John Swinney

John Swinney became SNP leader and Scottish First Minister in May 2024, succeeding Humza Yousaf after an internal SNP crisis. He previously served as Deputy First Minister under Nicola Sturgeon and as Finance Secretary for over a decade. An Electoral Calculus MRP (fieldwork 13-31 March 2026, published 7 April 2026) projects the SNP to win 67 Holyrood seats — the first outright majority since Alex Salmond's landmark 2011 result. Swinney has framed a majority as a mandate to pursue a second independence referendum.

The 2026 Holyrood election is fought on new constituency boundaries (the first revision since 2011) with a record 39 MSPs retiring. Swinney inherited an SNP minority government operating with a nine-seat deficit. Reform UK is projected to win 14 regional seats, making it joint third-largest party at Holyrood and displacing the Scottish Conservatives as the main right-of-centre force in Scottish politics.

A majority for Swinney would carry immediate UK-wide constitutional consequences. A fresh independence referendum demand directed at Westminster, on the back of a mandate comparable to 2011, would force Rishi Sunak's successors — or any future Labour government — to either negotiate terms or explicitly refuse, reopening the question of whether the constitution of the United Kingdom can be held together by Westminster veto alone.