Kenny MacAskill: A summit isn't how you defeat Reform. Independence is

My friend Neale Hanvey coined the phrase “the only ‘Reform’ that Scotland needs is independence”.

In that, he’s quite right, and with the spectre of a Reform UK or a Reform/Tory government in Westminster looming large, organising to meet the challenge is correct.

But that meeting should be a convention of independence parties and groups to drive us forward in the only way that we can protect our land, which is by taking control of our own destiny.

On current polls Reform won’t win a seat in Scotland at the next General Election. But as with Thatcher and Conservative governments since before I was even born, they will be foisted on us.

Independence is therefore essential to escape from what is coming down the line from south of the Border.

Meeting to work out strategy and tactics, and even just to agree to co-operate and make common cause, was what was needed. It has to start somewhere, and it has to begin soon. Sadly, it cannot be the constitutional convention which should have been held after Brexit.

It could have been called any time after 2016, but definitely should have been convened after Boris Johnson romped home in England in 2019 but was rejected in Scotland.

With the majority of MPs and MSPs supporting independence, along with the public seeing the damage being done to our economy and society by Brexit, that was the time to strike.

Then-FM Nicola Sturgeon stated in February 2020 that one would be held. But it never happened and the chance passed us by. What might have been is all we’re left with.

Now, though, we must look forward in the changed circumstances. Such a meeting cannot be a constitutional convention as it would have been when there was a majority of elected members supporting independence.

But a convention can still be held by parties and groups supporting independence. The ability to implement a democratic mandate has passed for the moment but laying the ground to tackle the coming challenges is essential. That’s the meeting First Minister John Swinney should have held.

The SNP are the biggest political voice but not the only one, and creating a united front is essential. Convening a meeting to address the far right in Scotland was both the wrong meeting and the wrong target.

There are right-wing groups which are rightly proscribed and others operating which are dangerous. Police monitoring and action against them is what is needed. But Swinney’s summit was portrayed as a platform against Reform UK.

I abhor Reform and loathe Farage, not just because of their views on refugees but also on privatisation of the NHS and the undermining of workers’ rights.

But Reform are not a fascist party and are legitimately able to contest elections both here and in England and Wales. They’re our incarnation of other right-wing populist parties which have sprung up in Europe and even taken power in some countries. They’re also reflective of views and individuals currently operating in or for the White House and those in power in the United States.

Worse still was that far from marginalising Reform, all it did was give them publicity. What a gift, TV time portraying themselves as victims, which they couldn’t have got otherwise and which to an extent they could only have dreamed of.

It also allowed Reform to continue their false narrative of portraying themselves as the anti-political party when they are insiders and rich boys and are funded by the oligarchy.

But it also ill behooves those who were fawning over Donald Trump, happy to meet his minions, or were courting the likes of Musk to be sanctimonious about Reform. Oppose them, yes, but at the ballot box, with the real solution being independence. Even in an independent Scotland there will be them or their ilk, as the Republic of Ireland is experiencing.

They’ll never be in charge here or across in Ireland. But they might well be in power in Westminster either on their own or in coalition with the Tories come 2029. No matter what leader Kemi Badenoch says, and Robert Jenrick seems to think otherwise, electoral arithmetic might dictate it.

A likely by-election victory in Runcorn this week is only going to energise Reform with Labour MPs fearful of a further collapse of the Red Wall, one which could be a total wipe-out, not just the breach achieved by Johnson’s Tories.

Scotland seeking to stem the Reform tide in England is as doomed as Neil Kinnock’s call years ago for Scots to phone their relatives and friends in England to warn against Thatcher. There’s nothing Scotland can do about it but save itself and that can only come through independence.

There’s no cavalry coming over the hill to rescue us and certainly not from down south. The one thing the 2024 election confirmed was that there’s no salvation coming in Westminster.

Many of us are old enough to remember previous Labour incarnations and their failure to bring change, let alone progress, for Scotland. However, there was a younger generation who hadn’t experienced that failure and sell-out and in their disgust at Tory incompetence and corruption sought hope in Starmer. For some others the memories of Labour sell-outs had faded. But both know the reality now.

That’s why there needs to be a meeting but it has to be on the right subject – how we work together for independence and do it now. The strategy needs to be formalised and must build on the good work of others such as the Scottish Independence Convention.

What matters now is not how many votes Reform get in the 2026 Holyrood election, but how we use it to get us out of the UK, because the future in Britain is frightening.

[This article was first published in The National on 28.04.2025]