LAST Friday morning, Glasgow City Councillor Thomas Kerr took to social media to announce that, following a recent surge in recruitment, Reform UK now has more than 10,000 members in Scotland. If Kerr, a recent Tory defector, is correct, Nigel Farage’s party is now the country’s third-largest — and may yet surpass Scottish Labour.
The results of a Fife council by-election later that day sounded further alarm bells for Anas Sarwar and his party. In Glenrothes, Scottish Labour — already well beaten by the SNP — narrowly avoided ceding second place to Reform UK by a margin of just 3 per cent. This is the latest in a string of local by-elections across the country at which similar results have been recorded.
Kerr attributed his party’s recent momentum to the fallout from the Scottish government’s anti-far-right summit, which took place last Wednesday. In the gilded environs of Glasgow’s Merchant House, the First Minister united the great and the good of civic Scotland to discuss “locking” Reform UK out of Holyrood after next May’s Scottish election.
The leaders of Scotland’s major political parties, barring the Conservatives, all attended. Together, they agreed to recommit to upholding the values of “participation and openness,” “the sharing of power,” “accountability,” and “equal opportunity.”
The problem, of course, is that John Swinney’s unpopular front lacks even the pretence of legitimacy. Indeed, the stunt was so poorly executed that, within 24 hours of its conclusion, the respective MSPs had returned to Holyrood to tear lumps out of one another at First Minister’s Questions.
After all, what can politicians who routinely use public consultation as a means of putting radical policy proposals out to pasture tell the Scottish public about “participation?” What can Swinney, whose party has spent the last four years under police investigation for fraud, tell us about “openness?” What can the Scottish government, for who centralisation has long been a key organising principle, teach the electorate about “the sharing of power?”
What can any of Scotland’s politicians know of “accountability” for as long as they remain content to entrust swathes of our economy to the control of asset managers? What lectures can Anas Sarwar give on “equal opportunity” while he remains resolute in his support of the British government’s £5 billion welfare raid?
This is not about purity politics — far from it. My point is simply to emphasise that Swinney’s summit to stop Reform UK risks doing exactly the opposite. The event serves only to legitimise Farage’s false claim that his party represents the only alternative to a moribund political establishment, so much so that this formerly disparate bunch are teaming up to stop it.
As this article’s opening paragraph sought to convey, Reform UK represents a clear and present threat in Scotland. However, the success of any challenge to Farage’s radical right-wing agenda will depend on its ability to face down the actors who have fostered his rise. Instead, unable to look themselves in the mirror, last Wednesday, Scotland’s politicians put their fingers in their ears and shut the door behind them.
Those who disagree with the thrust of this column may argue that Swinney’s summit was called in the best traditions of the devolved settlement. It was, after all, a similarly broad front which made up the Scottish Constitutional Convention and led the campaign for home rule more than 25 years ago. The problem, however, is that it is not 1999. It’s 2025.
Throughout the intervening quarter century, a bipartisan failure to deliver the promise of devolution — to bring power and resources closer to the people of Scotland — has seen the credibility of Scotland’s governing class crumble. Now, with their seats and salaries under threat, Scotland’s politicians are trying and failing to resuscitate the ideas of decades past.
During the campaign for the Scottish Parliament, one major player in the Scottish Constitutional Convention was the Scottish TUC. Perhaps it was in this spirit that the STUC accepted an invitation to Swinney’s summit on Wednesday.
As the STUC’s annual congress convenes in Dundee this week, delegates will debate those strategies and tactics that best tackle the far-right. Central to this conversation should be the extent to which the trade union movement is willing to associate itself with state-sponsored initiatives like that which took place in Merchants House.
If, as a movement, we believe that the social vandalism wrought by successive rounds of austerity has created a petri dish in which support for Reform UK now grows, then surely our place in the struggle against Farage is not beside those politicians who have lent their support to successive cuts budgets.
