Twelve years ago, Nigel Farage was chased from a pub on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile by a crowd of flag-waving Scottish nationalists. “You’re a racist, go home to England,” they roared outside the Canons’ Gait. It was a warning, not just to him but to the populism he represented: Scotland would have none of it.
A decade later and he’s back. Not in the capital, but in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, the site of today’s by-election, and a place that in many ways no longer resembles the Scotland that jeered him in 2013. Here, in a ferociously working-class patch of South Lanarkshire, Reform UK is polling competitively. In a place where elections have long been two-horse races between the SNP and Labour, public opinion has angrily shifted. Frustrated by stagnating living standards, and ignored by Westminster and Holyrood alike, these down-at-heel suburbs are hunting for change. And a third force has spied an opportunity. That Farage even has a chance here suggests less about what his party is offering, and more about what has collapsed.
While the SNP is defending the constituency with a majority of around 4,500 votes after the death of MSP Christina McKelvie, you might have tipped Labour to comfortably take the seat from a tired, scandal-struck party. But Labour seems to have vanished from the fight, its candidate, Davy Russell, dubbed “the invisible man” for refusing to debate.
The Party’s absence seems to signal something deeper than just a lack of care, though: more emblematic of the party’s abandonment of the communities that once built it. This was where miners, steelworkers and trade unionists lived and voted. But during Labour’s long drift to the centre from Blair to Starmer, voters watched the Party deliver only managed decline. And that legacy lingers. While the SNP offered a national identity to believe in, Labour is offering little at all.
There is scant enthusiasm for the party outside Labour HQ this week — only crude signs and a growing anger. “Migrants adored pensioners ignored”, reads one, flapping desolately in the wind as trucks whizzed by. “Free Lucy Connolly”, proclaimes another. These are seen daily in Parliament Square and at anti-immigration protests across England. But here, just 10 miles from Glasgow, they reveal a new front in Scottish politics. As Davy avoids hustings and botches media appearances, the SNP and Reform feel like the only real choices.
“The Labour Party have completely sold us out — they absolutely hate the indigenous people of Hamilton,” one of the men securing the banners to the railings tells me, explaining he belonged to the far-Right group Patriotic Alternative Scotland, who have also spied an opportunity here. There is little other opportunity. While Labour clearly spent money refurbishing its campaign office, the rest of Hamilton town centre paints a dreary picture. Part of the main street has been dug up by construction workers, with heaps of concrete left blocking the pavement. Litter languishes in the ditches, exposed pipes poke out. Many of the baronial crow-stepped gables that frame the main drag have been left to rot. It all shouts of neglect.
None of this surprises me: I grew up 20 minutes away. But what I hear next does. The man from Patriotic Alternative spoke of a “white genocide” coming to Scotland — the sort of Trumpian rhetoric rarely heard in these parts. Scotland, after all, has far lower levels of immigration than England. But politics here is becoming increasingly racialised. The culture wars have left no place untouched. Another of the banners — “Scotland too white Anas?” — refers to Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar who, in an eerily similar speech to former first minister Humza Yousaf, bemoaned the “whiteness” of the Scottish establishment. It all points to an unexpected division, ready to be harnessed by Farage, who is already in trouble for a Facebook ad which claimed Sarwar was prioritising Scotland’s Pakistani community.
That division echoes through the normally quiet streets of Hamilton, as an anti-Farage protest makes itself heard. “Nigel Farage! We see you! You’re a racist through and through!” The socialist banners and keffiyehs are on show. I speak to a man called Sean Clerkin, a trade unionist. He had been screaming that Farage was a “crypto-fascist” and should “fuck off back to London”. Even so, Clerkin understands why some here might go for Reform. “The mainstream parties are neoliberal, only for the rich and the powerful,” he says. “People feel completely betrayed. So they’ll turn to Reform because it offers them rage, anger, blame.” Arguments break out, tensions rise, and the police close in. Each side screams that the other is full of liars. An older woman called Margaret tells me she’d never seen anything like this in her life for a by-election. “The [2014] referendum was horrible enough,” she says. “We cannae go back there.”
In the end, the anti-Farage protest succeeds. The Reform UK leader changes his plans, avoids volatile Hamilton, and instead goes for a walk around Larkhall with his candidate Ross Lambie. A councillor, architect and farmer, Lambie has proven himself to be a competent communicator on the streets and online, something that’s helped his party scoop up working-class support on what was formerly known as Red Clydeside.
I eventually track them down at a brick factory on the outskirts of the constituency. Three black Mercedes and bearded men with Barbour jackets mill about outside. Farage emerges, grinning, lapping up the approval of the workers gathered around him. His expression shifts to a studied concern, though, when I ask if he believes that Scottish politics has moved on from the anti-Englishness of 2013. “It’s really unpleasant,” he says, almost enjoying an assumed victimhood. “I think it’s a small part of the nationalist movement, to be honest, but it is there, undeniably. What was amazing about being assaulted, was that Alex Salmond refused to apologise. If any of my people behaved like that I’d be ashamed. And yet they’re the ones that call me the nasty names.” It’s classic Farage, a punchy mix of grievance and performative fairness, suggesting he is the one on the side of the angels. And did he really think Anas Sarwar was a racist who would prioritise his own ethnic community? “I just think many in the Scottish political class are obsessed by race and gender,” he says, sidestepping intimations of race-baiting. “I think we should just treat everybody the same.” He is ready to talk unity. But only on his terms.
