Disruptors and appeasers

I have remarked numerous times that the 'soaring' support for Reform UK indicated by recent polling is almost entirely explained by the fact the Nigel Farage's party is perceived as a disruptor. As, indeed, is the man himself. A disruptor promises to break a status quo generally regarded as unsatisfactory. Which has been the situation in Scotland for many years and now in England as well, albeit for reasons which differ insignificant respects. It doesn't really matter whether they have credible proposals for breaking the status quo or for remaking stable conditions afterwards. Perception is everything. Just the promise to break the existing regime is enough to attract voters who are at the stage of reckoning anything would be better than this.

From a dispassionate perspective, British Labour's campaign for the 2024 UK election bordered on brilliant. It was completely dishonest, of course. But it was effective. It got them elected. From a dispassionate perspective, this is all that matters. It was successful because the strategy was to use the appeal of a disruptor tempered with an impression of responsibility. They were the party that was going to break the status quo of badly managed decline established by successive Conservative UK governments. At the same time, they were portrayed as the party which had ideas about how to fix what was broken. As Sir Keir Starmer's British Labour Party amply demonstrated, it's a winning formula.

The disruptor part of this formula is working for Reform UK even though they don't have much in the way of credible proposals for fixing things and what they are prosing would strike many (most?) of those switching to Farage's party as breaking things even more than the Tories did and British Labour is now doing. Even though people would reject much if not all of what Reform UK proposes, the fact that they are a disruptor is enough to attract voters.

The attractiveness of the perceived disruptor is proportional to the unsatisfactoriness of the existing regime. Where that regime is held in particular disfavour, the easier it is for the perceived disruptor to attract voters and the less the disruptor needs credible proposals. The Starmer regime has taken the unsatisfactory status quo established by the Tories and made it utterly repulsive. They have created near-ideal conditions for a disruptor, and Reform UK is taking full advantage.

Appeasers try to sell themselves as the party that will bring about dramatic change without breaking anything. They may talk the talk of the disruptor from time to time - especially election time. But they walk the walk of concession and compromise and consensus at any cost. I just described the SNP and Alba Party. I have no doubt both parties would indignantly reject this description. I am happy to defend it. If ever there was someone who looked less like a disruptor than John Swinney, that person would be politically invisible.

Into this mix we must now add a new disruptor - the nascent Corbyn-Sultana party. We don't yet know enough - or, indeed anything! - about this new disruptor’s post-disruption proposals. But this may not matter too much. The mere fact of it being perceived as a disruptor on the political left will probably be enough to have it 'soaring' up the polls in the same way Reform UK has. The novelty factor alone draws media attention and thereby voter interest.

There are a lot of disaffected voters out there across the whole political spectrum. It is not impossible that the Corbyn-Sultana party might attract voters from across this constituency of the disaffected. A new disruptor could garner support from both right anf left simply by virtue of its promise as a disruptor. If the imminent arrival of the Corbyn-Sultana party isn't giving other party leaderships the fear then they must be deplorably unaware of what is happening. This isn't just a pebble tossed in the pond. This is a bloody great boulder.

If we know little of the Corbyn-Sultana party - it doesn't even have a name yet - we know even less about what it means for Scotland. We know there is an ongoing attempt by the left in Scotland to jump on the Corbyn-Sultana party bandwagon. But what they are seeking to created has been referred to as both a branch of the English party and as a sister party. Which suggests an autonomous party such as 'Scottish' Labour pretends to be. Whatever it turns out to be, it promises to be a threat to all the existing parties in Scotland - with the SNP and Reform UK losing most. British Labour in Scotland (BLiS) has probably been taken down to its base support by Anas Sarwar - with a deal of help from his boss, Sir Keir Starmer. That base is vulnerable to a new party on the left. BLiS could conceivably be wiped out completely by the Corbyn-Sultana party, whatever form it takes in Scotland.

