Scottish Labour leader Michael Marra said voters were dissatisfied with the SNP’s record but did not see Labour as a credible alternative. He made the assessment at a Labour Friends of Scotland event during the party conference in Liverpool, after Labour’s poor result in the May Holyrood election.

Labour fell from 21 seats to 17, its worst result since devolution, and finished level with Reform UK. Its constituency vote share dropped by 2.4 percentage points to 19.2 per cent, while its regional list share fell by 1.9 points to 16 per cent. Minister Blair McDougall acknowledged failings in the campaign, saying voters also viewed Labour as centralising and insufficiently ambitious on devolution; he argued the defeat was not the fault of Marra’s predecessor Anas Sarwar or former Prime Minister Keir Starmer.