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Telegraph
06-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Reform didn't win – but it's on the cusp of a breakthrough in Scotland
A month ago, Reform UK's triumph in the English local elections all but killed off the two-party system in Westminster. On Thursday night, it did the same in Holyrood. 'There's a new party in Scotland,' declared Ross Lambie, Reform's candidate in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election. He may not have won, but he did send the strongest signal. Though Labour prised the constituency from the SNP – only the third time a seat has changed hands in the admittedly brief history of Scottish parliamentary by-elections – it was far from a resounding victory. Davy Russell's margin of just 602 votes puts him in the second-most precarious position of all current MSPs, with just 11 months to go until a guaranteed re-election battle. From a standing start six weeks ago, Reform's Mr Lambie took 26.1 per cent of the vote, while all other major parties – including Labour – suffered a fall in their share. Reform now looks on course to pick up double-digit seats in next year's Scottish Parliament elections, and could pose a real threat in the 2029 general election. The Tories, meanwhile, fell to a lowly fourth place, with just 6 per cent. Having received well over four times as many votes, Reform now reigns supreme on the Right in Scotland as Labour and the SNP, each blighted by being in power, tussle for the Left. The SNP's shock 16.8 point crash in vote share (despite a number of polls favouring the party for the win) was a disaster for John Swinney, the First Minister. His first electoral contest as leader resulted in the worst-ever by-election swing against the SNP and the second-worst for any party since devolution in 1999. Reform ended up just 869 votes behind, putting the top three parties within less than 1,500 votes of each other. 'Scotland is now a three-way marginal,' declared Richard Tice, Reform's deputy leader, leaving many seats vulnerable to a Reform insurgency. Less than half of constituencies in 2021 were won with a majority of the vote. But only 73 of the Scottish Parliament's 129 seats are awarded in this way. The combination of first past the post in individual constituencies with regionally elected party list members, according to the proportion of votes received, could actually be even more of a boon to Reform. Few politicians have been hampered by Westminster's electoral system as much as Nigel Farage. Even his successful 2024 general election campaign proved the most distorted in history, his party receiving 14.3 per cent of the vote yet just 0.8 per cent of the seats. Holyrood tends to produce far less skewed results. Looking at the percentage of 'unearned' seats in elections since devolution shows – calculated by adding up the difference between each party's vote share and their seat share and dividing by two (what psephologists call a Loosemore-Hanby index) – they tend to in fact be roughly twice as faithful to the will of the people. This bodes well for Reform in the Scottish Parliament elections next May. Given the party's current overall polling average of around 16 per cent, it could be on course for between 12 and 20 seats. More sophisticated analysis from Ballot Box Scotland suggests that, as of May 30, Reform could pick up 15 seats. None of these, however, represents an outright constituency win, but rather the allocation based on a 15.4 per cent share of the regional vote. Reform's predicted haul matches that of the Tories and is only a few behind Labour, on 21. Reflecting on the by-election result, Prof Sir John Curtice, a polling expert, said the Conservatives were 'being eaten for lunch, breakfast and dinner' by Reform. While the SNP would win the most seats on 59, that falls from the 64 in 2021 and slips further from the 65 required for a majority, giving challengers' voices even more prominence. While Scots often vote differently between general elections and their parliamentary elections, their distaste for the Labour Government's policies speaks volumes. Labour capitalised on the SNP's financing scandal to take 35.3 per cent of the vote last July – a greater share than its 34.4 in England. While the SNP salvaged 30 per cent in second, Reform came fifth with just 7 per cent, less than half its 15.3 per cent take south of the border. This underlies the fact that Scotland is not naturally fertile ground for Mr Farage – 62 per cent of Scots voted Remain in 2016's Brexit referendum, more than any other UK region. The party neither won nor came second in any of Scotland's 57 Westminster constituencies. Its highest vote share was Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (14.6 per cent), but that was still only enough to put it third after the SNP (35.2 per cent) and the Conservatives (32.8 per cent). But attitudes are shifting. Immigration was the issue Scottish adults felt Labour