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Professor John Robertson OBA

This was first published in Scots Independent in July 2025.

A recent survey by pollster More in Common for GB News, has cast doubt on Reform UK’s prospects in Scotland and suggests an ‘impenetrable wall’ of support for the SNP.

On 19 July 2025, GB News reported:

Reform UK’s hopes of generating a tartan tidal wave have been handed a damning verdict as a pollster has told GB News that the party’s values do not fully resonate with Scottish voters.

According to a recent MRP poll by think tank More in Common, the SNP is set to make a major comeback in the next general election, returning to 2019 levels of strength and bagging 41 of the 57 seats available in Scotland.

When asked whether Scots think Reform UK aligns with their values, George Buchan, founder of GB Insight, told GB News: “Reform UK’s recent surge in Scotland appears to be driven more by frustration with both Labour and the Conservatives than by a strong alignment with Scottish values.

This does not surprise me at all. Two recent YouGov polls have put the SNP at 40% in the Scottish sub poll, in sharp contrast with their Scotland-only polls where the sample has been adjusted to match the 2014 referendum result and puts the SNP only in the mid 30s.

What are these ‘Scottish values’ referred to? Critics will froth that such things do not exist and that to suggest they do is a form of narrow, ethnic, anti-English nationalism. When values such as more inclusive and more egalitarian, health care, education, benefits and taxation are mentioned, critics will correctly tell us that many in England hold the same values dear.

No one is suggesting otherwise but what is being suggested is a that a larger proportion of the electorate in Scotland supports policies based on these values than is the case in England, enabling the party of government, the SNP, to act upon them, within the fiscal limitations of devolution, and at least to some extent, to produce a more inclusive, more egalitarian, fairer society.

Increasingly we have independent experts confirming that Scotland is diverging for the harsher settlement in England. These include Professor of Human Geography at Oxford, Danny Dorling, who has written that ‘Scotland is showing us the route to a fairer society’, Richard Murphy, George Monbiot and researchers at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, The King’s Fund and the Nuffield Trust. All of these experts have looked at SNP initiatives such as the Child Payment, the higher taxation of the better-off and the higher staffing ratios/better pay and conditions, of doctors, nurses, midwives, home visitors, teachers, and police officers.

With their enhanced research skills, relative to journalists working for the media in Scotland, these highly qualified and experienced researchers have been able to correctly identify the better outcomes across health service measures, from shorter waiting times to more equal provision; across the education service, from more graduates to improving attainment among the disadvantaged; and across crime and punishment, from far lower overall crime rates, notably against women, to lower levels of hate crime.

Perhaps most clear and meaningful are the significantly lower levels of poverty in Scotland, especially child poverty, and of homelessness due in major part to more affordable and better-quality housing, the far lower levels of student debt due to free tuition and the greater comfort and safety afforded the elderly and vulnerable as a result of free prescriptions and bus travel.

Space here does not permit me to provide the sources for the above claims as proof, but the search option at my blog enables all to be quickly checked.