Scottish nationalists won a third term in power but lost their outright majority Friday in one of a series of local and regional elections seen as a key test for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
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Although the SNP picked up six other constituencies, those three losses cost Nicola Sturgeon as her party finished on 63 seats – two short of an overall majority.
The SNP have a commanding lead in terms of seats at Holyrood but they do not command the parliament.
Campaigners mounted a legal challenge to his result in the 2015 general election, after he lied over the leaking of a memo which falsely claimed Nicola Sturgeon had told the French ambassador she would prefer Conservative leader David Cameron to the then Labour leader Ed Miliband as prime minister.
There had been an assumption that with another overall majority the SNP would have a “mandate” to demand one at some point during this five-year parliament (assuming the right conditions were in place), the precedent being the 2011 election.
The Tory added: “We’ve deprived @theSNP of a majority”.
She backed income tax rises for not just the wealthiest Scots but basic rate taxpayers, saying this was needed to prevent cuts in public services such as schools and the NHS.
Shadow Scotland secretary Ian Murray laid blame for the defeat at the feet of Mr Corbyn. Ruth Davidson’s Conservatives are now the official Holyrood opposition, with seven seats more than Labour.So what happened?
The result of the election was emphatic – the people of Scotland once again placed their trust in the SNP to govern our country.
Among the announced seats, the Scottish Conservative Party garnered 16 and the Scottish Labour Party 11 seats.
Sian Berry, the Green’s candidate for the London mayoral elections, is on course to come in third place after Sadiq Khan and Zac Goldsmith.
Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson, who now leads the main opposition, said changes to the controversial named person legislation would be among the priorities on her agenda.
“There are many results still to be declared but what is now beyond doubt is that the SNP has won a third consecutive Scottish Parliament election”.
“I would imagine by the end of it all, we will be looking at a very similar position”, he explained.
Scottish Labour, meanwhile, had a predictably bad night, but not as bad as some expected (they didn’t lose, for example, every mainland constituency) Its leader, Kezia Dugdale, emerges undeniably weakened but not fatally so.
There was also success for the Liberal Democrats, with Scottish leader Willie Rennie winning back the North East Fife seat from the SNP, while children’s charity worker Alex Cole-Hamilton won Edinburgh Western from the nationalists. Plaid Cymru are now in second with six, the Conservatives have six and the Liberal Democrats have one.
“Their argument that Labour should be doing better, though, especially considering Conservative divisions over Europe in recent weeks, will continue to resonate”, he said.
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It is a decent result for the pro-independence Greens, whose membership quadrupled after the referendum, but not as meteoric as the party had hoped, with the failure to secure a second MSP in Glasgow a particular disappointment.
