Challenging the SNP’s failure requires bringing Scotland back to hard realities

IT HAS BEEN quite the summer for me, but I am back and ready to do battle over Scotland’s future.

With the shortening days and autumnal colours rippling through the Scottish woodlands, silly season draws to a close and Reform UK is in a fine position to stand up for Scotland from day one of the new parliamentary term.

Sixteen of my colleagues join me on Holyrood benches, refreshed and motivated by summers spent discovering all corners of Scotland.

In the North, Reform Business Manager and Highlands MSP Max Bannerman, embarked on a sterling effort to host 45 constituent surgeries in just two weeks, taking on local issues and setting a high bar for other MSPs to aspire to.

A huge well done to Dr Bannerman.

In Glasgow, Thomas Kerr has highlighted the sharp rise in crime and antisocial behaviour in Scotland’s largest city – a problem corroborated weeks later by BBC Disclosure.

His work in highlighting why our cities need Reform continues to chip away at the defensive rhetoric wrapped in the old nationalist ploy of Scottish exceptionalism.

To the south, the trusted trio of Senga Beresford, David Kirkwood and Jamie Langan are ensuring Reform UK will not overlook the needs and concerns of Borders residents and businesses as Conservative and nationalist politicians have so often done.

But it is in the East of the country – at Holyrood, now entering the seventh term of the Scottish Parliament since devolution – where all of us will come together to hold this unimaginative SNP government to account.

This term welcomes the largest intake of new MSPs since 1999.

Seventeen of those new MSPs are your Reform representatives, but do not think that makes us wet behind the ears.

For the first time in the parliament’s history, a party has been built on the idea of electing real people with real-world experience, determined to deliver real solutions to improve life in Scotland.

Over the next five years, we will challenge the SNP’s approach to governance, which has turned prosperity and success into negative connotations, and actively encourage the nation to embrace hope, opportunity and civic pride.

I start off this new term with three realities Reform UK will push the rest of the Scottish Parliament to accept.

With Ivan McKee waiting in the wings to swing the axe on public services, the  government must stop wasting time and money on party-focussed ideological obsessions:  Net Zero, anti-nuclear positions, transgender culture wars and geopolitical virtue-signalling have cost us too much money and held Scotland back with ceaseless talk of yet another  “neverendum”.

Second, we need to return Scots to the front of the line. Let’s encourage our adults back into work when they have lost faith in themselves by repositioning Welfare Scotland to give a hand-up instead of a hand-out. Social housing should be distributed fairly to hard-working locals, and homeless Scots should have every expectation of being contacted about social housing before newly arrived immigrants.

the greatest catalyst for success, now and in future, will be the creation of jobs

Finally, the government must concede that the six-band income tax model has not worked. Not only does it penalise Scots for working tirelessly to make a better life for themselves, it also reduces productivity, while the higher tax bands have not generated revenues sufficient to justify the thousands of pounds taken from salaries.

Yet the greatest catalyst for success, now and in future, will be the creation of jobs, the regeneration of brownfield sites around Scotland’s towns so they serve their local communities, and the restoration of civic pride across Scotland.

Closer working relations between local government and both the UK and Scottish governments, focussed on boosting communities with jobs and prospects will help bring down unemployment rates and, ultimately, the cost of living.

The path to growth and prosperity is rarely easy, but it is better to build a fair system than one which penalises determination, rewards sloth and drops us deeper into a spiral of deficit.

Whether they voted for Reform or not, the eyes of the public will be on Reform UK to see how well we navigate the next five years.