Broken Britain, Scotland’s Opportunity
British politics is being remade before our eyes, the consequence of decades of failure, grotesque social inequality and the collapse of living standards. These are the conditions in which the politics of grievance and hate thrive.
The far-right are predictably jubilant. Allison Pearson, writing in the Telegraph shouts (‘A new dawn has broken – and Nigel Farage might just be our next Prime Minister’): “Labour came to power barely 10 months ago as the party for change – and change there has been; to something even worse than the despised Tory government. Voters know in their bones that Sir Keir Starmer and his insufferable cadre of human rights lawyers, arguing for the rights of foreign scumbags to avoid deportation on some ludicrous pretext, is “not for the British”.
“There has been no mood like it – this furious euphoria, this rage for hope – since the Brexit vote” she gasps.
From The National: “Three polls in 24 hours have given Reform UK major leads over Labour. It comes after separate polls in Scotland and Wales also saw Labour support ‘collapse’.
Now we have a second poll with Reform on 30% plus & 10% or above lead. Another projected Reform landslide has the Tories in fifth place in seats with Farage winning no Scottish seats. That would have the SNP on more seats than the Tories.
REF 32% (+9)
LAB 22% (-4)
CON 19% (-5)
LDEM 13% (-1)
GRN 9% (+1)
Via @BMGResearch
6-8 May +/- vs 26-27 March
Robert Struthers, Head of Polling at BMG Research, said: “Some polls make you do a double-take. This is one of them.
“With recent local election success, our national polling now shows Reform UK surging. If repeated at an election, their commanding 10-point lead would be enough to win a majority, and likely a substantial one.
“First past the post really is a funny old system. For insurgent parties, it holds you back until the moment it doesn’t.”
The BMG poll also showed Reform 13 points clear of the Conservatives, languishing at levels last seen under Liz Truss on 19 per cent. It’s disastrous for Kemi Badenoch’s doomed leadership.
This is a monumental shift in British politics, it’s completely unprecedented. So what does this mean for us in Scotland?
All the polls show that a Reform government would turbocharge calls for Scottish independence, but it would also completely change the game. This would mean a hard-right English nationalist government that has shown complete hostility to devolution itself, far beyond even the attempts of the Conservatives and Labour to flex their “Muscular Unionism.” Even if the SNP are thrawn to take the challenge to London, this point of conflict may be coming to them.
Labour are engaging in a process of electoral self-destruction that is difficult to comprehend. Captured by the logic of their own internal thinking they are incapable of course-correction or change, now desperately mimicking Reform by announcing further changes to the immigration system.
Meanwhile the Daily Mail helpfully lays out Reform’s policy platform which is predictably one dimensional, simplistic and dangerous.
As Gerry Hassan notes “The reality of a Nigel Farage government would be one of Trumpian excess, bluster & division AND Trussonomics on steroids causing economic instability & chaos. The scale of tax cuts proposed here is £200 billion per year: more than FOUR TIMES Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget.”
The Economist estimates that the annual costs of Reform UK’s manifesto would be around £200bn and savings around £100bn. The gap would amount to a colossal fiscal shock, blowing up the deficit and straining the gilt market to its limit https://t.co/fVZKpEwyZD
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) May 12, 2025
Reform are a disaster waiting to happen, but what would they say about Scotland? Nothing’s clear as they have no elected representatives, no branches and don’t exist as a traditional party. The recent appearance of Richard Tice was a farce and compounds the impression that campaigning in Scotland is a chaotic afterthought. But we do know that a hard-right English nationalist government would be on a collision course with Scotland, and a Stephen Flynn-led SNP clashing with a Farage PM would be an entirely different dynamic than a Swinney-Starmer one.
We do know that Nick Candy is awash with donors as the Conservative backers move their money to back Reform and that 40 per cent comes from those who have questioned climate change or have investments in fossil fuels. Ecologically Reform would be a disaster riding a wave of disinformation about Net Zero which has become the latest lightning rod for the far-right and their dark money.
Their bid to “stop the war on farmers” is code for supporting wealthy landowners. Their politics are a mixture of recycled Trump talking-points and swivel-eyed culture war slogans.
Chris Munday their Councillor for Croyland & Swanspool, Wellingborough has said “Reform UK will axe the 2010 Equality Act, removing the public sector equality duty and all DE&I initiatives that public sector organisations are forced to roll out to people.”
We would likely see much more of this Trumpian rhetoric and no doubt the next stage of forced deportations and rounding people up would follow led by the ‘Minister for Deportations’, already the concept of DOGE is being embraced by Labour and this maniacal wrecking ball politics would be enthusiastically taken up by Farage and cheered on by his allies across the media. How far this insanity would go is difficult to see, but his backers have deep pockets and high ambitions.
Allison Pearson quoting Tony Blair and talking of a “rage for hope” is revealing. It’s a dark day when people see ‘euphoria’ in hatred and relish talk of ‘foreign scumbags’. We can only hope that such surge and collapses renders the Union unviable and we can sever links with such a broken country. Paraphrasing Daniel O’Connell (Nuair a bhíonn deacracht ag Sasana, bíonn deis ag Éirinn) “England’s difficulty is Scotland’s opportunity”.
The prospects are ominous, the opportunity is tremendous, the solution is simple!
The prospects are ominous! –
People are demanding change from years of decline in living standards and, for many , continued poverty.
In England, the majority seem inclined to choose Reform as the vehicle for change and therefore imposing same change on Scotland!