was handling the least well, with 74 per cent of respondents answering 'badly' to just 13 per cent 'well' when polled on June 1. In YouGov's latest temperature take of politicians' net favourability – the share of Scots viewing them positively minus those with a negative impression – Mr Farage came in at -44. That may sound dire, but it makes him more popular than Sir Keir Starmer (-52) and Kemi Badenoch (-50). That's a 10-point improvement since last July for the Reform leader, compared to a 38-point decline for the Prime Minister. More recent MRP polling – multilevel regression and post-stratification polls that combine a large survey sample with local demographic and historic support – hints that this could yield political results. According to The Telegraph's election predictor, Labour's seat tally in Scotland would plummet from 37 to three, leaving it with just Glasgow North East, Midlothian and Edinburgh South. While Reform still falls short of breaking through in any single seat, its overall vote share increases to 12.8 per cent. It now comes second in six seats and third in 22, with the average margin to the victor shrinking from 36.2 points behind to 24.9. The Telegraph's poll tracker shows that Reform has soared over the past two months. The party overtook Labour for second place at the start of April, surging from 16.7 per cent to 23.9 per cent as of the start of June. The Tories, meanwhile, having won 12.7 per cent of the Scottish vote last summer, are languishing on 8.2 per cent of voting intention in fifth place. With the party effectively 'disappearing down a plughole', Reform has seized the reins of the UK Right by taking the lead in the nation most historically antipathetic to its values.
The Herald Scotland
06-06-2025
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
It's time to stop the scaremongering over heat pumps
If you take away the cost of a gas boiler, which would not be required, this makes the cost difference about £10,000 maximum. Is he suggesting that the housebuilders should leave out the insulation and double glazing as well? The difference in heating costs between a standard house built around 1970 and current standards is significant and I doubt if anyone would want to live in a basic 1970s house or pay the heating bill. The housebuilding standards in the UK for insulation have been extremely poor compared to the standards in Scandinavian countries for at least the last 60 years and we are paying the price now in high retrofit costs to bring them up to a similar standard. Most of the hype about additional measures required to install a heat pump result from this failure in building standards, and any changes to the heat emitters of new-build houses should result in a reduction in costs as less heat output is required. For interest, you only need to replace the heat lost from a building and a heat pump can do this just as effectively as a gas boiler although it may be necessary to increase the radiator size as the flow temperature is lower. This does not apply to new-build and therefore it will not result in additional cost. There was no incentive for builders to build houses with decent insulation and this could have reduced the potential profit per build and it was only when the Government eventually started introducing proper building standards that this situation slowly improved. The before-tax profits of one major housebuilder last year were £359.1 million for 10,664 completions which amounts to £33,674 profit per house (11.1%). Some of these properties will include most of the standards for net zero and should be heat pump-compatible if they are still fitted with gas boilers. I am not suggesting that housebuilders should not make a profit as that is how capitalism works, but perhaps it might put Ross Lambie's claims in perspective. There are lots of reasons why we should be moving from gas to electricity, reducing global warming and saving the planet is only one of them, but misinformation is making a sensible transition more difficult. Iain McIntyre, Sauchie. Read more letters Pride has had its day I found the first half of the letter (June 4) from Rebecca Don Kennedy, CEO of the Equality Network, regarding the removal of Pride flags from lampposts on Arran quite enlightening. I read it thinking that we may well have an outbreak of common sense. Until. The CEO went on to accuse Mark Smith of hypothetical and imaginary views, indeed, accusing him of victim blaming. There then followed a completely non-evidential, truly hypothetical and imaginary reasoning of what someone must be thinking if they dislike a flag. The removal of a flag is straightforward vandalism (if damaged) or theft, and nothing else. Until the perpetrator is found nobody knows what their thought process was. They may just have been having a laugh. Under no circumstances is that then a hate crime. For me, and many like me, I'm afraid that Pride has had its day, and it seems to me that it, and the "inclusive" groups of people behind it, are more about continually causing and promoting division in society. Why can't we all just let people be? Gregor McKenzie, East Kilbride. A Pride march in Glasgow (Image: PA) Frustration over hospital parking Today (June 4) I failed to make a significant appointment at Glasgow Royal Infirmary (GRI), booked at a specialist unit in October 2024. I spent two hours attempting to find a parking space, and failed. I recall that there was some problem in making the GRI car park free, which was eventually resolved. As a regular patient, I enjoyed a brief period when outpatients had an allocated parking area: that privilege did not last. A missed appointment costs the NHS around £233 and I have now to wait until at least September for a new appointment. I do not believe that the GRI car park is solely occupied by staff and patients. Glasgow is restricted and punitive in parking, and I suspect that this car park has a high occupancy of selfish non-entitled healthy parasites. Stewart MacPherson, Kilsyth. Dictionary corner The faulty English usage Steve Barnet despairs of (Letters, May 29) doesn't exasperate me as much as the profusion of malapropisms that have become common. Educated writers can no longer use the following, for fear of being misunderstood: apprise, which will be confused with appraise; beg the question will be supposed to mean pose the question; deprecate (an obscure theological term) seems to be supposed to be a posh modern variant of depreciate; enormity is used as a synonym of magnitude; fulsome is used instead of full (it is cognate with foul); ilk is presumed to mean sort; iconic is used as though it means special rather than totally standard; the verb loathe is used where the adjective loth would be correct; the adjective staunch is used where the verb stanch would be correct. This stems from the modern practice of guessing at meanings instead of consulting a dictionary. Some hold that words should mean what people think they mean rather than what a lexicographer declare them to mean, but this leads to degeneration into baby-talk shorn of all subtlety. Robin Dow, Rothesay. Cruise control It annoys me that CalMac ferries, the latest Glens Sannox and Rosa in particular, are referred to by several of your correspondents as "cruise liners". They are actually "crew's liners", a very important distinction and the root of a large number of the problems imposed on CMAL and CalMac by each other. Peter Wright, West Kilbride.
The National
06-06-2025
- Politics
- The National
John Curtice in warning to SNP and Labour after Hamilton by-election
The polling expert was appearing on the BBC after it was announced that Davy Russell had won the by-election for Scottish Labour, becoming the party's 23 MSP with 31.5% of the total vote. The SNP were second, with their candidate Katy Loudon picking up 29.4% of the vote, while Reform UK's Ross Lambie was a close third with 26.2%. Speaking to the BBC, Professor Curtice said that the result had confirmed the 'evidence of the opinion polls', but that Reform's level of support was "a bit of a surprise". READ MORE: Hamilton by-election results – see the full breakdown in charts and graphs He explained: 'The revival of the Labour Party that took place in the two years running up to the General Election has indeed disappeared, the party is indeed more or less back to where it was in 2021. 'But at the same time, with the SNP vote down by 17 points, here is more than ample evidence that indeed the SNP, while it might have steadied the ship psychologically, has still made very little progress in advancing on where it was at last summer.' Curtice said that the vote result showed that there was a 'chunk' of pro-Yes voters who had backed Labour in the 2024 General Election and 'have not returned to the SNP fold'. He added: 'This election confirms very, very clearly that the SNP still have an awful lot of work to do to get those voters back on side, and it does illustrate that indeed, although, given, if this kind of result were to be reflected across the whole of Scotland, we'd still bet about the SNP being the largest party, they are still on relatively fragile ground.' The University of Strathclyde expert further said that Reform UK's vote share had been a 'bit of a surprise given the national polls'. Reform UK candidate Ross Lambie campaigning in the by-election (Image: Gordon Terris) He went on: 'That 26% almost matches their best performance in the Scottish local government by-election [in Clydebank]. It is higher than we would expect given the current polls in Scotland. 'It certainly is very bad news for the Conservative Party, who are frankly being had for breakfast, lunch, and dinner by Reform at the moment, so far as the public is concerned. They're at 18% in the GB-wide polls, they're down to 12% in the Scotland polls. The Conservative Party cannot afford for Reform to gain momentum north of the Border.' However, he went on to issue a warning to the SNP and Labour, saying both parties 'need to think about how are they going to effectively deal with Reform'. Curtice said: 'For all the complaints about Nigel Farage's ad [attacking Anas Sarwar], it is not clear from this result that it did any damage. 