{"id":532013,"date":"2026-04-15T10:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T10:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/532013\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T10:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T10:40:09","slug":"scottish-parliament-election-2026-debate-fall-out-over-labour-reform-deal-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/532013\/","title":{"rendered":"Scottish Parliament election 2026: Debate fall out over Labour-Reform deal claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘The moment the election got personal’published at 09:56 BST<\/p>\n

09:56 BST<\/p>\n

\"\"Phil Sim
Scotland political correspondent<\/p>\n

This was the moment the election
\ngot personal. Really very personal.<\/p>\n

In theory this is a question of
\nparliamentary arithmetic; the idea being that if the SNP is short of a majority
\nafter 7 May, opposition parties could unite to put Anas Sarwar in Bute House
\ninstead.<\/p>\n

But in the immediacy it’s a
\nquestion of electoral tactics.<\/p>\n

It is in the SNP’s interests to
\ntalk up Reform, because John Swinney likes the idea of Nigel Farage as a
\nbogeyman to pull his own supporters out to the polls.<\/p>\n

He is also calculating that
\nframing the election as “stop Reform” could corral the tactical votes
\nof those who don’t like the insurgent party.<\/p>\n

Reform, meanwhile, are just as happy
\nto shut Labour out of the debate, if it increases their chances of being the
\nanti-SNP vote.<\/p>\n

Labour though are desperate to
\nmake this a “stop the SNP” election where they are the main
\nalternative, and are ramping up their attacks on Reform to try to paint them as
\nan irrelevance in the race for Bute House.<\/p>\n

In short, each party is hoping to
\nset this up as a two-horse race where they get to choose who the other horse
\nis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘The moment the election got personal’published at 09:56 BST 09:56 BST Phil SimScotland political correspondent This was the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-532013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}