If the political disenchantment in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse shadows the sort of thing we’re seeing south of the border, though, that’s because there is a greater unifier than identity politics: poverty. Once astonishingly wealthy — first off slaves and sugar, then from building 20% of the world’s shipping tonnage — the Dear Green Place, as Glasgow is known, has had a torrid few decades. Deindustrialising at speed, it has struggled to transition to a service economy. The persistent poverty rate is the same as it was in 2010, while half of the top 20 areas in the UK with the highest proportion of working-age people claiming out-of-work sickness benefits are in or around the city. That’s partly the SNP’s fault, with its quixotic focus on trans rights and other culture war manias over basic services. But the numbers equally speak to a Labour Party, on both sides of the border, bereft of radical economic ideas.
In a town that’s lost its purpose, it is perhaps not surprising that Glasgow would become the epicentre of Scottish independence. Like Brexit for many voters in the red wall, the 2014 vote was seen as a chance for a fresh start and a clean break from post-industrial decline. Other than Dundee (post-jute, post-jam, post-journalism), Glasgow and the surrounding areas recorded the highest percentages of “yes” votes, though “no” still won in most councils. Yet given Britain actually left the European Union and Scotland remained part of the UK, both the legacies of Brexit and Scottish independence are defined by unfulfilled promises made by their parliamentary masters. In Hamilton and Larkhall, voters feel let down by both SNP and Labour — and into the gap slips Farage, tapping into the disillusionment with political elites of every stripe.
For some, these failures have prompted apathy. Many I spoke to say they were never voting again. “They’re [politicians] aw just in it tae line their pockets,” says Jim, a 35-year-old plumber, with a nonchalant grin after a draw of a cigarette. A gale picks up and the rain begins beating down. “That Farage might be saying different ‘hings, but does he really care aboot people like me?”
Yet even though there is despondency, there is no escaping the fierce political tradition of the Glasgow suburbs. Here, nationalism brushes up against some of the staunchest unionism in the country. In Hamilton, but especially in nearby Larkhall, sectarianism remains a way of life. Union Jacks flutter and many Orange walks start from here in the summer. The traditionally Protestant football team, Rangers, is sacrosanct, and anything green is associated with “Old Firm” rivals Celtic. The Subway sandwich shop is painted black and even green traffic lights have been vandalised.
But now, political tribalism is displacing these former religious loyalties. A Rangers man once might have quipped that there would be “sair hearts in the Vatican” after a win — but today the divide cuts through politics: Palestine flags in Celtic Park; anti-woke banners at Ibrox. “It’s not about religion anymore,” explains David, a local marketing director. “Back then it was more fights and that. It’s political now. I’m Hamilton Accies [the local football team] so I’m no caring. But it’s Palestine and Kneecap and everything else now.” It has become custom and feeling.
“Political tribalism is displacing these former religious loyalties.”
In the past, the most spectacular site of sectarian tensions was the Old Firm derby — when, to quote Tom Gallagher’s The Uneasy Peace, “the crust of civilisation” almost seemed to vanish. These days, though, the antagonism in places like Hamilton has moved from the pitch to politics. Where Celtic fans revel in their progressive credentials, chanting for Palestine and attacking the legacy of the British Empire, their Rangers rivals hold up banners at games reading: “Keep woke foreign ideologies out. Defend Europe”.
Still, caricatures fall short. As the man who hung up the Lucy Connolly banner tells me: “folk fae both teams support us”. I ask him if you could still infer someone’s politics from their footballing allegiance. “That would be insulting to the people of Glasgow,” he scoffs. Perhaps that explains why Reform is cutting a swathe through both sides of the traditional sectarian divide, tapping into frustrations on both sides. Strongly pro-union, it attracts voters who might be disillusioned with Scottish nationalism and feel betrayed by the SNP.
But, equally, Reform promotes a vivid anti-establishment, anti-woke tone alongside its pro-British, anti-immigration discourse. In other words, then, the tide Farage is riding here is arguably, quite simply, populist — against SNP’s technocracy, Labour’s silent centrism, and distant Westminster elites. Reform isn’t tied to an ideology, it is harnessing discontent. And while Glasgow’s Catholic-Protestant rivalry might have once served as a “tension-releasing valve,” as Gallagher once observed — today, economic hardship unites far more than identity divides.
And Reform knows exactly what it is doing: seeking to weaponise that economic frustration and cultural grievance. It wants to carve out a place — possibly an uneasy one — beneath both the Saltire and Union Jack. Certainly, Farage knew his economic message, delivered in Aberdeen this week, that Reform would be committed to reversing deindustrialisation, easing Net Zero and reducing energy prices, would go down well in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, Scotland’s former coal and steel capital. Could he deliver on those promises? Right now, that isn’t the point.
As voters go to the polls, it looks like it’s going to be tight. For many Scots of a certain age, Farage and Tice will always be “sons of Thatcher”, as Clerkin put it to me. They won’t stomach Reform. But a younger generation doesn’t remember Thatcher. All they know is economic stagnation, rent they can’t afford, and a political class that has consistently failed to improve the lives of working people. For them, Farage is a provocation. A gamble. And a warning to Labour. As one young chef told me in Larkhall: “I’m scunnered wae the whole thing,” he said, reflecting a discontent we are seeing north and south of the border. “What have I got to lose?”
