Lib Dems set sights on winning more seats than the Tories at Holyrood in 2026

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has set his sights on overtaking the Tories in 2026 Holyrood elections.

After the party increased its number of Scottish MPs to six in the general election, meaning it has more representatives from north of the border than the Tories, he said they could “beat them at Holyrood too”.

It comes as the Liberal Democrats, who currently have five MSPs are targeting up to a dozen seats in the 2026 ballot, with Cole-Hamilton insisting polls show them “surging forward”.

The Liberal Democrats have never won more MSPs than the Conservatives in the 25 years of devolution, but the Scottish leader told his party conference in Perth: “We overtook the Scottish Tories at the general election.

“Why stop there. Let’s beat them at Holyrood too.”

A local council election victory for the Liberal Democrats in Strathallan in the “Conservative heartland of rural Perthshire” shows the party has “parked our tanks firmly on the lawn of the Scottish Conservative party”, Cole-Hamilton added.

Noting that the next Holyrood election “will be here before we know it”, the leader stressed people were taking his party “seriously again”.

While he said he had been “heartily glad to see the back of the morally bankrupt Conservative government” in July’s general election, he said Labour had so far not delivered the change promised.

Criticising Sir Keir Starmer’s government, the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader said: “When families needed a fair deal, Labour stood by the two-child benefit cap.

“When business needed a fair deal, they hiked employers’ national insurance contributions.

“And when pensioners needed a fair deal, Labour removed the winter fuel allowance.

“This doesn’t feel like the change we were promised.”

He was critical too of the SNP government at Holyrood, branding them “tired” and “out of touch”, with John Swinney’s party having “been in power too long”.

Cole-Hamilton told the conference: “The proof of that runs through their abject failures of government.”

Here he cited the Scottish Government’s failure to introduce a deposit return scheme for drinks cans and bottles, new ferries being built on the Clyde that “have yet to carry a single passenger” and “doomed” plans for a National Care Service after ministers announced another delay to proposals which are opposed by the opposition at Holyrood, local government body Cosla and trade unions.

Branding the National Care Service a “dead parrot of a policy” the Lib Dem leader challenged the SNP to “read the room” and ditch it.

His comments came as he insisted that decisions made by the Scottish Government “are harming the people of Scotland”, with budget cuts in areas such as housing, mental health care and help for those struggling with drugs and alcohol.

Adding that next month’s Scottish budget “could make a difference to all of this” he said the Liberal Democrats would “act like grown-ups” in talks with ministers ahead of that.

But with the minority SNP government having to find support from at least one other party at Holyrood to get its budget through, Cole-Hamilton said: “They will have to move mountains to persuade us.”

He said this was because “we know the scale of the reform that’s needed” and because “we know the only thing that will truly bring about the change that Scotland needs is a change of government”.