Scotland’s Coming Reckoning

Caledonia is at a crossroads. The rise of right-wing populist, and in many cases, explicitly nationalist sentiment, that has whipped Europe into a furore amid unchecked mass migration and cultural erosion, has yet to hit the land of Knox, Burns and Wallace with any degree of real force. The country’s governing party, the ironically named Scottish ‘National’ Party (SNP) remains thoroughly wedded to the orthodoxies of liberal multiculturalism like a wartime soldier that refuses to surrender. Recent trends, however, indicate that the SNP’s 18-year hold on power is beginning to fracture as Scottish voters revolt against its failed policies and misguided priorities. 

Unlike almost every other political party in Europe, the SNP continues to not only support mass migration but continually advertises its desire to repeat the English experience by way of throwing open Scotland’s borders were the country to become independent. Mercifully of course, Scotland remains part of Britain and is therefore subject to all immigration restrictions decreed by the central government in Westminster. In London, the prevailing attitude has turned decidedly against such open-border recklessness, as evidenced by Keir Starmer’s recent ‘Island of Strangers’ speech (retroactive retraction notwithstanding). 

Since the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, a political move that was hailed as the “settled will of the Scottish people” following a done-deal referendum campaign, the country has been in the grips of a three-party system, with Labour and the Conservatives boxing against the SNP for political hegemony. 

Spoiler alert: the SNP keeps achieving the knockout win. 

It has done this by cultivating a present and fierce sense of Scottish nationalism and utilising its image as supposedly the only party ‘truly’ representing the interests of Scotland within the governing structure of the British state. It has been incredibly successful thus far. The SNP has governed Scotland for nearly two decades under four First Ministers and has, most of the time, won the majority of Scottish seats at Westminster elections since the millennium. 

Now its days appear to be numbered. A new movement snaps at its heels. A movement shared across the United Kingdom: the omnipresent spectre of Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party that is currently shaking up the political establishment up and down the island has arrived on the banks of Loch Lomond. All the polling suggests Holyrood could be in for a dramatic shock in May 2026, where Reform is set to potentially gain upwards of fifteen seats, with a strong chance to eclipse both the Greens and Liberal Democrats combined. Survation, a polling company well known among Edinburgh politics hawks, recently published polling showing the party coming second. This would bury alive the myth of a ‘liberal and progressive’ Scotland once and for all. The Scottish Parliament by-election in the working class town of Hamilton in June was further evidence that the party is finding itself on fertile ground. Reform achieved third, but on a previously thought impossible 26.1% of the vote. The SNP won 29.4%, coming second, and Labour won on 31.6%. The difference between Reform and Labour was merely 1,500 votes. UKIP under Farage over a decade ago would have done anything for such results in England, let alone Scotland. 

Scotland has kept its status as one of Europe’s last bastions of multiculturalist ubiquity only due to its proportionally much lower level of diversity and mass immigration compared to its thoroughly multicultural, multiethnic and multireligious southern neighbour, effectively allowing Scottish society to support progressive ideology and remain cohesive. However, that is slowly changing. England’s failed experiment with open borders is beginning to have a tangible effect. While Scotland remains overwhelmingly populated by native Scots, ‘central belt’ cities are beginning to feel the impact of a phenomenon increasingly being understood on the British right as ‘Yookayification,’ a term coined by an anonymous X-based cultural commentator known as Kunley Drukpa, who uses it to describe the changing character of Britain in the face of huge demographic shifts. 

Scottish cities increasingly look and feel more diverse, and tensions have escalated due to poor decision-making at the top. A scandal erupted in Glasgow several months ago when the Home Office decided to house a record number of mostly African asylum seekers in the city, and very shortly after groups of foreign men angered local residents by taking photos of children at a play park. The strongest condemnation was led by Reform and its top man in Glasgow, Councillor Thomas Kerr, who called for tighter rules on child public safety and met with local police to raise the issue personally. 

Needless to say, these kind of events cast a growing shadow over Britain’s second largest country. 

Living in Stirling, where I study, I am always reminded of Scotland’s herculean victory against my English ancestors in the fight for freedom and how the spirit of the Scottish people remained utterly unbroken during those many hundreds of years they fought. If Britain continues on its present trajectory of abyss-level economic, social, cultural and demographic decline, Scotland may yet need to breathe new life into that spirit.