🗳️Unspun Election Briefing: The Meh-lection

Good morning, and welcome to Unspun: Election Briefing.

Earlier this week, in a thread on X, More in Common’s Luke Tryl said he’d been focus grouping some Scots about the election.

The key takeaway? This is, the pollster says, “possibly the most unenthusiastic or ‘meh’ I’ve ever experienced people be about their choices in an election”.

Unionists really want the SNP out, but are totally underwhelmed by the choices to do so and resigned to its re-election.

Equally, nationalists are underwhelmed by the SNP and think the government seems tired.

There is enthusiasm among some Reform and Scottish Green voters, but even then, not that much. 

If that’s how you feel — and hopefully it isn’t because you’re reading this — then don’t fret. This campaign will all be over in just eight days.

As ever, drop us an email with your thoughts at politics@theherald.co.uk.

And if you have a friend who’d find this newsletter interesting, please forward it on and ask them to subscribe.

The last debate

Part of the reason for the Meh, Tryl says, is the “perception the leaders are all slightly ‘grey’ men”.

For the last time this campaign, those grey men faced off in a TV debate in the very not-grey Signet Library in Edinburgh.

And it was, to be fair, the most colourful of the clashes.

The STV rammies always stand out because of the inspired decision to make the party chiefs tackle each other head on.

It was at this debate five years ago, during cross-examination, that Douglas Ross forced Nicola Sturgeon to admit that the SNP had taken its “eye off the ball on drug deaths”.

And five years before that, it was in this debate that Nicola Sturgeon claimed Kezia Dugdale offered to drop her opposition to Indyref2.

The big difference between those two debates and last night’s is the presence of Reform.

Malcolm Offord came under attack from all sides. I'm not sure the leader of the anti-establishment party will have minded that too much at all.

He also provided the line of the night as he criticised Scottish Green plans to tax wealth.

“I went to London 40 years ago with £2,000 in debt and full of ambition — I worked hard, and I was successful," he said.

“Today, I own six houses, five cars and six boats.

“In a 40-year business career, I’ve employed hundreds of thousands of people and paid £45 million in tax.”

He added that his intention was not to “boast”, but to ask if the Greens would want more or less people like him in Scotland.

“Fewer people like you,” Ross Greer replied.

My social media mentions are split between people describing it as a gaffe and others saying we should be celebrating a working class man done well.

I was in the spin room last night, and spoke to Offord very briefly about the claim. He told me he had only employed thousands rather than hundreds of thousands, but otherwise everything else was right.

One Green spinner said the peer had just provided them with the next week’s worth of leaflets.

The other big takeaway from last night was how nice John Swinney and Anas Sarwar were being to Alex Cole-Hamilton.

Almost like he and his Lib Dem MSPs could be quite important in a minority parliament.

Labour’s biggest hit came towards the end, when Anas Sarwar gave over two of his questions to Kimberly Darroch, the mum of Milly Main, who died after contracting an infection at the Royal Hospital for Children, part of the QEUH campus.

She said “politics was more important” to the First Minister “than my daughter”. She accused him of a “cover up”.

This is the last TV debate, though the six party chiefs are facing each other in a hustings for the Courier in the next couple of days.

My colleague Kevin McKenna was with me in the Signet Library last night.  His thoughts will be on heraldscotland.com in the next couple of hours.

My write-up is here: Malcolm Offord: 'I own six houses, five cars and six boats'

The long wait

Hannah Brown has today’s splash with some fresh mental health figures exposing major gaps in post-discharge psychiatric care, with more than 2,000 patients across Scotland waiting longer than two weeks for follow-up support after leaving hospital.

Scottish Government guidance says all psychiatric inpatients should receive a check-in within seven days because the first week after discharge is considered a particularly high-risk period, including for self-harm and suicide.

Freedom of information data obtained by the Scottish Liberal Democrats shows that standard is being routinely missed, with 2,092 patients waiting more than 14 days last year and some facing delays of almost a year.

NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde recorded a maximum wait of 330 days, while NHS Tayside reported 823 psychiatric patients received no follow-up at all.

Alex Cole-Hamilton told Hannah the figures showed vulnerable patients were being left without critical support. SNP ministers insisted record staffing and a £1.5 billion mental health budget showed “serious action” was being taken.

Starmer survives

Keir Starmer lives to fight another day, easily seeing off Kemi Badenoch’s bid to have him referred to Parliament’s Privileges Committee.

In the end, 15 Labour MPs rebelled against the three-line whip, including Falkirk and Grangemouth’s Brian Leishman.

A further 53 of Starmer’s MPs abstained.

In his speech, Leishman said Starmer should “stop putting Labour MPs in awkward situations”.

He added: “The Prime Minister should refer himself to the Privileges Committee. It would say to Parliament — and more importantly to the country — that he knows he’ll be proved innocent, that he’ll be vindicated, that he’s got nothing to hide and, importantly, that transparency and accountability are really at the heart of our democracy.”

The vote means there’ll be no immediate Privileges Committee probe, but the political danger for Labour is far from over.

More documents on Mandelson’s appointment are due to be published, but not until after next week’s elections.

The Labour leader will be in front of MPs at noon for the final PMQs of the term. Parliament prorogues this afternoon until the State Opening on May 13.

Read more: MPs vote against sleaze probe into Keir Starmer over Mandelson vetting

Schrödinger's goalposts

John Swinney has insisted he is “changing no goalposts” on his route to a second independence referendum after questions over whether the SNP had quietly softened its threshold for relaunching the constitutional push.

The First Minister used a campaign stop in Edinburgh to argue his position remains the same as it ever was.

That is that an overall SNP majority on May 7 would recreate the 2011 precedent, which ultimately led to the 2014 vote.

On Monday, while the First Minister repeatedly refused to say whether the plan would go ahead if the SNP fell short of 65 seats in Holyrood but still formed the next government, a senior party source made clear that it would.

“The whole manifesto stands,” they said. “If we’re elected to government, the manifesto stands. Otherwise, what is the purpose of a manifesto?”

“We’re going to continue to argue for and pursue independence,” the SNP source added. “That’s hardly news.”

Asked directly whether there had been any repositioning, Mr Swinney rejected the suggestion. “I’m changing no goalposts,” he said.

“I’m saying to you exactly what I said to you last summer, which was get an SNP majority, repeat the precedent, and get an independence referendum.”

Read more: Swinney: 'I'm changing no goalposts on independence'