Dear oh dear. With just days to go until the Scottish Conservative conference, party leader Russell Findlay will have been hoping for a quiet news week. He has had no such luck however – at the eleventh hour, it transpires that yet another one of his Aberdeenshire councillors has defected to Reform UK. Lauren Knight has become the party’s fifth representative on the council – and party officials insist that with the support of two independent councillors, they now have an official group. The tide is turning…
Knight, who represents the ward of Huntly, Strathbogie and Howe of Alford, was previously a Tory party member. But her move to Reform comes as she feels her party ‘has left her’, with the Aberdeenshire councillor adding she ‘feels let down by so many broken promises’. She went on: ‘Scotland has been abandoned by the two party establishment, which continues to prioritise self interests and party politics over genuine change.’ Ouch.
And by choosing the timing she has done to jump ship, Knight has rubbed salt in Scottish Tory wounds ahead of the party’s annual conference this weekend. She is the 10th councillor the party has lost to Reform since the end of last year, and her move comes as the party prepares to contest Scotland’s mainstream political parties in next year’s 2026 Holyrood election. Findlay has attacked the councillors who have turned their backs on him, blasting their decisions in the Press & Journal as ‘opportunistic’. Reform UK’s Thomas Kerr – formerly the Conservative group leader on Glasgow City Council – has hit back, remarking: ‘Reform UK is delighted to be living rent-free in Russell Findlay’s head.’ The gloves are coming off…
Today’s development comes a week after the Hamilton by-election where, despite coming third, Reform UK took 26 per cent of the constituency vote – outperforming their place in the polls and coming just 500 votes behind the party of government, the SNP. Kerr insists the party is the ‘fastest growing’ in Scotland, telling the Spectator last month that the party has 10,500 members and claims to be close to overtaking Scottish Labour’s numbers. Indeed the party even managed to recruit its first Labour defector last week, with Renfrewshire council’s Jamie McGuire swapping in his red tie for teal. Will more defections come ahead of the finalisation of Reform UK’s Holyrood selection list? Stay tuned…
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