John Swinney has insisted he's still the best man to lead the SNP after the party suffered a shock by-election defeat in Hamilton.

The First Minister faced calls to quit from some veteran Nationalists after Davy Russell was elected in a result that stunned pundits, pollsters and bookies, who had nearly all predicted victory for the Nats.

The by-election contest in South Lanarkshire has handed huge momentum to Scottish Labour with less than a year to go until the next Holyrood poll.

Swinney today strongly hinted he will soon carry out a Cabinet reshuffle as he looks to put the Hamilton disaster behind him.

Alex Neil, a former Scottish Government minister and SNP MSP, broke ranks in the hours after the result was declared on Friday morning to call for a change in the party's leadership.

"Poor by-election result for the SNP despite having the best candidate," he said. "It shows that the opinion polls appear wide of the mark. Most importantly it shows the current SNP leadership needs to be replaced urgently."

Asked if he was still the man to lead the party, Swinney told BBC Scotland: "Yes. Twelve months ago, the party turned to me. I was not seeking high office, I'd held high office for a long time in my life, and the party turned to me, at a moment of real jeopardy, and asked me to use all of my skills and experience, and the loyalty I command in the party, to bring people together and focus us on the future.

"Over the course of the last few months, we've seen real progress being made by the SNP in terms of our policy agenda.

"We didn't win on Thursday, but we will again."

Asked if he would carry out a reshuffle, the SNP leader added: "Obviously, I've got a Cabinet minister coming back from maternity leave, Mairi McAllan, so I'll have to look at the team, and I'll be doing that in due course."

Swinney also vowed he would not “do any sort of deal or co-operation” with Nigel Farage after losing the Hamilton by-election.

Reform UK came from nowhere to finish a close third behind the Nats and Scottish Labour.

Swinney said that if it was necessary to form a coalition to keep Reform out of government, he would “pursue the policy priorities of my party”, and pledged never to work with the Clacton MP.

Swinney said: “We’ve got to give people hope of what the future lies for Scotland, and that’s as a country that can use our enormous energy wealth for the benefit of our people who are paying extraordinarily high fuel prices at the moment.”

When asked if he would consider a coalition between the SNP, Labour and the Greens to keep Reform out of government, Mr Swinney said: “We’ll be going into that with the aim of winning that election.

“If you look at the result on Thursday, all the pollsters say that if that was applied across the wider electorate in Scotland, the SNP would remain by a country mile the largest political party in the Scottish Parliament.

“Now that’s not good enough. I want to get stronger in that election, but I’ll tell you one thing I will not do under any circumstances, is do any form of deal or co-operation with Farage.

“I just won’t do it, and people need to understand that."

Source: Daily Record