Labour's relentless red wave reached Scottish shores - and left little in its way

Labour has forced the SNP into turmoil after its dire General Election results, ITV News' Correspondent Peter Smith reports.

This election is a tidal change for Scotland.

That relentless red wave that we knew was sweeping up through England has also reached Scottish shores overnight, and it left little in its way.

The SNP has been wiped out in Edinburgh and Glasgow - it no longer has a single seat in either the Scottish capital or Scotland's biggest city.

It is reduced to single figures in seat count, and a decade of dominance for Scotland's party of independence comes to an end.

There are no two ways about it: this is a devastating result for the Nationalists.

Even in their worst nightmares, they wouldn't have imagined it could possibly get this bad for them just a few months ago.

The reasons are varied: some voters have become just as disillusioned with the SNP after their 17 years in power in Scotland as they are with the Conservatives after 14 years in Westminster.

The SNP are being held to account for their failings on domestic policy, with problems in the Scottish NHS just as acute if not worse in some areas as we see in England and Wales.

And there is also "independence fatigue" - even people who might believe in independence would like a change of priorities in the short term at least, with more focus on tackling a cost of living crisis.

Scottish independence was front and centre of the SNP campaign.

"Vote SNP for Scotland to become an independent country" - that was line one, page one of their manifesto.

The original architect of making this General Election about independence was Nicola Sturgeon.

She wanted to make it a "de facto referendum" to give the people of Scotland a say on their future in or out of the UK, after successive prime ministers had denied them another vote.

Since Sturgeon left as SNP leader, her replacements Humza Yousaf and then John Swinney downgraded that "de facto referendum" somewhat.

Instead the new party policy was to go into this election pursuing a majority of seats in Scotland as a trigger for then having an official referendum on independence.

Nicola Sturgeon, speaking on ITV News' overnight election programme, called the SNP results 'devastating'

"Independence is on the ballot paper," said the SNP's leader at Westminster, Stephen Flynn.

"A vote for the SNP is a vote for independence," said current party leader Swinney.

What's more, Swinney conceded to me in an interview that "a vote for any other party other than the SNP [is] running the risk that independence is damaged as a cause."

These were the terms the SNP set for themselves in this election.

If they had succeeded and won a majority of seats in Scotland, fighting the election on these very clearly defined terms, that would have been a huge problem for the next prime minister.

Sir Keir Starmer insists he would reject any calls for another referendum but it would be extremely tough for him to just ignore entirely what the people of Scotland had said at the ballot box.

He would have had to at least engage with the constitutional question in a meaningful way.

However, the converse of that must also hold true.

That the SNP failed in their own mission means the independence case is, as Swinney put it, "damaged."

It is infinitely easier for Downing Street to shrug off any attempt from the SNP to demand another referendum now, and from this result it's unlikely the voters of Scotland would want him to.

The SNP's position is now weaker than it's been for 14 years - the last time Labour won an election in Scotland - and it is likely independence will now be on the backburner for the foreseeable.

Labour's resurgence to become Scotland's biggest party is extraordinary in itself - recovering from a period banished to the wilderness north of the border to quite suddenly securing a healthy majority here.

Rather interestingly, if it weren't for this rise of Labour in Scotland, the vote for Starmer's party in this election would actually be almost unchanged from what it was for Labour with Jeremy Corbyn at the helm in 2019.

What we know is support for independence in Scotland now far exceeds support for the SNP - the 'party of independence.'

We can deduce that a large number of independence supporters have lent their vote to Labour in this election, but that doesn't mean they don't still believe in independence.

Starmer should not take these votes for granted, not should he assume it means the independence question will spontaneously disappear.

It may be better to say the SNP will in all likelihood take a pause in pushing for independence. They will engage in a period of reflection. But not for too long.

The next Scottish Parliament elections are in 2026 - expect that to be the next battleground for Scots to decide whether or not to revive the case for having another independence referendum.

Have you heard our new podcast Talking Politics? Tom, Robert and Anushka dig into the biggest issues dominating the political agenda in every episode…