A Scottish Labour councillor has defected to Reform UK on the eve of a pivotal Holyrood byelection, as the rightwing populist party’s leader, Nigel Farage, defended a controversial advert attacking Anas Sarwar that has prompted accusations of racism.
The Reform leader welcomed Jamie McGuire, who represents Renfrew and Braehead, as he campaigned on Monday in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse byelection, with opinion polls suggesting Reform and Labour are neck-and-neck in Scotland, albeit behind the Scottish National party.
Scottish Labour sources had earlier been sceptical, and speculated whether it could be someone who had already quit the party to sit as an independent. McGuire, who was previously chair of Glasgow University Labour Club, is the first councillor to switch from Labour to Reform UK after several defections from the Conservatives.
Speaking as he announced another Scottish Conservative defector to Reform in Aberdeen – the local councillor Duncan Massey – Farage played down the prospects of Reform delivering a shock win in Hamilton, despite its surge in England.
“We just don’t know,” he said, at a press conference at the Silver Darling fish restaurant overlooking the mouth to Aberdeen harbour. “Are we confident of coming third? Yes. Are we confident of coming second? Well, I don’t know. If we do, it’ll be a very nice surprise.
“Do I realistically think we can win? Well, if we do, then that will be the biggest earthquake Scottish politics has probably ever seen. You never know. On a low turnout election with a disenchanted electorate, I guess it’s not impossible, but I think it’s improbable.”
Farage said he was buoyant about Reform’s chances in Scotland. The latest opinion poll, by Norstat for the Sunday Times, has put his party one percentage point behind Scottish Labour in a Holyrood vote, at 18% and 19% respectively.
Massey is the 13th councillor in Scotland, out of a total of 1,226, to have defected to Reform. The party has yet to win a council or parliamentary seat in Scotland, but did come second ahead of Labour in a recent council byelection.
Farage said he was justified in calling Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, “sectarian” after Reform circulated a video of Sarwar praising the successes of Pakistanis in public life.
With anti-Reform protesters loudly chanting outside, Farage claimed Sarwar meant south Asians wanted to “take over the world”, but admitted under questioning that the Scottish Labour leader’s speech was to commemorate Pakistan independence day.
Sarwar, who was campaigning in Hamilton on Monday morning, said Farage’s remarks were “pathetic, poisonous and obviously deliberate misinformation”.
The Reform leader’s focus on race was doing a disservice to voters, he said, who “should be hearing a debate about how they get investment in their town centres, how we improve their NHS facilities, how we give skills and opportunities to young people”.
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Farage was with his deputy leader, Richard Tice, to call for Westminster to drop windfall levies and steeply cut taxes on North Sea oil and gas, and to drop levies on household energy bills. Tice claimed that with the UK’s North Sea reserves contributing only 1% of global emissions, limiting drilling and heavily taxing the sector was the “greatest act of financial self-harm ever imposed on this nation”.
Farage said the concept of net zero was misleading, since growing imports into the UK meant the country was offshoring its carbon emissions. Instead, the UK ought to be mining Cumbrian coal to keep steel mills open, rather than relying on imports, he said.
He was asked three times by the Guardian whether it was Reform policy that all the world’s oil, gas and coal reserves should be exploited, given he believed all the UK’s fossil fuels should be burned, but refused to give a direct answer.
“You know, mankind this year is going to burn 8bn tonnes of coal,” he said. “I share with you reservations about what this is doing to the atmosphere … But does it make sense to commit economic hara-kiri in this country, whilst this is happening across the rest of the world? No, better to refine in this country. Better to produce chemicals in this country. Better to manufacture cement.”
Pressed by the BBC on whether extracting all the UK’s North Sea oil and gas reserves would cut energy prices, he acknowledged they were traded globally. It would increase jobs and wealth for those companies involved, he said.
At the Aberdeen event, Farage accused Herald reporters of conspiring with the protesters who endeavoured to drown out his remarks, wrongly suggesting the journalists had leaked his whereabouts. The Herald editor, Catherine Salmond, later described the attack as “a low tactic and one we should all stand against”.
Later in the day, Farage travelled south for a walkabout in Larkhall, but failed to meet the media and the public as planned in nearby Hamilton, instead remaining in the back garden of the campaign office where he met supporters with Tice and McGuire.
