Scots aren’t turning racist, they’re just scunnered

Reform’s advance horrifies the left but denouncing “fascists” won’t help

And the gods laughed. Last month, John Swinney held a cross-party summit against the far right. To drum up support, he warned that Nigel Farage was likely to be the next Prime Minister. It was time to mobilise Scotland’s progressive majority against the insidious threat from the “racists” of Reform, he said.

Well, what he never expected was that Farage’s party could become the official opposition in the Scottish Parliament. Shock. Horror.

The latest opinion poll from Survation for the PR firm True North suggests that Reform could be in the running to return 21 MSPs in the Holyrood elections next year — three more than Labour on 18, and eight more than the Scottish Conservatives on 13. That would make a party which has virtually no ground operation in Scotland, and zero recognisable politicians, the official opposition to the SNP.

Columnists in the SNP-supporting National are aghast. They regard Reform as “fascists”, albeit in soft shoes. It was always assumed by liberal leftists in “civic Scotland” that Scots are culturally immune to the blandishments of the far right. Is Reform not a quintessentially English nationalist party led by a politician, Nigel Farage, who wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament, axe Scottish funding through the Barnett Formula, and privatise the NHS?

So why are so many of Jock Tamson’s Bairns contemplating voting for a politician who, ten years ago, had to be rescued by police from an Edinburgh pub where he had taken refuge from angry demonstrators?