Nigel Farage has never done well in Scotland, even once famously being forced to find refuge in an Edinburgh pub after being accosted by an activist mob.
That is, until now.
Yesterday’s Hamilton, Stonehouse and Larkhall by-election for Holyrood saw his Reform party come an impressive third place with 26% of the vote—just 5% behind Labour’s winning score and only 3% behind the Scottish National Party (SNP), which previously maintained a firm grip on the seat.
For context, Reform got just 58 votes at the last (2021) election there, compared to this time’s 7,088. Telegraph columnist Tom Harris added that
Were it not for both the main parties’ considerable advantage in terms of organisation—both have years of local canvass records for the area and can rely on the efforts of seasoned organisers—Reform might have expected to do better.
Labour is, of course, right to celebrate its win. But as is also true in England, these results show that the momentum is with Reform, not with the establishment parties. As Reform deputy leader Richard Tice put it, the latter have now become the “coalition of the terrified.”
Indeed, winning candidate Davy Russell could not have been more wrong when he said “this community has sent a message to Farage and his mob: the poison of Reform isn’t us, it isn’t Scotland and we don’t want your division here.”
On the contrary, voters are turning to Reform—even in Scotland—and fast.
Respected pollster Sir John Curtice assessed that the result “certainly means that Reform are making the political weather north of the border, as indeed they are south of the border.”
Reform are making progress in Scotland in the polls, as they are south of the border, but they’ve been running around 19/20%. Now in Hamilton, they’ve got 26%.
They’re certainly doing damage to the Conservatives who are down to 6% … But, frankly, also one of the reasons why Labour’s victory is so narrow and is based on a lower share of the vote than Labour got in this constituency in 2021, and well down and what they got in the area last summer, is because Labour in Scotland are also losing more than one in six of their voters to Reform.
Reform deputy leader Richard Tice hailed this as “a seismic result,” saying that “lit up Scottish politics.” The challenge now is to keep the momentum going.
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
