SNP has betrayed voters - no wonder Reform is on the march in Scotland

The Herald Scotland

27-05-2025

As the referendum campaign entered its final weeks I travelled extensively throughout Scotland and began to sense a dynamic in our towns and villages that seemed to have been overlooked by Yes strategists. As the opinion polls crept up from a starting point of around 27% in favour of Yes and moved into the high 30s and mid-40s, the inconvenience was easily buried.
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The truth that dare not speak its name in ardent Yes society was this: that a large percentage of Scots were quite happy to belong to the Union and harboured deep feelings of affection about England and the English. What's more: they considered themselves to be as fiercely proud of their Scottishness as the most fervent nationalist. This simply didn't compute at Yes HQ.
What if people just liked the Union for its own sake and for what it seemed to represent to them: peace, stability, permanence, yet still permitting badinage and nationalistic tomfoolery around the big sporting occasions? It was unlikely, given the intensity of the emotional excursions and alarums around September, 2014, that these people would be out and proud about this.
Alex Salmond seemed to recognise this too (though somewhat late in the day) when he delivered a speech in Cromarty about the social, cultural and political unions that would always bind Scotland and England in a fraternal embrace.
Certainly, support for Scottish independence has more or less held up since 2014. It could hardly have failed to: not when you consider the Boris Johnson years and extreme Brexit and Jacob Rees Mogg and the obscene get-rich-quick Covid schemes that operated for friends and families of Tory grandees. And then, even when it seemed that the SNP would inevitably lose Holyrood to Labour in 2026, along came a windfall named Sir Keir Starmer, a man so shallow and insincere that he makes John Swinney look principled.
Two questions remain for those who still think independence is a possibility in the next ten years or so: how many of those quiet Scottish No voters have become even more attached to the Union. And to what extent have their numbers been augmented by Scottish nationalists sickened by the way their party has been hollowed out by an ugly and vicious cartel of special interest groups hell-bent on cancelling women arguing for their sex-based rights?
SNP leader and First Minister John Swinney (Image: free) Even a cursory glance at social media reveals that many could scarce forbear to shout 'three cheers for the Union' when first the UK Tories activated the Section 35 provision to thwart self-ID and then again when the UK Supreme Court ruled in favour of biological reality for the purposes of the 2010 Equality Act.
We may get an answer to these questions if Reform UK, lacking even a Scottish figurehead, occupies either of the top two places at next week's Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by election. The disgusting race-baiting that's featured in Reform's attacks on Anas Sarwar should alert those tempted to vote for this deeply unpleasant party. It's reasonable to ask why decent people might consider voting for them. An even more pressing question arises, though. What does it say about Scotland's counterfeit Left that large sections of the working-class seem intent on doing just that?
John Swinney already seems to have read the runes. In one of several rambling, incoherent interviews, the First Minister – under probing by BBC Scotland's excellent Martin Geissler – tried to explain what a 'compelling and demonstrable demonstration of support for independence' looks like.
Mr Swinney said it would be something like the numbers in the run-up to the 1997 election in Scotland, when there was 'demonstrable, clear consensus of opinion that Scotland should have its own parliament within the United Kingdom'. In other words, 74%.
I've long suspected that the SNP in the Sturgeon/Yousaf/Swinney era has been duping its support base. This confirmed it. A few days later, Michael Gove could scarcely wipe the smirk from his face when he said that he agreed with Mr Swinney that another referendum might happen if there was 'an overwhelming desire on the part of the Scottish people for one'.
Effectively, he was saying: 'my job here is done'. And neither he, nor his Unionist chums even had to lift a finger to make it happen. All of the heavy lifting has been done by the SNP who surrendered independence to their malevolent little identity parade.
Such has been the chaos engulfing Scottish and UK politics in the last 12 months that it's been claimed that Nigel Farage may yet be the man to keep the dream of independence alive. Another suspect narrative attaches to this: that if he were to lead Reform UK into Downing Street then surely all reasonable, liberal and thoughtful Scots would have no other option than to vote for independence to disassociate us from this riot of a party.
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This though would be to ignore the ugly, class-baiting tendencies of the SNP in recent years in which they routinely attack working class communities for not speaking properly, for drinking too much; for eating unhealthy food, for being unfit parents; for exhibiting irresponsible attitudes to refuse collection; for their callousness in the face of Scotland's drugs death crisis.
'Find something else to moan about,' Mr Swinney spat at a Labour MSP who had attempted to question him about child homelessness, a response for which he was later forced to apologise.
Elements of the deeply unpleasant nature of Reform's attacks on Anas Sarwar are present in the tide of malevolence that the SNP and Greens have directed towards decent Scottish women who have refused to be cancelled.
It may be that having seen the sewer that runs beneath the SNP, the darkness at the heart of Reform doesn't scare voters so much now. The SNP have brought us to this bad, bad place in Scottish politics, no-one else.
Kevin McKenna is a Herald writer and columnist. He is Scottish Feature Writer of the Year. He's fiercely proud of never having been approached by any political party or lobbying firm to do their bidding.