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The Steamie: A politics Podcast from The Scotsman - August 28 2025
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00:00The Steamy, a politics podcast from The Scotsman.
00:11Hello and welcome to The Steamy, The Scotsman's politics podcast. I'm Alistair Grant, the political editor of The Scotsman.
00:18Just how bad can things get for the Scottish Conservatives?
00:21After months of speculation in Holyrood, this week we saw our first direct defection from the party to Nigel Farage's Reform UK with Graeme Simpson,
00:31a central Scotland MSP since 2016, jumping ship at a special press conference held by Mr Farage at a hotel in West Slovian.
00:39Mr Simpson said it was an absolute wrench to leave the party he had first joined at the age of 15,
00:43but argued too many people had been let down and ignored by the political class and reform offered the opportunity to create something new.
00:51Now he's the third MSP to leave the Tories in recent months.
00:54We had Jamie Green defecting to the Scottish Liberal Democrats earlier this year.
00:58In more recent days, we've had Jeremy Balfour announcing his intention to sit as an independent.
01:04Both of those men raising concerns about the party's shift to the populist right in a bid to combat reform.
01:10But what does this all mean for Scottish politics?
01:13Well, to discuss all this and more, I'm joined by David Ball, the deputy political editor of The Scotsman,
01:18and by Katrina Stewart, The Scotsman's education correspondent.
01:21And Kat, I'll come to you first with a broad question, perhaps too broad.
01:26What did you make of Nigel Farage's press conference in West Slovian on Wednesday?
01:31Right, Al, I have promised not to get on my soapbox about this, and I will try and rein it in.
01:37But there's so much to say about it.
01:40I think it's astonishing and not astonishing simultaneously
01:44that he can sit in front of the gathered media and just have nothing to say.
01:50But what he does say is obfuscation and lies.
01:55So he was asked about his policy platforms for Scotland.
01:59And one of the direct questions that was put to him was his policy platform for tackling violence against women and girls in Scotland.
02:07The only response he had to that was to start going on about the number of asylum seekers in Glasgow.
02:13And again, repeat this figure that he keeps trotting out about, as he says, the fact that Afghan men are 20 times more likely to commit for sexual assault or rape than British men.
02:27That number is not true. It has been debunked.
02:30It has been debunked by Sky News.
02:32It's been debunked by various other authoritative places.
02:36And yet he just keeps repeating it.
02:38And these kind of lines and lies and misinformation are being live streamed on the Internet.
02:44Too late for anybody to do anything about them.
02:46So I think Graeme Simpson is going to regret his choice.
02:52You saw him being interviewed after the press conference.
02:56And some of the things that Farage did manage to say were put directly to him.
02:59So Farage has this madcap pie-in-the-sky scheme for how he's going to deal with migration and asylum issues, should he ever become prime minister.
03:09And one of the ways of dealing with the issue is to set up internment camps.
03:15And Graeme Simpson was asked about this.
03:17He was asked about the lines about asylum seeking refugees.
03:20And he had nothing to say.
03:21He just looked deeply, deeply uncomfortable.
03:23So I think there is going to be a lot of regret from Graeme Simpson's position.
03:27But for Nigel Farage, I think he just needs to be challenged and challenged and challenged again.
03:31Because the rhetoric that he is now using, I think, is absolutely remarkable.
03:35And David, what did you make of this defection?
03:39Because you've been speaking to folk within the Scottish Tory party over recent days and the mood seems to be absolutely dire.
03:46Oh, yeah, the mood is a depressingly bad, I think.
03:49I don't think this came as a surprise that someone has left for reform.
03:54I think we've been kind of hearing rumours about it for a while.
03:56I think the idea of it happening has just been tumbling on.
04:02And Russell Finley, who gave a speech on Monday to kind of start the new term at Hollywood off with a bang,
04:10it was completely overshadowed by the defections.
04:13And his strategy seems to just be kind of ignore it a little bit.
04:17And he said repeatedly, Russell Finley, that he can't stop people leaving.
04:23But he does seem to just be putting his fingers in his ears and just ignoring it.
04:26One MSP told me, like, he was just ignoring concerns and that people have been raised, have raised this with him repeatedly.
04:35And he is just not interested.
04:38It's very much painted as the people that are leaving are the problem and not the party.
04:41And we could see more people going to reform.
04:45We could see more people going as independents because Russell Finley is trying to kind of please everyone.
04:50And he's pleasing no one in that he's trying to kind of mimic reform to try and stop people and voters go that way.
04:57That's obviously alienating a big part of the sort of liberal wing of the Tories, which is where they saw a lot of their success under Ruth Davidson.
05:05So he's kind of in a no-win situation at the moment.
05:09And he doesn't really have a strategy or seem that interested in having a proper strategy about how he stems of leading.
05:16And the more it goes on, the more it's just going to be a disaster for him in the lead up to that election where he's already under pressure about them looking at definitely slipping from second place into third.
