A different kind of politics is needed to beat Reform in Scotland

The National

25-05-2025

In the past few weeks, Reform UK have risen to 21% in Westminster voting intentions in Scotland and 20% in one Scottish Parliament poll in regional list voting intentions. This would make them the main opposition party to the SNP and dramatically alter the composition of Holyrood. And they are challenging for first place in the Welsh Senedd elections.
In real votes, the party is making its presence increasingly felt. Just over a week ago, it won 26% – its highest ever Scottish vote – finishing second behind the SNP in the Clydebank Waterfront local by-election. And in just over a week, Reform fancy their chances of polling well in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse which the SNP are defending after the recent untimely death of Christina McKelvie.
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This shouldn't come as a surprise. Look at the state of Scottish politics and the track record of the current SNP administration after just under two decades in office. Add to that the unpopularity of UK Labour and the ineptness of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, alongside the complete irrelevance of Scottish Labour and Tories.
Can the above momentum be a wake-up call to mainstream politics? Or do we need a complete overhaul of how politics is done? And is there anything realistically which can be done politically between now and the 2026 elections?
The Reform UK vote in Scotland has a distinctive constituency. There is the 38% Leave vote in the 2016 Brexit referendum who feel unrepresented. There is the absence of a centre-right politics with cut-through in 26 years of the Scottish Parliament. This has seen the failure of successive Tory leaders to critique and offer an alternative to the centrist consensus which defines Holyrood, independence apart.
Add to this Scottish Labour's problems with the Starmer government and Anas Sarwar's inability to stand for anything. Scottish Labour's problems run deeper than Starmer and Sarwar and reflect the party north of the Border's failure to adapt both to the age of devolution – despite their role in bringing it about – and the rise of the SNP.
Reform UK's vote in Scotland is drawn from 20% of Tories and 15% of Labour's 2024 Westminster vote. With Labour's vote last year being nearly three times the Tory vote (35.3% v. 12.7%), that means there are a lot more Labour switchers to Reform UK; the comparable figures for the LibDems and SNP are 6% and 2% respectively.
Reform UK not surprisingly gain more among 2016 Leave voters (39%) compared to 9% among Remain voters; they average 28% among current No supporters and 7% among Yes supporters.
Professor John Curtice observes: 'As in the rest of the UK, support for Reform is concentrated among older people, Brexiteers and sometime Conservative voters.' This comes with what he describes as 'two important twists in Scotland'.
The first is that 'Labour's vote of last summer appears more vulnerable to Reform than south of the Border – probably because a significant chunk of their support in Scotland came from former Conservative voters.'
The second is that 'support for Reform UK is primarily concentrated among Unionists – and in fracturing the pro-Union vote, the party's rise has significantly enhanced John Swinney's chances of remaining First Minister after next year's Holyrood election' albeit with a declining SNP vote and prospect of a pro-independence majority being open to question.
Scottish politics likes to emphasise how better it is compared to Westminster. It is a low barrier to jump. Beyond this, a suffocating, complacent consensus defines Holyrood. It is failing Scotland on the fundamentals – health, education, poverty, local government, drug deaths, ferries, Grangemouth and more. Even more existentially, there is a powerlessness and lack of voice in too many communities the length and breadth of Scotland which the Parliament has not addressed.
There is an obvious terrain for a politics of insurgency and disruption. The problem for Reform UK is that it comes with baggage. One is Nigel Farage – who has not translated well north of the Border.
'In the days of Ukip, Farage used to treat Scotland like the Romans did – being frightened of going north of Hadrian's Wall,' says Michael Crick, author of the biography of Farage, One Party After Another: The Disruptive Life Of Nigel Farage. 'Farage,' he notes, 'has almost felt fearful of Scotland, regarding it as hostile territory. Big in his memory is the Edinburgh altercation in 2013 with independence supporters. Farage has felt until now that Scotland is not worth the trouble. Wales is much more productive and ripe for challenge.'
Reform UK have little Scottish ground operation, zero policy agenda and no Scottish leader. But there is a constituency for their politics. Their voters feel the UK is not a country they recognise from when they were younger. They read disproportionately the Daily Mail and Telegraph, watch GB News and have a pessimistic view of Britain, thinking that its best days are behind it.
'We are fed up being told what we can and can't say in our own country,' comments one Reform UK supporter north of the Border; another opines: 'Someone has to stand up to the SNP and say that we are proud to be British. Labour and Tories haven't done that.'
Crick takes the view that 'Farage's parties have evolved' through the serial platforms he has run – Ukip, Brexit Party and now Reform – the latter of which began as a private company owned by Farage and Richard Tice before morphing into a more conventional party. Ukip used to comprise, according to Crick, 'retired colonels in the golf club in the Home Counties and retired people on the South Coast. They have gradually established bridgeheads along the South Coast and worked northwards.'
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We know what the outline of a Reform UK politics would look like in Scotland. It would challenge many of Holyrood's assumptions. It would question the mantras of professional, middle-class Scotland and those that think they know best what is in the public good. They would claim to stand for freedom of speech and assert that the Scottish Government is an embodiment of 'the nanny state' and 'the woke'.
