‘Disastrous’: John Swinney facing SNP backlash after Hamilton byelection loss
SNP activists and senior figures have vented their frustrations at their leader, John Swinney, after a “disastrous” byelection campaign that saw the party lose a pivotal Holyrood seat to Scottish Labour.The party was also accused of running a “panicked” campaign that some believe pushed more voters towards Reform in last Thursday’s Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse byelection.SNP members are voicing criticisms of the result at branch meetings, with Swinney expected to face robust questioning at the SNP’s national executive committee meeting on Sunday.Central to members’ concerns was the key campaign message that the byelection was a two-horse race between the SNP and Reform UK, which has been gaining ground in Scotland since last year’s general election.That was coupled with the party’s failure to promote independence as an alternative to the rightwing populist party’s divisive rhetoric.
In the event, Scottish Labour’s popular local candidate, Davy Russell, pulled off an unexpected victory, beating the Nationalists’ Katy Loudon by 600 votes, with Reform UK’s Ross Lambie 800 votes behind her.Since last Thursday’s result, Swinney has faced calls to resign from veteran SNP critics as well as feverish speculation about plots among senior party figures to oust him.The former SNP MP Tommy Sheppard, writing in the National earlier this week, branded the strategy a “disaster”.“The message to anyone flirting with Reform UK is that they are a serious contender, best placed to upset the SNP.We make their argument for them.
”One experienced campaigner said: “People think the party got it wrong this time,” They argued, however, that members remained willing to give Swinney initial time to reflect, before adding “if he digs his heels in around strategy and doesn’t listen, it will be a very different mood”,Others pointed out that, compared with the “off-the-scale” internal divisions experienced by the party towards the end of Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership and under her successor, Humza Yousaf, current discontent is relatively minimal,In a modest reshuffle on Wednesday morning, Swinney created an elevated role as cabinet secretary for housing for the rising star Màiri McAllan as she returned from maternity leave, signalling a renewed focus on voter priorities ahead of next May’s Holyrood elections,The Guardian understands that Swinney faced criticism of the Hamilton strategy at a “fractious” MSP group meeting on Tuesday.
There he repeated his insistence that the Reform-focused strategy was led by what canvassers were hearing on the doorstep.But one senior backbencher suggested that Swinney had “panicked” at the growing support for Reform – who secured 26% of the vote last week – especially after their strong showing in the English council elections, which took place just as the Hamilton campaign was gaining momentum.“He talked about Reform too much and not enough about Katy.We didn’t give people a reason to vote for us.”At this Sunday’s meeting of senior party officials, insiders expect “a demand for a clearer vision, focused on independence”.
Stewart McDonald, the influential former SNP MP, praised Swinney’s leadership as having broought calm after “an incredibly turbulent few years”, but said he urgently needed to give party and government “a renewed sense of purpose”.“The party’s campaign infrastructure is dated, tired, analogue and it needs to be modernised.Labour outgunned us on the ground in Hamilton and we cannot let that happen in 2026.For the government, people need to start seeing tangible improvements in their living standards and in public services.He has started that process but now needs to put it on steroids.
This is the most effective way to ensure we win next year and answer many of the grievances that are driving so many people to Reform: a laserlike focus on making Scotland better”,Another former MP said Swinney had to pivot fast: “It’s either that or lose the next election,The party failed to act after Rutherglen [another bellweather byelection defeat, in 2023] and the MPs lost,We can’t afford to lose the Scottish government so this is the last-chance saloon,”
How to Train Your Dragon to Neil Young: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
How to Train Your DragonOut now This live-action remake was shot by Bill Pope, the cinematographer behind films as diverse as Clueless, The Matrix and Spider-Man 3, with puppets used on set to give the actors something to work with before painting in the CGI. Starring Mason Thames, Gerard Butler and Nick Frost.Film on Film WeekendBFI Southbank, London, 14 & 15 JuneA whole weekend of films screening exclusively from actual physical prints? Sign us up. Physical film in a digital world is a use-it-or-lose-it kind of treasure, so to see the likes of Star Wars screened from prints, vote with your wallet and get down to the BFI.LollipopOut now Daisy-May Hudson based this portrait of a woman trying to regain custody of her kids on her own experiences of the social care system, with Posy Sterling giving a barnstorming performance as a woman who can’t get a bigger flat because she doesn’t have her children with her, and can’t get her kids back because her flat is too small
British Library to reinstate Oscar Wilde’s reader card 130 years after it was revoked
The British Library is to symbolically reinstate Oscar Wilde’s reader pass, 130 years after its trustees cancelled it following his conviction for gross indecency.A contemporary pass bearing the name of the Irish author and playwright will be officially presented to his grandson, Merlin Holland, at an event in October, it will be announced on Sunday.Rupert Everett, who wrote, directed and starred as Wilde in The Happy Prince – the acclaimed 2018 film about the writer’s tragic final years in exile – will play a part in the ceremony.Holland is an expert on Wilde whose publications include The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. Asked how his grandfather might have reacted to the pass being reinstated, he said: “He’d probably say ‘about time too’
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‘Difficult love’: Spanish publisher reprints groundbreaking book of Lorca’s homoerotic sonnets
In the autumn of 1983, dozens of carefully chosen readers received an envelope containing a slim, red booklet of sonnets that had been locked away since they were written almost 50 years earlier by the most famous Spanish poet of the 20th century.While those behind the initiative gave no clue as to their identities, their purpose was made abundantly clear in the dedication on the booklet’s final page: “This first edition of the Sonnets of Dark Love is being published to remember the passion of the man who wrote them.”Here at last, lovingly pirated and printed in blood-red ink, were the deeply homoerotic and anguished verses that Federico García Lorca had completed not long before he was murdered in the early days of the Spanish civil war.To commemorate the anonymous effort, to revisit a peculiar episode in Spain’s literary history, and to bring the poems to a new audience, a Galician publisher has now brought out a perfect facsimile edition of that groundbreaking 42-year-old booklet.Although long known to Lorca scholars – not least because they had been published in French two years earlier – Los Sonetos del Amor Oscuro had been hidden away by the poet’s family, who believed their tortured and sensual lines would taint his legacy and stir up old hatreds
Seth Meyers on Trump’s deployment of troops to LA: ‘About spectacle and power and nothing else’
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