Reform\u2019s teams in Scotland and the U.K. don\u2019t expect to form the next Scottish government, but their strength in polling, and the chance they could\u00a0win a potentially crucial cluster of seats, adds uncertainty and a smack of chaos to the election campaign. The race was expected to be between Labour and the SNP \u2014 but would turbocharge Reform\u2019s hopes of entering No. 10 Downing Street if they can demonstrate momentum and strength.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re aiming for second,\u201d said one senior Reform UK figure, granted anonymity to speak frankly like others in this article. \u201cBut that\u2019s with a view on becoming closer to power [next time].\u201d<\/p>\n
Eating the Tories \u2014 and Labour<\/strong><\/p>\n Farage\u2019s previous outfits, UKIP and the Brexit Party, failed to make much of a breakthrough in Scotland.\u00a0Called \u201cscum\u201d during a 2013 visit to the Scottish capital\u00a0to launch his party\u2019s campaign for a Holyrood by-election (Farage never even managed to introduce the candidate),\u00a0UKIP had trouble attracting the same level of enthusiasm there as it did in England and Wales\u00a0because of its perceived \u201cLittle Englander\u201d image and \u2014 back then \u2014 the different mindset toward immigration in Scotland.<\/p>\n \u201cUKIP made little headway [in Scotland] because they looked like cranks with crank fixations on Europe and \u2018foreigners,\u2019\u201d one Scottish Tory lawmaker said.<\/p>\n But Scotland\u2019s politics have shifted and, just as across the rest of the U.K., Reform\u2019s surge in popularity has come at the expense of the Conservatives. While the center-right party kept most of its Scottish seats in last year\u2019s election battering, the Scottish Conservatives are at risk of drifting into obscurity \u2014 giving Reform an opportunity to fill the gap.\u00a0<\/p>\n The party looks almost certain to finish well ahead of the Conservatives in Scotland, and the Scottish Tories \u2014 led by Russell Findlay, who has struggled to garner any attention \u2014 finished a distant fourth behind Reform, the SNP and Labour at a recent Holyrood by-election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reform\u2019s teams in Scotland and the U.K. don\u2019t expect to form the next Scottish government, but their strength…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5009],"tags":[3971,768,802,748,12495,33,393,4884,4582,40,807,8175,384,5111,48,712,16,68103,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-462041","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scotland","8":"tag-agriculture","9":"tag-borders","10":"tag-brexit","11":"tag-britain","12":"tag-development","13":"tag-elections","14":"tag-england","15":"tag-great-britain","16":"tag-human-rights","17":"tag-immigration","18":"tag-keir-starmer","19":"tag-labor","20":"tag-nigel-farage","21":"tag-parliament","22":"tag-rights","23":"tag-scotland","24":"tag-uk","25":"tag-ukip","26":"tag-united-kingdom","27":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115291080881872126","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}