Scottish politics is finally competitive again and voters will punish an exhausted ruling party.


If 2023 was an annus horribilis for the SNP, 2024 hardly looks like it will be much better.
Scotland’s governing party has laboured under 12 months of scandal, policy failure and police investigation. Its poll ratings have plummeted, and after 16 years in office its political dominance appears to be ending.
If much of the damage has been self-inflicted, through a mixture of arrogance, complacency and incompetence, the Nats are also suffering from a reality that confronts all parties that remain in power beyond a sensible time span – the voters have grown tired of them and their particular obsessions, the party has run out of dynamic and interesting ideas, and the quality of its front-line personnel has sharply diminished.