With eight months to go until the Holyrood election, Nigel Farage predicted the Conservatives will soon cease to be a political force in Scotland. Graham Simpson joined Reform, becoming the third MSP to quit the Tories in four months and leaving Russell Findlay facing major questions as his party trails Reform in opinion polls. Reform UK has led the Tories in four of the last five Holyrood polls on both constituency and list votes and finished strongly in the Hamilton by-election with 26% versus the Conservatives' 6%. The party is gaining ground UK-wide and prompting Tory councillors to defect. Findlay has aligned with some Reform policies and criticized net-zero initiatives, a shift that risks alienating the moderate centre-right base established under Ruth Davidson.
With eight months still to go until the Holyrood election, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has confidently predicted that the Conservatives will soon cease to be a political force in Scotland. Farage was speaking as he announced that Graham Simpson had joined Reform after becoming the third MSP to quit the Tories in the past four months. It leaves Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay facing enormous questions about the future of his party, which is now consistently trailing Reform in opinion polls.
Reform UK has led the Tories in four of the last five Holyrood polls, on both constituency and list voting intention. They had a strong third place finish in the Hamilton by-election in June, winning 26% of the vote to the Conservative 6%, and have had a decent showing in a number of council by-elections. This is part of a wave the party is riding UK-wide, with Nigel Farage's outfit regularly in the lead in Westminster polls.
More than a dozen Scottish Tory councillors had already moved across to Reform in advance of Simpson. You can perhaps see why an increasingly embattled Findlay would be tempted to shift his party to the right to combat this threat. He has already aligned with a number of Reform policies, hitting out at net-zero initiatives and describing protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers as "understandable". But such a shift risks alienating the moderate centre-right voter base established under the leadership of Ruth Davidson,
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