That Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is even in contention in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election this week is itself a remarkable development in Scottish politics. Farage has long been a hate figure in nationalist and Labour demonology. When he visited Scotland 12 years ago, he had to be rescued by police from an Edinburgh pub, at which point he was pursued further by anti-racist demonstrators.

Protestors were again present when Farage spoke in Aberdeen this morning, but they were comparatively muted. The Reform leader launched an attack on Net Zero, which he blames for the “deindustrialisation” of Scotland. Aberdeen is the centre of the North Sea oil and gas industry, and there have been significant job losses recently blamed on windfall taxes and Labour’s ban on new drilling.

“Net Zero is the new Brexit,” Farage declared to a sceptical press, as he unveiled Reform’s first Labour defector, councillor Jamie McGuire. He then departed for what he’s dubbed the Hamilton “catfight” — the by-election triggered by the death of SNP MSP Christina McKelvie.

This Lanarkshire seat is in traditional Labour territory. Only nine months ago, the party was supremely confident that seats like it would return to the fold. Those hopes have wilted, and an internal inquest is already underway over what has gone wrong. Keir Starmer, in Scotland today for his big defence announcement, has declined even to visit Hamilton.

While there have not yet been opinion polls in the constituency, Reform has been neck and neck with Labour in recent national polls in Scotland, behind the SNP. First Minister John Swinney insists that Hamilton is “a two-horse race” between the SNP and Reform. Few expect Farage’s party to actually win on Thursday, but even polling guru John Curtice refused to rule it out on the BBC today. Turnout is expected to be low as Scottish voters express their disgust at parties across the political spectrum: the vote is far from a foregone conclusion.

However, in a sense, it doesn’t matter. Reform has won even if its candidate, Ross Lambie, loses on Thursday. In the last Westminster contest in this area, Reform’s vote was 8%. Yet the party is suddenly being regarded by leading politicians and commentators as potential winners in a country where it has no track record and almost no ground operation.

Last week, Reform outraged the Left in the country by accusing Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar of “prioritising the Pakistani community”. Sarwar, along with much of the Scottish press, said this claim was “obviously racist” and accused Farage of being “a nasty little man only interested in sowing division”. Reform doubled down, and today Farage responded that it was Sarwar who is “obsessed by race” and that only his party is truly “colour-blind”.

It was astonishing for Reform to lead with race in a country which is supposed to be a bastion of the liberal Left. But perhaps Farage has sensed something in the air. An opinion poll in the Sunday Times yesterday suggested that more than half of Scots are indeed concerned about immigration and want it curbed. If the Reform leader sounds as if he is already on a victory tour, that is partly because he has shown his party can be a player even in Scotland. What’s more, he has done serious damage to the myth of “Scottish exceptionalism”.

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Iain Macwhirter was political commentator for The Herald between 1999 and 2022. He is the author of Disunited Kingdom: How Westminster Won a Referendum But Lost Scotland.

iainmacwhirter

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