Reform is about to smash the myth of a ‘progressive' Scotland

Telegraph

08-05-2025

As is the fashion these days, journalists, politicians and commentators are getting their tartan troos in a twist over the most recent polling for next year's Holyrood elections.
Given Reform's narrative-changing performance at last week's local elections in England, it probably shouldn't be much of a surprise that Nigel Farage's party has enjoyed a post-poll bounce even in Scotland, where, we are regularly informed, your average voter is so progressive that he is permanently on the cusp of canonisation. Yet being more virtuous than our English neighbours has not prevented a Caledonian surge for Reform here too.
A Survation poll has produced a snapshot of party support north of the border that suggests Reform could form the official opposition to the SNP government from next May. The usual caveats apply: not a prediction, things could change, margin of error, etc.
This will annoy a lot of people and frighten many more. Not so much because they see in Reform's advance a repeat of German history in the 1930s – Scottish education has suffered under the SNP but it hasn't quite deteriorated that much yet – but because it looks likely that Scotland is about to endure another political earthquake that will reconfigure the political landscape. Again.
Ten years ago today, Scotland woke up to the new political reality that Scottish Labour's reliable fiefdom was no more: all but one of its MPs had been removed from office in a crushing defeat by the nationalists at the UK general election.
In the years that followed, the party made heroic efforts to recover, helped by the SNP's own unforced errors. Last year, most of those seats were recaptured by a new generation of Labour MPs. But discontent with Keir Starmer's administration has been widespread and Scotland has not reverted to the way it was in the '70s through to the noughties, when voters would reliably vote Labour whatever the national UK mood.
A friendly and sensible Labour MP pointed out to me recently that the threat to UK Labour from Reform is similar to the threat the SNP poses to Scottish Labour: voters in large parts of the country would be unlikely to countenance voting Tory, however unhappy they might be at Labour. But when an electorally viable alternative arrives on the scene… well, all bets are off.
And it is Scottish Labour and its leader at Holyrood, Anas Sarwar, who will feel most worried by the latest poll. When Humza Yousaf, the SNP's Liz Truss tribute act, was first minister, Sarwar enjoyed the unusual experience of being the most likely person to succeed him in Bute House, the official residence of the head of government in Scotland. But Yousaf's replacement by the dull, reliable and 'nice' John Swinney has steadied the SNP ship and the party has been leading in every poll since then.
The prospect of being replaced by Reform as the main opposition in even a single poll is exactly the kind of blow to personal and party morale that Sarwar could do without. Starmer repeatedly insisted, before last year's general election, that his path to Downing Street ran through Scotland. He was right. But if he's still right, that could mean the path to Downing Street is being paved for the benefit of a rather different political leader.
Does this poll mean that Scots are suddenly dangerously Right wing – or even 'far Right' as Swinney has often warned – and are emulating their southern compatriots' alleged intolerance of high levels of immigration?
Put it this way: the only time I had a voter tell me that 'Enoch was right' was not in a housing estate in London, Birmingham or Leicester; it was in Glasgow. From a Labour voter. The fact that for, decades, Scots generally voted for parties perceived as Left-wing, progressive and tolerant, effectively hid the frustration felt across many areas of Scotland, particularly in the sprawling housing estates where Labour used to trawl for support.
The resentment against the influx of asylum seekers, sent northwards by the Home Office to Labour-run Glasgow, the only Scottish local authority that had agreed to be part of the asylum dispersal scheme, was real and it was loud. And political parties ignored it.
It has been pointed out often but it's worth reiterating: it is the poorest communities, the ones with the fewest employment opportunities, the lowest quality of housing and schools, the fewest community facilities, that are more likely to resent new arrivals, especially if they arrive in large numbers. This is true across the whole of the UK, and Scotland is not exempt.
But our politicians chose not to acknowledge this, at least publicly. The myth of the welcoming, progressive Scot who is only too happy to hold placards declaring 'refugees welcome here' was propagated and repeated, however little attention was paid to the fact that a lot of those placard wavers headed home afterwards to their comfortable, middle class homes and their comfortable middle class jobs, separated from the affected communities by a comfortable middle class distance.
And suddenly in Scotland it's no longer socially unacceptable – or at least, not as socially unacceptable – to admit to being a Reform voter, especially if the central aim of placing that cross on the ballot paper is not to object to immigration, but to protest at the complacency of the establishment.
I know at least two members of my former local Labour Party who intend to exercise their frustration at their party by doing exactly that. Scottish Labour thought the nightmare of 2015 was over. It may be about to be repeated.