Nigel Farage can’t lose but John Swinney or Anas Sarwar face huge let-down in Hamilton by-election

With just days to go until the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, prompted by the death of SNP MSP Christina McKelvie, First Minister John Swinney warned that a vote for Scottish Labour will help Nigel Farage’s Reform party to victory.

Scottish Labour’s Anas Sarwar, on the other hand, would like voters to know only his party can see off both the SNP and Farage.

So, the usual back and forth of campaigning. But the bogeyman is new.

Reform has previously made no significant impact in Scotland. The party has a handful of councillors – defectors from the Conservatives – but no MSPs or MPs.

For a long time, it suited Scotland’s parties of the centre left to treat Farage’s politics as irrelevant. The divisive, inward-looking policies of UKIP, then the Brexit Party, and now Reform were anathema to the Scot, genetically conditioned to be compassionate and fair.

The result of 2016’s EU referendum was used by former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon as proof of the rejection by Scots of Farage’s politics. After almost two thirds of Scottish voters backed Remain, she sharpened up her story of diverging nations.

But while Leave lost in Scotland, its 38 per cent support was not insignificant. There is a substantial constituency of Scots that agrees with Farage on immigration.

For many of these voters, still struggling after the 2008 global financial crisis and, often legitimately, disappointed with their lots under Labour, Conservative, or SNP governments, the prospect of someone like Farage “shaking things up” is hugely appealing. First Minister John Swinney knows better than anyone at Holyrood that this same instinct was, in the past, nurtured by the SNP as it built support for independence.

Last week, in an “exclusive” open letter published by the Daily Record, Swinney urged Labour voters to back the SNP’s by-election candidate Katy Loudon in order to see off Reform’s Ross Lambie. This was a two-horse race between the nationalists and Farage’s party, he insisted (On Saturday, the paper ran an “exclusive” open letter from Anas Sarwar in which he said the contents of Swinney’s open letter were nonsense and that only Labour’s Davy Russell could defeat the SNP).

Behind their campaign games, neither the SNP nor Scottish Labour currently believes Reform can pull off a win. Both parties think they can, while recognising the other is very much in the game.

A turnout in the region of 30-35 per cent would suit Labour, which reckons it already has sufficient numbers nailed down to take the seat against that backdrop.

While Labour pins its hopes on the relative indifference of voters, the SNP remains convinced that the spectre of Farage can get its candidate over the line.

The Magnus Pyke of politics, Professor Sir John Curtice, predicts Reform will come a “good third” on Thursday. A victory, he says, would be “spectacular”.

But, while Nigel Farage may not be anticipating the election of his party’s first MSP this week, he will perfectly satisfied by the reaction of his opponents to his party’s first serious intervention into Scottish politics.

There was, I believe, real camaraderie behind John Swinney’s intervention over a Reform Facebook ad attacking Anas Sarwar with the false claim he had promised to prioritise Pakistani communities in Scotland.

Demanding that Facebook’s parent company remove the offensive ad, Swinney said “Anas Sarwar is a political rival of mine, but he shouldn’t be subjected to that kind of racist attack and we want to make sure that we stand in solidarity against the tactics of Farage.”

These were admirable words, though I do wish politicians would ditch the habit of pointing out their rivalries at times when they are irrelevant. If I were one day to hear Anas Sarwar say “I may not agree with John Swinney’s politics, but I’m sorry he fell off the step-ladder when he was doing the gutters”, I would not be at all surprised.

But the shared anger of the SNP and Labour on this matter did not worry Reform. Rather, it emboldened it. Nigel Farage’s response to complaints from Swinney and Sarwar was to issue a second attack video captioned: “Anas Sarwar is the one obsessed about race.”

This was ugly stuff but the ability of mainstream leaders to recognise as much will not counter it.

Reform continues to invest in this tactic of attacking Sarwar because it’s gaining traction with a certain part of the electorate.

Recently, there has been much talk among politicians and activists about the need to unite against the rise of right-wing populism. A summit organised by the First Minister saw leaders from across the Holyrood chamber, minus the Conservatives’ Russell Findlay, recite words of compassion and solidarity.

This sort of thing is all well and good but it betrays a misunderstanding of the sort of voters who might be tempted to back Reform.

People, uncomfortable though it may be for the current generation of SNP and Labour policy-makers to accept, should be allowed to hold views about the restriction and management of immigration without being told that they are part of a new Nazi movement.

If the SNP and Labour are to halt the rise of Reform, they might start by finding a way to talk to – rather than patronise – voters on the issues that Farage so deftly exploits.

For most of his career, Farage was barely relevant in Scotland. Mainstream political leaders treated his success in England as proof of the moral superiority of Scottish voters.

Now he’s a serious player.

Either John Swinney or Anas Sarwar is going to be deeply disappointed in the early hours of Friday morning,

Nigel Farage will be happy, regardless of the result.