Reform’s toxic thinking has infected Scottish politics – this week’s Holyrood elections will tell us how badly |
As Scotland prepares to elect a new parliament on 7 May, immigration is dominating the political discourse as never before. Reform UK, a party whose top three policies are “stop the boats”, “secure and defend our borders” and “deport illegal migrants” is now polling in second place behind the SNP in many recent surveys. Its success here seems illogical. Immigration, after all, is not devolved to the Scottish parliament. But as I’ve learned from my experience as an immigrant in Scotland, Holyrood’s position on immigration matters.
In Westminster, the Labour government’s approach to Reform’s toxic, distorted narrative on immigration has been not to challenge it but instead to accept it as the starting point for its own hardline anti-immigrant agenda. If this thinking were to infect Holyrood, it would be disastrous for Scotland.
With an ageing, shrinking workforce, Scotland desperately needs immigrants for its social security system to function. Without more workers, tax revenue will decline while demand for health and social care rises, squeezing us at both ends, according to Skills Development Scotland. A 2025 Improvement Service report on projected population change suggests the problem is more acute in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK, due to lower birthrates. Given Westminster’s “hostile environment” policies to discourage immigration, the report recommends focusing on creative local initiatives to attract and retain the people Scotland needs.
During its past two decades in power, the SNP government seems to have understood this. Motivated by the desire to show Scotland could succeed as an independent nation,........