Taking out the Nigel Garbage

Nigel Farage, the man who makes you wish for a time machine so you could go back to the 1960s and insist his father used a condom, has announced that he’s planning a trip to Scotland in order to boost his far right band of millionaire enabling English ethno-nationalists in plenty of time for the next Holyrood elections. It’s surprising that he thinks he can find his way to Scotland. He certainly can’t find his way to his own constituency of Clacton.

Reform UK have little in the way of distinctively Scottish policies, other than SNPbad and über-unionism, many of its members seek the abolition of the Scottish Parliament and a return to the situation as it was before the devolution era. The party also has very little ground and local organisation in Scotland. Its support in Scotland is running at about half of that it attracts south of the border but due to the more or less proportional voting system used in Scottish parliamentary elections, Nigel Farage’s private limited company is forecast to win a small but significant bloc of seats in Holyrood at the next Scottish elections in May 2026.

As such Reform UK is the classic example of what they accuse migrants of being, an alien presence imported into Scotland and promoted by the establishment, in this case, the British media.

Farage says he’ll be coming to Scotland after the local elections in England, due on 1 May in which Reform UK is expected to take a large number of council seats from both Labour and the Tories. Such a victory will make Farage even more insufferable than usual, and the baseline with Farage is extremely insufferable indeed.

Scotland is not natural territory for Farage, he avoided coming here during last year’s Westminster general election campaign when his deputy Richard Tice claimed that Scotland was “too dangerous” for him. Tice may have been referring to Farage’s visit to Edinburgh in 2013 when he had to cancel his planned press conference due to protests and had to be bundled away by the police – although sadly they released him.

Farage has visited Scotland a number of times since that visit, on every occasion he has been met with protests bu he has never been at risk of physical harm. Farage is actively repulsive to most people in Scotland, he attracts support from the kind of people who post in the comments sections of the Herald or the Scotsman demanding the immediate abolition of Holyrood.

For some bizarre reason which illustrates the cultural gulf between Scotland and England, Farage, like Boris Johnson before him, is unaccountably popular with far more people in England than is good for the mental health and sanity of anyone – Scottish, English, or Welsh – who has to share an island with them.

Farage himself attributes the fact that his popularity in Scotland is on a par with some dog mess you’ve trodden into your brand new carpet to anti-English racism. That way he gets to blame us, and not his own repulsive politics and personality. It suits Farage’s narrative to paint support for independence as being driven by imaginary anti-English racism, that sets up a future Reform UK Westminster government for taking legislative measures to squash pro-independence parties and restrict their ability to campaign and organise. Farage’s own politics are themselves driven by racism and the myth of English victimhood. Claiming that anti-English racism is what motivates support for Scottish independence plays into Farage’s favourite white English-as-victims narrative and sets the stage for anti-Scottish measures such as the abolition of the Barnett Formula in the name of supposed “fairness”.

Earlier this week the First Minister announced a cross-party conference aimed at tackling the rise of the far right, which is currently partying like it’s 1933. John Swinney wants all parties represented in Holyrood to attend as well as representatives of civic Scotland. It’s a worthy idea but achieving the objective of stopping Reform and its ilk in their tracks will be an uphill struggle. Firstly and most importantly the rise of the far-right is a global phenomenon driven by forces outwith Scotland. Scotland cannot prevent this happening on its own, and can’t prevent the BBC and the British media which floods Scotland from platforming Nigel Farage.

Within Scotland, too many parties and politicians think that they can leverage some advantage from pandering to the policies and talking points of the far right. The Tories are by far the worst offenders in this regard with their UK leader Kemi Badenoch frequently weaponising far right culture wars issues and talking about how it will probably be “necessary” for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. It should not need to be said that if your policies conflict with decades old international standards on human rights law, it’s your party and its policies which need to change, not human rights law.

However Labour is also guilty of pandering to the far right. This week, on the eve of his visit to the White House to bend the knee to Donald Trump, Keir Starmer announced a measure that could have come straight from Reform UK’s playbook, slashing the international aid budget in order to boost defence spending. Yet again it’s the poor and vulnerable who are targeted, not the rich.

At Labour’s recent conference in Glasgow, Anas Sarwar announced, to resounding face-palms from the assembled Labour members, that he intends to copy Elon Musk and set up a Scottish Department of Government Efficiency in the increasingly unlikely event that he becomes first minister after the next Holyrood election.

Alba’s Ash Regan has also made overtures to Elon Musk, inviting him to invest in a Tesla factory in Scotland. However with sales of Tesla’s Swasticars in Europe plunging faster than what’s left of Anas Sarwar’s credibility, that’s unlikely to happen, which is just as well for anyone who wants to keep Musk’s malignant politics out of Scotland.

The most likely outcome from the conference will be to drive a wedge further between the anti-independence parties. Alba’s abortive dalliance with Musk will not develop further if she fails to succeed in the leadership contest which is currently tearing Alba apart. The Tories, with an eye on their haemorrhaging support are unlikely to agree to any concrete measures, allowing the SNP to portray them as being in Farage’s pocket.

Labour will pay lip service to any ideas which arise from the conference but as always with Anas Sarwar, you can’t trust a word he says. In any case, he’s Starmer’s puppet and will meekly follow where his London bosses lead. However, securing an agreement from all parties not to co-operate with the Faragistes in Holyrood or to solicit their votes, will weaken the ability of the anti-independence parties to defeat a pro-independence Holyrood majority and undermine the influence of Farage’s vile politics in Scotland. That’s got to be a good thing.

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