05:26And who knows how far down the pegging they will come without some sort of intervention.
05:30And Kat, do you think more defections are to come?
05:34Because Russell Finley is being squeezed on both sides here by reform on the one hand and by those kind of more liberal traditional Tories on the other who are unhappy at the kind of populist bent the party's been taking in recent months.
05:46And we've seen Jamie Green, we've seen Jeremy Balfour, we've seen Graham Simpson.
05:51There's no secret that other names are being whispered about and Holyrood is potentially joining reform or potentially becoming independents because they're so unhappy at the direction of the party.
05:59What do you think? Have we seen the last of this or do you think more MSPs will jump ship?
06:04I think Russell Finley has a real job of work to do now to try and stop any further defections.
06:10There has been talk for months about people leaving.
06:14The defection to reform was the worst kept secret in Scottish politics because reform has been seen very clearly for months that we had someone.
06:22I think initially that was mostly talk and there wasn't all that much to it, but they have been courting people quite aggressively.
06:30Russell Finley does have firm allies in the party who are backing him, who are taking other MSPs aside and trying to convince them that the best thing to do is to stay in the party.
06:41But I'm not really sure how effective that is going to be.
06:46It hasn't been effective.
06:48Russell Finley doesn't have a clear path for what's happening.
06:51I don't want to use any swear words on our podcast, but when I've been getting messages from people, they have not been fit for sharing.
07:00Unparliamentary language, definitely.
07:02And I think Russell himself is fed up and disaffected, but one of the problems is that there isn't a clear successor to Russell Finley.
07:13And the worse this gets, the more of a poison chalice it becomes and nobody is going to want to step in and try and clean up the mess.
07:20And then they're also looking ahead to Hollywood 2026, you know, forget about defections.
07:25They also have some serious names in the party who are stepping down.
07:29Where is that new talent coming from that's going to convince voters that they're a viable option to plump for at the next election?
07:36It's a really, really difficult picture for Russell Finley and for the Conservatives.
07:41And also just huge frustration in the party in that they have things that they want to do.
07:45They have messages that they want to send and the defections are just blurring all of that out and detracting from just a day-to-day job of work that they're trying to do.
07:55And David, you spoke to First Minister John Swinney today at an event in Glasgow.
08:00He called on Mr Simpson to quit.
08:02What did he say?
08:04Yeah, he basically accused Graham Simpson, who ironically is bringing forward a bill to kind of a recall petition bill.
08:13So he basically called it legendary hypocrisy.
08:17And it's hard to disagree with that, the fact that Graham Simpson has moved party, the man who's bringing forward a bill to kind of stop this sort of behavior happening.
08:26Not specifically what he's done, but things quite similar to it.
08:31So John Swinney has basically said, how can he carry on, basically?
08:34And it is uncomfortable when people on the parliamentary list do move parties.
08:40I mean, Jamie Green as well.
08:42I mean, it is a tricky one because they're voted, people are voting for a party when they elect them, basically.
08:48But John Swinney basically was saying, yeah, he can't see how he could, how he could remain in that job.
08:54Also, he kicked, sort of hit out at some of the racist rhetoric that Kat was mentioning earlier, saying how reform are trying to kind of contaminate the debate in Scotland.
09:06Because Scotland is having a immigration debate.
09:09It is, we have an aging population and there are going to be a requirement.
09:14We need people to come here to pick up jobs, basically.
09:16So there is a sensible and important debate to be had and it is kind of being overshadowed.
09:21And he was quite scathing at Labour and the Tories for basically being willing accessories, is how he put it, to this debate and not keeping it grounded and central to what Scotland needs.
09:33I think that's going to be one of the really interesting issues in the run up to the election, is how the other parties feel specifically with the immigration debate.
09:41Because I think Anna Sarwar is probably very uncomfortable with the tone that UK Labour is taking.
09:47I mean, there is a place for an immigration discussion, less in Scotland than in England, but it is a viable discussion.
09:53I mean, I'm writing about the university sector at the moment and it's been massively damaged by changes to immigration rules, to visa rules that are affecting the numbers of international students who are coming here to study.
10:06And we have an entire sector that is completely underpinned by being attractive to international investors.
10:13And yet we have this hostile immigration policy and hostile immigration narrative, and even young people who can come here don't want to come here because they're so put off by everything that's happening.
10:24So Keir Starmer could be putting forward those arguments.
10:26He could be framing it as, yes, let's have this discussion, but let's do it in a humane and compassionate way.
10:32And he's not. He's just echoing formerly Tory rhetoric, now reform rhetoric.
10:37And I think Anna Sarwar is going to be uncomfortable with that.
10:39I think that's going to put him in a really difficult position.
10:41At the moment, John Swinney is the only person who is being really vocal, the only political leader, really, who's coming out and saying, this rhetoric is boring.
10:51We need to reframe this debate and we need to reframe it urgently.