Yet, as we can see from Reform UK councillors elected in England, it would introduce a wave of anti-immigrant rhetoric and posturing alongside racist, xenophobic attitudes targeting black and ethnic minorities. They would take an anti-equality stance, trying to row back diversity and inclusion initiatives, and question any net zero policies while embracing climate change denialism. There would be a lot of performative posturing and anti-virtue signalling.
All of this would be done in an abrasive, arrogant, cocksure Trumpian manner made for maximum attention and offence; the style of which was seen last week in Reform UK's grotesque and racist allegation that Anas Sarwar commented that 'he will prioritise the Pakistani community', which he never said.
Crick thinks that Farage needs to reappraise his approach to Scotland and come up with a new offer if he wants to achieve a Scottish breakthrough. He states that 'Farage should come up to small-town Scotland. He would get a good reception. He is a formidable operator. He would get a lot of opposition. He would win many people over while creating a buzz.'
He offers this summation of Farage: 'A lot of politicians hate talking to voters. Farage thrives on speaking to people and has enormous energy and charisma. And from small-town Scotland, he should move onto more hostile territory such as Glasgow and Dundee.'
A recent YouGov poll last week predicted that Reform UK would win three Westminster seats – Dumfries and Galloway; Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale, and Aberdeenshire North and Moray East. These are all currently Tory rural seats that feel as far removed from Holyrood centralisation as they do Westminster.
It might well be too tall an order for Reform UK to break through at Westminster first-past-the-post seats in Scotland. But they are aided here as well as elsewhere by the long-term decline of the Tory Party. In Scotland, the Tory vote is falling off the cliff. In 2024, they won 12.7% - the lowest vote in the party's history and the YouGov poll cited had them on 8%. There is, it appears, no floor in the Tory vote – and that leaves the room clear for Reform UK.
Add to this former Labour voters who have shifted to Reform UK and this amounts to a sizeable part of the electorate. It also poses challenges. It necessitates that Reform UK talk right on immigration, Europe and culture wars, and are against red tape, bureaucracy and 'the woke'.
At the same time, they need to pivot left on public spending, an interventionist state on key utilities and an industrial strategy – witness Farage's opportunist remarks on Scunthorpe steel and renationalisation. They are 'coming after what was Labour's traditional working-class base' in England, Wales and Scotland, says Crick, and the knee-jerk response of what he calls 'illiberal liberals – just tut-tutting at Farage' will no longer do.
One way not to respond to Faragism is to dismiss it as 'far right' or 'fascist'. There are clearly far-right elements in the party, but Farage himself is a skilled political operator who has maintained for more than two decades a cordon sanitaire against the extreme right. This is what drove former Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe from the party with Lowe wanting to make common cause with Tommy Robinson.
Reform UK voters are not uniformly 'far right' but disillusioned, cynical and angry at the pale offer from mainstream parties. They are driven in Scotland by the same sense of not feeling listened to and respected and the same dismay at what they see as an insular, out-of-touch political class. All the parties in Holyrood are seen as part of the failed establishment.
Another way not to respond to Reform UK was John Swinney's recent anti-far-right summit. This looked and felt like a gathering of the Scottish political establishment and what used to be called 'civic Scotland'. It was an open clarion call and invitation for people to vote Reform UK – for the outsiders against the inside political class.
Scottish politics has been locked into the same path at least since 2014 and the indyref; an SNP with a sizeable enough constituency to remain in office as the largest party for the foreseeable future but exhausted, run out of ideas and with little positive to offer for the future for government or independence for now.
The pro-Union mainstream parties have struggled. Labour and Tories have failed in their opposition years to develop a convincing critique of SNP Scotland. Independence has work to do but it is also true in the past decade that the case for the Union has not been reset or remade. The LibDems struggle for air and the Scottish Greens will maintain a significant foothold but have irritated many with puritanism and self-righteousness.
Many now struggle to find a home. Someone visiting Dumfries and Galloway in the past week said: 'I have always voted. But I can't vote for any of them. Labour and SNP have so disappointed. The Greens are just annoying. For the first time in my life, I might spoil my ballot paper.' She was an enthusiastic Yes voter in 2014 and still supports independence. Such sentiment in others provides a rich stream for Reform UK.
Reform UK will arrive as a major presence in next year's Scottish elections and win their first Holyrood representation. That will be a wake-up call and a challenge to the 'business as usual' centrism that defines the Parliament.
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Scotland will need to meet this challenge head on. It has to recognise that centrist cautious managerialism is not enough here or anywhere. It is not enough to defeat Faragism in England. Or Trumpism in the US. Or Faragism in Scotland. And, in fact, is part of the problem.
A different kind of politics is required to defeat Reform UK and what they represent. That will involve grassroots campaigning, grounded politics and a political vision which speaks to and involves people. That will require a rupture with the present politics of Holyrood and of the SNP, Labour, Tories and others.
UK society increasingly feels fractured and fragile, and Scotland is no exception. It should not be a surprise that politics increasingly mirrors this. A political earthquake of dissatisfaction and anger is shaking the West. And Scotland is not immune from this. Reform UK are on the march and the mainstream and unimaginative way that politics is done here, as well as at Westminster, is aiding its appeal.