Reform UK are on manoeuvres in Scotland. Mr S can reveal today that not only did Nigel Farage’s party poach former Tory councillor Ross Lambie last month, now the right-wingers will rub salt in Conservative wounds by standing him in the Scottish constituency of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse in the June by-election – after incumbent SNP MSP Christina McKelvie sadly passed away in March.
Lambie, of South Lanarkshire Council, defected from Russell Findlay’s Scottish Tories at the beginning of March after blaming ‘legacy parties’ like the Conservatives, Labour and the SNP letting down voters ‘again and again’ – and he has since proclaimed on social media that ‘only Reform UK can drain the bog of Holyrood’. Lambie is one of the latest to jump ship to the Farage-founded group, accompanying Renfrewshire Council’s John Gray, an ex-Conservative whose defection was announced on the same day, and – as Steerpike revealed earlier this year – the Scottish Conservative’s leader on Glasgow City Council, Thomas Kerr.
The move comes as Reform continues to see its support surge north of the border. A month ago, Farage’s lot recorded their highest level of support in Scotland yet – with a Survation poll for Quantum Communications suggesting that the party is predicted to pick up 17 per cent of the constituency vote share and 16 per cent on the regional list – leaving the group with 14 MSPs in Holyrood next year from a standing start, and hot on the heels of the Tories.
Lambie’s time in Reform hasn’t all been plain sailing however. On his very first day in the party, deputy leader Richard Tice forgot both his surname and, er, the council he belonged to during a media huddle with Scottish hacks on the day the Reform bigwig was announcing the defections. Tice will certainly be forced to remember his name now!
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