Scotland Undone
Scotland is no exception to the forces radically reshaping British politics
As the 7 May elections approach, there is talk of upheaval – at least in England and Wales, where local and devolved party-politics looks set for a shake-up. That contrasts markedly with the seeming stability in Scotland, where the Scottish National Party is widely expected to secure a fifth consecutive term at Holyrood.
But look closer and the picture is less settled. The same forces reshaping politics in England and Wales – the decay of incumbent parties and the rise of anti-establishment sentiment – are present north of the border.
Our podcast guest Dean Thomson’s new book Scotland Undone: Nationalism, Dogma, and Decline in the Devolution Era casts light on these changes. His argument is blunt: there is a yawning gap between SNP rhetoric and reality. Scotland is sold by some as a story of renewal, bringing power closer to the people. But in practice it resembles a cautionary tale – less an exception to Westminster decay and more a laboratory for the institutional sclerosis and state dysfunction now spreading south. In many ways, the ‘Scottish Question’ - as I have put it in our Letter on Liberty - is both a long way from being settled and an encapsulation of the many issues facing the UK more broadly.
Labour’s woes
Labour has long been marginalised in Holyrood, out of office since 2007 and, by 2021, reduced to winning less than one in seven voter. Yet just two years ago, when Labour regained power in Westminster, hopes were high that Labour could also recapture Holyrood.
Certainly, Labour’s plight in Scotland is likely to be less eye-catching than elsewhere. In England, voters are set to eject 2,000 councillors amid near-total collapse of the Red Wall and even some of its urban heartlands. In Wales, one survey suggests that, after a century dominating the political map, Labour will become a small island in a sea of green and blue. Yet Labour’s Westminster catastrophe – a string of policy disasters and mounting public anger – seems to be feeding their Holyrood angst. Scots Labour leader Anas Sarwar even called for Keir Starmer’s head in an attempt to staunch a haemorrhaging Labour vote.
The beneficiaries of Labour’s woes – at least in the short-term – are the SNP, which continues to benefit from the exhaustion of traditional parties. But another term in office should not be interpreted as renewed strength. Indeed, while the SNP may win broadly similar seat numbers to 2021, they are being abandoned by supporters, with up to a third of voters expected to drift away.
That is hardly surprising. After years in office, the SNP presides over an anaemic economy, a collapse in public services such as health, education and policing, and infrastructure failures from ferries to roads. Controversial – and unpopular – policies on hate crime and gender have generated hostility; independence seems to be off the agenda; and simple appeals to anti-Westminster grievance no longer seems to suffice. Meanwhile, those committed to ‘progressive’ causes head to the Greens and their increasingly outlandish proposals, from prison abolition to colonial reparations.
Are Reform UK rising in Scotland?
Yet it’s the rise of Reform UK that does most to undermine the idea that Scotland is exceptional in the Union. Instead, it is clear that Scotland reflects the wider political divides in the UK and Europe. Despite having no presence in Scotland just five years ago, Reform are attracting levels of support that mean it may even form the main opposition in Holyrood.
To no-one’s surprise, detractors allege that Reform are playing the race card. But critics fail to recognise the growing tensions in Scotland over the UK’s porous borders. Glasgow is now Britain’s asylum seeker capital and asylum hotels also affect life in smaller centres like Falkirk and Perth. But this is far from the whole story.
Reform want to reduce Scotland’s eye-wateringly high taxes, tear apart the ‘quangocracy’, create opportunities for business, push back against Net Zero, and back Scotland’s oil and gas industry (the latter policy eventually helping shame the SNP into expressing mild support for continued drilling of oil).
Yet, just as Scotland mirrors political divides elsewhere in Britain, many political and cultural changes incubated over 25-plus years of devolution are now bleeding into the wider UK.
Deep-rooted failures in Scottish government
At the heart of Scotland’s malaise is a chronic failure of governance which actively degrades the economic and institutional foundations required for success. The so-called ‘wellbeing economy’ prioritises happiness metrics and environmental targets over growth. Predictably, this invites costly misadventures. Self-inflicted catastrophes like the Deposit Return Scheme have collapsed – but not before businesses had sunk £300 million into compliance. Likewise, the rush to decommission oil and gas in favour of wind – now echoed at UK level – risks long-term economic damage for the sake of virtue signalling.
The deeper problem is institutional. Devolution has weakened democratic accountability while empowering a managerial class more attuned to ideology than any outcomes rooted in public aspirations. Scotland has, in effect, pioneered the rise of the ‘lanyard class’ – credentialled professionals embedded within public bodies and quasi-state institutions, largely insulated from meaningful scrutiny.
These networks were not accidental. The devolved architecture set up by New Labour dispersed power into arms-length bodies, reducing accountability while giving activists free rein. The result is a politics that is detached from public priorities. High-profile controversies – such as health boards expending vast sums defending ideological causes such men’s access to women’s changing rooms, all while thousands join NHS waiting lists – illustrate the problem. We should all worry that Labour plans to roll out further devolution right across the rest of the UK.
As Thomson notes, political life once rested on ‘collateral organisations’ – local associations, trade unions, churches – which anchored power and enforced a degree of accountability. As that that ecosystem withered, it has been replaced by a pseudo civil society of state-funded NGOs and charities, while real decision-making drifts upwards to remote, unaccountable officials. The result is that Scottish politics has become increasingly detached from public priorities – and even from common sense – leaving the wider public bewildered.
Look across the UK and a similar pattern is hard to miss. Failures of the state to protect citizens or reflect their concerns – from the rape gangs to the failures revealed in the Nottingham or Southport inquiries – point to the same institutional drift. The dynamics first embedded in devolution-era Scotland now look less like an anomaly and more like the template quietly exported across Britain.
If the outcome of the 7 May elections is that Scottish voters have taken the opportunity to strike an anti-establishment blow against the current political class, then we should all raise a glass.
If you enjoyed this, or the video with Dean, please check out his work:
You can find him on Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/deanmthomson
And you should read his book: Scotland Undone: Nationalism, Dogma, and Decline in the Devolution Era
You can read and purchase Alastair Donald’s Letter on Liberty ‘The Scottish Question’ on our website here:
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