Tag Archives: 2026 holyrood elections

Well, I’m back from my count where I saved my deposit and came within a couple of hundred votes of beating the Conservatives.

I am beyond exhausted, but I will try and pull together what we know so far.

Scotland

The bad news is that we have lost Shetland.  It will seem like a big shock to everyone to lose a seat that we have represented in Westminster for 75 years and in Holyrood since devolution. I feel for Emma Macdonald, who ran a busy and beautiful campaign.  I think there was some worry about Shetland at the start of the campaign but that we had become more confident. It’s a huge loss, let’s make no bones about it.

In the other group of Northern Isles, Liam McArthur was returned with what I think is the highest percentage vote share of any MSP ever – 70.9%.

He is one of 5 MSPs we have at 5:30 pm. This is one more than we had in 2021 and means that we will be an officially recognised group from the start of the new Parliament.

The others are Sanne Dijkstra-Downie who gained the new seat of Edinburgh Northern which was notionally SNP, Alex Cole-Hamilton, who now enjoys a 13,000 majority in Edinburgh North Western, Willie Rennie who won Fife North East with 63.7% of the vote and an increased majority and Adam Harley, who has just won the constituency of Strathkelvin and Bearsden for the first time in the history of the Scottish Parliament from the SNP.

It’s looking that we might also soon win in Caithness, according to the BBC. Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch and Inverness and Nairn are two horse races between us and the SNP.

Alan Reid missed out on winning Argyll and Bute by 2.500 votes, a seat he held at Westminster between 2001 and 2015.

And they haven’t started on the lists yet, where we hope to pick up another few seats.

Wales

I’m beyond gutted that we didn’t win our two biggest prospects for gains, Sam Bennett in Swansea and Rodney Berman in Cardiff. However, thankfully, Jane Dodds has got back in in the last seat in her constituency so we will still have representation. It’s such a shame that this will be the third term that we have had a sole representative in the Senedd. She will no doubt have an important role, though given the overall numbers between Plaid and Reform.

England

Overall, we are 92 Councillors up, but London seems to be a tale of two halves. In the south, we’ve already had almost North Korean results in Richmond and Sutton – a testament to the brilliant work of our councillors. Kingston added to that with 44 out of 48.