on a family outing recently the sat nav led me through a part of town which at one time was a tabloid favourite for notorious crime families, poverty, hopelessness and lack of aspiration. Today the street I drove down was row upon row of new-build flats and housing, a new school, a health ..read more