Still desperately seeking socialism in Scotland

Introduction

If a film was to be made about the plight of the radical left on 7 May 2026, it would no doubt be called ‘Still desperately seeking socialism in Scotland’. Twenty-three years on from the highpoint of 6 Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) being elected with 128,026 list votes, the path seems to have been an ever downward one despite the crying need for socialism and social democracy as capitalism continues in its neoliberal form and is plagued by crises which workers patently pay the price for.

From the 1820 ‘Radical War’ which was the first ever general strike in the world (Davidson and Allison, 2020, 2022) through to ‘Red Clydeside’ of the period of the First World War and after and then on to the likes of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in of 1971–1972 and the Lee Jeans workplace occupation in Greenock in 1981, there have always been momentous events to feed the perception that society in Scotland, essentially that of the Central Belt, has a significant ‘red thread’ continuing to run through it (Gall, 2005). Indeed, some like the followers of John Maclean called Scotland a ‘proletarian nation’. Figures like Maclean, James Connolly, Willie Gallacher and Jimmy Reid have been seen as the personification of the salient events and processes. The SSP breakthrough in 2003 was the latest in the line making up the ‘red thread’.

Though these historical and contemporary dimensions now clash and collide, elections remain an important opportunity to not only test the degree of traction for socialist politics but also constitute a periodic occasion to advance the cause of those politics.

From 1999 onwards, this has been ever more the case as the reconstituted Scottish Parliament has used a proportional representation voting system for the 56 MSPs elected on the regional list seats. With a threshold of around 6% to secure the last seat on the list in any one of the eight regions, minority parties can credibly seek election to the Parliament in contrast to the other 73 constituency seats which use the first-past-the-post voting system. The prospects of success for minority parties on the list seats are increased further as the D’Hondt distribution method is used meaning that success for a party in the constituencies limits how many lists MSPs they can gain. There is also no £500 deposit to be paid to stand on the list seats (as there is in a constituency seat).

Yet since late 2004, when the SSP experienced its own ‘9/11’ on 9 November 2004, ¹ the trajectory for the whole of the radical left at the ballot box (as well as outside it) in Scotland has been a steady downward one. The seventh general election to the Scottish Parliament continued this catastrophe. Indeed, the contemporary standard-bearers of the radical left – the likes of George Galloway and Tommy Sheridan – were not much in evidence in this election campaign. They were not out ‘on the stump’ engaging in the ‘ground war’ even if they fought an ‘air war’ by digital means. This did not mean the situation was any better for the rest of the radical left, especially the long-standing SSP. Sheridan has never stood for election outside of Scotland while Galloway frequently has.

The Seventh Scottish Parliament elections

Overall, the 2026 Scottish Parliaments elections proved a disappointment for all the main parties apart from the Scottish Greens, Reform and Liberal Democrats. While the Scottish National Party (SNP) was again the largest party with 58 of the 129 seats, it was 7 seats short of a majority. This represented a fall of six seats since the 2021 elections. In the constituency seats, the SNP’s vote share was commonly down by 10%, with many voters switching to the Scottish Greens or Reform. Because of the d’Hondt system, the SNP won just 1 list seat despite gaining 597,520 votes across the 8 list regions. The SNP’s fall is graphically illustrated by its total (constituency, list) number of votes in 2021 of 2,385,578 declining to 1,474,597 in 2026. Despite calling itself a social democratic party, the SNP has long proven itself to be a social liberal party (Gall, 2011, 2022). ² This track record can be seen mostly clearly on public spending and public services. The few instances of expanding public ownership have been slow and begrudging.

Meanwhile, Scottish Labour was down 5 seats to 17, tying with Reform which never before had representation in the Scottish Parliament (other than through the single defection from the Tories). Often Scottish Labour was pushed into third place in the constituencies behind the Scottish Greens. The Tories fell from 31 seats to 12. Both the Scottish Greens and Liberal Democrats were up 6 seats at 15 and 10 seats, respectively. The Scottish Greens won constituency seats for the first time (being in Edinburgh and Glasgow), unseating two SNP government ministers. Though the Scottish Green Party sometimes identifies as eco-socialist, ³ it is social democratic and far less so than the Green Party of England and Wales if the public policy pronouncements of new leader, Zack Polanski, are anything to go by. To date, the Scottish Greens have only ever changed SNP Scottish Government policy around the margins and this will continue in spite of having 15 MSPs because the SNP intends to govern as a minority administration. Voter turnout was down from 63% in 2021 to 53% in 2026.

