Swinney promises no ‘deal or co-operation’ with Farage after by-election defeat

Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney has vowed he would not “do any sort of deal or co-operation” with Nigel Farage after losing the Hamilton by-election.

Scottish Labour took the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse seat in South Lanarkshire from the SNP but Farage’s Reform UK party also made gains in the Scottish Parliament ballot on Thursday.

Speaking on the Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme on Sky News, SNP leader Swinney said that if it was necessary to form a coalition to keep Reform out of government, he would “pursue the policy priorities of my party”, and pledged never to work with Clacton MP Farage.

The First Minister said he intended to win the 2026 Holyrood election, adding his party would “get stronger” after losing the Hamilton seat, which it had taken in the 2021 Scottish Parliament election with 46% of all ballots cast, compared with its vote share of 29.35% in Thursday’s by-election.

Newly elected Scottish Labour MSP Davy Russell won with 8,559 votes while SNP candidate Katy Loudon took 7,957 votes. Reform’s Ross Lambie secured 7,088 votes.

Swinney said: “We’ve got to give people hope of what the future lies for Scotland, and that’s as a country that can use our enormous energy wealth for the benefit of our people who are paying extraordinarily high fuel prices at the moment.”

Demonstrators outside the Reform UK office in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire during a visit by party leader Nigel Farage (Jane Barlow/PA). PA Media

When asked if he would consider a coalition between the SNP, Labour and the Greens to keep Reform out of government, Swinney said: “We’ll be going into that with the aim of winning that election.

“If you look at the result on Thursday, all the pollsters say that if that was applied across the wider electorate in Scotland, the SNP would remain by a country mile the largest political party in the Scottish Parliament.

“Now that’s not good enough. I want to get stronger in that election, but I’ll tell you one thing I will not do under any circumstances, is do any form of deal or co-operation with Farage.

“I just won’t do it, and people need to understand that.”