Thomas Kerr defection Square

How Reform can now say “Vote Tory – get SNP”!

TWO STRIKING – and related – news stories have hit Scottish headlines this week. A Survation poll for Holyrood Sources on the 2026 Holyrood election put the SNP on 53 seats, Labour on 25, and the Conservatives and Reform on 15 each. Meanwhile, the Conservative Group Leader on Glasgow Council, Thomas Kerr, has defected from the Scottish Conservatives to Reform.

Reform overshadowed Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay’s keynote New Year speech earlier in the week. Although Findlay made no mention of the party, focusing instead on attacking Labour and the SNP, journalists’ questions afterwards were obsessed by the Reform threat. Findlay responded with a familiar canard: “Any vote for any other party can only help the SNP”.

The Survation poll promptly blew this old duck out of the water. With Reform now equalling the Tories’ projected number of seats, and every recent poll showing Reform in the ascendant throughout the UK, the argument is rapidly reversing: Vote Tory, get SNP.

The growing wave of support for Reform is overturning the centuries-old two-party duopoly in British politics – and although SNP support remains steady for now, Reform is also upturning numerous applecarts in Scottish politics. Already commentators are speculating on Reform working with the Tories in Holyrood in 2026, a prospect Findlay has refused to rule out, or Reform holding the balance of power in a unionist coalition.

While Scottish Labour is still pretending Reform is a Tory problem, and John Swinney talks a big game about “confronting” the bogeyman of Reform, the issue for Russell Findlay is becoming ever more acute the more support Reform attracts. He was left flailing by the defection of Thomas Kerr this week – and, smelling blood, reporters doorstepped him about it immediately after First Minister’s Questions.

Kerr is the fifth Conservative councillor to defect to Reform in recent months. He was undoubtedly the Tories’ most high-profile councillor in Scotland, acknowledged as a rising star in the party. The brightest among a group of working-class Tory politicians rooted in their local communities, he even ran the campaign for Meghan Gallagher in the leadership election last summer. Kerr clearly sees a better future for himself and the Shettleston community he represents with Reform than with the Conservatives, implicitly recognising Reform’s greater popularity in Glasgow in the general election and council by-elections since.

Tories in Scotland, as in the UK, like to attack Reform for having no policies, claiming they don’t know what the party stands for. Yet the very opposite is true. Kemi Badenoch is still sitting on her hands, keeping schtum about the future direction of her party as she tries to keep disparate factions on board. Similar discontent can be discerned in Scotland, where Scottish MSP and past leadership contender Murdo Fraser used his Scotsman column to launch a shot across Findlay’s bows, warning him not to go Reform-lite but to stick to Ruth Davidson’s liberal conservatism. All the column showed was that Fraser has not kept up with the times.

Everyone knows what Reform is for – that’s why the party is gathering support across the board. The real question is: what are the Conservatives for, specifically the Scottish Tories? Findlay argued they had put in the “hard yards” opposing the SNP over the last decade, but that seems a desperate basis on which to pitch for people’s votes now. Besides, not a few people felt the Tory opposition to the SNP has not been nearly fierce enough – for example, they have gone along with many of the SNP’s ridiculous Net Zero ambitions and did not even whip their vote against the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. Like Fraser, Findlay has trouble realising that with the rise of Reform, times have changed.

In a speech this week, Badenoch acknowledged the Conservatives had made mistakes and needed to win back voters’ trust. This is much easier said than done, and the same problem confronts Russell Findlay. If his own councillors no longer trust him and his party to do the best for their constituents, why should voters?

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Image of Cllr Thomas Kerr from Reform UK meme.

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