{"id":532195,"date":"2026-04-15T12:56:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T12:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/532195\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T12:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T12:56:11","slug":"scottish-parliament-election-2026-debate-fallout-over-labour-reform-deal-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/532195\/","title":{"rendered":"Scottish Parliament election 2026: Debate fallout over Labour-Reform deal claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

What could happen in a parliament of minorities?published at 13:44 BST<\/p>\n

13:44 BST<\/p>\n

\"\"Kirsten Campbell
BBC Scotland political correspondent<\/p>\n

In every session of the Scottish Parliament so far the leader of
\nthe largest party has become first minister and formed a government.<\/p>\n

But in a parliament of minorities that needn’t necessarily be the
\ncase.<\/p>\n

MSPs have to vote for the first minister, and the victorious
\ncandidate needs to secure more votes than all the other candidates combined to
\nbe elected.<\/p>\n

If there are just two candidates then a simple majority is enough.<\/p>\n

So it’s possible that you could come second in terms of seat
\nnumbers, but have more support from other parties than the leader who came
\nfirst.<\/p>\n

If that is what Labour is thinking then it’s entirely plausible
\nthat Anas Sarwar would encourage Malcolm Offord to back him for FM rather than
\nallow John Swinney’s SNP a record 5th term in power.<\/p>\n

Depending on the numbers an abstention might be enough.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t need to mean a formal deal like a coalition or a
\npartnership government is in the offing.<\/p>\n

As always it will depend on what the electorate decides.<\/p>\n

And it’s worth bearing in mind that while it’s risky governing as
\na minority because you need to strike deals with other parties to get
\nlegislation through and critically to ensure budget votes and motions of no
\nconfidence are won, the opposition parties also need to agree to disagree with the
\ngovernment in order to stop it getting its own way. <\/p>\n

When there are a multitude
\nof different parties with different views getting agreement on anything can be
\na challenge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What could happen in a parliament of minorities?published at 13:44 BST 13:44 BST Kirsten CampbellBBC Scotland political correspondent…\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":["post-532195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532195","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=532195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532195\/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=532195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}