The Changemakers
When we get bored in the summer silly season, we often start poking around in stats. This week we’d been pondering the complete waste of everyone’s time Anas Sarwar’s four and a half years in charge of Scottish Labour have been, and the open goal he’s missed in failing to capitalise on a period of constant chaos and turmoil for the SNP.
That got us to thinking about which leaders in the Scottish Parliament era have made a significant difference (in either direction) to the fortunes of their parties, and from there it was pretty short work to illustrate it in the form of a graph.
It rather leaps out at you, doesn’t it?
Alex Salmond didn’t just bring about the biggest increase in any party’s support since Holyrood came into being 26 years ago, he pulled off the doubly difficult task of doing it twice in a row. After taking over from the disastrous leadership of John Swinney (and we rather suspect that won’t be the last time anyone will hear THAT phrase used) it was arguably a relatively easy task to drag SNP up by almost 10 points in 2007, but even from that high he managed the extraordinary task of adding another 13 points after four challenging years leading a minority government.
Only Ruth Davidson (9.4 points in 2016) and Tommy Sheridan (5 points in 2003) have come even remotely close to such advances for their parties.
The worst leaders have been equally easy to spot. The biggest failure of all was Kezia Dugdale who managed to lose Labour more than 8 points in 2016 despite only having the hapless Iain Gray to follow. (She actually took over from Jim Murphy, who never fought a Holyrood election, but she still contrived to lose almost four points from his record low showing in 2015, when Labour dropped from 41 Scottish MPs to just one. And Murphy was never an MSP, so as his deputy Dugdale was effectively in charge at Holyrood when he was leader.)
Tavish Scott of the Lib Dems is close on her heels, losing more than seven points in 2011 after having refused to work with the SNP in 2007 and casting the Lib Dems from government to irrelevance. Jack McConnell comes in as third-bottom, albeit by having had two elections to lose votes in. Next worst is Colin Fox, who pulled off a similar trick to Tavish Scott but with the SSP, and then John Swinney, who dropped nearly six points even compared to his own disappointing 1999 debut.
Swinney will almost certainly, however, sink to the very bottom next year. The SNP are currently polling at around 12 points below their 2021 figure, although the responsibility is shared between himself, Sturgeon (who never presided over an increase in the SNP vote share, recording drops of 0.6 and 0.1 points in her two Holyrood elections) and Humza Yousaf, the Iain Gray of the SNP. But Swinney’s likely cumulative loss of circa 18 points will make Kezia Dugdale look positively competent by comparison, and make him the statistically worst leader in Holyrood history.
It’s against that backdrop that the magnitude of Anas Sarwar’s failure should really be judged. Even with the SNP’s support in freefall, Labour’s current polling is basically unchanged from 2021 as Sarwar has sat back and relied on not being the SNP as his sole detectable policy platform, with Reform looking like being the main beneficiaries of his lazy complacency.
(Nigel Farage will likely overtake Ruth Davidson for second place at the same time.)
But what the graph really shows is how little most Scottish political leaders manage to achieve, even inside the narrow frame of their own party’s benefit. Just two people in the last 20 years have seriously improved their party’s standing, and only one of them ever achieved power.
You never know what you have until it’s gone, folks.
Sarwar won’t attack the SNP – Scottish Labour and the SNP are one and the same thing.
Marie,
Tories, greens and lib dems are in that mixing bowl as well.
Rainbow parties behind the scenes. None of them seriously are an opposition party in Scotland just like Parties around the rest of Britain,
They leave openings in proposed legislation as they go out, ready for the next incomer party to use if they want or need to use it,
Prepared groundwork, better together,
Hard to dispute, even if cynical.
Oh I don’t disagree. The status quo is maintained by political parties helping each other behind the scenes. I clearly remember Alec saying that about Westminster. Holyrood is now just the same now.
I believe that the online hate crime bill that labour used was a tory idea that has been extended.
British Labour in Scotland can’t be seen to be publicly attacking their devolutionist plants and partners in the nuSNP now, can they?, they’ve got a coalition to form next year after all.
Clearly we need a cheerful, hugely energetic, personality to lead our cause.
I have to sigh at the loss of Iain Lawson as well as of Alex.
Who is there in Scotland with these characteristics? There’s plenty with the intelligence and probably enough energy, but cheerful and magnetic?
Could Brian Cox [actor not scientist!] help?
