Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has continued its summertime dominance of Britain’s political agenda by unveiling its first member of the current Scottish parliament (MSP).
Graham Simpson has defected to the upstart anti-immigration party from the Scottish Conservatives, whose position looks increasingly precarious in advance of next May’s crucial Holyrood elections.
Mr Farage, a day after a high-profile policy launch down south on illegal migration, travelled north of the Scottish border to Broxburn near Edinburgh on Wednesday morning to announce the recruitment of Mr Simpson, a former journalist at the Sun newspaper.
The MSP had long been considered a possible defector to Reform UK. He was first elected to the devolved Scottish parliament in 2016 under the regional list system that operates side-by-side in Scotland with constituency votes.
RM Block
Despite only making it to Holyrood because central Scotland voters chose the Conservatives from a list, Mr Simpson refused to stand down as an MSP upon his defection and will instead sit under Reform’s banner.
He is the sole Reform MSP in the current Holyrood set-up, although the party briefly has had one other member of the Scottish parliament – former Tory Michelle Ballantyne sat as a Reform MSP from January to May 2021, when she lost her seat.
Mr Simpson said it was an “enormous wrench” to leave the Tories, which he joined at 15: “I’ve been through a lot of soul searching in the past few weeks. I watched Reform with interest and I see the opportunity to help create something fresh here in Scotland.”
The defection is another blow to the Scottish Conservatives under their new leader Russell Findlay – Mr Simpson is the third Tory MSP to quit the party since April, after one joined the Scottish Liberal Democrats and another became an independent.
Reform, seen by many as a predominantly English nationalist party, now stands on the cusp of big potential breakthroughs in Scotland and also in Wales at the devolved parliament elections next May.
Reform UK came close to winning a Scottish parliament byelection earlier in the summer, garnering 26 per cent of the vote in Hamilton.
A Survation poll carried out three months ago for True North Advisers put the party neck-in-neck with Labour, with both well behind the Scottish National Party (SNP).
The poll result was interpreted as a signal that Reform could sweep up several seats under the list system under which 56 MSPs are chosen, and it might also be a contender in some of the 73 constituency votes.
John Curtice, a Strathclyde politics professor who is considered a polling guru in Britain, predicted it could win 20 seats or more.
The party is also well ahead of its rivals in the Tories and Labour in polls for the UK parliament in Westminster.
Voters have rallied to its anti-migration cause, encapsulated in its Operation Restoring Justice plan to round up and deport up to 600,000 illegal immigrants. Mr Farage launched the plan to much fanfare in Oxfordshire on Tuesday.
