LEAKED texts have revealed that Aberdeen Tory MSP Liam Kerr privately begged a local Reform UK campaigner not to stand in 2026.
"You’re parking your tanks right on my lawn in my own church," he wrote in messages seen and first reported by the Press and Journal.
The leak shows that the MSP is worried that Nigel Farage’s party standing in Aberdeen South and North Kincardine seat will split the Unionist vote, allowing the SNP to win.
Kerr is up against Aberdeen South MP Stephen Flynn, who is attempting to swap Westminster for Holyrood in the election in May next year.
The Tory MSP was second to SNP MSP Audrey Nicoll by roughly 1600 votes in 2021.
“My vote could hold up and in those circumstances I’d beat Flynn and the SNP,” Kerr wrote to ex-Tory turned Reform man Conrad Ritchie.
“If you come into [the constituency] you will get a few votes (you’ll never win that seat) but enough to let Flynn back in.”
He added: “On May 5th do you REALLY want to wake up to Flynn back in in a constituency when we could have got him out? I don’t.”
Kerr also took issue with Reform activists wanting to hold meetings at his local Mannofield church.
He asked: “Why Mannofield church again for your meeting next week Conrad?
“Being as it is right in the constituency where I can beat the SNP and Flynn if the vote is not split; but also is the actual church I go to on a Sunday.
“Was that your choice of venue?”
Ritchie then replied: “Only because it was available and central for folk coming north south or west.”
He added: “Actually I felt like saying mind your own business.
“I don’t ask [where] Tories have meetings as I don’t care.”
Kerr then said: “That’s one view.
“The other is you’re parking your tanks right on my lawn in my own church in the area where splitting the vote will allow the worst possible result for the North East whatever our politics.”
Ritchie was previously chairman of the Tory Banff & Buchan group but quit after accusations of racism for telling French-born SNP councillor Christian Allard to “go back” to his country of birth.
A Scottish Conservative spokesperson told the P&J: “As every pollster has said, and the last General Election demonstrated, a vote for Reform only helps the SNP.
“We know that Nigel Farage is fine with the nationalists remaining in power, as are those Reform candidates who back independence, but the majority of Scots are desperate to get rid of this failing SNP government.”
