Embarrassment for Jeremy Corbyn as Labour sees their lowest levels of support in Scotland since the Scottish Parliament elections began.
Last night’s Scottish Parliament elections were good news for the Conservatives as they pushed Labour into third place for the first time since the Scottish Parliament was created in the 1990s.
With 24 seats, Labour has the smallest representation they’ve ever had in Scotland. In the last 13 years they’ve also had their share of seats halved.
The Conservatives, long written off when it came to Scotland, had a major breakthrough, coming second in their best performance ever at Scottish parliament elections.
The Scottish National Party won 63 seats, two short of the 65 needed for an overall majority. Nonetheless, they are still by far the biggest party, and are likely close enough to a majority to run a comfortable minority government.
What does a poor showing mean for Jeremy Corbyn?
At this point in the electoral cycle, opposition parties usually perform much better in local elections than governing parties. That said, there was considerable expectation that Labour would perform poorly at these elections.
For some, these elections were seen as the first major challenge of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, and as such a quasi-referendum on his role so far as the Labour leader.
Despite their poor showing in the Scottish parliament elections, the Labour Party performed better than expected in the English local council elections. This mixed bag makes it difficult to draw any long term national conclusions from the election, and means Labour’s performance is unlikely to be the terminal blow for Jeremy Corbyn that some of his opponents hoped for.
Last year there were talks that if Labour performed poorly in England and Scotland, and in addition struggled in the London mayoral election, that Corbyn would face a coup by many on the right of the party (some formerly referred to as Blairites). Labour almost breaking even in England, and Sadiq Khan’s strong performance in London are likely to disappoint any potential challengers to Corbyn.
For more information the BBC has full election results for Scotland.