Why Reform UK now has to be taken seriously in Scotland

There are many lessons to be learnt from how the 2024 General Election played out in Scotland and unsurprisingly most of the focus is being given to Labour’s return to domination at the expense of a collapse in SNP MPs to single figures.

The trouncing of the SNP was well deserved; the party has delivered disastrous outcomes from the Scottish public services it has neglected at the expense of its repeated grievance-mongering to further its cause of Scotland’s secession from the UK.

That cause was further humbled in what the SNP insisted would be a de facto referendum – with the four unionist parties attracting a 65 per cent vote share and returning 48 MPs to the nationalists’ paltry nine. Whatever way those advocating the break-up of the UK try to look at it their appeal for secession has been left in tatters, even worse than the 2014 referendum.

Douglas Ross, right, of the Scottish Conservatives, at the count in Aberdeen last week, where he lost the Aberdeenshire North and Moray East seat to the SNP's Seamus Logan, left

Yet for all the humiliation and embarrassment of the SNP, the blame for which lies heavily on the shoulders of Nicola Sturgeon, Humza Yousaf, John Swinney – and supporting cast members such as Kate Forbes, Shona Robison, Ian Blackford and Stephen Flynn – the other horror story to emerge is the worst campaigning performance of the Scottish Conservatives Party’s history.

True, the party was not wiped out – as happened in 1997 when no MPs were returned from a 17.5 per cent vote share of 493,009 votes – nor did they manage only a solitary MP as in four elections between 2001-2015 – but they did fall from six to five MPs when at the start of the campaign they appeared poised to increase their number.

The facts do not lie. The vote share of 12.7 per cent and total of 307,344 Scottish votes were both the worst results in the party’s history. The party lost fifteen deposits and in Glasgow its vote share was below 5 per cent and behind the nascent Reform UK in all six seats.

The reasons for the Conservative’s holding only five of their six seats were, I believe, twofold; that in each case it was a straight fight with the SNP and, secondly, the party is clearly now defined as a rural party with little impact beyond some historical legacies in Scottish urban areas. The days when Conservatives could return a couple of seats in Glasgow and the majority of seats in Edinburgh have long gone and show no prospect of revival.

With such a poor record after fourteen years in power at Westminster all that saved the party from another wipeout was they were less unpopular than the SNP in all but one of their seats.

Needless to say those responsible for the party’s fall from even recent glories of 17 MPs in 2017 from a 28.6 per cent vote share and 6 MPs from a 25.1 per cent vote share in 2019 show no sign of accepting their role in the party’s embarrassment. Blaming Liz Truss, partygate and any other political issue of Westminster origin is to fall into blame-shifting behaviour of the SNP.

The real weakness for Scottish Tories is the lack of a positive case for voting Conservative.

This is deeply troubling for under the careful management of the now retired Scottish Secretary Alister Jack, the party had provided a bulwark against the culture war excesses of SNP-Green-Labour-Liberal Democrat politicians that proved attractive to many who had not supported Conservatives in the past. Emphasising those issues could have strengthened reasons for voting Conservative rather than timorously relying on growing anti-nationalist sentiment.

And now, with the SNP so humiliated, where will the campaign slogan of “only the Conservatives can stop the SNP here” take them now, but to the further loss of seats in the Holyrood elections in 2026 and the next general election of 2028 or 2029?

Pointing the finger of blame at the appearance of Reform UK in these elections is no more than a device to escape the reckoning those leading the Scottish Conservatives deserve.

The goal of Reform UK, run by its own activists in Scotland, was to build upon their 0.2 per cent vote share after their debut on the 2021 Holyrood elections by standing a candidate in every parliamentary seat. Their campaign yielded a highly respectable 7 per cent vote share, providing a platform to target of 8-12 MSPs in 2026, primarily but not exclusively to the cost of the Conservatives.

The idea Douglas Ross lost in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East because of Reform UK not standing down in that new seat is as daft as it is illogical. The Reform UK candidate, Jo Hart, came third with an astonishing 14.6 per cent of the vote – ahead of Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Using the argument that other unionist parties should not stand so Ross could win must surely then apply to the two legacy parties whose votes were also larger than the SNP majority.

That Reform UK did so well was surely helped by Douglas Ross’s cataclysmic decision, backed by the party’s board, to deselect former MP David Duguid and stand in his place. The revulsion amongst so many Tory supporters found Reform UK offered a more palatable alternative than Labour or Liberal Democrats.

Worse still, I have no doubt the dreadful treatment of Duguid resonated across Scotland and put the party’s prospects of doing well against SNP candidates elsewhere into reverse, turning their posture into a desperate scramble to defend what they had.

Meanwhile Reform UK lost only nine deposits, better than the 28 lost by the Liberal Democrats, or Alba, who lost all of theirs – and moved ahead of the Scottish Greens as the rising political force. Unless the Scottish Conservatives recognise they need to stand for positive policies rather than campaign solely on anti-SNP sentiment, Reform will take regional list seats from them in 2026.

Yes, the SNP domination is reduced, but not dead – but the Scottish Conservatives are threatened once again and it is solely of their own leadership’s making.