All the latest news and results after Thursday’s elections in Scotland, England and Wales
- Nicola Sturgeon plays down SNP prospects after pro-UK tactical voting
- Labour makes big gains in Wales defeating ex-Plaid Cymru leader
- Labour’s Khalid Mahmood says party has become ‘London-centric’
- 2021 elections: results for the English local, Scottish and Welsh polls
- When to expect results from Super Thursday elections
John Swinney, Scotland’s deputy first minister, is being interviewed on the Today programme now. Nick Robinson is interviewing him.
Q: Do you accept you won’t get an overall majority?
Good morning. Many of the votes cast on “Super Thursday” are still being counted and today there will be particular focus on Scotland, where the SNP will win – but with its chances of having an absolute majority now looking slim. This is what Prof Sir John Curtice, the leading psephologist, told the Today programme this morning about the state of the contest in Scotland.
There is still a chance but in truth it’s a remote chance. It rests on whether or not the SNP can pick up Galloway and Aberdeenshire West, these two Conservative-held marginal seats, but those do look more like a long shot.
And it also depends on whether or not they can pick up a couple of list seats, one in the Highlands and one in the south of Scotland. But they would need to get at least three of those four seats in their lap and the truth is, on the evidence of what we’ve seen so far, they will be lucky to make it.
If this was in almost any other democracy in the world it would be an absurd discussion.
If people in Scotland vote for a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament, no politician has got the right to stand in the way of that.
My impression was that they [the SNP] moved away from the idea of a referendum, and I think very wisely.
Because I don’t think this is anything like the time to have more constitutional wrangling, to be talking about ripping our country apart, when actually people want to heal our economy and bounce forward together. That’s what people want.
Related: 2021 election results: latest results from Scottish, Welsh and local votes
