Reform's first electoral breakthrough in Scotland is a wake-up call for Labour

Reform UK has done it; the Scottish breakthrough is here.

It’s taken the party long enough. After months of building its ranks, defector by defector, it has finally succeeded at the ballot box in a local by-election result that, frankly, stands out even in the weird world of local by-election results.

That you cannot predict a national result from a local poll is amongst the most commonly-held of political beliefs, used widely across the spectrum from left to right.

But Reform UK could be tempted to draw conclusions from this win. After all, the latest polling suggests the party will form the opposition at Holyrood come May 2026.

So how did it happen?

West Lothian Council’s four-member Whitburn and Blackburn ward lies in former mining country. One of nine wards in the local authority, it has long had representation from both Labour and the SNP. Two of its current representatives come from the latter party, and until recently the other two came from Labour.

Until, that is, the general election set off a chain of events that led to the Reform breakthrough.

In summer 2024, Bathgate and Linlithgow returned a new MP, Kirsteen Sullivan. The candidate wasn’t just anyone – she had been depute leader of West Lothian Council since 2017 and was councillor for – you guessed it – Whitburn and Blackburn.

But entry to the Commons meant her council career would come to an end, and in the resulting by-election her party held on to the seat she was vacating.

But winner David Russell would last less than a year before resigning his post.

And that left the party needing to motivate its base twice in quick succession.

So it could be said that in losing the seat now in what was a shocker of a result for the party, Labour has been the victim of its own success.

At the last time of asking – November 2024 – Labour’s victory was a slim one, however. Russell came first by a margin of just 71 votes with a total of 1,093, while the SNP trailed closely behind on 1,022 and Reform came a distant third at 578 votes.

That third-placedcandidate was David McLennan. Thirteen months later, he’s not only come in first but well ahead of his rivals, finishing with 149 votes more than the SNP, which came second again.

And Labour’s support didn’t just slip, it sank, coming up at just 627.

“I want to thank the people of Whitburn and Blackburn for putting their trust in me and in Reform,” said McLennan. “This is a clear signal from local residents that they want their community to take a new, positive direction. This is a vote of faith in Reform in Scotland. We have all the momentum in Scottish politics.”

It’s stirring stuff – and great campaigning fodder.

But McLennan’s win came against a very low base. Because only 22.2 per cent of locals actually turned out to vote.

So while the vacant spot is no longer red, that level of participation is a massive red flag – a warning that the electorate is disengaged.

And that’s one of the things about council by-elections: turnout for these tends to be lower than in regularly scheduled local government races (the next one of those, by the way, will be in May 2027), and certainly lower than in Scottish or UK parliament ballots.

How different could this result have been if more locals had turned in their papers?

The aftermath of an election is full of ‘might-have beens’. In this case, as we frantically seek indicators of next May’s national result, the ‘would have, could haves’ take on a different character.

Reform UK would be stupid not to make the most out of this win. And stupid, it is not. This is a party that was a laughing stock, at best, in 2021 when its then-leader Michelle Ballantyne MSP, a Tory defector, lost her seat and the party’s candidates, all contesting the list, ended with nothing.

This time we expect a different result, and sitting MSPs from across the board will say that they anticipate a notable Reform presence in the next parliament.

The party, which still lacks a Scottish leader, has succeeded in harnessing media attention and pushing its priority – slashing immigration – up the political agenda. Its messaging is blunt, with UK leader Nigel Farage using Glasgow’s bastion of multilingual schoolchildren as part of that anti-immigration rhetoric, and head of policy Zia Yusuf making a personal attack on Scottish Labour’s Anas Sarwar after he called out the comments on Question Time.

“Why are you using – Reform using – Glasgow’s schoolchildren to spread your bile and poison into our communities?” Sarwar asked recent Tory defector Malcolm Offord.

In response, Yusuf turned to a 2022 speech given by Sarwar at an event marking the 75th anniversary of independence for Pakistan. You know the one – it was used by Reform to attack the Glasgow MSP in the Hamilton by-election last year.

At the event, Sarwar spoke about creating more opportunities for those from Pakistani and South Asian backgrounds in mainstream politics.

“If you stand in front of the flag of a foreign country and give a rousing speech about how people of that country can attain ‘real power’ in the UK,” said Yusuf, “don’t whine when other parties play this speech to voters so they can decide for themselves where your loyalties lie.”

Disingenuous? Yes. But, shorn of its context, the material will travel far and wide on the ungovernable channels of social media. As I said, Reform UK knows how to spread its message.

All parties are working on their messaging right now, trying to find that magic form of words that will cut through to the average punter and inspire them to pull their trainers on and get out the door to vote.

They’ll be looking at the Whitburn and Blackburn result carefully and trying to learn as much from it as possible.

But they won’t be using it to predict their final seat tally – it’s far too early for that.