The leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, has said he will join the campaign trail at the next Holyrood election as his party aims to make gains at the Scottish Parliament in 2026.
The Clacton MP insisted he would be personally campaigning in Scotland and suggested his party could secure a handful of seats.
Farage did not head north of the border during the election campaign as his deputy Richard Tice suggested it was too “dangerous” for him to do so having received an unwelcome response before.
In 2013, he visited Edinburgh as the leader of UKIP but was pursued by protestors near the Scottish Parliament and police were called to escort him away.
Opinion polls are already putting Reform UK almost neck-and-neck with the Tories in Scotland
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However, Reform UK still managed to secure seven per cent of the vote share at the general election in July with little campaigning in the country.
In an interview with STV News, Farage said: “What was remarkable is that we fielded a full slate of candidates in Scotland. I was stunned. How did that happen, when we didn’t have much structure at all?
“We are now holding meetings in Scotland. The numbers coming are quite impressive.”
Reform UK is set to hold its Scottish conference on November 2 with deputy leader Richard Tice scheduled to attend the event.
Farage continued: “I can assure you, Scotland will be seeing me, of that there is no question at all.
“And I think really from little acorns we made a very good start.”
The Reform leader went on to explain how the party may attract support from Scottish voters.
He said: “The economic implications of the collapse of the North Sea industry, not just for Aberdeen, but for large parts of Scotland are huge.
“It doesn’t matter how many wind farms you build, we’re going to need this stuff.
“So why not produce our own, rather than import it from other parts of the world – and often run by unpleasant dictatorial regimes. And I think we’re the only pragmatists, we’re saying ‘look, we will be using oil and gas in 2050’.
“That I think is the basis upon which we’re beginning to build support in Scotland.”
He added that “no one knows what the Scottish Conservatives are or what they stand for.”
The Scottish Conservatives are searching to replace Douglas Ross as their leader
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Opinion polls are already putting Reform UK almost neck-and-neck with the Tories in Scotland.
Pollster Mark Diffley said that Reform had been the “surprise package” of the general election and is on course for a historic breakthrough.
No party to the right of the Conservatives has ever won a seat in the Scottish Parliament at an election and Reform’s anti-immigration stance is rarely reflected in debates in Holyrood.
Diffley said: “The two or three polls that have been done since the election actually puts support for Reform higher than it was in the general election, up at around eight per cent or nine per cent. And that is more than enough to get a handful of seats at the next Holyrood election.
“The importance of that is that it gives the parliament a very different flavour. We haven’t had representation from the hard right of politics here previously, and of course it will come largely at the expense of the Conservatives.”
A recent poll by Survation found that the Tories would win just 11 per cent of votes on the proportional regional list while Reform would win eight per cent.
Meanwhile, in constituency votes, the Conservative share would halve to 11 per cent while Reform would jump to nine per cent.
Researchers at Survation spoke to 1,021 eligible voters in Scotland between August 27 and 29.
In the 2024 general election, Reform outperformed the Greens and also came third in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East.
The polls come at the same time as the Scottish Conservative leadership race to replace Douglas Ross as the party leader in Edinburgh.
