Why Reform UK’s new champion means Scottish Tories can’t rely on their usual strategy to win votes

Not McLaren, X, Macdonald or Canmore, but as significantly more Scotsman readers will know, not least from Brian Monteith’s column and multiple media appearances this week, it’s Malcolm Offord, the highly successful Scottish businessman, former UK Government minister and soon-to-be ex-Conservative peer who a week ago was unveiled by Nigel Farage as Reform’s latest high-profile recruit.

Despite polls repeatedly showing Reform is a force to be reckoned with, it’s been easy to dismiss the handful of Scottish recruits as a bunch of opportunistic misfits, and to believe that, without a proper figurehead, the jalopy would blow a puncture in the heat of a proper election tussle. As of last Saturday, for Conservatives that scrap of comfort blew away with the last autumn leaf.

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Unimpressed by Scottish Tories

Lord Offord of Garvel is a serious man with a record of achievement at the highest levels. A Greenock Academy boy who’s now a multi-millionaire from a career in private equity, he entered politics to be a major player. I wouldn’t quite share Brian’s description of him as “unassuming”.

Like his friend Alister Jack, the former Scotland Secretary, he was not impressed by the Conservatives at Holyrood and before Douglas Ross’s leadership imploded he was considering a tilt at becoming leader in Scotland. The rise of Reform has changed everything.

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But so too will Malcolm Offord change Reform in Scotland. Having announced he will renounce his title and place in the House of Lords, it’s a certainty he will be the top Reform candidate on the Lothians regional list and virtually guaranteed a seat at Holyrood.

Only something unpredictably catastrophic will prevent him from being the party’s leader in Scotland, so the Scottish public is going to be seeing a lot more of him between now and May.

READ MORE: Reform defector denies 'backstabbing' as he distances himself from Farage's Glasgow comments

Shock, then anger

It’s also probable he will fight the Edinburgh Central constituency and nothing would give him greater pleasure than to unseat the SNP incumbent, Angus Robertson, although with the Conservatives fielding the popular local councillor Jo Mowat, a split of the right-of-centre unionist vote is the more likely outcome.

I don’t know him well but we have met on several occasions, most recently at the same ThinkScotland.org private dinner to which Brian Monteith’s column referred, and while the event was attended by Reform figures, any intention to jump ship was well under wraps. The shock of his defection around Conservative circles last weekend was palpable, now turning to anger.

But in retrospect, it was predictable. His analysis of devolution in his Wealthy Nation, Healthy Nation series of essays, published in September, criticised what he saw as a Conservative concentration on opposing independence, claiming it was “to the exclusion of other important areas of debate”. It might have paid dividends in the past but, he said, “it has held back the policy development that Scotland so desperately needs”.

This isn’t entirely fair, because considerable effort has gone into policy making over the years. But it’s also true the rolling campaign against separatism has consistently topped the agenda, largely because focus group research indicated anti-independence messaging remained effective.

Holyrood’s left-wing consensus

Concerns about immigration at the heart of Reform’s appeal are not top of Malcolm Offord’s priorities but the economy certainly is, and it will be the first time a genuinely heavy-hitting business figure will have such prominence in the Scottish Parliament, leaving the likes of the SNP’s Ivan McKee (manufacturing) and Colin Beattie (banking) well in the shade.

His recurrent theme is how a cross-party focus on economic growth which sets aside the constitutional question has never been tried, and while probably true the simple reason is there has been no agreement on how it can be achieved. The SNP, Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens all back variations of throwing money at public services and welfare, with lip service to wealth creation while enthusiastically embracing the ruinous net-zero agenda.

But as Humza Yousaf and Kate Forbes so ably demonstrated, there wasn’t even agreement within the SNP on the economy, and there still isn’t, so how opposing parties are supposed to come together beats me. Even if only at council level, I know what it’s like to make pro-market arguments to a wall of hard-left socialists and Greens.

The left consensus will still hold sway at Holyrood after the election, and as John Swinney has tried to corral cross-party opposition to Reform, I rather suspect Malcolm Offord will very quickly bash his head against Holyrood’s bare concrete walls in frustration.

Offord’s damning criticism of former colleagues

Wisely, the Scottish Conservatives have not reacted to his critique of the Tory government in his Saturday speech – leaders with no clear principles or ideology, career politicians working out what they wanted for themselves, weathervanes bending with the wind – but it’s damning nonetheless, and time is running out to respond in a positive way which will produce a meaningful shift in the polls.

Through no lack of effort, the current Scottish Conservative approach isn’t working. When not focussing on the SNP-Labour melodrama, media attention is likely to be on Malcolm Offord’s next moves, not on Tory leader Russell Findlay unless there is a significant switch to a much more forceful presentation of key concerns and front bench strengths.

If I was advising the campaign team, I’d maximise Russell Findlay’s reputation as a fearless reporter who took on the worst criminals in Scotland, given organised crime is arguably the biggest daily threat to Scottish communities, including illegal immigration. Like it or not, for this election, ‘Say No to Indyref2’ has had its day.