The Talking-up Scotland fund raiser closing on Friday, primarily to enable the recruitment of some research assistance, in order to take pressure off me [74 in June and tiring] and hopefully to further improve the blog, has made a good start. To contribute, only if you can (!) go to: Talking-up Scotland - a Politics crowdfunding project in Ayr by Professor John Robertson
By Professor John Robertson OBA, former Faculty Research Ethics Chair, UWS
Westminster sub-polls of around 200 Scots over 18 are not, in themselves, strong indicators of support for the different parties but when 12 in a row tell a very similar story, they start to become at least of interest.
I’ve been looking at Westminster polls which have a Scotland sub-set in them since the beginning of December 2024 and yesterday’s YouGov poll reinforces the narrative.
From YouGov on 23-24 February 2025 – Full poll and Scotland sub-poll:
- Con – 22%, 15%
- Lab – 25%, 17%
- LD – 14%, 10%
- SNP – 3%, 39%
- Reform – 25%, 14%
- Green – 8%, 4%
From Opinium for 19-21 February 2025:
- Con – 21%, 11%
- Lab – 28%, 17%
- LD – 12%, 12%
- SNP – 3%, 36%
- Reform – 26%, 16%
- Green – 8%, 6%
From YouGov on 10-11 February 2025
- Con – 21%, 10%
- Lab – 24%, 17%
- LD – 14%, 12%
- SNP – 3%, 38%
- Reform – 25%, 19%
- Green – 9%, 3%
Going back to the 2nd December 2024, 9 polls showed a similar picture but with the Con and Lab support in the Scotland sub-polls falling steadily from the high teens and around 20%, to the situation in the last three above, of Cons close to only 10% support and Labour at 17%.
Support for the SNP is steadily growing, from the mid to high 30s but support for Reform seems stuck around the mid teens in Scotland.
Lib Dems seem confirmed at a slightly improved level of around 10-12% but Greens seem to be still suffering from the divorce effect at around only 5%.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
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Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
The SNP support will increase. The Scottish Gov is reintroducing the pensioner winter fuel payments. SNP support will now go up further. Massive.
Westminster increasing the (attack) Defence Budget. £13Billion. Spending £Billions wasted on Trident and redundant weaponry. A total waste of money. Dumped in Scotland without authority. Putting Scotland in danger.
Westminster Gov funding decommissioning nuclear £13Billion a year. Rising all the time. A total waste of monies.
Westminster Gov extending runways. A total waste of monies. More subsidised planes flying empty around the world. A total waste of time and monies. Dangerous.
Investing in railways in the North and Scotland would cut journey times, improve connectivity and cut the needs for internal flights and subsidised slots in London.
The Westminster total unionist incompetents. Promoted above any capability. They cannot count or read a balance sheet.
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I take it the Reform Party like the Unionist Parties are not registered as a political party in Scotland so just another foreign shower telling us what to do.
Vote SNP
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Former Tory Councillor , Thomas Kerr, who defected to Reform UK party tweeted this yesterday:
“Swinney calling a press conference to discuss Reform is peak desperation. The Holyrood establishment is petrified and rightly so. Scotland is scunnered with pointless grandstanding and lack of common sense”.
” @ReformUKScot isn’t going anywhere bar up” ! (then he put a rocket emoji after this comment).
This defection by him earlier this year, was also seen to be his blatant opportunism in assuming that Reform UK were in ascendency in Scotland, based on the polls, while for the Tories it was the opposite.
So to be in with a chance of being elected , perhaps in the 2026 elections as a MSP candidate, Kerr jumped from the Tory ship and landed on what I hope will be a Reform UK party ship that will sink to the depths in 2026, as will , I also hope, Kerr’s future career aspirations.
Kerr had stated that he defected from the Tories to Reform UK because “he had been “annoyed and angry” with the Conservatives for several months, accusing the party of failing to champion working-class communities like those in Shettleston”.
Well this may be news to Thomas Kerr but if he sought a party that would “champion working-class communities” then the Tories and also Reform UK party too are both not the kind of political parties who will do this, in fact the opposite is the case.
Kerr was first elected as a Tory councillor in 2017 and so it took him 8 years to realise that the Tory party that he supported, was a member of and was then elected as a Councillor for , was “not the party to champion working-class communities like those in Shettleston”, so is he a bit slow on the uptake then ?
Kerr was a guest last night on the STV programme, Scotland Tonight, to give his opinion , a very much partisan one, on John Swinney’s press conference yesterday on Mr Swinney calling for all Holyrood parties to unite in Scotland against the “Far Right” party , Reform UK.
So it seems that STV , like the BBC in Scotland , are determined to not “unite” against “Far right” English nationalist parties like Reform UK, instead they will give them a platform to then legitimise their (unwanted) propaganda to voters in Scotland.
Currently Reform UK have no elected MSP’s in Holyrood but how much airtime will they get, as a party, in the run up to the Scottish elections in 2026 by the media here, which then may persuade some gullible and uninformed voters here to ‘give them a chance’. To do what ? Destroy the Scottish parliament from within ?
Farage is known to make many promises and predictions , remember Brexit ?
All of Farage’s promises and predictions on the outcome of Brexit collapsed as a reality, but he is not getting blamed for it failing and being a disaster for our economy in Scotland and it also negatively impacting the economy in the UK too.
Yet he, Farage, was initially totally responsible for Brexit happening as a reality.
Based on that fact then let’s see what Reform UK present as their manifesto (emphasis I am sure being mostly on the MAN in their MANifesto) for the Scottish elections.
Will it be similar to their failed and also very much flawed Brexit and where they will promote pretend issues as being more significant, like Woke issues and Cancel culture, compared to what really matters , or should do, to people.
Or will they realise that Scotland, via a majority, are less likely as voters to respond to fake concerns that far right parties like Reform UK promote as being more urgent and more important as matters that need priority in being addressed.
So instead they , Reform UK party, will pretend that they care about Scotland (but only to keep us chained to their England) and also pretend that they have all of the solutions to all of the supposed problems that they will say only exist in Scotland because of the SNP and that, as supposed problems, are then not being addressed by the SNP.
That’s the same SNP who, unlike Nigel Farage , did not swan off at various times to America to try to get Donald Trump elected as America’s new President and then go over to America yet again to celebrate Trump’s win , all after he, Farage, was elected as the new MP for Clacton in England in last years GE.
Of course it is also worth reiterating that Reform UK English MP , Rupert Lowe, stated in his conference speech last year that Devolution was a “scam” and that his objective was to once again see Scotland under the total control of WM, what does Thomas Kerr say about that ? Will he even be asked by the media here his opinion on that ?
Let’s be honest here , Rupert Lowe may at some point end up being Reform UK’s next party leader, if that is the case then we all know what his future plans for Scotland are, as in Scotland back under the total control of an English parliament in the English capital city. Now that , if nothing else, is worth considering when any voter in Scotland casts their vote in 2026, surely ?
Vote SNP in 2026 to win the Scottish election .
Liz S
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