Scotland is heading for one of our most fractured and potentially fractious, Parliaments in the devolution era come May 2026. The SNP's defeat at the hands of Scottish Labour at the 2024 General Election in July signalled the end of a period of hegemonic dominance for the party. Still, while losing 39 seats, they trailed Labour by just 5.3 points – 30% to 35.3%.

Scottish Parliament elections operate using an additional member system which approximates proportional representation within each of the eight regions, making it impossible for a party to win 64.9% of the seats on 35.3% of the vote, as Scottish Labour did in July. Indeed, the Scottish Parliament polling we have had since July, with the elections now 18 months away, suggests a deeply fractured Parliament than that, as support for Scottish Labour has slipped in the first three months of the new UK Government.

In Ballot Box Scotland's average of Scottish Parliament polling, Scottish Labour's constituency vote share has declined five points, from 34.6% in July to 29.6% this month. Its regional list vote share has declined 3.2 points from 30.2% to 27%.

The SNP's vote share in the same poll average has also declined by just 2.2 points from 35% to 32.8% in the constituency vote and just one point from 29.4% to 28.4%. According to Ballot Box Scotland, the polls suggest that the SNP would be the largest party in a Scottish Parliament election with 45 seats, despite falling significantly from the 64 seats they won in 2021. Scottish Labour would win 39 seats, the Conservatives 17, the Liberal Democrats and Scottish Greens 10 seats each, and Reform UK would break through with eight seats.

This could mean chaos in the Scottish Parliament. To be sure of passing legislation, parties need 65 of the Parliament's 129 MSPs on their side, and likewise to make their leader First Minister (barring some unusual circumstances). A minority SNP government with 45 MSPs would need the support of either Scottish Labour or a combination of at least two other parties. Assuming it would struggle in the best circumstances to deal with the Conservatives, even the support of the Scottish Greens and Scottish Liberal Democrats would leave votes on a knife-edge.

Scottish Labour would be in a tougher position. Without the support of the SNP, it would need the Liberal Democrats, Scottish Greens, and one of the Conservatives or Reform UK onside. Or, if constitutional animosities are too great to overcome, it would need some combination of the Conservatives plus the Liberal Democrats or Reform UK. Regardless, these would not be comfortable bedfellows.

Regardless of who formed a minority government, that government would struggle to govern and every annual budget process would pose an existential threat to it.

Read more by Mark McGeoghegan

You will have noticed a running theme here: the assumption that Scottish Labour and the SNP would not work together. As I wrote a fortnight ago, the Scottish Parliament is a European-style consensual institution inserted into an adversarial political culture that could act as a serious block to consensus building, and there are no two parties in Scotland with less love lost between them than Scottish Labour and the SNP.

But there is no particular political reason, beyond personal animosities, why this should continue to be the case. The two parties are very close on two of the most important political axes: economics and social policy. Where they differ on these axes is often exaggerated, half thanks to the narcissism of small differences and half to shape political narratives.

Their real difference is on the constitutional axis that has dominated Scottish politics for a decade. But that dominance ended in July, and for the nation's sake should cease to dominate Parliamentary politics, too.

To achieve that will necessitate putting secession, which otherwise will continue to dominate the SNP's political manoeuvring at least, in a box labelled "open when independence becomes the settled will of Scotland'" Otherwise, the SNP's temptation to demand referendums and Scottish Labour's fear of being seen as weak on the union would scupper any serious collaborative efforts between Scotland's major centre-left parties.

Which is why Wednesday's publication of a new paper by the University of Glasgow Centre for Public Policy's Kezia Dugdale, former Scottish Labour leader, and Stephen Noon, former chief strategist for Yes Scotland, is so timely. They advocate for a new, collaborative approach to the constitutional issue and a renewed reform agenda rooted not in the absolutism of independence or union, but in the question of what powers Scotland needs and what reforms Scotland must make to enable us to tackle the nation's pressing challenges.

A crucial part of that new approach is agreeing a Northern Ireland-style deal, in which the Secretary of State for Scotland would have a duty to monitor, through polling, election results, and other means, the state of public opinion in Scotland and if secession becomes the sustained, majority will of voters, a legal duty to call a referendum.

The details of such a deal, which Westminster would need to pass into law, would be thorny to work through. And the incentives not to do a deal are significant: the UK Government would need to sacrifice a great deal of its discretionary power over the Union, and the SNP would lose one of their greatest electoral assets.

Kezia DugdaleKezia Dugdale (Image: PA)

And let's not forget that the Good Friday Agreement was reached after decades of political violence resulting in the deaths of thousands. That deal was reached only with the weight of those deaths and the prospect of continued havoc if negotiations failed.

But the prize for Scotland is significant, creating a space in which parties on opposite ends of the constitutional question can cooperate to pursue the institutional and public sector reforms we desperately need, and to pass legislation and budgets that recognise their areas of agreement.

We have had a decade of watching the political status quo fail. Change is coming in 2026, and it is up to our politicians - in the SNP and Scottish Labour in particular - to shape that change and ensure it is for the better. The road to a constitutional deal and shared reform agenda will be long, rocky, and potentially fruitless, but it is undoubtedly one worth pursuing. It is time for the parties to start preparing to get around the table.

Mark McGeoghegan is a Glasgow University researcher of nationalism and contentious politics and an Associate Member of the Centre on Constitutional Change. He can be found on BlueSky @markmcgeoghegan.bsky.social