Suggestions, anyone?
Donald Trump.
Upbeat, positive, loves golf. Loves money even more. Admittedly the first two don’t play well with us Scots, but the latter two more than compensate.
The biggliest personality around.
He likes to kick ass too. Again, we Scots have kinda moved away from that. But we used to excel at it in our colonising prime, so maybe we can get it back.
Have you ever considered that the ones to actually achieve independence for Scotland might not be «Scottish» in the conventional sense?
Outsiders may well be better able to see the forest rather than just the individual trees which so many ardent tree splitters in Scotland are prone to do.
Scottish politics is afflicted by the particular to the general mindset rather than the general to the particular.
It is why the British as a «nation» are inept at planning; the idea comes first, the how second, lose sight of the idea and the rest is vacuous rhetoric.
@ TURABDIN says:3 August, 2025 at 2:51 pm
“Have you ever considered that the ones to actually achieve independence for Scotland might not be «Scottish» in the conventional sense?”
Of course I have, TURABDIN, and I’ve posted here about it too.
In essence, my belief is that when a sufficiently critical mass of New Scots forms, they will democratically drive Indy themselves, pulling up the drawbridge behind them to isolate England as she descends into civil war.
This is based on what I believe to be self-evident: immigrants are usually smarter and are ALWAYS better motivated and driven than the supine mass of entitled, indigenous people. NOBODY emigrates to make their lives worse.
Where I differ from many Wings BTL posters is that when I look at the options for these New Scots, white, Christian-heritage, mostly civilised English or third-world, sub-Saharan, medieval Muslims, I choose the white English every time. Again, my reasons are self-evidently obvious, but that doesn’t stop the rabid, spittle-spraying English haters from kicking up a strop.
Boo fucking hoo.
Postcolonial theory (Memmi) is pretty clear on the objective of the colonialist, that:
“the se**ler only moves to the colony for an easier life… and to make a profit”;
And in regard to the oppressed colonized group:
“his liberation is a matter only for the colonized”
“the se**ler only moves to the colony for an easier life… and to make a profit”
No shit, Sherlock!
Still, you do have to wonder at all the eejits who have been swallowing the rubbish about se**lers being necessary to keep the economy afloat and services running for the past 30 years.
Do they really believe the hordes of dinghy occupants are in the grip of uncontrollable altruistic and charitable motives?
Donald Trump?! Laughing here. You clearly are not aware of the looting of America he and his idiot cohorts, employed purely for their lack of talent or ability, are doing. There is a woman named Heather Cox Richardson on Facebook who does a daily roundup of the atrocities he does to avoid releasing the Epstein Files, everything from legally attacking people who he has tangled with in the past to murdering folk in boats he claims (with no evidence) are drug dealers to sending the National Guard into states as a show of farcical force. The man is deranged scum. No two ways about it. He’s a sex pest, a nutcase, and is declining mentally. He can barely string two sentences together that make any sense anymore.
He couldn’t care less about Scotland. The only thing he cares about is himself, and enriching himself: end of story. He has zero business skills. He’s a creep, a conman, a grifter, a spoiled born-rich, always-bankrupt, lying, thieving dolt. He cares so much about the land of his “seriously Scotch” mother he never even set foot here until he built his first nature-destroying golf course here in 2012 – when he was 66 years old. What an amazing connection he has to this fine windblown golf-home vista! He would never have even come here were it not for golf having been born here. The man is psychotic narcissist vermin, he’s destroying America with his Keystone Kops Kabinet, and he should be kept as far away from these shores as possible. Forever. Trump! Genuinely laughing out loud here. Grow up, trollboy. We know you hate Scotland and don’t want us independent, just like the yanks don’t, but GET A GRIP.
Sarah @ 13.25.
I doubt that Mr Cox, the actor resident in New York, would be an ideal spokesperson for Scottish Independence; having been widely reported in November 2022 as stating that he did not consider himself a Scottish nationalist, being an Anglophile. He is quoted as saying that he does not favour Scots independence, but rather a move to a Federal system.
He further disclosed that he did not wish to break up the Union, but rather to have a different type of Union.
BRIAN COX, the one who is not the physicist, is 80, is that honestly the best Scots can come up with? The country needs an Alexander the Great, or someone like, a man who died at age 32 having created an empire still awsome even today.
Why do some think «small» on what is a not small matter.
