Sophie Taylor, client manager, looks at the top stories for the week ahead.
Thursday is election day, and much of the result is already written. What it sets in motion is not.
Polls suggest John Swinney will fall short of the SNP majority he has been chasing, though his party is on course to remain comfortably the largest at Holyrood. Plaid Cymru looks set to end more than a century of Labour dominance in Wales. In England, Labour and the Conservatives are bracing for losses to Reform UK, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats. The counts in Scotland and Wales are being held back this time until Friday, with the final picture not expected before evening.
It is what comes next that will define the week.
The first question is whether Swinney will get close enough to a majority to credibly claim the mandate for a second independence referendum he has already said he will demand regardless. The Norstat survey for The Sunday Times, with seat projections by Sir John Curtice, points to 57 SNP seats – eight short – and Reform UK overtaking Labour and the Conservatives to become the largest opposition party. A worse-than-expected night for the SNP does not end the independence push. It simply changes the argument Swinney has to make.
The second is what Friday means for Keir Starmer. A bruising set of English council results, layered onto a poor Welsh showing, will sharpen every question already circling him – and will return Angela Rayner, Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting to every conversation about what Labour does next.
The third may be the most consequential, and the least discussed. If Plaid Cymru takes power in Cardiff, Swinney will – for the first time – sit alongside nationalist first ministers in both Wales and Northern Ireland. He has already described the prospect to Sinn Fein as “an absolutely seismic moment”. Constitutional experts argue a Celtic triumvirate would not change the law but would test the Union's settlement in ways it has not been tested since devolution began. Sceptics, including Professor James Mitchell at Edinburgh, see something closer to a publicity stunt than a strategy. Either way, the dynamic is new.
Three elections, then, on a single day – and a set of questions that will outlast the count by a long way.
In brief - Scotland's economy and business
Heineken UK, the Edinburgh-headquartered brewing giant, is investing £44.5 million into pub upgrades with more than £3 million allocated for projects at 27 Scottish pubs (£) this year, creating 85 jobs north of the border. This comes as the hospitality sector struggles with rising costs and pressures on consumer spending.
A survey of 4000 employees across 32 councils found that Scotland’s local government workforce is “in crisis” (£). The research, carried out by trade union Unison, revealed staff to be worn out, suffering low morale and working well beyond their contracted hours without pay, with many planning early retirement. These workers were also found to be struggling with the cost of living - nearly two thirds reported regularly feeling stressed or overwhelmed by rising costs.
Seven organisations are now calling for the SNP’s food price cap – which would see the price of essential food items capped in an attempt to ease the cost of living – to be scrapped, claiming it would be unworkable, damaging to retailers and fail to cut household bills as intended.
The chief executive of CalMac, Duncan Mackison, has warned the organisation will remain “on the edge” of further major disruption until new ferries revive its fleet next year (£). Mackison said the operator was in “crisis management mode” after nearly one third of its vessels were out of action, and revealed that the recent significant disruption, which he has described as unprecedented, was “not a complete surprise”.
OpinioNation - columns of interest
Sir John Curtice explains why the rise of Reform UK will benefit the SNP when it comes to tactical voting (£) at the Holyrood election. Tactical voting may well cost the incumbent party its majority, but by making it more difficult for voters to identify the best way to vote strategically against the SNP, Curtice highlights that the addition of Reform UK to the electoral race actually protects the SNP’s dominance at Holyrood.
Events like the Iran war are serving as a reminder that physical and geographic facts – like the existence and power of the Strait of Hormuz – are what shape our lives, and not the digital tech world. In the Financial Times, Janan Ganesh frames recent affairs, like in the Gulf or with the dawning acceptance of Britain’s inescapable Europeanness, as the reassertion of the three-dimensional, material world (£).
In a short video clip, The Economist draws parallels between today’s tech titans and the “robber barons”, like J.D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, who drove new technologies in the Gilded Age. If history is to repeat itself, a regulatory backlash could be on the horizon for AI’s ‘famous five’.
Shifting the dial - recent research
In its final survey before votes are cast in Scotland, Norstat has shown for The Sunday Times that the SNP will fall short of the majority John Swinney aspires to.
Seat projections by Sir John Curtice suggest that if repeated on polling day, the SNP would emerge with 57 seats - eight short of a majority - and Reform UK would become the largest opposition party with 19 MSPs. It also predicts a late revival for the Scottish Conservatives with a base of 16 MSPs – tied in third place with Scottish Labour, which is on track to return its worst ever result.
The survey also revealed that Scots do not believe the SNP will deliver on cornerstone manifesto promises to reduce the cost of living, with 47% unconvinced that the party would implement its policy of capping the cost of essential products.
The week ahead - fill your diary with key events
Note: The House of Commons and House of Lords are in prorogation. They will next sit on 13 May 2026.
Monday
- UK: Early May bank holiday
- New York: Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour co-host the Met Gala
- Pulitzer Prizes announced
- Armenia: 8th European Political Community summit, bringing together about 50 European leaders and heads of international organisations for high-level political and strategic discussions on the future of Europe, including prime minister Keir Starmer
- 100th anniversary of the General Strike, a nine-day walkout that became the first, and up until now only, general strike in British history
Tuesday
- France: G7 trade ministers meet in Paris, running until Wednesday
- UK: Trial begins for men charged with the murder of former Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins
- Champions League semifinal second leg: Arsenal v Atletico Madrid
- Tony Award nominations
- Results from: HSBC, ABinBev, Paypal, Pfizer, AMD, Hugo Boss, OXY, BioNtech
Wednesday
- Switzerland: World Trade Organization General Council meeting
- Champions League semifinal second leg: Bayern v PSG
- Reports: S&P Global services PMI data, April official reserves data
- Results from: Novo Nordisk, Lufthansa, Daimler, Orsted, Walt Disney, JD Wetherspoons, Next, Arm Holdings, Uber, New York Times Co, Marriott International, Flutter, APA Corporation
Thursday
- UK: Parliamentary elections in Wales and Scotland, plus local elections in England, including all London boroughs
- UK: Bank of England Agenda for Research (BEAR) annual two-day conference begins in London
- Reports: S&P Global construction PMI data
- Results from: Shell, A.P. Moller-Maersk, Warner Bros, Coinbase, NewsCorp, McDonalds, Airbnb, Expedia, Swiss Re, Rocket Lab, InterContinental Hotels Group
Friday
- UK: Scottish, Welsh and English local election results come through
- British broadcaster Sir David Attenborough celebrates his 100th birthday
- Bulgaria: Giro d’Italia begins
- Victory in Europe (VE) Day, marking the anniversary of the formal end to fighting in Europe during the second world war in 1945
- One year ago: Pope Leo elected
- Reports: Halifax house price index, quarterly public sector productivity figures, US unemployment and consumer sentiment index
- Results from: IAG, Toyota, Sony, Nintendo, AngloGold Ashanti, Commerzbank
Saturday
- UK: Final English and London council election results
- Russia: Vladimir Putin holds the Russian Victory Day parade
- Hungary: Hungarian parliament votes on Peter Magyar as the new prime minister
- Vienna: Eurovision Song Contest opening ceremony
Sunday
- UK: Bafta Television awards ceremony in London
- Australia, Canada, US: Mother’s Day