26 March 2025, 15:15 | Updated: 26 March 2025, 17:36

By Gina Davidson

If Scottish Labour had a mountain to climb to potentially win at next year’s Holyrood election before Rachel Reeves stood up to speak today, by the time she sat down, she’d ensured that Anas Sarwar now faces a sheer rock face without a grappling hook or rope to hand.

With every economic announcement made at Westminster since Labour won last year, Sarwar’s prospects of becoming the next First Minister of Scotland recede, while the SNP is boosted.

Universal Winter Fuel Payment cut, the two child benefit cap remaining, and now slashing the benefits for disabled people - Scots voted for change last year, but nowhere in their political nightmares did they think this was the kind of change a Labour government would deliver.

Labour sources in Holyrood had remained hopeful despite last year’s Budget, believing Starmer and Reeves were “front-loading pain”, and by the time of the Holyrood poll things would be looking up, especially in the economy with people feeling better off.

The OBR revised figures, and Reeves speech today, have destroyed that hope.........

© LBC