The Royal George Hotel in Perth has existed since 1773. Queen Victoria stayed there in 1848, and there are two lamps in the hotel fashioned from the bed she slept in. Since March this year, the Stone of Destiny, used in the coronation of ancient Scottish kings, has been on display 300 yards away.
It is, therefore, a place of some historic note. This weekend, a different kind of history will occur, when the Royal George hosts Reform UK’s first-ever Scottish conference. The event, which only lasts four hours, is billed as featuring “Richard Tice MP and guests”. A few short years ago this might have created general amusement in the mainstream political class. No longer.
The party is expecting between 200-300 attendees, a figure the Scottish Liberal Democrats, for example, could only dream of. Recent polls suggest Reform UK is on course to secure between 12 and 14 MSPs at the Holyrood election in 2026, which could leave it in the unlikely position of kingmaker. For the established Scottish parties, it feels like the barbarians are at the gate.
Scotland barely figured in Reform UK’s strategy ahead of the general election. The party prioritised those parts of the country where it felt it could win, and north Britain was somewhere near the bottom of the pile. There was, consequently, no real effort put into organisation. However, the result was significantly better than expected – no seats, but a seven per cent share of the vote.
That outcome, and the fact polls suggest support has almost doubled since July, has been accompanied by a strong performance in council by-elections across central Scotland. Reform UK came third in North East Glasgow, with 18.3 per cent, well ahead of the fourth-placed Tories on 5.4 per cent. It also came third in Maryhill, in Drumchapel and Anniesland, and in Whitburn and Blackburn in West Lothian.
This sustained show of support has alerted the leadership to the fact that Scotland has potential. In particular, they believe the Scottish Conservatives currently lack direction and sense an opportunity to get a chunky foot in the door in 2026. The main targets will be the unionist vote in Glasgow and surrounding areas, and in the North East, home to the oil and gas industry (alarmed by Labour’s net zero policies).
It’s not just Scotland. Reform is even more focused on Wales, where it came a close second to Labour in Llanelli at the general election. It has the ambitious target of becoming the opposition in the Welsh Assembly in 2026.
Thought is now being applied to policy. There are suggestions that rather than promising to scrap Holyrood entirely, as many expected, Reform UK will instead promise to improve the performance of the parliament. Other than a commitment to scrapping net zero targets, it sounds like the party intends to park its tanks squarely on the Tory lawn as a unionist alternative. There is clearly going to be a battle over which of the two is entitled to the slogan “common sense politics”, as adopted by new Conservative leader Russell Findlay.
But it’s not just the Tories who need to worry. There is evidence that, around the edges, both the SNP and Labour risk losing support to the insurgent. There is something of a Trumpite rebellion in the air – as the centre-left mainstream talks in the abstract about “progressive politics”, “sustainable growth” and a “wellbeing economy”, the day-to-day experience of many voters is of a political system that is failing to deliver on the substance: whether education, the NHS, the economy, transport or so much else.
The sense of an overreaching state is increasingly in the air. Headlines this week that the SNP government is planning to cut the national speed limit on Scotland’s single carriageway roads from 60mph to 50mph are unlikely to help. Nor are those reporting that First Minister John Swinney has said that men can’t get pregnant, even as his government is in court arguing the opposite. Nor those that Health Secretary Neil Gray has been having a fine time of it, attending freebie movie premieres and football matches while the NHS teeters on the brink of collapse. Nor plans to release hundreds of inmates from Scotland’s jails early, in order to tackle overcrowding.
Next week’s Scottish Budget is likely to be a rough one for many services – owing to health and welfare spending pressures – despite an additional £3.4bn from Rachel Reeves. This is in part due to the SNP’s profligate use of taxpayers’ money over the past decade, including its high public sector pay settlements, despite higher income taxes for anyone earning above £29,000.
Even the IFS is worried. In a report issued this week it warned that “if health spending were to continue to grow at the rate seen in recent years, many other areas of spending would almost certainly face cuts – perhaps as soon as next year. The Scottish government should also evaluate key policies that increasingly differentiate it from the rest of the UK, including its higher public sector pay and income tax policies and wider tax strategy.” The impact of Reeves’s increase to employers’ National Insurance contributions and the minimum wage have yet to be factored into broader economic performance.
One doesn’t have to have any truck with Reform UK’s agenda to see how much of the above could fuel growing unrest among a significant part of the Scottish population that is fed up with the status quo, and send those people looking for an alternative outside the traditional choices. Immigration may not be the hot-button issue that it is in the south, but one increasingly hears it talked about by ordinary Scots, and not in a nicey-nicey, send-us-your-huddled-masses way.
If the barbarians are at the gates, there appears to be a growing number of natives who are ready to let them in. It’s up to Messrs Swinney, Sarwar and Findlay to find an effective response.
[See also: Britain needs a strong economy to be secure]
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