And so it is over.
I hesitated to say anything much about the election, not least because I was out of the Country for much of it, visiting my mother-in-law in Hungary, involving a cleared diary, flights and car hire booked and Andi. my wife booking time off work, long before Sunak's surprise announcement. To have suggested we wouldn't go would have led, shall we say, to marital disharmony, but to be honest it never occurred to me, for I have kind of lost interest and enthusiasm for front line politics. For the first election since 1970, I delivered not a single leaflet, let alone knocked on a single door.
We were however back on 2nd July, in time to vote and, in the early hours of July 5th, celebrate my friend and comrade, Katrina Murray, becoming our new MP as part of Labour's Scottish landslide.
In the internet age, being abroad hadn't prevented following the election and, while you will have to take my word for it, my gut feeling on the eve of poll was that the Tories would not do quite as badly, and the SNP a bit worse than the polls predicted. As indeed came to pass.
But there will be many more people steeped in the campaign able to digest it more readily than me.
Rather I am going to point out something largely ignored by the Scottish media but which seems to me to be of significance. Starting with the result in my own seat. Katrina obviously won and my departing MP, Stuart McDonald, came a relatively close second. But the Party in third place was not the Tories, or the Libs or even the Greens. It was Reform UK, in the presence of a man called Billy Ross, of whom I know nothing except his name. But he wasn't just third, he was a comfortable third, his 3000+ votes placing him well ahead of the just less than 2000 secured by the Tories and securing just less than twice the Green vote and well over twice that of the Lib-Dems.
And it wasn't just here this happened. Reform UK were third in every seat in North Lanarkshire. And across Scotland they were comfortably ahead of the Greens in fifth place and just two and a half percentage points behind the Libs in fourth. Indeed if you discount the the tactical vote the Libs clearly enjoyed from my Party and the Tories in the six seats they secured, and to be honest only truly contested, it is possible Reform UK would have ended up the fourth Party in terms of the popular vote in Scotland. And while they came nowhere close to winning anything, on their route, they clearly cost the Tories two or three.
And they did this breaking all the conventional assumptions of Scottish Politics. Firstly they made no pretention to being a "Scottish" Party. They weren't "Scottish Reform UK" or even "Reform UK (Scotland)". They were just Reform UK. Then, they didn't even have a Scottish leader. At all, not even nominally. And they took part not at all in the exclusively Scottish election debates. Nor made any fuss about that as did Alba, despite the latter ending up with a very small fraction indeed of the Reform UK vote. To be fair, without a Scottish leader, it is difficult to see who would have participated on their behalf. Although perhaps Billy Ross could have stepped up to the mark. Whoever he is.
And, to the best of my recollection, they did not deliver a single leaflet to my door. Even the freepost.
My point however is this. Reform UK are now a feature of Scottish politics and yet everybody wants to ignore that because it does not fit with the accepted narrative that in some way Scotland is more progressive than the rest of the UK, immune to the populist right. Yet the electoral results simply don't fit that.
But never mind that. Let's look ahead to the May 2026 election, assuming the Scottish Parliament term runs that long. Reform UK are likely to be represented thereafter, probably with more seats than the Greens. Given the result on Thursday, it is difficult to see how they could be excluded from the leaders' debates and while that might expose their callow populism, it might instead provide them with an opportunity to show themselves as a real player in Scotland, despite the best efforts of the press to put their fingers in their ears.
And while they are clearly not going to win in 2026, their presence in the Parliament with more representatives than The Scottish Green Party would certainly change the narrative about Scottish public opinion. I'd even suggest possibly for the better.
They do however need a leader. Perhaps this could be the opportunity for Billy Ross to seize his moment.
