SCOTTISH Tory leader Russell Findlay has claimed “many” Reform candidates in Scotland are “nationalists”.
The former journalist, who took over the Holyrood arm of the party when Douglas Ross quit, was pressed on the woeful results for the Conservatives in last week’s English local elections.
With Reform cutting into the Tory vote south of the border, Findlay admitted it had been a “terrible result”.
Reform won control of 10 out of the 23 local authorities in England who went to the polls, winning 31% of the vote share compared to the Tories 23%. The LibDems won 17%, and Labour 14%.
Findlay was probed on the sharp drop in support for the Tories at the ballot box on BBC Scotland’s Sunday Show.
In response, he insisted that there “wasn’t a vote cast in Scotland” but that he understood voters were “disillusioned and disconnected”.
BBC journalist Martin Geissler asked if Findlay could explain why Scottish voters wouldn’t be “seduced” in the same way that those in England had been.
“What we've seen from Reform, from Nigel Farage’s own mouth, is he would be quite comfortable putting an SNP First Minister into Bute House,” Findlay claimed.
“Many of their candidates are nationalists.
“It's absolutely questionable whether they're even a party of the Union.”
“We are the party that understands the needs of mainstream Scotland and care about fixing those, about getting people a GP appointment when they need it, reducing the taxation [on] hard working Scots, and fixing the education system, which used to be world leading, and since the SNP took control almost two decades ago, has become completely disastrous,” he added.
Findlay was repeatedly pushed on Reform’s appeal to his party’s voter base, which the Scottish Tory leader attempted to fend off.
“I don’t know what Reform stands for,” he told the programme.
“If you want change in Scotland, there's only one party able to deliver that, that's the Scottish Conservative Party. We're the only party that stood up consistently against not just the SNP, but the entire left wing Holyrood consensus.”
Asked if he understood the appeal of Nigel Farage, Findlay said: “No, I don't.”
“What I understand is why people, voters in Scotland and across the United Kingdom, feel disillusioned, feel disconnected and left behind with politics,” he said.
“I'm not a career politician. I’m new at this, I've been doing this job seven months. I completely understand why people feel that way, but Reform are not the answer in Scotland.
“The only way to defeat the SNP and get them out of power in 2026 is a strong vote for the Scottish Conservative Party.”
Thomas Kerr, a Reform councillor in Glasgow who defected from the Tories, said the idea that the party would help put the SNP into power was “fantasy politics”.
He added: “What terrifies the Tories is that we might actually replace them.
“Political loyalty isn’t a football strip, you’re allowed to change your mind.
“Russell Findlay says Reform are nationalists. The SNP say we’re unionists. They both cling to this tired binary because it protects the status quo, where they take turns failing everyone in Scotland.
“Yes, some people who once voted for independence now support Reform, and they’re welcome. Not because they’ve swapped sides, but because they’ve seen that neither the SNP, Labour nor the Tories have delivered. It’s not about flags or feelings. It’s about the future."
It comes after pollster Mark Diffley told the programme that the English local election results showed the “rise of Reform is real”, and that the party had successfully translated positive polling into votes at the ballot box.
He added that in Scotland “dealing with Reform is not going to be an easy issue”.
Scottish polling put Reform’s popularity at about “half of what it is in the UK as a whole”, Diffley said, adding that the result in England (30%), would translate to around 15% north of the border. At Holyrood 2026, with the proportional representation system, this could give the party between 10 and 15 MSPs.
“That changes our politics in really fundamental ways,” he added.
“That impacts on legislation that can be passed, particularly as we're likely to have a minority government, they'll have membership of committees, and just the environment around Holyrood will change significantly.”
