It's 100 days until Scots go to polls - political parties are setting out their stalls

In 100 days Scotland will go to the polls to elect new MSPs in the seventh Scottish Parliament election.

Officials are preparing for the biggest ever changeover of MSPs, with around half of Holyrood’s 129 members expected to be replaced.

One hundred days to go sounds like a big deal that should be accompanied by some kind of fanfare, but the reality is that it is of no real political significance; it is just a nice round number for the party leaders to remind us of their existence and step up their campaigns in the media.

So today we have the SNP, campaigning for the Scottish Parliament election at Westminster. They’re attacking the Prime Minister, saying that in 100 days voters can sack Starmer and reckon that a bad result for Labour would force a challenge to Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership. The party’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn was at the forefront, with an ad-van showing a photo of the Prime Minister with a caption “gone in 100 days”. They might be right, a really bad result for Labour in Scotland and in Wales on May 7 has long been thought the potential catalyst for a leadership challenge to Sir Keir Starmer.

Labour in turn want to Sack Swinney – their line today was 100 days to save the NHS. With the end of the evidence to the Hospitals Inquiry high up the news agenda, Labour are pushing the health issues as hard as they can. Questions of whether the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital was safe when it opened and who knew what and when dominated FMQs last week, and Labour will lead a Holyrood debate on health tomorrow afternoon.

We heard from Reform yesterday – they want to cut income taxes by £2bn if they win the election in May. The Fraser of Allander Institute warned that the plan is “implausible” without hitting public services. Reform’s new Scottish leader, former Conservative minister Malcolm Offord, denies it would mean cuts to frontline services, but also admits he “hasn’t gone through it line by line”. If he wants his ideas to be taken seriously, he should have been through it line by line, but realistically no-one expects him to be in a position to deliver on the promise come May 8. I challenged him on his proposals on Scotland Tonight on Monday, which you can see on the STV Player.

The Conservatives and Lib-Dems are in much the same campaign mode as Labour – challenging the SNP, who have been in Government for almost 19 years and are still out in front in the opinion polls. Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay will set out his plans to crack down on Welfare spending tomorrow, and he really does sound like he wants to crack down on it. The Greens are pushing their own record of delivery, pushing things like free bus travel for under 22s, and they are also taking exactly the opposite line on tax to Reform, promising higher taxes for the highest earners.

So 100 days before some pretty big changes here at Holyrood – 40 current MSPs have announced they are standing down but after the electorate get their hands on them, parliament bosses think there could be up to 75 new MSPs at the election – that would be the biggest turnover since the start of devolution in 1999 when all 129 members were new.

One hundred days until the country’s future is in the hands of voters – if you are 16 or over on May 7, make sure you are registered to vote.