'I think I would point out to both the SNP and the Labour Party that what they ended up doing in this by-election campaign was giving an awful lot of publicity to a message that they thought was not a very good idea. 'One of the first rules in politics is to avoid scratching the itch of things you do not like because you simply end up potentially giving them airtime. READ MORE: Angus Robertson tears into BBC coverage of Hamilton by-election count on live TV 'And the truth is that evidently Mr Farage's message was not sufficiently unacceptable for at least a body of people in Hamilton for Reform to record a quite notable share of the vote, and certainly the highest share of the vote won in a parliamentary contest by any anti-EU party in Scotland.' Asked where Reform's vote had come from, Curtice said: 'Around one in four of the people who voted Conservative last year, diminished in number as they were, in Scotland are switching to Reform. 'But Labour also are losing somewhere between one in six and one in five of their voters to Reform of the ones they had last year.' He added that Scottish voters who backed Labour in 2024 are more likely to switch to Reform than English voters, saying that south of the Border Labour 'are losing about 10% of their vote to Reform'.
Telegraph
05-06-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Meet Reform's Hamilton candidate: the architect in a T-shirt who vows to ‘drain the bog'
In 1967, a by-election just outside Glasgow saw the first crack appear in what would go on to form a chasm in the political map of Scotland. The candidate of the SNP, then just a fringe party, won Hamilton, Lanarkshire, defying the odds by taking the seat off Labour despite it being one of the party's safest constituencies. The result launched the SNP's rise to power: ever since that by-election, the party has had a continuous MP in Westminster. Now nearly 60 years later, that same watershed moment could be about to repeat itself because voters in Hamilton, Larkhill and Stonehouse have the opportunity to elect the first Reform UK member to the Scottish parliament. The candidate is Tory defector Ross Lambie, a 41-year-old architect who switched allegiances in March. Mr Lambie was elected as a Conservative South Lanarkshire councillor for the Clydesdale South ward in 2022. He previously stood for the Tories in the 2021 Holyrood election for Central Scotland and in last year's last general election but was unsuccessful on both occasions. But in March, he along with John Gray, a councillor from Renfrewshire, switched to Reform UK in a provocative stunt filmed alongside Nigel Farage and Richard Tice in a chippy. Often seen campaigning in a T-shirt and windbreaker as opposed to the more conventional suit and tie, Mr Lambie has had an unorthodox route into politics. He was raised in a small mining village in South Lanarkshire to working-class parents before going to Glasgow School of Art to study architecture. Mr Lambie set up his first practice 17 years ago, Ross Alexander Lambie Architects, and his portfolio includes luxury properties in some of the most expensive streets in West London. He has since moved back to the Scottish countryside with his wife and daughter to run a little farm outside the constituency. Mr Lambie has focused his campaign on drilling in the north sea for oil since announcing his candidacy for the by-election, called following the death of former SNP MSP Christina McKelvie. He has also pledged to 'drain the bog' of Holyrood's main parties – Labour, the SNP and the Conservatives – which he claims have 'wasted money on nonsense'. Mr Farage is pinning his party's first test of electoral viability in the Scottish parliament on Mr Lambie.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Daily T: Is Farage coming for Scotland?
It's Farage's big test in Scotland. For years it was a political dead-end for Reform party leader - heckled in Edinburgh, chased from restaurants in Aberdeen, and repeatedly rejected at the ballot in today's Holyrood by-election in Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse, Reform UK is mounting a serious challenge. With Farage back in charge and his candidate Ross Lambie gaining ground in an SNP stronghold, could this be the moment his party makes a breakthrough north of the border?And while the Tories remain locked in internal warfare, we speak to Reform's most senior council leader, Linden Kemkaran, on how the party plans to cut spending with their own version of Elon Musk's DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) department, and why she wants to end taxpayer-funded English lessons for migrants. Watch episodes of the Daily T here. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
