Election specialist Professor Sir John Curtice has projected there will be a Unionist majority in Holyrood for the first time since 2011 — a change propelled by Nigel Farage.
While current polling suggests the SNP will remain as Holyrood’s largest party after the 2026 election, Curtice projects that Reform UK will be the largest opposition party.
This means it is likely the number of Unionist MSPs will outnumber Pro-Independence ones — potentially putting the question of an independent Scotland to bed until the 2030s.
Furthermore, Farage and his allies are likely to gain even more political clout and, depending on how the other seats are distributed, could create some serious political headaches.
Scottish elections use a proportionally representative system, meaning the vote share closely aligns with the seat share in parliament and it is very difficult for one party to have outright control.
This makes collaboration necessary, and a large Reform presence could force other parties to work more closely together.
Farage, leader of Reform UK, has had a patchy relationship with Scotland over his quarter-century in frontline politics.
With little electoral success or mainstream popularity to speak of, during his time as Ukip leader Farage was forced to hide in an Edinburgh pub after being swarmed by angry protestors.
He has previously described the SNP as being “openly racist” and “anti-English” and was widely mocked after Reform UK’s deputy leader had to clarify that Farage was “not scared of Scotland” after failing to appear at the party’s Perth conference.
Yet, in the recent Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election Reform missed out on electing its first MSP by less than two thousand votes.
After achieving 7 per cent of the vote in the UK’s 2024 general election — an astonishing improvement on the Brexit party’s 0.5 per cent in 2019 — polls are now suggesting Reform have won over more than 1 in 5 Scottish voters.
Reform UK, a successor of the Brexit party and Ukip, gained traction heading into the 2024 general election. After electing five MPs to Westminster and unseating nearly half of all the Tories that were defending their seats in England’s local elections.
With the three largest parties in Scotland — the SNP, Conservatives, and Labour — all struggling to rally support, there might be a rare gap in the market for a new party in Holyrood.
While the Tories have struggled to regain their place as Scotland’s second most popular party, support for the SNP remains significantly down from the heights of their 2021 Holyrood result.
For a time it looked as though Anas Sawar’s Scottish Labour Party were most likely to take control after Holyrood’s 2026 elections, however the Westminster Government’s rocky start has weakened support for Labour parties across the UK.
With the doors of Scottish politics pushed open and Farage on the march, can the old parties slam them shut again or will Reform slip into Holyrood and spoil the party? That will be decided by the voters.
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