Reform’s courting of Scotland’s post-industrial communities

Dr Maike Dinger

Postdoctoral researcher on the AHRC-/DFG-funded project “Voices from the Periphery: (De-)Constructing and Contesting Public Narratives about Post-Industrial Marginalization” with Bournemouth University and Stirling University. Her research focuses on the connections between politics, media, national(ist) cultures and identities, with a view to marginalisations and intersectional exclusions.

Prof Darren G. Lilleker

Professor of Political Communication at Bournemouth University and PI of the DFG/AHRC funded Voices from the Periphery project which explores lived experiences in post-industrial communities in the UK and Germany.

Scottish Election 2026

Section 1: Parties and the campaign

  1. How SNP and Swinney stopped the rot (Eddie Barnes)
  2. The Scottish green wave breaks at last (Dr Jonathan Parker)
  3. What went wrong for Labour (Prof Kezia Dugdale)
  4. The Scottish Conservatives (Dr Alan Convery)
  5. Reform’s courting of Scotland’s post-industrial communities (Dr Maike Dinger and Prof Darren Lilleker)
  6. From chatbots to the ballotbox – how voters used AI to learn about the Scottish Parliament election (Dr Louise Luxton, Dr Timea Balogh, Elise Frelin & Prof Zoe Greene)
  7. Online advertising in the Scottish Parliament election (Kate Dimson and Prof Cristian Vaccari)
  8. Boring is not a virtue: Lessons from Scottish parties’ campaigns on TikTok (Prof Ana Ines Langer, Dr Lluis de Nadal)
  9. When parties travel, does negativity follow? Comparing campaigns on X (Dr Aybuke Atalay, Dr Ricardo Ribeiro Ferreira)
  10. Minding the distance: leaders in the election manifestos (Dr Michael Higgins, Prof Angela Smith)
  11. “It’s the Crisis, Stupid!” – Permacrisis and the 2026 Scottish Parliament election (Dr Paul Anderson, Dr Coree Brown Swan, Dr Judith Sijstermans
  12. ‘Whither Scottish national identity? The Reform UK challenge to an inclusive Scotland’ (Dr Murray Leith, Dr Duncan Sim)
  13. Environmental politics: flooded off the agenda? (Dr Kristen Nicolson)
  14. A disappearing crisis? Climate debate in the 2026 Scottish election campaign (Dr William Dinan)
  15. The Curious Case of the Co-operative Party and Lessons for Labour (Katharine McCrossan)

Reform UK, conceived and led by Nigel Farage, has successfully garnered support in former industrial English seats largely characterised by precarity, crumbling infrastructures, anti-social behaviour and the sense of being left behind. Data from the DFG/AHRC-funded Voices-project suggests residents of these communities are nostalgic for the fraternity of mass employment, the affluence of towns built around mines, steelworks and mills, and community spirit. Similar geographical areas also demand socio-political and electoral attention in Scotland in 2026, despite that it has long enjoyed a status of exceptional resilience against populist radical right parties.

While preliminary findings from the election indicate a slight preference for Reform among those in deprived communities, results are fairly consistent across constituencies and country, indicating that Scotland remains, according to Scottish Reform leader Malcom Offord, “behind the curve”. The post-industrial vote in Scotland is split among Reform, SNP, and Labour. With considerable media attention to Reform as a self-proclaimed “challenger” in the Scottish Election, and a voter base primarily of older, socially conservative men without higher education and pro-Brexit and Unionist sympathies, we ask whether Reform UK candidates actively targeted deprived communities in deindustrialised areas. In England, conscious efforts to connect with these communities are evident, for example “Rebuild Rotherham, Regenerate our Industries, Revive our potential”. According to Luntz’s rhetoricians guide Words that Work, slogans that focus on “re”-words appeal to nostalgic rust-belt areas and residents’ lived experiences.

Reform UK’s Manifesto for Scotland 2026 includes among their key election promises “Community Cohesion”, i.e., they “will prioritise local people in communities and restore law and order” . The language focuses on a specific subset of voters, namely “the ordinary, decent, hardworking people who are fed up with the way Holyrood has been run” or, using nativist rhetoric: “hard-working Scots”. This framing is made explicit under the heading “Putting Locals First”, which promises affordable housing for the “most deprived communities” and positions migrants as competitors for these, “our working class communities [who] are at breaking point.” Explicitly drawing on Roosevelts “three Rs”, Reform’s aim is given as “reform[ing] and revitalis[ing] our communities”. This entails “restor[ing] civic pride” and “restor[ing] community cohesion by putting locals first”.

SNP antagonism, common across most parties contesting this election, is complemented by pitching the ordinary and hardworking people against an exploitative and unresponsive elite, constituting a common populist trope – or, according to Yates & Mondon, the right’s practice of “replac[ing] one elite with another”. Furthermore, Reform promise in their manifesto to restore what “once made Scotland great” – a slogan that, in its national variations, has become all too familiar. The related promise to explicitly tackle deindustrialisation foregrounds Aberdeen and Grangemouth as areas of decline, contrasted with the “well paid jobs [that] are haemorrhaging overseas” and the assurance “work always pays more than welfare”.

What is striking across Reform UK’s party communication is the visibility of party-leader Farage. The Scottish Reform branch is not differentiated by name from its UK-wide counterpart (bar its X account), as is the case with the other UK-level parties. The top-down campaign letters and manifesto depict the leader of the Scottish branch, Offord, alongside Farage. The late nomination of constituency candidates may have contributed to the lack of a tailored ground campaign and personalised communication for constituency candidates – as were widely circulated by other party candidates. The same cannot be said for the lack of social media communication from Reform candidates, raising the question how Reform make their messages resonate with the “left behind” communities that arguably form one of their core voter bases.

Candidates in constituencies selected on the basis of their industrial past and high level of multiple deprivation have not been found to use directly targeted election messages – apart from their profile statements on the official Reform UK election website. One exception is Andrew Russell, candidate for Ayr, who promises to “stop managing decline in Ayr and start rebuilding” the local high street with “legitimate” businesses and the rule of “law” in an article for the Ayr Advertiser, playing into the law and order frame and assuring the restoration of local wealth and community. The only social media account targeting deprived, deindustrialised areas was that of Scotland’s Reform leader and candidate for Inverclyde, Offord, who uses his platform on X to communicate Scotland-wide campaign goals and promises. Pointedly a video posted on Reform UK Scotland’s X account on Election Day shows Offord, filmed against the backdrop of the Grangemouth industrial site, which he describes as a “symbol of industrial strength” turned into a “sad symbol of decay and decline”, leaving “us all the poorer for it”. His call to vote Reform is issued through a row of alliterations, including “Prosperity versus Penury, Work versus Welfare, Graft versus Grievance”. Few messages are as clear and targeted, with Reform’s campaign communications strongest in semi-public local meetings and social media channels. Relying on a recognisable image curated on a UK-level ,and the advantage of being a “new” alternative to the established parties, Reform seemed to benefit from being talked about rather than being visible on the ground in Scotland.