It’s May 2026, and Anas Sarwar is sitting behind the First Minister’s desk in Bute House. Not because he led his party to victory in a Scottish Parliamentary election earlier that month, but because he has occupied the office of First Minister since the last Scottish elections in May 2023 – held just months after the chaotic resignation of Nicola Sturgeon and amid a storm of scandal buffeting the SNP.

This could have been reality if not for the 2011 Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which set the date of the next Westminster elections for May 2015. The Scottish Parliament extended the 2011 term to avoid a clash, and five-year terms would become normalised, leading to elections in 2016, 2021, and 2026 instead of 2015, 2019, and 2023. Without the FTPA, Mr Sarwar would never have had to contend with the single biggest barrier to his becoming First Minister – the Labour Government in London.

Mr Sarwar’s pitch to voters at last July’s General Election was that Scots should vote Labour to get rid of two governments failing Scotland – the Conservative Government at Westminster, and the SNP Government at Holyrood. That pitch was wildly successful, with Scottish Labour winning 35.3% of the vote and 37 of Scotland’s 57 seats.

The pitch made by Sir Keir Starmer in the same campaign was premised on the idea that what Britain needed after years of Conservative turmoil was stable, grown-up government.........

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