Scottish politics is facing a significant shake-up as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and the Greens gain ground from voters disenchanted with the party political consensus.

New polling puts the Reform UK party on course to win up to 16 seats in Scotland as support for Labour collapses.

This would see the SNP return to Government in Holyrood in 2026 as part of a 74-strong bloc pro-independence MSPs – the largest ever majority of members favouring separation.

Labour would shrink to just 16 MSPs – their lowest ever number in the Scottish Parliament.

The shock poll for the Herald on Sunday newspaper puts the SNP on course to win 51 seats, the Greens 15 and Alba 8.

Sir John Curtice, the polling expert, said: “The point here is the SNP finds itself where they are basically because Labour support has imploded.

“That just gives the SNP the chance of forming the next government, albeit from a rather weaker position than it is at the moment.”

Prof Curtice said a political landscape made up of smaller unionist parties and one big nationalist party would inevitably benefit supporters of independence.

While support for the SNP has slipped, Labour’s collapse is so substantial that they are set to come a distant second when voters head to the polls in May 2026.

SNP MSP Keith Brown said: “Support for Labour is imploding, and it’s hardly surprising given their betrayal of so many people, through axing the Winter Fuel Payment, maintaining the two-child cap, hiking National Insurance for charities and businesses, refusing compensation for the WASPI women, and skyrocketing energy prices. Labour can promise plenty in an election, but they cannot deliver in Government.”

Thomas Kerr, the former Tory councillor for Glasgow Shettleston who defected to Reform, said the Conservatives have lost the support of central Scotland.

He told The Sunday Show on BBC1: “They have neglected the central belt … the same as the SNP and Labour have done for generations.”

He said that Reform would publish “a fully costed manifesto” for the Holyrood election.

“We now have branches from Orkney down to Glasgow and right across,” he said. “We now have 8,000 members in Scotland, which is more than the Conservatives, Greens and Liberal Democrats.

“So we have the infrastructure, we have the campaigns, we are winning across Scotland.”

He cited Reform’s performance in council by-elections, from “Fraserburgh, where we got 25 per cent of the vote, down to Glasgow, where we got 18 per cent of the vote.

“It’s people who are fed up and angry. People who are scunnered with politics.”