Long before the final votes were counted in Scotland, veteran Labour politicians said this was a defeat made in Downing Street.

When Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar strode into the Glasgow count arena on Friday afternoon flanked by sombre-faced activists, the scene was in mirror image to the same venue in 2024, when his resurgent party won 36 seats from the SNP, playing a significant part in Keir Starmer’s landslide.

Two years later, Starmer’s unpopularity proved an insurmountable obstacle for Sarwar, despite record donations to Scottish Labour and a formidable electoral machine, honed over the past five years. And with only a handful of constituencies declared, he made the decision to concede defeat even before the real scale of Labour losses across the country was known.

Over 12 hours later, when the final regional results were declared after 1am, it was clear that Holyrood politics had been upended, as Scottish Labour tied for second place behind the SNP with Reform UK, the party that previously attacked Sarwar’s loyalty to Scotland in a racist attack ad. And a party that SNP leader John Swinney has described as an acute threat to devolution.

While Holyrood has no ‘official’ opposition as in the Commons, the second placed party leads first minister’s questions every week. A tie has not happened before, but the assumption is that Scottish Labour and Reform UK will take turns.

While newly elected SNP MSP Ivan McKee thanked voters in his Glasgow constituency “for rejecting those that seek to divide our communities”, Reform picked up its 17 seats on the regional list allocations, although making fewer inroads than some polls were predicting. It failed to make any breakthroughs on the constituency vote, with its Scottish leader Malcolm Offord trailing in third place in his native Inverclyde.

In fourth place, the buoyant Scottish Greens secured what co-leader Gillian Mackay described as a “seismic” result, with MSPs in every area of the country.

Thanks to a successful strategy of standing candidates in only a few potentially winnable constituencies and funnelling support on to the regional list vote, they harnessed a Green surge that was the result not just of the Zack Polanski bounce south of the border, but progressive dissatisfaction with both Scottish Labour and the SNP, especially over Gaza.

For the SNP, it was a muted victory, its support plunging across the country with the lowest constituency vote share, at 38.3%, since 2007, and resulting in much slimmer majorities for Nationalist incumbents. There were losses to the Lib Dems, and a surprise defeat by Labour in Na h-Eileanan an Iar (the Western Isles), against the background of local fury at Scottish government failures to deal with an ongoing ferries crisis.

While voter anger at the SNP government’s public service failures was evident on the campaign trail, at the ballot box it benefited from the fracturing of the pro-union vote.

Craig Hoy, the Scottish Tory chair, who held the Tory seat of Dumfriesshire – one of three south of Scotland seats the Scottish Conservatives won despite dire polling – said Reform had allowed the SNP to win many of its constituency seats by default, by splitting the anti-independence vote.

“John Swinney really should’ve been up for a pasting tonight, and Reform let him off the hook,” he said.

The result is a Holyrood chamber with a very different character. At the helm of Reform is Malcolm Offord, a billionaire financier and former Tory peer with no experience of leading a party in parliament, whose MSPs – as second place tie – will now take key roles in Holyrood committees. These MSPs include Senga Beresford who has stated support for Tommy Robinson and the deportation of Muslims and Amanda Lindsay who was accused of using an antisemitic trope.

The new Scottish Greens groups includes Iris Duane, the parliament’s first transgender female member, Q Manivannan, a non-binary Tamil immigrant, and Kate Nevins, who was berated as “dangerously naive” by opponents when she called for the abolition of prisons.

One-third of SNP MSPs stood down at the end of the last term, including trusted veterans and women sick of juggling family responsibilities, but today saw their new cohort boosted by experienced players from Westminster, including current Commons leader Stephen Flynn, who is known to have leadership aspirations, as well as respected figures such as Alison Thewliss, Kirsten Oswald and Stephen Gethins.

In the coming days more will be known about how the parties will work together. Although a pro-independence majority exists between SNP and Scottish Greens, Swinney is highly unlikely to seek a formal coalition after the disastrous governing partnership that brought down his predecessor Humza Yousaf.

This had been the most unpredictable Scottish election for more than a decade, with a record number of undecided voters, and also one defined by public apathy and frustration. No party put forward the big ideas needed to fix Scotland’s most pressing problems, be that its looming budget black hole or the country’s de-population crisis. This was reflected in a final turnout of 53.1%, 10 points down on 2021, and surely demanding every new MSP’s attention on how to re-engage half the Scottish public.