It’s been a week or so since 2025’s Scottish Labour Conference and I’ve been thinking about a few things from the weekend. The first conference since both the Scottish and UK Labour parties went from parliamentary irrelevance to Parties of Government is always going to be important in setting a direction; that’s even truer when the Scottish Election is just over a year away. This Conference was important.

Which makes it odder that Anas Sarwar’s speech is one of the least memorable parts of this year’s conference for me. There was – and I don’t think this is a criticism per se – a lot of repetition of previous pledges: reducing NHS board Numbers, driving growth, supporting a more to renewables through GB Energy. The stuff that was new was…interesting. Why it was felt that explicitly linking a project to reduce government inefficiency and bureaucracy with Trump and Elon Musk’s probably illegal and unconstitutional DOGE was a good idea, I don’t know. It has, I think, overshadowed what was otherwise a decent start to the very-long-campaign for 2026. I The DOGE comment was, for example, the only thing that was sent to me by “politically-aware, but not political” friends – 3 of them. In terms of speeches, Keir Starmer’s – who backed Ukraine, who promised support for Grangemouth workers, who was not afraid of Labour’s achievements in government over the past 8 months – was far more remarkable and visionary.

What stood out in my mind, though, didn’t take place int he Conference Hall, but at a fringe event with the Scottish Electoral Study (SES). They were delivering their analysis of the shift we saw in the 2024 General Election – and what that means (or meant) for Labour in the future. There were 2 slides from their presentation that stood out for me:

These two slides are going to be the key to the next Scottish Election. On the left is Labour’s Framing: Is Scotland heading in the right direction (with extended waiting lists; with declining education; with trains, bus and boat prices rising) or does it need a New Direction under Labour (where in England there have been 2million more NHS Appointments created; investment in green energy projects; and project and long-term investments). Most people – literally 50% – believe Scotland is heading in the wrong direction. On the Right, though, it the challenge to that framing – the SNP’s election Campaign: Is Labour Good Enough? Most people are not convinced.

And right now (bearing in mind that that this data always carried a time-lag) that is the challenge for Labour. We can say – possibly even rightly – that the UK Labour Government is a 5-year project. That, in fact, long-term strategy and not short-term tactics is actually what we need in Government, where for the past 14 years in the UK, and 18-years in Scotland, we have been government by gimmick. he magpie heuristic has dominated – where shiny new projects and announcements (or, in Scotland’s case, re-announcements) have been used to distract from the fundamental failings in our public institutions – has dominated for too long, to our detriment. That is the prose of Government.

But in Scotland, we require poetic campaigning. As great as the result of July 2024 was – we are now in March 2025; and while the SNP position has not recovered in polling at all – ours has slipped considerably. We need to offer that inspiring ‘Change’, that clear ‘New Direction’ that is credible and demonstrable. DOGE and “bonfire of the Quangos” is not going to be it – that is not good enough. That is not a message that says the current system isn’t working – but that it simply needs better managed, or a little reform. The danger is that a decent chunk of the electorate agree – and Reform is exactly what we begin to see.