All that said, there is now a clear majority of MSPs supporting independence (SNP 58, Greens 15, thus, 73/129) and the call for a second referendum. However, the pro-independence majority was 69 seats in 2016 and 72 seats in 2021 without gaining any movement on another referendum because the SNP has been somewhat constitutionally craven in pursuing its key foundational objective through only legal and parliamentary means, and so blithely ignoring the reality than many countries’ independence was gained from their colonial masters through mass movements and not referenda. The Scottish Greens do not genuflect to social movementism either. The SNP’s own self-induced roadblock was graphically highlighted when on the first day’s sitting of the seventh Scottish Parliament, a motion was passed calling for a Westminster Section 30 Order (to facilitate a further referendum on independence), but within a matter of hours this was rejected by the Labour government.

Of the minority parties, the SSP did extremely poorly, gaining just 0.36% (8326 votes). Like other radical left minority parties now but not 20 years before, the SSP did not present a full set of candidates (7) per list seat as before. In six of the regions, it stood three candidates and in two regions of the regions it stood just two candidates, testifying to its atrophy.

The toxicity of Tommy Sheridan is still the principal reason why the SSP did so poorly even at 20 years after the event. After splitting the SSP in 2006 by forming Solidarity, all SSP and Solidarity MSPs including Sheridan lost their seats in the 2007 Parliament elections, gaining just 2.1% of the list vote between them on the regional list seats (with Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party gaining 0.7%). Even though the SSP had the same polices as before, its credibility and stature were shot by the acrimonious split. The SSP stood again in 2011 elections for the list seats, gaining just 0.4% (8272 votes) with the Socialist Labour Party gaining 0.9%. The SSP did not stand in 2016 under its own banner but as part of RISE (which gained 0.5% while Solidarity gained 0.6%) and did not stand at all in 2021. The SSP and Solidarity were labelled as ‘two bald men fighting over a comb’.

The Alliance to Liberate Scotland received 0.85% (19,318 votes) of the list vote across Scotland, with Sheridan as its lead candidate in the Glasgow region gaining 1.3% (3128 votes) of the list vote there. Having intended to be part of the Alliance to Liberate Scotland, the Independence for Scotland Party withdrew over a dispute about candidate selections (over Sheridan and others) and stood on its own, gaining 0.45% of the list vote across Scotland and 0.5% in the Glasgow list seat. By comparison, in the 2021 Scottish Parliaments elections and standing on an ‘independence first’ platform, Alba gained 1.66% of the list vote where the Independence for Scotland Party withdrew in favour of Alba (with the Alliance for Independence having already folded into Alba).

Standing in just 6 constituency seats, the Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition gained 2740 votes (averaging 1.6% in each seat). These were mostly the same seats it stood in in 2016 where it gained 3540 votes (averaging 2.1% in each seat). A strategy of standing in 3 constituencies and 3 regions in 2021 brought no more success, gaining 959 and 1404 votes respectively, ranging from 0.7% to 1.3% and 0.1% to 0.2%, respectively.

Standing in just 1 region, the West of Scotland, the Socialist Labour Party gained 0.7% of the votes (2260 votes). Meanwhile and standing in half of the regions, Galloway’s Workers’ Party gained 3402 votes (0.15% of all regional list votes). The Communist Party of Britain’s single outing – for the Edinburgh and East Lothians regional list seat – saw just 672 votes (0.2%) gained. By formal policy pronouncements, a number of centre-left or social democratic sounding parties – like the Equality Party, Scottish Common Party and Alliance for Democracy and Freedom – also stood in the constituency and lists seats, receiving in total around 3000 votes in each type of seat, representing less than 0.1% of votes cast.

George Galloway: A spent force

Though a lifelong unionist, that is an opponent of independence, George Galloway, now 71 years of age, had a conversion on the proverbial road to Damascus, saying shortly before the 2026 election campaign got fully underway that the imperial United Kingdom must perish. In the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections, Galloway had stood as the lead list candidate in Glasgow for his anti-independence All For Unity vehicle. All For Unity gained a meagre 23,299 (0.9%) votes in standing in all the regional lists seats, with Galloway proportionately doing slightly better in the South of Scotland regional seat with 5521 votes (1.5%). This was relatively speaking, a considerable fall on his vote when he stood for Respect for the Glasgow list region in 2011 Scottish Parliament elections, where he gained 6972 votes (3.3%). Under his new party vehicle, the Workers Party of Britain, Galloway stood on the regional list for Glasgow but was the second ranked candidate, behind journalist, Yvonne Ridley. Health issues and what he termed a ‘forced exile’ to live in Russia kept him off the campaign trail. Signifying the changed stance over independence, the Workers Party of Britain stood as the Workers Party – Scotland. It made no tangible difference.

