Copyright wingsoverscotland
This really is an extraordinary headline, for multiple reasons. Because what actually IS “the rise of Reform”? The only thing “the rise of Reform” can possibly mean here is “more and more people choosing to vote for, or express their support for, a particular lawful political party in a democracy”. Why are we supposed to think that’s a terrible thing, when it is in fact the entire POINT of democracy? The way to “resist” the rise of Reform is to offer the electorate something better to vote for. What their rise proves is that all the other political parties are failing to do that. That isn’t Reform’s fault, and it isn’t the electorate’s fault either. But what is it Reform are offering that’s so awful anyway? Let’s have a look. Let’s for a moment put to one side the fact that all politicians’ promises are essentially worthless and are rarely kept. That would almost certainly be the case with Reform too, although they have the significant advantage that it hasn’t been proven yet. (Every current party at Holyrood HAS been in government at some point in the last decade or so, either in Edinburgh or London – the Lib Dems as part of a Westminster coalition with the Tories, the Greens as part of a Holyrood one with the SNP, and they’ve all been pretty wretched failures. Only Reform, among parties likely to secure any MSPs next year, are as yet untainted by power, although they’re already having a bumpy ride in a number of English councils.) But we can only judge parties in an election campaign on what they pledge, and what of the above is the Scottish public likely to find objectionable or offensive? “Abolish Net Zero”? All sensible people know that Scotland’s contribution to climate change is so infinitesimally small that nothing we do can possibly make any difference, so all that pious proclamations and virtue-signalling measures aimed at reducing our carbon footprint to nil achieve is to impoverish people already struggling with the cost of living and make everyone’s lives that little bit more miserable. Enjoying those paper straws and only getting your bins collected every three weeks? No, nobody is, and the only people who are getting anything out of it are posturing politicians. “Stop illegal immigration”? We’re all against illegal stuff, aren’t we? There are no boats landing in Scotland, but their occupants are, and Glasgow City Council – which alert readers will know is run by the SNP, not Reform – is complaining bitterly about the strain being put on public services as a result. You know, just like those racists do. It’s all very well grandstanding about how much you welcome refugees, but if you then turn around and whine that you’re only welcoming them as long as someone else has to pay for them, it rings somewhat hollow. (Though in private, they lay the blame closer to home.) Poll after poll for many years has found that however much we wang on about “Jock Tamson’s bairns” and Kenmure Street, the Scottish public’s view on immigration is barely any different to that in England. The reasons that Scots tend to vote for different parties have nothing to do with a greater fondness for immigration. “Restore Scottish education standards”? Not much controversy there. “Solve Scotland’s housing crisis by building more homes and prioritise locals for social housing”? Again, such a policy is hardly a foul outrage against common decency. We strongly suspect both of those aims would be supported by a vast majority of Scottish voters right across the political spectrum in any poll. “Protect women and girls safe places, end woke policies in our schools and oppose self-ID”? Once again, these are utterly mainstream positions overwhelmingly backed by the electorate but ignored, decried or sneered at by the other parties. It’s Reform who are speaking for the vast bulk of ordinary Scottish voters here, and the SNP, Labour, Lib Dems and Greens who are with the extremist fringe. NONE of the pledges on Reform’s leaflet, then, are even mildly contentious as far as the Scottish public is concerned. So how do people generally tend to respond if you try to gaslight them that a party espousing sensible policies they agree with – again, let’s leave aside the question of whether those policies would be successfully executed in reality, because it’s true for every party – is in fact a vile and reprehensible menace to the very foundations of their society? That’s a rhetorical question, of course. It’s the tactic that’s been failing spectacularly against UKIP/The Brexit Party/Reform for the best part of 20 years now. It’s the tactic that brought us the Leave vote. In the USA it’s the tactic that brought Donald Trump two election victories. And it’s the tactic that’s now bringing us this: It’s six months since John Swinney put together a laughable “summit” in Glasgow about the threat posed by Reform to Scottish democracy, and what’s been the result? How’s the great strategy working out this time? And still the mainstream parties double down on a tactic that’s an endlessly-proven failure. This week has seen a confected political and media storm about comments made by Reform MP Sarah Mochin in a TV interview, when a caller complained about white people being under-represented and demonised in TV adverts. It’s worth looking at what she actually said. POCHIN: It drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people, full of, you know, people that basically are anything but white- HOST: What’s wrong with that Sarah? What’s wrong with that? POCHIN: Well, it doesn’t reflect our society and I feel that your average white person, average white family is, I agree with you [caller], not represented anymore in there. HOST: Lots of white people on television, Sarah, are there not? There are lots of white people. There are lots of white men. There are lots of white women. POCHIN: We’re talking about adverts, and how many times do you look at a TV advert and