Reform’s result is all the more remarkable for the fact that there was virtually no campaigning in Scotland, almost no media coverage of Reform candidates (certainly none that I saw that was neutral or positive) and a number of paper or unknown candidates. When polls began to show Reform as a threat to the Conservative vote in Scotland, a vigorous campaign was unleashed on Twitter/X and in the press to dissuade potential Reform voters, furiously blaming them for SNP victories if they did not vote tactically. In the final days of the election campaign, some unionist tweeters and Conservative Workers’ Party MPs went so far as to smear Reform’s deputy chairman in Scotland as a nationalist in order to scare voters away. In the end, Reform was held responsible for Douglas Ross losing his seat (while the opprobrium that greeted Ross’s theft of the seat from incumbent David Duguid was conveniently covered up), and in four others (one Conservative; three Labour) where the SNP won.
All of this suggests that the injunction to “stop the SNP at all costs by voting Conservative” is not deterring reform voters. It was once a compelling, general argument for voting Conservative, but I think it is past its sell-by date (though of course that won’t stop the Conservatives repeating it in future elections). Reformism will emerge as a significant force in Scottish politics – current performance alone predicts 6 list seats at Holyrood in 2026. Reformism’s success in the general election shows that the realignment of Scottish politics away from constitutional politics is already underway, and both will gain momentum as the SNP implodes.
Reform has considerable scope to win votes in Scotland. It is a mistake to think that all reform voters are ex-Conservatives. I know several nationalists and Labour supporters who voted reformist in Scotland. If Starmer fails to deliver for Scotland in 2026, many disaffected Labour and ex-SNP voters who could never vote for the toxic Tories will turn to reformism. The spectre of Thatcher still looms over the Scottish Conservatives, and an evolution towards a CSU-type party could not exorcise it even now, 13 years after Murdo Fraser proposed it in his failed bid for the presidency.
Apart from that, the Scottish Conservatives have long distinguished themselves by being less pro-Brexit and more liberal than the Westminster leaders. He Times Yesterday, the Conservative Republican MP and likely party leadership candidate Jamie Greene (pictured) claimed that “there is little appetite for a reactionary swing to the right in Scotland”, and was forced to add that “the status quo is equally unappetising”. Yet one million Scots voted for Brexit, many of them on a Scottish nationalist impulse. As the Conservative Republican MP Douglas Lumsden ruefully admitted, the party “had underestimated how many people would turn out for the Reform Party”, particularly in Brexit-bound areas. If the Scottish Conservatives stick to the Lib Dem-lite route (as Jamie Greene implies they should), they will hand Scotland’s centre-right over to the Reform Party.
If, as I have argued, the SNP is facing an existential crisis with the realignment of Scottish politics away from constitutional politics, so too are the Scottish Conservatives. Jamie Greene warns that “continuity is not enough”, but this is likely to be as empty a slogan for the Scottish Conservatives as it was for Kate Forbes when she became deputy to SNP continuity supremo John Swinney. The politics professor James Mitchell recently wrote that “the SNP leadership cannot deal with the problem because it is the problem”. Again, it is hard not to see that this applies equally to the cabal of curmudgeons who rule the Scottish Tory roost. To this extent, Reformism, as a nascent party in Scotland open to all comers and eager for policy development, is also better placed to respond in a timely manner to the changing political tide.
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