Another red-letter day for Reform as the party unveils its second defector at Holyrood. Graham Simpson, a Conservative member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP), has today crossed the floor to join the ranks of Nigel Farage’s ever-expanding army. He is Reform’s second ever MSP, after Michelle Ballantyne’s short-lived spell from January to May 2021. Simpson, though, is likely to last longer, by fighting his Central Scotland seat at the upcoming election in May next year.
At a press conference, Simpson told assembled journalists that he was joining Reform ‘to create something new, exciting and lasting that puts the needs of people over the system.’ He is expected to play a leading role in the planning and the policy development of Reform in Scotland. Farage-led parties have traditionally done less well here when compared to results in England and Wales. But a string of decent results on a shoestring budget recently has raised hopes of a third-place finish next May.
If one zooms out and looks at the UK-wide picture, it looks as though what is happening in Scotland is playing out in Wales too.
The flip side of this defection is the sad decline of the Conservative and Unionist party. After 25 years in the post-Thatcher doldrums, the rise of nationalism and constitutional politics saw the party rise to new heights under Ruth Davidson in the mid-2010s. Yet under first, Douglas Ross, and now, Russell Findlay, the party has mirrored the drop in Tory standing seen elsewhere across the UK. The Conservatives in Scotland now sit on just 10 per cent, less than half their 2021 share. Simpson is the third MSP to quit the party in four months, after Jamie Greene and Jeremy Balfour.
If one zooms out and looks at the UK-wide picture, it looks as though what is happening in Scotland is playing out in Wales too. There, the Conservatives are down to around 3,000 members and sit between 10 and 13 per cent in polling for the Senedd election next May. Labour, meanwhile, are doing better, but still significantly down in their traditional Celtic stronghold. A remarkable YouGov poll for the Times today shows Keir Starmer’s party on just 7 per cent with Welsh voters in Westminster voting intentions. All signs point to his party losing a major national election in Wales for the first time since Lloyd George.
One senior nationalist suggests there appears to be a ‘recalibration’ going on in Wales between two clear camps: the pro-independence, ‘pro-Wales’ Plaid Cymru, and British nationalists increasingly backing Reform. Though we should be aware of overestimating this trend, unionist parties do look at risk in both Scotland and in Wales of being carved up on new lines of national identity.
An alternative view says that Plaid and the SNP have been successful in marrying centre-left socio-economic views with a soft form of nationalism. In England, the left currently lacks such a party. But Nigel Farage’s key strategic insight could be his willingness to fill this gap, by embracing both a tough stance on national borders and steel and water nationalisation. If signs elsewhere in the UK are anything to go by, this positioning looks likely to prove extremely politically profitable.
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