Commenting after the summit, Farage listed “the trade unions” alongside civil society and the political parties as part of Scotland’s Establishment. Any worker facing victimisation, fire and rehire, or a real-terms pay cut this year knows that not to be true.The reality, however, is that if Reform UK are allowed to paint our movement as indistinct from the politicians represented at Swinney’s table, then our ability to challenge their agenda will be severely curtailed.
This article first appeared in the Morning Star on 29th April 2025
Kerr attributed his party’s recent momentum to the fallout from the Scottish government’s anti-far-right summit, which took place last Wednesday. In the gilded environs of Glasgow’s Merchant House, the First Minister united the great and the good of civic Scotland to discuss “locking” Reform UK out of Holyrood after next May’s Scottish election.
The leaders of Scotland’s major political parties, barring the Conservatives, all attended. Together, they agreed to recommit to upholding the values of “participation and openness,” “the sharing of power,” “accountability,” and “equal opportunity.”
The problem, of course, is that John Swinney’s unpopular front lacks even the pretence of legitimacy. Indeed, the stunt was so poorly executed that, within 24 hours of its conclusion, the respective MSPs had returned to Holyrood to tear lumps out of one another at First Minister’s Questions.
After all, what can politicians who routinely use public consultation as a means of putting radical policy proposals out to pasture tell the Scottish public about “participation?” What can Swinney, whose party has spent the last four years under police investigation for fraud, tell us about “openness?” What can the Scottish government, for who centralisation has long been a key organising principle, teach the electorate about “the sharing of power?”
What can any of Scotland’s politicians know of “accountability” for as long as they remain content to entrust swathes of our economy to the control of asset managers? What lectures can Anas Sarwar give on “equal opportunity” while he remains resolute in his support of the British government’s £5 billion welfare raid?
This is not about purity politics — far from it. My point is simply to emphasise that Swinney’s summit to stop Reform UK risks doing exactly the opposite. The event serves only to legitimise Farage’s false claim that his party represents the only alternative to a moribund political establishment, so much so that this formerly disparate bunch are teaming up to stop it.
As this article’s opening paragraph sought to convey, Reform UK represents a clear and present threat in Scotland. However, the success of any challenge to Farage’s radical right-wing agenda will depend on its ability to face down the actors who have fostered his rise. Instead, unable to look themselves in the mirror, last Wednesday, Scotland’s politicians put their fingers in their ears and shut the door behind them.
Those who disagree with the thrust of this column may argue that Swinney’s summit was called in the best traditions of the devolved settlement. It was, after all, a similarly broad front which made up the Scottish Constitutional Convention and led the campaign for home rule more than 25 years ago. The problem, however, is that it is not 1999. It’s 2025.
Throughout the intervening quarter century, a bipartisan failure to deliver the promise of devolution — to bring power and resources closer to the people of Scotland — has seen the credibility of Scotland’s governing class crumble. Now, with their seats and salaries under threat, Scotland’s politicians are trying and failing to resuscitate the ideas of decades past.
During the campaign for the Scottish Parliament, one major player in the Scottish Constitutional Convention was the Scottish TUC. Perhaps it was in this spirit that the STUC accepted an invitation to Swinney’s summit on Wednesday.
As the STUC’s annual congress convenes in Dundee this week, delegates will debate those strategies and tactics that best tackle the far-right. Central to this conversation should be the extent to which the trade union movement is willing to associate itself with state-sponsored initiatives like that which took place in Merchants House.
If, as a movement, we believe that the social vandalism wrought by successive rounds of austerity has created a petri dish in which support for Reform UK now grows, then surely our place in the struggle against Farage is not beside those politicians who have lent their support to successive cuts budgets.
Commenting after the summit, Farage listed “the trade unions” alongside civil society and the political parties as part of Scotland’s Establishment. Any worker facing victimisation, fire and rehire, or a real-terms pay cut this year knows that not to be true.The reality, however, is that if Reform UK are allowed to paint our movement as indistinct from the politicians represented at Swinney’s table, then our ability to challenge their agenda will be severely curtailed.
This article first appeared in the Morning Star on 29th April 2025
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