A symptom, not a solution
In part one, I highlighted that Reform Scotland is not offering anything fundamentally different. The obvious question then is: why does it have any support at all?
The answer is uncomfortable, but straightforward. Reform is a symptom of Scotland’s political malaise.
Its rising level of support is the product of decades of failure from Scotland’s political class. A failure not just of policy outcomes, but of political imagination. Scotland, like most developed economies, is facing what can only really be described as a polycrisis: rising inequality, persistent poverty, economic insecurity, and an accelerating climate crisis, and yet the response from mainstream politics has been strikingly limited.
There have been some worthwhile policies from Scotland’s government over the decades. Policies like free tuition, free prescriptions, an extra £20 on Scottish child payments, and even the baby box, are not nothing. They do signal progressive ambition, but they do not challenge the underlying structures that produce inequality in the first place. They soften the edges, while leaving the system intact.
Behind this progressive mantra, SNP governments have continuously operated in ways that actively reinforce the unequal system. Policy is increasingly outsourced to private consultants. Council tax remains fundamentally regressive. Land reform, despite being endlessly discussed, has barely shifted the reality that a few hundred individuals control vast swathes of the country. Key sectors, including energy and infrastructure, have been opened up to foreign ownership, allowing profits generated in Scotland to flow elsewhere.
The result is a growing disconnect between political rhetoric and lived reality. Parties continue to talk about fairness, about opportunity, about building a better Scotland. But for many people, especially those in working-class communities, very little actually changes.
Space to flourish
It is within this gap that Reform finds space.
It is able to point to real problems – housing, wages, public services – and say, convincingly, that the current system is not working. And on that point, it is right. But what it offers in response does not address the root causes of those problems. Instead, it redirects frustration away from the structures that produce inequality, and towards more convenient targets.
One of those targets is, unsurprisingly, immigrants.
In the area of housing, Reform suggests that migrants, particularly asylum seekers, are a major driver of the pressure on temporary accommodation, and that ‘ordinary Scots’ are losing out because refugees are being prioritised. However, out of roughly 40,000 people in temporary accommodation in Scotland, only around 3,000 are refugees or asylum seekers. That is less than 10%. Thus, the overwhelming majority of people in temporary housing are not migrants. They are people who have been failed by an extractive economic system that does not provide sufficient affordable housing.
And what is one of the SNP’s recently announced election promises? A rebooted Help to Buy scheme offering up to £10,000 to first-time buyers. On the surface, it looks like support. In practice, it does very little for those who are actually locked out of the housing market. Those most likely to benefit are those who already have some level of financial stability, whereby £10,000 will add to their established savings. It does nothing for those at the sharpest end of the crisis, and particularly not for those in temporary accommodation.
Worse still, policies like this tend to increase demand without addressing supply. And when demand rises in a constrained housing market, prices rise with it. As already highlighted, this is not an isolated issue. It is characteristic of a broader approach, one that prioritises politically attractive, short-term measures over structural reform.
Scapegoats
When real structural policy is avoided, it allows Reform to benefit, using migrants as scapegoats for the capitalist and political elites, and thus diverting attention from the real sources of working-class despair. It goes, then, that housing is unaffordable and scarce because of the 3,000 refugees seeking temporary accommodation, not because of the London speculators or private developers like Taylor Wimpey, who think tank Common Weal noted as having, in 2024, built 10,593 houses while also distributing £339mn in dividends.
Moreover, Reform labels Glasgow the “asylum capital of the UK”, and has recently rolled out billboards with brown and black faces posted behind the bold language “Scotland is at Breaking Point”. Apparently, these people are flocking to Scotland due to overly generous welfare.
However, migration is structurally driven by forces that extend far beyond domestic policy choices. Reform would have you believe that people are fleeing their homeland and families because the UK and Scotland are offering some temporary accommodation and some weekly cash for food. The reality though is that they do so because of war, political instability, economic collapse, and, increasingly, environmental degradation.
Looking ahead, climate change is likely to be the most significant driver of migration. In 2024, Sir Crispin Tickell (British ambassador to the UN) warned that global warming could displace up to 300 million people over the coming century. Considering this, the idea that reducing ‘incentives’ in countries like Scotland will meaningfully alter migration patterns becomes delusional.
Reform can deport as many people as it wants, and make it as hard as possible for migrants to claim asylum here, but this will do very little when famine, drought and war strike their homelands.
Yet, Reform’s response to this looming reality is to oppose meaningful climate action.
For the working class?
It is not controversial for Reform to claim Scotland is at breaking point. One thousand people die every year from drug overdose. Almost 25% of children in Scotland still live in poverty. Housing prices are through the roof. Wages have stagnated, and energy prices are set to rise again. However, this is not because of the refugees and asylum seekers Reform plasters on billboards. It’s because of the exploitative economic system that Reform’s funders expect it to protect.
It is a sad state of affairs that such an incompetent and incoherent party has even a semblance of popularity, but it is the fake leftism from Scotland’s “progressive” political parties that Scotland’s working class see through, thus driving them to entertain the likes of Reform.
As emphasised already, all of Scotland’s mainstream parties are vying to come across as fighting for the working class and ordinary Scots. However, they all parrot the same neoliberal economics which literally guarantees austerity and is dependent on a class of low paid labour. There are no two ways about it: the only society for working class people is one that abandons neoliberalism and capitalism. Reform is not offering this, and neither is any other relevant party.
To end bluntly, the two Reform members most on Scottish airwaves and driving its narrative are party leader Malcolm Offord, and Glasgow councillor Thomas Kerr. Both are former members of the Conservatives, the party that many hold historically responsible for at least some of the deindustrialisation of the UK, causing despair and poverty in working class communities, as well as the post-financial crisis austerity years which studies have linked to 300,000 excess deaths. They now audaciously blame the SNP for this despair, and insist that Reform is the answer. Sadly though, in doing so, they are merely joining a long line of opportunists among Scotland’s political class.
More from Ciaran McKenna
Friends of Bylines Network
There has never been a greater need for grassroots journalism that investigates the stories that really matter, holds power to account and champions the voices of everyday citizens. We are proudly powered by volunteers but what we do isn’t free.
STAND WITH US for independent, citizen-led journalism that makes democracy stronger, and you will even get some exclusive benefits.