Tommy Sheridan: Totemic to toxic

The case of Tommy Sheridan, now 62 years old, showed there was to again be no Lazarus-like return to the Parliament in 2026. It also showed his political and personal degeneration. He has become an irrelevance, remembered for what he was – socialist then swinger – and not what he is now (which many do not know about at all).

Having been first elected to the Parliament in 1999 as a sole SSP MSP, he was joined by five other SSP MSPs in 2003. However, after a disastrous decision to take News of the World to court for defamation in 2006 for stories about his sex life that were substantially true but which he won, Sheridan was jailed for perjury in 2010 (see Gall, 2012). He then scored just 4% in the 2007 Glasgow list election so losing his seat for his new Solidarity party, could not stand in 2011 as he was in jail and then in the 2016 elections after his own ‘Hope Over Fear’ pro-independence campaign ⁴ of 2014 gained just 1.4% of the vote. In retrospect, the 2007 and 2016 elections were his best chances of a return to Parliament. Therefore, it has been a classic case of a rise and fall story but without the possibility of a Lazarus-like return.

The situation of the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections compounded this further but in a qualitatively different way. As an SSP MSP, Sheridan championed the creation of an independent socialist Scotland but now he merely champions the cause of an independent Scotland. That is why he was characterised as a ‘steadfast socialist’ and is now characterised as a ‘proud patriot’ where, the famous quote of writer, Samuel Johnson, namely ‘patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel’, is often also now trotted out about him. Sheridan still wishes to see a politically progressive society in an independent Scotland, but not a socialist society. His socialism when in the SSP was that of a left social democrat, favouring a mixed economy where the private sector played a minor role. Since then, the social democratic aspect has been somewhat diluted.

But more than that Sheridan is now prepared to consort with others who are not on his political wavelength or anywhere near it. This started with the winding up of his Solidarity party in 2021 after its decline and splintering since 2015 and then his intention to stand as a candidate for the Alliance for Independence in the 2021 elections. This was a hotchpotch of disgruntled former SNP members and nationalists who stood in the centre of the political spectrum and just either side of it.

The sudden creation of the Alba party by former SNP leader and Scottish Government First Minister, Alex Salmond, meant for the Alliance for Independence folded itself into Alba when Alba had already selected its candidates. Consequently, Sheridan did not stand in 2021. Alba was commonly characterised as economically progressive, but socially conservative. Sheridan then joined Alba and won the top candidate position for Alba in the Glasgow region for the 2026 elections. However, Alba dissolved and deregistered itself under the weight of debt and divisions in late March 2026, leaving Sheridan high and dry.

Consequently, he threw in his lot with a ragtag bunch called the Alliance to Liberate Scotland, standing as its lead candidate for the Glasgow region. Some involved in the Alliance to Liberate Scotland were on the far right (Heckle 23 March 2026), this being allowed by the Alliance having, according to founder member, Eva Comrie, ‘one single aim, one single purpose, and that is independence, nothing less’. The party slogan was ‘Independence. Nothing Else. Nothing Less’. Polling commissioned from Find Out Now (on small samples size of less than 500 people) by the Alliance to Liberate Scotland for the Glasgow region showed that in March 2026, 7% reported in they would ‘definitely’ or ‘very likely’ vote for Sheridan, but this fell to 5% in April 2026. In the March polling, those saying ‘definitely’ were 1% then rising to 2% in the April polling.

Sheridan claimed in the party’s party-political broadcast that: ‘8% of people across Scotland are saying, ‘Yes, I’m going to give my regional vote to the Alliance to Liberate Scotland’. That’s enough for a breakthrough in all eight regions’. This came from a Find Out Now poll of 1000 people across Scotland in March 2026, again, commissioned by the Alliance where definitely’ and ‘very likely’ voting intentions were combined. By April, this has fallen to 6% in polling commissioned from Find Out Now by the Alliance. In all the aforementioned polls, other party options were not presented to those polled so that support for the Alliance was argued to be somewhat inflated.

The fact that Sheridan spent much of the period of the election campaign being extensively interviewed for the forthcoming two-part BBC Scotland documentary, entitled Tommy, indicated he did not rate his chances of being elected very highly. For example, on the Monday before polling on Thursday May 7, Sheridan spent 6 hours being interviewed for the documentary. Even without making this deduction, the production team detected from his mood that he believed he had no chances of being elected. At the count the following day and some 6 hours before the declaration was made Sheridan told BBC Scotland that it was unlikely he would win a seat but believed the Alliance to Liberate Scotland party had ‘planted foundations and made an impact in independence-supporting communities’.

