THE headline story of Thursday's bumper batch of five local by-elections in Scotland was of the Conservatives making four gains from the SNP. But as is often the case in the complex, contradictory world of by-elections held under the Single Transferable Vote system, that story is at least partly misleading.
In three of the wards where the Tories made gains, namely Mearns, Fraserburgh and District and Central Buchan, they were defending a lead in the popular vote from last time around, meaning they could have achieved the "gains" if they had stood still or gone slightly into reverse. In the case of Fraserburgh and District, there was actually a swing from the Tories to the SNP of around 2%, as the SNP proved more successful at collecting the large number of votes up for grabs due to independent candidates from 2022 being absent from the ballot this time.
Nevertheless, in three wards the swing was indeed from SNP to Tory. But even to the extent that the narrative of Tory progress can be justified, there's a paradox at the heart of it, because the second-most noteworthy thing that happened in the by-elections was the string of good results for Reform UK, a phenomenon that ought to be disproportionately harming the Tories. It may be that Reform's spoiler effect is to severely limit what would otherwise be a much more fully-fledged Conservative renaissance, at least in the north-east.
Even in SNP vs Labour battleground areas of the Central Belt, it's possible that Reform's burgeoning popularity is proving to be indirectly helpful to the SNP. In Inverclyde West, 13% of Reform votes transferred to Labour once lower preferences were taken into account, implying that those would have been Labour votes if there had been no Reform candidate. This chimes with the recent Scottish poll from Norstat, which suggested that the SNP's substantial Westminster lead can be explained more by Labour voters switching to Reform than by Labour voters switching direct to the SNP.
That makes some sense, because a key feature of the conservative populism which is sweeping the democratic world, and which reached its new high watermark with Donald Trump's astounding triumph on Tuesday, is that it often combines hard-right or even far-right policies on social issues with economic rhetoric that is to the left of the neoliberalism of conventional right-wing parties. Reform UK may on paper be an exception to that general rule, because Nigel Farage is a classical economic liberal, but the lower-income components of his electoral coalition do not seem to have noticed that fact.
Reform's vote in the by-elections ranged from 8% in Inverclyde to an extraordinary 26% in Fraserburgh and District, confirming the message of recent polls that they are taking enough votes from both Tory and Labour to win list seats at the 2026 Holyrood election, and potentially hold the balance of power between the pro-independence bloc and the mainstream Unionist bloc. That would make it easier for the SNP to stay in office by default as the largest single party, given that it's tough to imagine Anas Sarwar reaching a sustainable accommodation with Reform.
But the SNP really should have more ambitious horizons than the side-benefits of an ultra-Unionist party taking votes from other Unionists. They have to face the uncomfortable fact that a substantial minority of the socially right, economically left votes that Reform are nabbing could easily be in the pro-independence camp, and indeed have been in the past.
In an ideal world, the Yes movement would hold a summit to engage in some blue-sky thinking about how those crucial votes can be won back. The SNP's liberal instincts are such that they would never feel remotely comfortable, and would never sound authentic, if they took on Reform with socially conservative rhetoric, so perhaps another pro-indy party would have better luck? Or maybe a sufficiently populist economic pitch from the SNP could appeal to Reform voters without having to compromise on issues such as immigration? One way or another, though, it's likely that the problem of Reform will have to be successfully addressed if there is to be any chance of retaining the outright pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament after 2026.
