Protest voters drawn to fringes after mainstream party failures - Susan Dalgety
Malcolm Offord, or to give him his full title, The Lord Offord of Garvel CVO, is the new leader of the Reform Party in Scotland.
The former Tory, Scottish Office minister and trustee of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme, was unveiled as the party’s boss at a press conference in Kirkcaldy a few days ago.
The affable peer, who is so rich it is reported he paid cash for his £1.6 million luxury home on the banks of Loch Lomond, may lead Reform into the Holyrood elections, but you can bet your last pound that it will be Nigel Farage who is calling the shots.
Farage doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who plays second fiddle to anyone, even the titled bloke he has entrusted to run the Scottish end of the operation.
But does it really matter whether it is Lord Offord – who has announced he will resign his seat in the House of Lords at the end of this month – or former stockbroker Nigel Farage who is in charge here?
Reform has no policies to speak of and voters won’t meet their Holyrood candidates until March, when they will be unveiled at a special conference.
Yet, despite the lack of information about their plans and personnel, the party is polling in second place to the SNP and stands to win as many as 20 regional list seats come May,
Even here in Edinburgh and Lothian, where the Scottish Greens and Liberal Democrats are strong contenders for list seats, the chances are Reform will have one Lothian MSP, perhaps even two.
So what are people voting for when they choose Reform?
Most potential Reform voters are not right-wing racists, as opposition parties tend to paint them. The people I know who are considering voting for Farage’s party are down-to-earth, middle-of-the-road, salt-of-the earth, everyday folk.
Some used to vote Labour, others Conservative or SNP, a few even flirted with the Greens. They have one thing in common –they are all angry as hell with the state of the country and no longer trust the mainstream political parties to fix things.
Their vote for Reform is the classic protest. A protest against the cost of living crisis that has seen food prices rise by about one-third in the last five years. A weekly grocery bill of £80 in 2019 now costs about £106, which is quite a jump.
People are fed up too with NHS waiting lists which see thousands die before they get treatment, and we have all had enough of the 8 am rush to beg for a GP appointment. Reform supporters have no idea if the party will make things better but, they argue, they can’t do any worse.
Following the election, the affable financier Malcolm Offord will have to show how he and his merry band of MSPs are going to be different from the usual, run-of-the-mill parliamentarians, many of whom seem to care more about their own career prospects than their constituents’ concerns.
Going by Reform’s antics in local government south of the border and the performance of Graham Simpson – the party’s sole representative in the Scottish Parliament - I think it is safe to predict that it will be business as usual.