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Scotland's Right Wing Reluctance
From at least the 90’s onwards, one of the most distinctive aspects of the Scottish electorate was a seeming reluctance to vote for overtly right wing options. The Conservatives were famously wiped out in Scotland in 1997 (as they were in Wales), and even at the peak of their post-IndyRef revival in the 2017 UK General Election, Scottish support for the party was around 15% short of what it was down south.
Throughout the late 00’s and then the 10’s, Scotland likewise had next to no truck with UKIP. Only one UKIP representative was ever elected in Scotland, on just over 10% of the vote at the 2014 European Election, when down south the party was at nearly 30% support. Whilst they surged to about 13% UK-wide at the 2015 UK General Election, in Scotland they couldn’t even find a full slate of candidates, and came up with just 1.6% of the vote.
Further, despite proportional voting systems at other levels, UKIP failed to elect a single Scottish councillor even as they dug in across parts of England. After a few polls suggested they could scrape a handful of MSPs, their then-MEP had to flee the 2016 Scottish Parliament count with his tail between his legs when they ultimately only scored 2%.
Convergence and Overcorrection
These factors naturally led to a strong sense that Scotland had a very different political outlook to England. In reality, social attitudes weren’t really very different, but how people came to express that in voting was, as was the strengthening of Scottish national identity. The SNP came to dominate parts of rural Scotland, eating into the core Conservative vote there, whilst New Labour offered an economically tolerable but crucially more Scottish feeling option for the urban right wing.
UKIP’s rise was also likely stunted by the SNP. At a time where voters were seeking an alternative from the Westminster usual, the SNP and Independence were already well established, meaning voters didn’t feel the need to swing for a further right option. That is, incidentally, a useful lesson for the current era that much of the Great and the Good of UK politics and the media refuse to learn: that what voters often want is an alternative, rather than, specifically and necessarily, a far-right alternative.
All of that has changed by (following the Conservative revival reshaping rural Scotland) and since 2024. Although the 7% Reform won in Scotland was a bit less than half of their English tally of 15%, it was the first noteworthy share for a Farage outfit north of the border, outwith European elections. Since then they’ve experienced a surge of Scottish support to the extent that at time of writing, they are narrowly ahead of Labour and in second place in polling averages for both votes at Holyrood. Clearly, the genie is now out of the bottle, and we can expect a sizeable Reform group in May.
This has led to some people triumphantly pointing out the old narrative of Scotland’s immunity to the far-right was complete rubbish, and actually Scotland is no different to the rest of the UK. That’s far too much of an overcorrection in my view, a roughly equivalent level of denial just in the opposite direction. As boring and trite as it is to say, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Comparative support across Great Britain
To demonstrate this, the obvious thing to do is to turn to the polls to get a sense of where things stand north and south of the border. For average overall GB vote shares, my starting point is Election Maps UK’s Nowcast average on the 1st of March. There’s then a little shoogling to account for the fact that lower support than that figure in Scotland means higher in England and Wales, which roughly speaking amounts to an extra 1% on the GB-wide number.
Reform Support in Westminster Polling
Comparing Reform’s best performances across polling, their ratio of support in Scotland relative to England and Wales is around 0.64; i.e. for every 100 English and Welsh voters that were leaning Reform at their peak, only 64 Scottish voters were. Currently however, the figures are a good bit closer closer, at roughly 0.72. To me, this suggests that Reform have a higher ceiling of support down south than in Scotland, but also that the support they have picked up is a bit softer. If I was to hazard a guess, I’d suggest that the constitutional question is also playing a large part here.
Although it’s nowhere near as pressing as it was in the last two Holyrood elections, it’s still the case that a portion of Reform’s support is coming from that part of the electorate that wants to vote for the strongest Pro-Union party. As Anas Sarwar can attest, the fact that there are different governments at each level does not stop some voters from making the same calculations in each.
Conservative Support in Westminster Polling
Of course, Reform haven’t yet fully displaced the Conservatives, who remain a force on the UK right. It’s therefore worth a look at their support as well.
In relative terms, the differences between Scotland and the rest of Great Britain are even more stark. The ratio between recent peaks for the Scottish Conservatives, at 0.5, is precisely half their England and Wales figure. Even with a similarly sharper decline down south, having seemingly hit rock-bottom in Scotland already, they’re still only on 0.57 times the support up here.
Combined Right Support in Westminster Polling
If we combine the two right-wing parties into a single bloc, allowing for the fact there’s a lot of direct movement between them, their relative support in Scotland versus England was roughly 0.61 for peak shares, and is currently around 0.66. Overall, that’s actually been a relatively consistent figure in recent months: Scottish support for clearly right-wing parties has run on average around two-thirds the level it does on the rest of the island.
For folk really keeping score, you might also note this isn’t all that much higher than the roughly 29% of the Scottish vote that the Conservatives plus the tiny rump of UKIP won in the 2017 UK General Election, which was the absolute peak of right wing support in recent years. That really feeds into the sense that whilst Reform are picking up some of the historic Labour core vote, as suggested in this earlier piece a lot more of it is funnelling through from the post-IndyRef Conservative voter base.
What about Holyrood?
It’s all well and good looking at Westminster figures, but it’s a Holyrood election breathing down our necks. Given voters often opt for different parties between levels of representation, is this much different? Figures here are drawn from the February 25th data point on the the Holyrood Hub tracker page.
Right Parties Support in Holyrood Polling
Ehhh, not really? Conservative support is basically identical, whilst Reform are about 3-4% worse off: measurable, but not massive. That’s a combined ratio compared to England and Wales support at Westminster of 0.59. A big part of why this is the case is likely to be the larger franchise. Based on 2024 figures the electorate for Scottish Parliament (and council) elections is almost 6% larger than it is for Westminster. Consisting of 16 and 17 year olds plus non-citizen residents who don’t qualify for the UK franchise, that’s an additional chunk of the electorate that is going to be overwhelmingly Reform-hostile.
Bute House Seeks Tenant: Right Wingers Need Not Apply
Clearly, for all that Reform are undoubtedly about to become a major part of Scotland’s political landscape, there remains a yawning chasm between how people north and south of the border choose to vote. Even if social attitudes to things like immigration don’t always vary that much, the degree to which those attitudes inform voting choice very much does. This results in a substantial, meaningful and vitally important difference in Scotland’s political character.
At less than one-third of the combined vote for Reform and the Conservatives in May, this is a continuation of the same Devolution story we’ve had since 1999. The only way parties of the overt right get into power at Holyrood is if those of the left and centre invite them in. Some of the commentariat may have gotten swept up in the “Ruth Davidson, Scotland’s Next First Minister” nonsense after 2016, but that was never going to happen. Malcolm Offord likewise has about as much chance of taking up residence in Bute House as I do.
Unlike England and (to a slightly lesser extent) Wales, the right simply isn’t in contention for government here. Obviously the FPTP voting system exaggerates the Westminster reality – the earlier referenced EMUK Nowcast is for 315 Reform MPs plus 53 Conservatives, for around 58% of GB seats on 47% of the vote – but even if it didn’t, they are still running very close to a majority of the vote.
You’d always had to have been daft to pretend that Scotland was somehow a no-go nation for parties of the right. You’d have to be equally daft now to pretend there’s a unified British story of yearning for a right wing government. As we head towards May’s crunch elections, don’t make the mistake of assuming Scotland fits wholly either within or outwith the highly oversimplified narratives we’ll undoubtedly see emerging from different parts of the media.
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