The Scots have long been stereotyped as dour, miserable whingers, and we finally have proof that this is pure slander. Ailsa Henderson, a political scientist at Edinburgh University, has produced a presentation into political anger in the wake of the general election. She finds that the English are three times as angry about politics as the Scots, with 60 per cent fuming south of the border and just 20 per cent north of the Tweed. Voters for the two most anti-mainstream parties, Reform and the Greens, are the angriest, and while Liberal Democrats are the least angry there are still 53 per cent of them fit to be tied. Meanwhile, only 25 per cent of Scottish Tories and 20 per cent of SNP supporters express similar feelings. I guess it’s never difficult to distinguish between an Englishman with a political grievance and a ray of sunshine.
Might the answer lie in divergent political cultures?
The obvious question is why the difference? It can’t only be that the two countries are served by different governments. While Scots might not feel angry, they are not happy with the way things are going, with the proportion thinking the country is heading in the wrong direction rising from one third (31 per cent) in 2021 to one in two (48 per cent) this year. Political anger seems to correlate to concern about uncontrolled immigration among Reform voters and insufficient action on climate change among Greens. Immigration enjoys less salience in Scotland, where levels have not matched those in England, and until earlier this year, there was a Green party in government at Holyrood. While the Scottish government has been backsliding on climate action the symbolic value of Green ministers and climate rhetoric might have been enough to satisfy at least some voters.
Might the answer lie in divergent political cultures? Professor Henderson points out that voters in England believe Britain’s best days lie behind it while Scots tend to be more optimistic for the future, something she attributes to the constitutional debate and its emphasis on independence as a platform for building a richer, fairer Scotland. There is definitely something in this, though it is worth questioning our assumptions about both anger and optimism. Anger has been a component of all political cultures and movements and while on its own it cannot remedy grievances it can help mobilise activists and shift public opinion.
The campaigns to expand the franchise, increase safety in factories, clear the slums, legislate gay and lesbian rights and end apartheid all began, in part, with anger towards a perceived injustice. Optimism, while coded as progressive, can also be a refuge for dishonesty and the gap between the bright future sold and its glummer reality can fuel cynicism about the political process. Dare I suggest that the Scottish parliament might be an example of this? It was sold to voters in 1997 in a Yes-Yes campaign positively bursting with optimism, yet polling from February found that only 50 per cent of Scots consider devolution to have been a good thing.
There is a danger of slipping into that familiar canard of Scottish exceptionalism and assuming that Scotland’s distinct political culture means anger has no electoral purchase. A red flag against this kind of thinking can be found in the results of last week’s Glasgow council by-elections. Reform UK took third place in all three, with 13 per cent of the vote in both Drumchapel/Anniesland and Maryhill and an impressive 18 per cent in North East. All three are Labour-held wards, confirming Professor Henderson’s analysis that ‘Labour has just as many reasons to be concerned about Reform as the Conservatives’.
The by-election results build upon the 7 per cent of Scottish votes Reform won in July’s general election, which saw Nigel Farage’s party attract more votes than the Conservatives in 25 of Scotland’s 57 constituencies. Scotland is not Reform country but parts of it are, and if Reform puts in the effort (professionalising its Scottish operation, recruiting credible candidates) it will be well-placed to make electoral gains. Just last month, two Aberdeenshire councillors elected as Tories joined Reform, including the former leader of Aberdeenshire Council.
When it comes to Farage, the Scottish establishment never learns. Political, media and civil society elites are concentrated in deeply progressive pockets of the country and unaware that it also contains deeply conservative pockets. They were shocked when Ukip won its first European Parliament seat in Scotland in 2014 and somehow shocked again when the Brexit party came second in the 2019 European elections and secured a Scottish MEP of its own. There is another opportunity for them to be taken by surprise: the 2026 Holyrood elections.
John Swinney seems to have arrested the SNP’s decline but the party is still far from where it once was. Meanwhile, Scottish Labour’s rebuild has apparently stalled and in July the Scottish Tories recorded their worst performance in almost 200 years, managing just 12.7 per cent of the vote. Scotland’s regional list system has previously helped smaller parties and single-issue candidates into Holyrood seats, with the Greens’ 8 per cent giving them eight seats in 2021. Reform UK, which is on 11 per cent in this month’s Survation poll, is well on its way to electing its first members of the Scottish Parliament.
There is plenty of time between now and 2026 for Reform to blow it. There is also an obstacle in the form of new Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay, who has shifted his party to the right with attacks on the Scottish government’s gender policies, spending on school-building in Africa and a proposal to give free bus travel to every asylum seeker in Scotland. Findlay’s anti-woke populism is a problem for Reform but not as much as its own lack of a clear message to voters. What does it think about devolution? The Scottish rate of income tax? The poverty-related attainment gap? Delayed discharge? The National Care Service? Islands infrastructure and connectivity? The Scottish Child Payment?
Reform’s supporters might point to those Glasgow by-election results and say the party is doing just fine without a message, but the closer the Holyrood election gets the more scrutiny Reform will face, and from an almost uniformly hostile Scottish media. Farage will need answers and, since he polls poorly, a viable Scottish face to communicate that message. Reform might not have as much anger to tap into north of the border but if it gets its act together, it might be the party’s opponents in Scotland who are left raging come 2026.
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