OPPOSITIONS don’t win elections, governments lose them, goes the saying.

There’s truth in this wisdom if one considers UK political history.

Labour’s big general election victories of 1945, 1964 and 1997 were all preceded by long Conservative governments of 14, 13 and 18 years respectively. All of these governments ended in failure, farce, decline or scandal.

Consider the Thatcher and Major years. Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979 and spent the next decade privatising national industries, smashing trade unions and pursuing the holy grail of self-interest over society and community.

No-one does regicide like the Tories and the Iron Lady - who was not for turning - was unceremoniously turfed out of office in 1990, to be replaced by John Major.

Major as PM led us into a recession, a double-digit interest rate crisis with exponential homeowner repossessions and the sterling crisis known as Black Wednesday.

Yet, despite looking at an open goal in 1992, Labour’s Neil Kinnock failed to win that year’s general election. Likewise, Ed Miliband and Jeremey Corbyn suffered similar defeats at the 2015 and 2019 general elections, with Corbyn winning the lowest number of seats for Labour since 1935.

What this tells us is that in order to win you need to have a credible economic and social plan to take the UK forward. Keir Starmer clearly has this and Labour’s landslide victory of 412 seats is evidence of that.

Labour’s victory this month comes after 14 long years of the Tories being in power which ended in a political bin fire. The election raises concerns that should be considered, as well as giving us a glimpse into the 2026 Holyrood elections.

First, there can be no doubt Labour benefited from a significant tactical vote to wipe out the Tories. Allegations of cronyism, corruption and incompetence were hallmarks of Sunak’s zombie government. The Tories lost 20 points and are now a rump opposition on 121 seats.

For most of the last century, UK general elections have had turnouts of around 75%. That’s been on the slide and was down to 67.3% in 2019.

This month, the average turnout was 60%. Voters are switching off and becoming alienated by political parties – that’s a concern for democracy.

The demise of the Tories was ably assisted by the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform. Originally known as the Brexit Party, it changed its name to Reform in 2021. It pulled over 4 million votes – mostly from the Tories – with a 14.3% vote share and 5 MPs.

Reform pulled 7% of the vote in Scotland with almost 170,000 votes. Given how Brexit has been an economic disaster it’s remarkable that so many people voted for Reform – but vote they did.

In Scotland, Labour has made its first real comeback since 2007. The SNP lost more than 517,000 votes from the 2019 election.

In truth, all votes are borrowed from electors. The moment a party assumes votes belong to them is the beginning of that party’s end. The days of tribal voting are gone. The SNP will have been in power in Scotland for 19 years at the next Holyrood election. The stagnation and incompetence that haunted the Tories now haunts the SNP.

What we know is simple. People are demanding change and competent government.