The opportunity is tremendous! –
The people of Scotland have the unique opportunity to choose Independence as a different path – real change!
With all that people have previously relied on, believed or believed in , fundamentally failing to deliver better future prospects, the people of Scotland can take responsibility to build a new approach for themselves .
The solution is simple! –
Encourage all those seeking a new direction to join the SNP and make that new direction a reality by participating in shaping an even better Scotland and then voting to deliver it.
Not any individuals vision of an Independent Scotland but the fruit of everyone’s labour!
We don’t need a new movement, route or anything else we just need to energise and use more effectively what is already there …gie it wings!
I think we also ignore at our peril the possibility that Reform will become the main Unionist party in Scotland
It’s easy to scoff, and say “they’ll never get in up here,there is not particular Scottish gene that gives immunisation against Fascism
. Look at the USA. Traditional campaigning is gone. The old ways of leaflets, door-knocking, and party loyalty are fading. In their place? Anger, algorithm-driven messaging, and constant online presence.
We need to be aware and develop strategies to counter Reforms message
The most worrying thing about Reform, and about Tony Blair’s tele-directed Labour Party, is this idea of abandoning net zero which has been floated the last couple of weeks.
In 2009, no one thought that green energy could ever actually replace fossil fuels, but we now know beyond any doubt that they can.
The political ramifications of this are MASSIVE. If energy becomes democratised, the knock on effects for geopolitics redraw the whole world map.
Suddenly, the petro-States lose their clout, and then it’s possible there might even be peace in the Middle East.
A whole new world opens up…
Obviously, there are deep-seated vested interests which want to stop this happening, whether that be Blair, Putin or Trump.
We have to organize and resist them…
The fight for net zero is absolutely the biggest fight of our lifetime…
We just can’t afford to lose it…
No Douglas, you cannot replace fossil fuels with renewables.
Fertiliser, food transportation etc are all reliant on fossil fuels.
It’s just not viable and it’s too late anyway. We’re heading for abrupt, runaway climate change.
Have you read Professor Jem Bendell’s works, the Deep Adaptation paper and the more recent book Breaking Together?
Wait, what about organic food production? Impossible?!
We are in deep shit but Jem Bendell’s work has been widely criticised
Criticised by who? No one credible.
What Bendell says is true. This fact clearly upsets lots of delusional people.
‘organic’ farming at the scale required is not realistic. There are 8 billion people in this planet.
Alastair McIntosh for one and there many others.
This from 2016 is useful:
“Studies that evaluate social equity and quality of life for farm communities are few. Still, organic farming has been shown to create more jobs and reduce farm workers’ exposure to pesticides and other chemicals.
Organic farming can help to both feed the world and preserve wildland. In a study published this year, researchers modeled 500 food production scenarios to see if we can feed an estimated world population of 9.6 billion people in 2050 without expanding the area of farmland we already use. They found that enough food could be produced with lower-yielding organic farming, if people eat a more plant-based diet with lower meat consumption.”
If Deform got in in 2029 this would be a trigger for Scottish UDI. War would follow as the English attempted to provent UDI. Thus, it might be better to trigger UDI sooner rather than later & the elections in May 2026 could be that moment. If Scottish parties that favour independence do well (& LINo & the tories badly) then that will be the moment. Take independence whilst you can – Starmer/LINO is nutless/gutless/brainless – ditto Starmer’s controller – the irishman & Zionist McSweeney – they will do nothing. Over to you Scotland, get out of the Union while you can.
Define “do well”.
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/brexit-is-back-nigel-farage-says-britain-will-renegotiate-eu-deal-next-year/
Something I’ve yet to see any pundits bring up is Farage’s attitude to the NI protocol.
If Farage becomes PM the Irish sea border could be a goner and the GFA with it. Wonderful thing for the loyalists in Ireland (who’ll be right behind it despite the fact it will make them worse off) and Scotland but what about the rest of us? We can probably look forward to an IRA mainland blitz. Using the same tactics they used when we had the headline “For the price of a few phone calls the PIRA have brought the city of London to a standstill” they’ll make every port on the mainland a no-go area. The occasional bomb on a lorry, crater on a port road and the same game of shell and pea they used when they shut down the motorways leading to London will result in massive queues at ports as searches are carried out. Foreign drivers (as well as some UK) will refuse to pass through the ports leading to huge food shortages and it will all be used by Farage as a smokescreen as to why Brexit continues not to work. There always has to be someone to blame.
This analysis just seems behind the curve on immigration and economics.
I suspect there will be a stream of English refugees northwards from an increasingly multicultural England unless the scale of immigration there is curtailed or reversed. This happens when people leave California for the Mid-West.
The article doesn’t address the Reform policy of increasing the personal allowance for income tax to £20K. This is a reserved power that can’t be reversed in Scotland and is clearly in the interests of the low paid in the private sector. It’s distinct from Liz Truss’s experiments as it targets the least wealthy for a tax break.
Farage seemed to get on well enough with Alex Salmond and has given the Scottish Right free rein to make Scottish policy within the devolution settlement. They may end up with representation in the Scottish parliament in 2026, which will liven up the debate by providing a serious opposition.
“Farage seemed to get on well enough with Alex Salmond” – I mean, that’s really great.
“All the polls show that a Reform government would turbocharge calls for Scottish independence”
Surveys indicated the same with the prospect of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson as British Prime Minister.
When he actually became PM pro-Independence sentiment didn’t change.
And nothing happened.