Achi news desk-
This week The Herald’s social media has been flooded with responses to Count Binface declaring how he would spend 24 hours as First Minister of Scotland, but following the local elections and by-elections in England and Wales he is a space cadet another who keeps failing to get elected to Westminster who has been making waves.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK came within 117 votes of the Conservatives in the Blackpool South by-election, pushed them to third in 16 council seats in Sunderland and secured nearly 80,000 votes in the London mayoral election.
An already sprawling Tory party will fear that votes lost to the rebel party could make a bad situation even worse – but is it something Scottish leader Douglas Ross has to worry about?
Farage’s posse have not agreed to take an official position on Holyrood, but he marked 25 years since devolution by asking on social media if it was time for a “rethink”.
Reform has already announced some candidates north of the border for the next Westminster election, with its website open to further applications, but it looks unlikely to cause anything like the stir it did. in the English local elections.
Read more:
Unspun | Will there really be a hung parliament after the election?
The early blows have not been positive for the party in Scotland. Two candidates, Stephen McNamara and David McNabb, were banned from the party in April after some of their social media activity was exposed by The Ferret.
The latter described Humza Yousaf as “more Pakistani than Scottish”, as well as sharing a video by far-right commentator Katie Hopkins.
Mr McNamara was due to stand for the Kilmarnock & Loudon constituency but was suspended after it was discovered that he had said that trans people have “severe mental illness” and that “their days are numbered”.
In a classic case of “you can’t dump me, I’ll dump you” he resigned from the party on the same day, although he had also been part of the Scottish Libertarian Party and a short-lived effort from the name Choice it is possible. fair to say he wasn’t that committed to the cause anyway. He remains active on social media and can stand as an independent – judging by his Twitter output it’s probably for the Edgelord Cringe Party.
— Stephen McNamara (@StephenMcLbrtrn) April 7, 2024
It may be front-curling, but the former candidate actually has more followers (5,548) on X/Twitter than the Reform UK account in Scotland (3,226) and the Liberal Party polled more votes than Reform in the election last Holyrood – as did Scottish Dissolution. Parliament, Independent Green Voice (founded by a holocaust denier) and the Scottish Family Party.
Not that Mr Farage and all seem too bothered by the Scottish vote. In the ‘Our Contract With You’ which passes for a manifesto on the party’s website, the word “Scotland” is not mentioned once. In the section on fishing and coastal communities, Aberdeen is described as a “fishing port” similar to Grimsby or Hull. One can only assume they mean Peterhead, which handles around 150,000 tonnes of fish a year rather than Granite City, which handles 1,000 and is better known for the oil and gas industry.
It must be said, the appeal of Mr Farage and his ilk has always been more selective north of the border. His former party, UKIP, managed just 2% of the national vote in the 2016 Holyrood election and when its Scottish leader stood in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath in the general election the following year he managed a total of 540 votes.
With a general election expected this year, all the polling points to a straight shootout between the SNP and Scottish Labor in the majority of seats, and it is difficult to see supporters of either party lending their vote to Reform.
Perhaps for Douglas Ross there may be some concern about the possible effect of the party in target seats. Reform is standing in Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock where it would only need a 2.5% swing from 2019 to return the seat to the Tories, and could yet announce candidates for other marginal seats such as Angus or Gordon.
Considering the position the Conservatives are in nationally, and polling numbers in Scotland that have them at something between 15% and 18%, any idea of ​​winning seats is likely to be fanciful. Mr Ross himself managed to hold off the SNP by just 513 votes in 2019 in his Moray constituency, with UKIP candidate Rob Scorer receiving 413, but given the numbers involved it is hard to see Reform have a lot of impact either way this time.
Count Binface though? Now he might have a shot.
