Scotland’s migrant-friendly civil society, egalitarian identity and the breadth of support for independence all provide ballast against Reform’s siege, writes Nicola Treanor.
Reform Scotland’s choice to announce its new leader at Dean Park Hotel in Kirkcaldy felt very intentional. Malcom Offord took to the stage with a pitch to “represent ordinary, decent, hardworking Scots who are fed up with mid-table mediocrity in Holyrood”. At one time the world’s largest exporter of linoleum, this once-thriving seaside town is now hollowed out. It has exactly the ingredients that the far-right seeks to exploit by deploying a weaponised nostalgia and presenting itself as an anti-establishment antidote which can return our communities to what they were before.
Kirkcaldy happens to be my hometown. Observing the resources and political will that have been spent here over the last six months has been surreal. And the lang toon is not unique, but a microcosm for the broader question that now faces Scotland. Can the idea of Scotland as a more welcoming and egalitarian society than its southern neighbour survive the reactionary politics sweeping the union and indeed the globe? Can it resist a movement that preys on those bearing the brunt of a cost of living crisis, of late stage capitalism, of rampant misinformation, of algorithmic exploitation?
For the best part of two decades. Scotland has returned SNP governments to Holyrood. It is the only UK country in which the Greens have held national office. It has not voted for a Conservative Government since the 1950s, and 62% of voters backed Remain. Afua Hirsch recently argued that baseline Scottishness is rooted in culture, food, music, folklore, language and place; as opposed to Englishness that is “tainted by race”, more intertwined with the decline of empire, and more fertile ground for creatures like Farage to thrive. By contrast, the SNP presents ‘New Scots’ not as a threat to Scottish identity but part of modern nationhood. Yet this vision of Scotland as more open and more flexible than England has never been stable. Racism is threaded through Scottish society, from structural outcomes to hate crime data. Edinburgh and Glasgow drew much of their wealth from empire, while we exhibit a form of colonial amnesia as to how crucial a role Scotland played in the transatlantic slave trade.
Unsettling Trends
Scottish identity is a site of negotiation and contestation, as has become increasingly apparent over the last year. When the first photos appeared from Tommy Robinson’s ‘Unite the Right’ march last year, Scottish flags were peppered through the Union Jacks. Now opposing groups are battling to claim the saltire as their own. Once associated with the independence movement, anti-nuclear campaigning, pro-European sentiment, and the vision of what Scotland could be, it has been (re)claimed by anti-migration protesters and used, much like St George’s Cross, as a marker of who gets to belong. At the summer protests organised outside the Cladhan Hotel in Falkirk, far right protesters were draped in saltires while holding signs that read ‘Stop the Boats’. It was at these very protests that Offord announced his defection from the Tories, via livestream.
These are some of the reasons why the stakes felt higher in this Scottish Parliament election. Reform was on the ballot for the first time, knocking our doors and appearing on our screens, making their case to be the next party to lead Holyrood. Despite being reserved matters, immigration and asylum dominated the campaign. Reform dubbed Glasgow the ‘asylum city of the UK’ and claimed it housed 10% of all asylum seekers in the UK. They homed in on the SNP’s decision in 2022 to abolish the requirement to show a ‘local’ connection when applying for housing, and claimed that this resulted in asylum seekers being prioritised for housing over locals (a claim debunked by organisations like Positive Action in Housing). Offord called Scotland the ‘food bank of the world’, blowing the dog-whistle that ‘enough is enough’, frothing that working class communities were at breaking point, and that we need to look after ‘our own people’. He linked a stabbing incident in Edinburgh to a ‘massive insurgence of immigrants’ and parroted Farage’s assertion that one in three schoolchildren in Glasgow do not speak English.
Reform have thought carefully about how their messaging can make sense to a Scottish audience. Take education. Since devolution, free university tuition has occupied a sacred position in Scottish policy and is seen as a system with Scottish Enlightenment roots. Salmond quoted Burns to promise that “rocks will melt with the sun” before he would allow tuition fees to be imposed on Scottish students. Now this cornerstone of Scottish policy is under pressure. Polling by the Carnegie Trust suggests that up to 48% of voters believe Scottish students who can afford tuition should pay for it. Taking advantage of this turn in public sentiment, Reform’s manifesto claimed that “Scottish education was once the gold standard of the world, but in the last twenty years has plummeted from being outstanding to just average”. They propose a “comprehensive review of University funding to ensure degrees are meaningful, value-for-money and grounded in genuine academic merit rather than EDI or sustainability metrics”.
Reform sits uncomfortably in Scottish civic and political life. Its playbook is to target working-class communities who have been failed by party politics, and to package the party as the anti-establishment alternative. Reform is an exercise in wilful contradiction. We are shown a party whose leadership attended elite schools, whose donor base raises serious questions, whose champions own country mansions. Offord dwells in a realm where owning six houses, six boats and five cars is a point of pride.
On 5th May, Kenny Farquharson predicted in The Times that election day would be “remembered as the day that Scottish exceptionalism ended”. The results suggest a mixed picture. Scotland delivered Reform its weakest result across Britain. That still matters. But 15.8% of the vote, more than 350,000 people, is significant for a party only beginning to establish itself. Their successes show that Scottish identity is never settled, and that Scotland is already a place where too many must negotiate to belong.
Nicole Treanor holds an MsC in gender studies and has spent seven years working in human rights and policy development.