you think there’s not a single white person on it? And actually it’s something that’s happened because, I believe, of the woke liberati that goes on inside this sort of arty-farty world, and when it comes to northern towns like Runcorn that I represent it’s just not representative of the rest of the country. It might be fine inside the M25 but it’s definitely not representative of the rest of the country. I’m actually, I’m hearing this more and more, people notice this and people will switch off. All of the people you’d expect leapt on it, focusing on the first half-sentence (which had interrupted by the host before she could finish her point) to suggest that Pochin was horrified to see non-white people on TV at all. But that wasn’t remotely what she’d said, as was perfectly clear from the rest of her comments. And rather awkwardly, what she actually HAD said was completely, unequivocally, demonstrably and comprehensively true. Just weeks ago a report (commissioned, with towering irony, by the ultra-woke Channel 4) found that non-white people were indeed vastly over-represented – by a factor of more than 12 – in TV adverts, while other, predominantly white, minorities were heavily under-represented. (C4 naturally presented this as great news, only complaining that not enough of them were also “LGBTQIA+”, who were also too often portrayed as fun, not serious.) But Pochin was dragged over the coals for stating a simple fact in some unplanned, off-the-cuff remarks responding to a caller on a phone-in show. And many of them were the same people who during the Hamilton by-election a few months ago had FURIOUSLY defended actually-racist comments from Humza Yousaf and Anas Sarwar in planned, co-ordinated speeches complaining that there were too many white people in good jobs in Scotland. Because apparently being angry that a 94%-white country has mostly white people in top roles isn’t racist, it’s a “powerful point about a lack of representative leadership”. (There is no such “lack”. Non-white people are in fact proportionately very well represented in senior positions in Scotland.) Apparently for some reason we MUST pretend there are 12 times as many non-white people in Britain as there really are, and be very very upset that there aren’t. Indeed, we can complain about white people being white as much as we want. Just last month, the countryside was too white. The England women’s football team is too white. (Presumably they’ve picked inferior players on purpose for racist reasons, which will be why they’ve, er, won the last two Women’s European Championships and reached the last Women’s World Cup final.) (And even though non-white players are in fact over-represented by 325%.) The royal family is too white. There are too many white men in Transport For London. There are so many white people in theatre it’s simply “hideous”. Question Time is too white, even though it has non-white people on 40% of its panels despite their only being 4% of the population. Even black people are too white. And you’re not allowed one white family in London. (Something that’s becoming increasingly the case in real life, as depicted in this BBC documentary from 2016, which is well worth watching. Nobody in it is racist, and the non-white people in it have done absolutely nothing wrong either. It’s just very sad.) Pochin is also entirely correct that voters get cheesed off about it. As you’ll see if you click the images, many of the incidents we’ve listed above attracted huge numbers of complaints to the broadcasters or other authorities involved, which were invariably dismissed, which then (quite rightly) fuels the complainers’ sense of injustice and resentment. And over and over again we learn the result of monstering normal decent people as “far-right” bigots for stating simple truths and holding entirely reasonable opinions – you push them further and further away until they DO vote for right-wing parties, out of sheer frustration and anger, because those parties are the only people who don’t seem to actively despise them. And that, readers, is how you make racists. (Equally, for pointing out this endlessly-evidenced cold hard fact, we ourselves will without a shadow of a doubt be called far-right racist bigots, etc etc. As ever, the people warning about the bad thing happening somehow get blamed for it when their warnings are proven correct.) Of course, John Swinney was in reality just using Reform as a shoddy scare tactic to demonstrate why Scotland needs independence, despite the fairly obvious fact that independence would almost certainly make Reform stronger in Scotland, not weaker. (Because firstly with independence achieved the SNP would no longer be holding the bulk of the indy vote hostage and would have to – yikes! – campaign on their record in government, and secondly if an indy Scotland was trying to rejoin the EU that would be a huge boost to Reform, since even a third of SNP voters voted Leave. They’re still barely polling above 20%, but almost twice that many Scots rejected the EU in 2016 and would likely flock to Reform if rejoining was a possibility. On 38% they’d suddenly be in real contention to win Holyrood elections, not just come 2nd.) But that doesn’t make his comments any less idiotic or counter-productive. There are still six months until the election, and since the other mainstream parties are equally terrified of Reform and are using exactly the same cretinous tactics, the chances are that by May they – and we, and everyone else who’d really rather not have Nigel Farage in charge of anything – will actually have something to be scared about. Alternatively, of course, everyone can try screaming “FASCIST!” and “NAZI!” a bit louder at people whose views are quite manifestly neither fascistic or Nazi, but merely reflective of how a measurably growing number of your friends and neighbours and families are feeling, and see if it suddenly starts working.