That Sheridan moved straight to the Alliance to Liberate Scotland again highlights his priority of independence over his social democratic politics for Your Party Scotland was another available option at the time. From 21 February to 26 March 2026, Alba was engaged in a financial crisis. Meantime, Your Party in Scotland, a 2.0 version of Corbynite social democracy, was constituted between 7 and 8 February 2026, voting then to become pro-independence and an independent party (as Your Party Scotland). It was not until mid-April that it became clear that Your Party Scotland would not be able to stand candidates (see below).

Much of Sheridan’s credibility and the consequent ability of the SSP to use it recruit to members and supporters to the ranks of the party relied upon his reputation for honesty and sincerity. The perjury conviction ⁵ drove a proverbial ‘coach and horses’ through that, especially as one of his most used lines was: ‘How do you know when politicians are lying? Their lips are moving!’ and commentators often recalled about him the quote attributed to comedian, George Burns: ‘If you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made’. Trapped into a tower of lies of his own making (see Gall, 2012), no rehabilitation or redemption (via an apology and atonement or showing some contrition or remorse) was possible. His perjury conviction became his Achilles’ heel.

All of this is surprising to some given the continued, if diminished, interest in Sheridan. On X (formerly Twitter), he has 66.7k followers and 35k friends on Facebook. However, his account on X called ‘Tommy4Glasgow’ for the 2026 elections had just 333 followers at the time of the elections, with the Alliance to Liberate Scotland party-political broadcast, in which Sheridan was the main component, the day before the election being watched just 388 times on IndyRef2’s YouTube channel and 1911 on IndyScotNews’ YouTube channel. ⁶ His ‘Hope Over Fear’ X account had just 7000 followers in 2026. The attention paid to Sheridan was that of people watching a spectacle and not a socialist. He attracted many more viewers as a host on the likes of ‘A Celtic State of Mind’ podcast and a guest on the ‘Let Me Be Frank’ podcast of former Celtic player, Frank McAvennie.

A lost Labour

The Campaign for Socialism ⁷ within the Scottish Labour Party was founded in 1994 as an attempt to prevent the abolition of Clause IV of the Labour Party’s constitution on nationalisation and public ownership. Though it fought a rearguard action against Blairism in Scotland, the Campaign for Socialism did not experience an upswing in its fortunes under left-wing leaders, Richard Leonard (at the Scottish level, 2017–2021) or Jeremy Corbyn (at the British level, 2015–2020). In a sense, because there was no ‘shock and awe’ of the new as with the creation of a left group – Momentum – inside Labour south of the border to support Corbyn, the Campaign for Socialism was seen by some as a worthy ‘has been’ which could not break out of its own marginalisation. At the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections, four of its members were returned as MSPs. In 2026, this dropped to three (Katy Clark, Carol Mochan, Paul Sweeney) after Mercedes Villalba decided not to stand again.

The party that didn’t get started: The Your Party ‘no show’

Other than the demise of the existing radical left as being in any sense a significant minority force, part of the explanation for this eventuality of an absence of sectarian competition was that Your Party Scotland did not stand any candidates as it had intended to as a result of the decision made at its founding conference in February 2026. ⁸ Though launching a new party that intended to stand for the Parliament exactly 3 months beforehand would have been foolhardy, even this never came to pass because Your Party headquarters in London would not allow Your Party Scotland to have the names and contact details of members in Scotland, would not allow branches to be formally constituted so that they could campaign, and would not provide any funding for campaigning. Consequently, the whole of the interim Executive Committee in Scotland resigned and the party haemorrhaged members (with a similar process going on in England and Wales). The potential of the mass signups to Your Party in the summer of 2025 by way of some 800,000 people – some 60,000 in Scotland – expressing an interest in knowing more about Your Party was not only wasted but destroyed.

