{"id":337637,"date":"2026-04-24T18:00:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T17:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsisc.com\/videos\/we-grilled-every-scottish-party-leader-on-their-election-policies\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T18:00:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T17:00:25","slug":"we-grilled-every-scottish-party-leader-on-their-election-policies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsisc.com\/videos\/we-grilled-every-scottish-party-leader-on-their-election-policies\/","title":{"rendered":"We grilled every Scottish party leader on their election policies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i4.ytimg.com\/vi\/Wt1bmo4edB4\/hqdefault.jpg\" alt=\"We grilled every Scottish party leader on their election policies\"><br \/> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Wt1bmo4edB4\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p>Scotland is heading to the polls on 7 May, and<br \/>\nITV News has spent time on the campaign trail with all six of Scotland\u2019s party leaders to hear their big pitches for power. <\/p>\n<p>The last Holyrood elections were held in 2021. In the time since, Scotland has had three First Ministers and the UK has had three Prime Ministers. To say it has been a rocky period is putting it lightly.<\/p>\n<p>The SNP, in particular, has suffered serious turbulence. <\/p>\n<p>Facing questions about scandals and transparency, particularly the much publicised ferries fiasco, have all taken their toll.<\/p>\n<p>John Swinney is the party\u2019s third leader in three years but his pitch now is about stability. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am a dependable person. I am someone to rely upon,\u201d he told ITV News.<\/p>\n<p>But he\u2019s defending a record of the SNP in government for almost 20 years now. <\/p>\n<p>For example, at the last election his party promised every child in Scotland a free laptop with internet access. It didn\u2019t happen.<br \/>\nSwinney pointed to global events, citing Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine and the inflation that followed as factors beyond the Scottish Government\u2019s control.<\/p>\n<p>But he mocks the idea other parties can deliver a fresh start or \u2018change.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy goodness, what a joke. Parties offering change,\u201d he said, pointing to Labour\u2019s decision to cut winter fuel payments shortly after winning the UK general election. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe first thing they did was come in and take away winter fuel payments from pensioners.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And on independence, the issue that defines his party above all else, Swinney shows no sign of stopping the push, even after the SNP\u2019s 2024 election setback when Sturgeon had billed the vote as a \u2018de facto referendum\u2019 on the issue and the party subsequently suffered a humiliating defeat. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI believe fundamentally in the democratic right of the people of Scotland to decide their own future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Reform are the new kids on the block.<\/p>\n<p>If the SNP represent continuity, Reform UK Scotland represent the insurgency, or, as they describe themselves, \u201cthe disrupters.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Their Scottish leader Malcolm Offord is trying to build a distinctly Scottish version of the Farage brand.<\/p>\n<p>But ITV News found some notable daylight between Offord and his London leadership on their flagship issue &#8211; immigration.<\/p>\n<p>Offord isn\u2019t the only one going off message from the boss: Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar kicked off his campaign calling for Keir Starmer to go. <\/p>\n<p>The Scottish Conservatives have a similar Westminster problem after a decade of unexpected success in Scotland. <\/p>\n<p>The unionist vote that consolidated around them during the independence debates is now diluted and the polls are less kind.<\/p>\n<p>Leader Russell Findlay, who has served as an MSP for five years, is trying to create distance between himself and the UK Conservative government\u2019s record.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not responsible for what the UK Government did,\u201d he said. \u201cBut \u2018Tory\u2019 to a lot of people in Scotland has bad associations. It\u2019s associated with things that didn\u2019t go right for us in government.\u201d He acknowledged it would be a problem at the doorstep.<\/p>\n<p>The Scottish Greens are the only party contesting this election with co-leaders, Gillian Mackay and Ross Greer. <\/p>\n<p>They were previously in a power-sharing arrangement with Nicola Sturgeon\u2019s SNP, and are open to another such deal to push green policies into law.<\/p>\n<p>Their platform includes banning horse racing, legalising and regulating drugs, and, in a break with the current direction of SNP foreign policy, refusing any cooperation with Donald Trump\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are other markets we should be looking at,\u201d said Mackay, when asked about voters whose jobs depend on a good relationship with the US president. \u201cWe should be making stronger alliances with Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton is positioning his party as a partner for coalition government but with significant caveats. <\/p>\n<p>He has ruled out working with the SNP, Reform, and the Conservatives, which, as ITV News pointed out, rather narrowly leaves Labour.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll look at the arithmetic,\u201d Cole-Hamilton said. \u201cIt would need to work for our values. But I think this country is crying out for change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Subscribe to ITV News on YouTube: http:\/\/bit.ly\/2lOHmNj<br \/>\n\u2022 Get breaking news and more stories at http:\/\/www.itv.com\/news<\/p>\n<p>Follow ITV News on TikTok https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@itvnews?lang=en<br \/>\nFollow ITV News on Instagram: https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/itvnews\/<br \/>\nFollow ITV News on Facebook: https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/itvnews\/<br \/>\nFollow ITV News on X: https:\/\/twitter.com\/itvnews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scotland is heading to the polls on 7 May, and ITV News has spent time on the campaign trail with all six of Scotland\u2019s party leaders to hear their big pitches for power. The last Holyrood elections were held in 2021. In the time since, Scotland has had three First Ministers and the UK has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":337638,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[128812],"tags":[131233,132645,130382],"actors":[],"class_list":["post-337637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-itv-news","tag-heading","tag-polls","tag-scotland"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>We grilled every Scottish party leader on their election policies | News ISC Videos<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Watch We grilled every Scottish party leader on their election policies for free, here on News ISC. Discover more great videos on our website and be part of the community.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.newsisc.com\/videos\/we-grilled-every-scottish-party-leader-on-their-election-policies\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"We grilled every Scottish party leader on their election policies | News ISC Videos\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Watch We grilled every Scottish party leader on their election policies for free, here on News ISC. 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