JOHN Swinney has ruled out a coalition with Reform UK after the next Holyrood election, but has not appeared to do the same with Scottish Labour.
Appearing at a live recording of the Holyrood Sources podcast in Edinburgh on Wednesday, the First Minister was asked by a member of the audience if he would consider joining forces with Scottish Labour after the next election to get his party over the line.
Initially, Swinney said discussions around a potential pact were based on “scenarios thrown up after the election”.
“I want to do spectacularly well in 2026, that’s what my sights are on," he said.
“Whatever else the election throws up, then we’ll deal with that.”
But on Reform UK, he said: “I’m not going to engage roundabout Farage and Reform, I won’t engage with them."
When pressed further on potentially working with Anas Sarwar’s party, Swinney pointed to the SNP’s minority government, which was in office between 2007 and 2011, a period where he was finance secretary and had “all sorts of folk voting for my lovely budgets”.
Recent polling ahead of the election in May still has the SNP as the largest party after a reversal in Labour’s fortunes, but the surge of Reform UK has seen them jump into second place in terms of support in some surveys.
Swinney admitted the polls were not where he would like them to be.
“I’m not sitting here saying to you where we are in the polls now is just fine for me – it’s not,” he said.
“It’s not acceptable for me, I need to get us into a stronger position.”
Pointing to the recent Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election – which the SNP lost to Labour – the First Minister said the party was not planning for it to be sparked, which came after the death of SNP MSP Christina McKelvie, but he would be ready for next year.
Later in the same podcast, the possibility of a coalition was put to Sarwar, who said he believed the situation simply wouldn’t arise for such a move – describing it as “mad” – and reiterating his stance that Labour would seek to lead a minority administration if it could.
The next parliament, he said, would be a “parliament of minorities”.
“Of course, with any minority government, you will have to find areas of consensus to make improvements in Scotland,” he said.
“But I genuinely believe, if we get a change of government next year and we are in a parliament of minorities … depending on leaderships and how people choose to act after there’s been a change of government in Scotland, I genuinely believe that there will be a scope and an appetite to get things done in our country.”