Radical Independence Campaign’s RISE and fall

Out of the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC) of 2012 to 2014, RISE was formed to stand in the 2016 Scottish Parliament elections. RISE did not rise (see earlier) owing to unrealistic expectations about what could be achieved by launching a new left alliance just a year before the elections. It was deregistered, that is, effectively disbanded in 2020. Out of its demise emerged the Conter website, but it fell almost into disuse by the time of the Scottish Parliament elections in 2026 and did not even offer any post-election analysis. RIC was disbanded as a national organisation in 2021. Attempts were made to continue RIC as a network of four local groups without much success compared to before. Out of the remnants of RIC 2.0, the Republican Socialist Platform was founded in 2020 to fight for a more democratic culture in the pro-independence left and republican socialist politics. Two years later, it launched an online magazine called Heckle (which is barely more active than Conter and did not offer any post-election analysis either). As left-wing pro-independence websites go, Bella Caledonia, launched in 2007 and still going, is far more active and relatively influential despite a financial crisis in 2017.

Best of the rest?

This ecological survey of the radical left in Scotland would be remiss without also at least mentioning a number of other organisations such as the tiny but long-standing Scottish Republican Socialist Movement, the independent (non-SSP) and re-founded (in 2021) Scottish Socialist Youth, the short-lived Red Party of Scotland (2018–2022) and the Scottish section of the Revolutionary Communist Party which was formed out of Socialist Appeal in 2024. Although of no social weight, along with others they help keep the flame of socialism flickering, at least, as an idea.

Worse in Wales

With the removal of the constituency votes so that only list votes now exist, the situation for the radical left (Communist Party, Socialist Labour Party, Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition) was no better in Wales and, in fact a lot worse with a total radical left vote of 0.07%, just 883 votes. Former left Labour MP, Beth Winter, standing as an independent community candidate (and not Your Party member) won 3.2%, but was not elected. Additionally, and compared to Scotland, there was an even lower turnout of 51.6% (which was 5.0% up on the 2021 elections). In the 2021 elections, 4895 votes were cast for the same parties on the list votes (0.45%) which again highlights the atrophy of the radical left.

Conclusion

Overall, the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections seemed to pretty much (re)produce more of the same, with the SNP as the major party and the Scottish Greens in tow to them as some kind of ‘confidence and supply’ friendly arrangement emerged. ⁹ Labour slid again as expected. Although Reform was long predicted to do well, it did not become the second biggest party, reflecting the fact that while it gained 29% of the vote in Wales and 27% in England it only gained 17% in Scotland. None of this was of any succour to the radical left. Compared to England (Gilbert, 2026) or Wales (see Worth, 2026), the movement of the tectonic plates of Scottish politics took place in 2007 when the SNP became the largest party at Holyrood and in 2011 when the SNP formed a majority government. Parliamentary – and wider – politics in Scotland have since then been but a variation on a theme.

In days gone by, the parties of the radical left in Scotland such as the Communist Party of Britain, Socialist Labour Party, the SSP and Solidarity would have each stood in sufficiently wide numbers in both constituency and regional list seats as to warrant serious sighing about a degree of significant sectarianism because these parties stood in competition with each other. For example, in 1999 had the SSP and Socialist Labour Party not stood against each, then one or two more independent socialist MSPs would have been elected alongside Sheridan. To many, all this was a constant replay of Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) where the Judean People’s Front opposes the People’s Front of Judea. The situation in 2026 marks the absence of even this – though it should not be forgotten that the SSP chose not to stand any candidates for the list seats in 2021 Scottish Parliament elections. ¹⁰

In its heyday, the SSP achieved something no other left-wing breakaway party in Scotland had achieved in last 50 years, namely, getting its candidates elected under its own banner rather than relying upon defections from other parties to give it elected representatives. For example, the breakaway Scottish Labour Party formed by Jim Sillars, the Labour MP for South Ayrshire, in 1976 collapsed in 1979 when he lost his seat. The SSP just about remains on the playing pitch but that is all that can be said about it in 2026.

No new other significant radical left force has emerged so far or is likely to emerge in the next few years. Not even a move to a full proportional representation voting system as in Wales would make any different to that at this stage (especially as the threshold would be raised to around 12%). The only hope is that those that left Your Party Scotland may work with the SSP, as both prioritise socialism and independence, to form something which is greater than the sum of its parts.

What may blunt this is the prospect of a Burnham-led Labour Government. As the self-style ‘King of the North’ devolutionary soft-left populist, any Burnham bounce will be especially bad news for the SNP for it will undermine its case on three fronts. The first is against ‘London government’, a mantra that it has used for years to cry ‘a big boy did it and ran away’ in order to evade responsibility for its own shortcomings. The second is Labour being a right-wing party that lacks social compassion contra the SNP as a self-proclaimed (but not) social democratic party. The third is that further devolution such as ‘devo-max’ may sap support for independence which struggles to clear attain majority public support since the 18 September 2014 referendum and under SNP Scottish governments.