SNP activists say John Swinney’s framing of the by-election as a “two-horse race” between the SNP and Reform UK helped clear a path for Labour’s win – despite members warning party HQ ahead of time.
Davy Russell had won the by-election for Scottish Labour, becoming the party’s 23rd MSP with 31.5% of the total vote.
The SNP were second, with their candidate Katy Loudon picking up 29.4% of the vote, while Reform UK’s Ross Lambie was a close third with 26.2%.
The SNP had been the bookies' favourites to retain the seat, which was won by the late Scottish Government minister Christina McKelvie in the 2021 elections, and the result was a shock for campaigners and leadership alike.
Just after the results were announced, an SNP source told The National it was "time to hit the independence button," and since then, other activists have reacted to the news.
One member who was regularly on the doors said the campaign shift in the last two weeks, from highlighting Labour failures to focussing on Reform UK, "doesn’t look like the smartest move in hindsight".
Campaigners and elected representatives in the party raised the issue with the campaign team, the activist revealed, adding: "It felt like HQ were not receptive to that".
Another echoed these claims, telling The National activists were "publicly shut down" for questioning the strategy.
They said: "I was deeply sceptical of the whole 'two-horse race between us and Reform' narrative when it was being first pushed. I wasn't alone. Several of us felt the same way.
"At one point, a well-known activist was publicly shut down by the campaign management team for merely questioning the strategy.
"Throughout the campaign, it felt like if you weren't a paid staffer, your opinion meant nothing. That needs to change, in my view. Especially since this time, they were clearly very wrong."
"In my view, the real issue was the campaign’s shift in focus toward Reform in the final two weeks," an activist from Glasgow tells me.
"Early on, when we concentrated on holding Labour to account -particularly by highlighting the failures of the Labour-run South Lanarkshire Council – we saw much more enthusiasm on the doorstep.
"Dropping the focus on local issues like school bus cuts and garden waste charges in favour of putting Farage front and centre on our leaflets and comms doesn’t look like the smartest move in hindsight."
They added: "I'm not entirely convinced that going nuclear on independence now is the right approach."
Another agreed, saying the party "don't need to have a knee-jerk reaction to it".
"A definite 'back to the drawing board' needed, but hinging the outcome of one by-election result on the future of Scotland isn’t practical. Independence does need to be the focus," they argued.
Several others shared the sentiment, but others called on leadership to "put independence at the centre of what we do".
One SNP candidate said: "I can't stand 'vote X to stop X' as a message no matter who is using it. It was a big mistake for us to talk up Reform rather than hammering Labour on their dreadful record in government and betrayal of their voters.
"Every SNP campaign needs to put independence at the centre of what we do. We need to make it clear that we are forced into mitigating Westminster policies and are opposed to the managed decline of their austerity agenda."
An SNP staffer shared that while they don't like being negative, their initial thoughts were "this was one of Labour's best-performing central belt seats in 2021" and "it would also be one of Reform's best performing seats in a Scottish Parliamentary election".
They stressed that this was important, despite it being "undoubtedly discouraging", as it is "far too early to say the roof is caving in as I've seen some others suggest".
They added: "That being said, I do think the party needs to be a bit more inspirational, and there needs to be a concerted effort by Scottish Government to materially deliver on past promises.
"In my view, the churn at the top over last few years has meant promises have often been dropped just as quickly as they've been made."
Others called for "more snappy, positive messages" and questioned John Swinney's stabilising leadership as enough to head into 2026 with.
One activist from the north east said they had decided not to traveldown and help with the final push as "what I saw was a campaign that was scared to use the 'I Word'".
They said: "Any campaign that doesn't have independence front and centre is one, I wouldn't travel all that way to help out.
"A loss to such an awful and ill-prepared Labour candidate should be a wake up call to everyone."
Swinney spoke to journalists at the SNP headquarters in Edinburgh and defended his narrative over Reform.
He told the press: “Clearly, we’re disappointed that we didn’t win last night, but we made progress in the election compared to the general election last summer, and we’ve got to build on that and make sure that we strengthen our support in advance of 2026.
“So the SNP made progress last night, but it’s not nearly enough and we’ve got to build on that.”
Asked if it was a mistake to call the by-election a “two-horse race”, he said: “I called it the way I saw it.
“The way I saw it was the Labour vote was collapsing compared to the general election last summer, which it did, it was down 20%. We saw the Reform vote surging, which it has.
“And in that context, I thought the SNP was best placed to see off Reform because of the scale of collapse in the Labour vote.”
The SNP's campaign chief, Jamie Hepburn, also reacted to his party's by-election loss, addressing the lack of focus on independence during the campaign.
MSP Hepburn, who previously served as Scotland's first independence minister before First Minister John Swinney scrapped the role last year, said that when looking towards the 2026 election, "I think when we get into that context, people will be thinking differently and independence will be part of that campaign."
Hepburn added: "We'll need to consider the proposition that we've laid out at this by-election, and how that may influence the propositions we lay out at the coming general election next year that we know is ahead of us.
"It's just the morning after the night before, so we'll take some time to consider that."