Mr Cox is also a big fan of the vichy ex deviant pervert I believe
There’s always Peter A Bell…
IMO, there is one person the hierarchy of the SNP and the Westminster establishment are highly wary of, is Joanne Cherry, but after the way the SNP treated her, I don’t if she would be up for the gig.
How about Professor Richard Murphy?
We dinna need celebs or SNP vetted nodding donkeys wha dinna e’en ken whit independence means.
There are plenty of Scots with valuable real world experience coming forward and standing in the Liberate Scotland cross-party alliance who are determined to deliver on a single mandate to end the union charade:
link to barrheadboy.com
No discussion of Scotland’s politics can be complete without consideration of Jezzah’s and Sultana’s new Lefty McLeftface party.
It seemingly already has 600,000 supporters. Simple arithmetic tells us that’s near 60,000 in Scotland. The majority of them won’t be white, white, white either, so they’ll be far more committed, organised and driven than your average stereotypically cringing Scot.
Reform shouldn’t be counting their chickens. May 2026 is still a long way away.
“600,000 supporters”????? Of a “political party” that doesn’t even have a name?
More like 6,000 actual members.
You have to be really stupid to believe Jezzah’s lies.
A really good leader would have understood the essential requirement to be receptive to identifying and nurturing new talent and ideas for the future, so a political void wouldn’t form when they are no longer in the game.
A political party being allowed to perform well within the limited devolved powers framework of Scotland’s poundshop parliament paradigm is one thing, but it doesn’t allow for more significant societal changes for the betterment of Scotland which would be possible if control of all major powers that are reserved to London Rule were available.
Two land reform acts passed by Scottish Parliament yet still more of Scotland is owned by fewer folk.
Our energy resources continue to be exploited with little discernable benefit to Scots.
A country evermore covered in renewable power generation infrastructure, yet still has to use diesel trains because the rail network isn’t electrified north of Dunblane.
Untreated effluent still pumped into our rivers through archaic infrastructure, yet the Scottish Water bosses get big bonuses, and implement using shitey leccy fleet vehicles to “save the planet”.
The old guard in Westminster need to keep the SNP in power because the snp in its current form will bark about independence until the end of days but will never go through the open garden gate.
A consistent factor in Holyrood over its entire existence has been Whitehall civil servants who run the show, draft the legislation, implement it and spend the money on the usual stuff, meanwhile telling Ministers what they can and cannot do, all in line with projecting the values and protecting the interests of Westminster rule over an annexed Scotland.
Hence irrespective of wha’s bums sit in Holyrood or wha is pairty leader it is aye a colonial administration, Rev.
Thought this was one of those articles that let a graph leap out at you to show a clear picture.
However 4th and 5th most successful duo’s of Harvie/ Chap-person and Harvie/ Slater surely is an arithmetical aberration in any list of so called “successful”party leaders..
The problem for the nationalist movement as a whole and thus for any realistic prospect of achieving independence in the short to medium term is surely the paucity of talented, charismatic people to drive the cause forward?
They certainly won’t be coming from within the ranks of the SNP, but to be brutally honest I can’t think of many (any?) other individuals I can honestly see standing on the steps of Bute House or the Scottish Parliament reading the Scottish equivalent of the proclamation of Irish independence issued during the Easter Rising, can you?
A tour d’horizon of the Scottish political scene doesn’t turn up many individuals like Lech Walensa, Vaclav Havel, or the leaders of the Catalan independence movement who were jailed or forced to flee abroad after their abortive declaration of independence.
Milquetoast devolutionists of the type currently steering the SNP will never deliver independence. Indeed they couldn’t even be trusted to increase the amount of devolution we currently have, nor to govern competently even were such extra powers somehow wrung out of Westminster.
Real change presupposes the leadership of “real” nationalists: people who are prepared to tell, not ask. People with the moral courage and charisma to lead a mass movement which commands a clear majority mobilised behind a clear vision and an absolute commitment to achieving independence in the shortest possible time.
If anyone can point out who these people are, it’d be a great start.
Some already stepped up because they could see what was going on, but as pretty much all of the supposed “leaders”, “influencers”, and commentators of the Indy movement have their heads so far up their own arse they didn’t notice and even begin to try to build awareness and support for new faces.
So aye, let’s point them out so you and your muckers can start finding fault with them, because let’s face it, it’s highly likely nobody will ever meet your exacting standards.
