Reform and SNP are two sides of the same coin

That said, I didn’t stay up for the result in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election last week, not expecting much in the way of drama. My expectation was that there would be a fairly comfortable SNP victory, with the only real interest being whether Reform would finish third or manage to beat Labour into second place.

I woke up in the morning to a WhatsApp message from a colleague expressing surprise at the outcome, and when I checked the numbers I had to share that sentiment. Few saw the Labour candidate Davy Russell’s victory coming, and it is all the more to his credit, and that of his campaign team, that they were able to pull off a quite dramatic victory against the odds.

So congratulations are due first of all to Labour in delivering a result which undoubtedly is a boost to Anas Sarwar. Having been written off by the pundits, and with a candidate widely ridiculed for his refusal to participate in TV debates, it demonstrated the importance of a strong, local narrative in winning votes.

The Scottish Conservatives had an equally strong local candidate in Cllr Richard Nelson from Larkhall who fought an energetic campaign albeit one we knew never had any realistic prospect of victory. Fourth place was always the best place we could hope for in this seat, as our voters were squeezed to vote tactically either for Labour or for Reform to beat the SNP. On the doorstep we met loyal Conservative voters who told us that they would be using this by-election to “send a message” to the SNP by voting tactically for whoever they thought was best placed to defeat them, but at next year’s Holyrood election would be back voting for us again. That said, we know there is work to be done in presenting a compelling message to maximise our vote for Holyrood in 2026.

The real losers on the night were, of course, the SNP. All the polls suggested that this is a seat that they would hold, and the party poured in resources, with numerous visits by leadership figures from the First Minister John Swinney downwards.

The SNP strategy appeared politically clever, if essentially dishonest, in attempting to portray the contest as a two-horse race between them and Reform. This was designed to squeeze Labour voters, in particular, into voting SNP as the lesser of two evils.

It backfired spectacularly. The Reform vote was indeed substantial, but if we analyse the figures, it seems that Reform’s gains were not so much at the expense of Labour, or even the Conservatives. The 26 per cent of the vote achieved by Reform, at a time when Labour’s vote share hardly moved, can only be explained by looking at the 17 per cent drop in the SNP vote. There was a direct transfer from one party to another. Perhaps this should not surprise us. Both SNP and Reform are essentially parties of protest, who have spent years pointing the blame elsewhere for the country’s troubles – in the case of Reform, to the EU and immigrants, and in the case of the SNP, to Westminster governments.

I can well remember at a previous election meeting on a doorstep in Perthshire one voter who we had previously identified as a regular Conservative supporter, who came out red-faced and angry to lambast me for the failings of the Tory government. “You’ve let me down”, he shouted, “letting far too many immigrants in. That’s it, I’ve had it with you lot. From now on I’m voting SNP”.

It was an encounter indicative of a particular type of individual who rages at the world around them. These will be some of the people who were motivated to vote for independence in 2014 on the basis that anything must be better than what we currently have. And it will be some of the same people who were amongst the 2 in 5 Scots who voted for Brexit in 2016.

For years the SNP have played the part of a populist party, simultaneously in government and in opposition, blaming all Scotland’s ills not on their own failings but on big, bad Westminster. Now we have the new entrants on the scene in Reform, singing a different song to the same tune. To change the metaphor, the two Parties are essentially opposite sides of the same coin.

They are parties who seek not to find solutions to the complex issues that face our country, but rather resort to simplistic slogans appealing to the basest level. Little wonder, then, that voters have little difficulty in switching between the two.

Swinney’s claim that Reform’s values are antithetical to Scotland now look ridiculous, when his Party was not only defeated in Hamilton, but finished a mere 869 votes ahead of Farage’s. Scottish exceptionalism has never had such a rude awakening.

Over the last 18 years, the SNP have demonstrated how far populist politics can take you. Now, the rise of Reform shows they have a significant competitor for that segment of the population who are content to blame others for the country’s woes. Fortunately, there is an alternative: the serious parties prepared to do the heavy lifting in proposing credible solutions to fix the problems in our society.

That is exactly what the Scottish Conservatives will be doing between now and May next year.