BLiS has ceased to be any kind of threat to the SNP's dominance. Polling suggests a limited decline for the SNP in 2026, going from nearly three times as many seats as second-placed BLiS to just over twice as many. What is interesting is the potential impact of the Corbyn-Sultana party on both BLiS and the SNP. The thing about powerful disruptors is that they tend to defy voter inertia, which is normally a force that favours the status quo. Without the Corbyn-Sultana party, we would expect voter inertia to play a big part in saving the SNP from the kind of fall from a cliff that many think they deserve. Indeed. this is precisely what the polls indicate, with the party looking like losing 'only' ten seats.

Election Polling

It takes a long time for the dumb beast of the electorate to get to where political activists and anoraks are at any given time. Those polling figures could be taken as suggesting that many voters are only now catching up with the backlash against the Tories.

A lot will depend on what the Corbyn-Sultana party tells us is their position on the constitutional issue. If they give any kind of indication that they are not opposed to a new referendum, that will be all it takes to lure a swathe of pro-independence voters. They are in the main SNP voters. So, the SNP stands to be the biggest loser to th new disruptor. Personally, I would not trust anything this new party said suggesting a position even vaguely sympathetic to Scotland's cause. But people generally are not as cynical as myself. Nor are they given to scrutinising politicians and parties as much as I do. The evidence of this is the number of people who continue to believe in the SNP as 'the party of independence' added to the number who imagine Alba Party is some kind of alternative as well as the number who leap on any new nominally pro-independence party he instant it appears. All of this suggests a very gullible electorae. Or possibly just a more desperate electorate.

A desperate electorate is low-hanging fruit for the disruptor. Knowing this, we can speculate on a possible scenario for the outcome of the 2026 election. Let's suppose the Corbyn-Sultana party in Scotland - having made the right noises about independence - get a level of support comparable with that achieved by Reform UK. That is enough to take 16 seats. (Bear in mind we are playing a game of 'just suppose' here.)

A lot depends on what proportion of that support comes from the other parties. If they took all 16 seats from the Scottish Greens, for example, this would wipe them out. It will disappoint a great many people, but that is not going to happen. I can say that with a very high degree of confidence.

What is likely is that the Corbyn-Sultana party will take votes (in our 'calculation' seats) from all the other parties. What happens if they take 6 from the SNP, 5 from BLiS, 4 from Reform UK and 1 from the Greens. Compared to the average of polls, that puts the SNP on 48, BLiS on 21, Corbyn-Sultana on 16, Greens on 15, and Reform UK on 12. With the Conservatives and LibDems 'unscathed' on 10 and 8 respectively.

The SNP is now 17 seats short of a majority. A minority government is problematic, to say the least. The Greens can no longer make up the difference with some sort of coalition-like arrangement. BLiS has no room to manoeuvre because Starmer dictates all their policies and positions. They are not going to help the SNP. But look at the traditional British parties plus Reform UK - the Unionist parties! They are now on a combined total of 51 seats - 3 more than the SNP. Assuming the Greens align with the SNP - which is not necessarily a safe assumption - that gives a combined total of 63 seats. Which means the Corbyn-Sultana party has come from nowhere to be the kingmaker.

This exercise will cause a spate of exploding heads among the nation's psephologist community. I don't care. It's the very definition of a rough calculation. But it does show how the Corbyn-Sultana party can quite easily become a significant player in the 2026 election. Given the criticality of the election for Scotland's cause, a lot hangs on which way the new party goes on the constitutional issue. Or to be more precise, on how effective it is in convincing pro-independence voters that it’s safe to vote for them.

My own feeling is that I will take any assurances offered by the Corbyn-Sultana party in Scotland with a good handful of salt. From where I am sitting - based, I admit, on practically no firm information - this will be just another British party intruding into Scotland's politics. I am not inclined to trust any of their superficially sympathetic noises. But I am realistic enough to know that faced with a choice between appeaser and disruptor, people will all but certainly go for the latter. I know also that both Alba Party and the SNP have had the chance to be the disruptor by taking a genuinely radical line on the constitutional issue. My fear and expectation is that this will be yet another opportunity missed.