You have continuously commented on every subject relating to Scottish independence, that you are aware of what the majority of independence supporters think and are willing to accept on any proposal or thought that may be proffered
You take great delight in denigrating and demeaning every promotion or avenue being attempted by individuals or organisations in the furtherance of independence
You align with other Scotland haters whose sole intention is to undermine and sabotage any and all avenues to attain independence, you assert with assurance what various international organisations are willing to accept or deny in evidence in Scotland’s fight for independence, you have commented repeatedly that a plebiscite election is the way forward, with all your various self declared educated assertions and knowledge that you claim to have and your insistence that you are privy to people’s thoughts and wants surely it is incumbent on you to put yourself forward for election, or better still form a NEW independence party to free the people of Scotland
Just think of the notoriety and gratitude that would be forthcoming from the people
And Dippy Dugdale whom a judge proposed doesn’t understand what she is saying and who holds the record for losing support gets the job in Glasgow University to show our emerging political talent how it’s done???
Of relevance not least to women is this recent dramatised TG4 documentary on Éamon de Valera’s role in Irish independence. Central to it is the role of many superb women who supported de Valera, but who were eventually politically betrayed by him. Such aspirational hope and unbearable disappointment. A story of Irish tragedy on so many levels. The title means ‘De Valera in the Wilderness’. (Many contributors use English, but to activate general English subtitles please click on white rectangle at bottom right of screen).
DE VALERA SAN FHÁSACH PART 1
An chéad chlár i sraith staire faoi shaol polaitiúil De Valera sna blianta 1924 go 1926. Bhí De Valera sa bpríosún in 1924. Ní raibh aon chumhacht aige agus bhí sé in ísle brí ach bhí grúpa mná a bhí páirteach in Éirí Amach na Cásca agus i gCogadh na Saoirse a thacaigh leis. Nuair a síníodh an Conradh Angla-Eireannach thaobhaigh na mná seo le De Valera arís.
The first episode in this history features the political life of De Valera during the years 1924 to 1926. De Valera was in prison in 1924. Bereft of power and at a low ebb, he got support from a group of women who had taken part in the Easter Rising and the War for Freedom. These women again sided with De Valera when the Anglo-American Accord was signed by Collins.
link to tg4.ie
DE VALERA SAN FHÁSACH (PART 2)
Feictear athbheochan pholaitiúil De Valera sa dara chuid den tsraith seo. Tháinig De Valera ar ais go láidir nuair a bhunaigh sé Fianna Fáil agus feictear mar a ghlac an páirtí leis an Mion Dílseachta. Ach d’airigh na mná a thacaigh le De Valera nach raibh an tír ag teacht leis an bhfís a leagadh amach sa bforógra in 1916.
We see De Valera’s unprecedented political comeback in this second installment. He founds the Fianna Fáil party and somehow finally accepts the Oath of Allegience to the British monarch. The key women who had previously supported De Valera now sadly witness the country departing from the Declaration of 1916, traditional Catholic Church morality being imposed, and the role of women in politics being marginalised.
link to tg4.ie
What happened to the enigmatic Richard Leonard’s ownership of the Labour party as a sub-group of the British Labour Party? Does he not make the charts as a loser?
Tavish Scott had a lot of help from Nick Clegg and the coalition at Westminster, though he might have managed all by himself too.
I’d put a question mark over Davidson’s Tory resurrection. If memory serves me right, that was Theresa May’s snap election with busloads of “dark money” and dodgy bungs sloshing about Scotland, and leaving a bad smell once the ballots were ahem, “counted”.
(Wasn’t that when the unprecedented 96% Postal Votes received Election? Kinda think it was you know… Dodgy as Fk.)
Davidson had no leadership talent. None. Tory talk of her even being PM one day was simply farcical. Just another deeply flawed narcissist on the make.
But we live under UK Democracy. The best that money can buy…
Again, if the foggy old memory serves again, that Sturgeon creature gave Davidson a free pass, and screwed the SNP turnout with her complacency and hubris. In the interests of fairness, I’m sure some of that + blue % should more properly be counted as Sturgeon’s influence, not Davidson’s.
Alex. A big fish in a small pond. Can’t believ it yet and since we have had Nicoliar. Yousless and now mr Swine’y. Now making it the Scottis non-national party