Another day, another poll that shows Reform could, from a standing start, pick up at least 14 seats at the 2026 Holyrood election. Nigel Farage’s party is attracting supporters from all of Scotland’s main parties – 5 per cent of SNP voters are backing Reform while only six in ten Labour voters would get behind the reds again next year – but the Scottish Tories have the most to lose. As Farage’s lot witness a further surge in support north of the border, the Scottish Tories appear set to lose almost 50 per cent of their seats. In short, Scottish voters are opting to support a group with no parliamentary experience – or leader – over Scotland’s official opposition – and the Scottish Tories don’t seem to know what to do about it.
A new Survation poll for public relations company Quantum Communications suggested that the Farage-founded party could pick up 17 per cent of the constituency vote share next year and 16 per cent of the regional list vote. The results came as a shock to the party’s political opponents – and even Scotland’s Reform members – who had broadly assumed that Reform’s success in Scotland would be in picking up seats on the regional list vote. More than that, today’s survey suggests that Farage’s lot stand a chance of picking up constituency seats in urban areas – with the party galvanising most of their support in Yes-voting Glasgow.
This morning’s survey presented results that had Reform UK’s leadership rejoicing while the Scottish Conservatives looked on grimly. The poll suggests the Tory group could halve in size after the 2026 election, to be left with just 17 MSPs. The figures are broadly consistent with those of the Norstat survey carried out for the Sunday Times in February, which suggested the right-leaning party would win back just 18 seats. It’s another blow to a party that hoped its change of leadership after the July election would invigorate its parliamentarians and members – not least after former leader Douglas Ross ruffled feathers by replacing hospitalised candidate David Duguid on the ballot paper.
But while Russell Findlay’s leadership hasn’t resulted in the poll bounce the Scottish Tories might have hoped for, it’s the party’s lack of strategy on the Farage threat that looks to be their biggest problem. There’s a degree of complacency in the Scottish Conservatives’ current outlook: a party insider suggested that one option for tackling the Reform threat was to simply ‘ignore them’, while another source shrugged off poor polling and suggested that ‘every party’s got to be wary of Reform’.
Does the party have any Reform-specific plans to reel voters back? The short answer is: not really. In fact, the Scottish Tories seem a little stuck in the past. They’re still apologetic about the mistakes of their UK counterparts, over lockdown and the cost-of-living crisis, with one party figure lamenting recently that: ‘We made errors over the 14 years that we were in power – and it’s going to take a lot of work to rebuild that trust.’ Their messaging feels a little dated too: Findlay’s boys in blue are pushing their ‘common sense’ agenda which has more echoes of Suella Braverman’s 2023 Tory conference fringe speech than Kemi Badenoch’s current approach. Meanwhile their attack lines are the same as ever, with the anti-Nat rhetoric ramping up despite the constitutional question looking decidedly less relevant this time around. In response to the Reform gains seen in today’s poll, the Scottish Tories repeated the same message they’ve been trying to make land for a while – that the survey ‘shows Reform helping the SNP to win a pro-independence majority’. That hasn’t stopped Scottish voters flocking to them, however.
A group the Scottish Conservatives seem to have particular difficulty connecting with is young people. While 16 per cent of 16-24 year olds would use their constituency vote to back Reform, just 4 per cent would support the Tories. The trend repeats when Scots were polled on their regional list choices too. It’s something Reform UK are particularly proud of, with party officials boasting of high attendance at local meetings and claiming an increasing number of younger adults getting involved. Tory defector Thomas Kerr told me earlier this year that, at his first Reform branch meeting: ‘There are a lot more young and diverse faces than what you would necessarily imagine. There’s this element of young people who just feel fed up.’ Meanwhile Farage’s party is doing its best to make inroads with Scotland’s working classes communities who, party organisers insist, feel forgotten about by Holyrood’s mainstream groups.
There does exist, however, a nervousness about the possibility of more defectors from the Tories to Reform. Already, nine Scottish councillors have jumped ship to Farage’s party, with the announcement of a tenth expected imminently. The Scottish Conservatives are delaying their list selections for as long as is reasonably possible in a bid to reduce the risk of more defectors hungry for a seat in Holyrood – although Conservative figures insist they have always left selections later than their opponents. Reform is confident it will pick up more councillors across Scotland in the coming months and the group remains hopeful that it could even persuade a parliamentarian to jump ship. Names of Tory MSPs who might make the switch are circulating among councillors and party activists in a sign of growing unease about the party’s future. ‘There’s a risk here that the Scottish Conservative party becomes irrelevant,’ Councillor Kerr told me in January after his defection. If the Tories don’t figure out a better way to tackle the rise of Reform, their opponents’ spin could very well become reality.
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