10:55So I think that is going to be a massive sticking issue.
10:58And I don't think it's going to go away in terms of.
11:01Yeah, well, I think we actually have a clip of David speaking to John Swinney that we can play now.
11:07So let's hear that.
11:10Unfortunately, if you're watching the video version of this, you might not get that clip.
11:14But why not listen again on the podcast afterwards?
11:16Because it's that good.
11:18But that was John Swinney, the first minister, speaking to David in Glasgow on Thursday.
11:24And Kat, there is a real issue here, isn't there?
11:27Because Graham Simpson was really unconvincing in the whole issue of why he shouldn't quit as an MSP at the press conference on Wednesday.
11:34You know, he accepted it was an uneasy situation because he's a list MSP and he's only in Holyrood because of the Tory vote.
11:42He doesn't have the sort of personal vote of his constituents in that way.
11:46So it is, you know, it's a question as to whether he actually has legitimacy when he's jumping ship to another party.
11:52So Graham Simpson has been asked repeatedly about whether he is going to jump ship to Reform UK and he has said no.
12:02The reform was banding his name around months ago.
12:05Internally, his name's been banding around in the party.
12:08He said that he had previously no intention of moving to reform.
12:12He has reflected over the summer and he feels that this is the way to build something new and do politics in a fresh way.
12:20And he referred to reform as being a centre-right party, which of course they're not.
12:25And I, again, think he's just going to butt up against reform when he comes to trying to set out what its policy objectives are.
12:32Because while he said clearly yesterday that he's not going to be solely responsible for that, he is going to have a firm hand in it.
12:39And I think his politics and reform's politics are actually going to clash against one another.
12:45So he's going to become even more unconvincing in what he's trying to sell.
12:51And I think actually having Graham Simpson as an MSP in Hollywood might be damaging to the party.
12:58Or if not damaging, just not the boon that they think it's going to be.
13:01Because at the moment, people are voting for reform as a kind of protest.
13:05There isn't anything to vote for.
13:07They're just lending their vote that way because they're unhappy about myriad other things.
13:12But I wonder now if they see policy platforms that the one reform MSP doesn't really back, trying to sell something that he's not convinced by.
13:23I wonder what that's going to do to their vote.
13:25And David, just to pick up on that, I mean, I asked Nigel Farage and Graham Simpson about this at the press conference.
13:31Because I think one of the really notable things about Graham Simpson's defection, as Kat was saying there, is that he's defecting to a party that doesn't have a specific policy platform in Scotland.
13:40We've got no idea what reform will do to tackle NHS waiting lists, improve schools, what its position is in any domestic policy.
13:48All we know is that Nigel Farage is what Nigel Farage thinks about immigration and things like net zero, the North Sea, oil and gas, these big, broad issues.
13:57And as Kat was saying, Graham Simpson said that he'll be involved in putting together that policy platform.
14:03But at the moment, reform is just a protest vote.
14:06It's a party that can be whatever you want it to be if you're sick of the mainstream.
14:11Yeah, people voting for reform are basically voting for a point of view that Nigel Farage puts across.
14:17That's it. It's not a vote for a political party that's willing to govern or even partake in the political system.
14:25So it is a protest vote. And as we get nearer to the election, they're going to have to come up with some sort of policy platform.
14:31And it will need to have the same scrutiny that we would give to any other parties.
14:35But at the moment, people are kind of voting for an idea.
14:39And we saw in the Hamilton by-election, loads of people voted for reform.
14:43They weren't far off winning.
14:44In fact, if the Tory candidate hadn't stood, there's a good chance they could have actually won that seat.
14:49So people are turning out and voting for them.
14:51It's not just opinion polls and people saying, oh, I'm fed up with the rest of them.
14:55People are actively going and voting for reform in Scotland.
14:59And without a reaction from the mainstream parties, that's just going to continue.
15:04I think it's interesting.
15:05Nigel Farage was kind of setting out yesterday that he had all these candidates basically waiting in the wings.
15:09And what we've seen so far is a lot of defections.
15:12And from reform's point of view, I don't know if they would like to have just a kind of ragtag Tory rejects kind of list, which is what they are at the moment.
15:22And people who are just wanting to keep their jobs.
15:25It's quite obvious some of them are jumping ship because they see it as a better chance of being reelected come next year.
15:32So reform do have a bit of an image problem here.
15:36But at the moment, it doesn't really matter because people are still going to come out and vote for them.
15:39But as we get near to that election, yeah, they're going to have to get nailed down on all these domestic issues that we've heard absolutely nothing on so far.
15:48And Kat, do you think that Russell Finlay can do anything to turn things around for the Scottish Tories?
15:52Or is he just a victim of circumstance?
15:55I think he has to.
15:57I mean, I think he is a victim of circumstance.
15:59The party has changed drastically from its Ruth Davidson heyday.
16:03And I think that they haven't been good at foregrounding Russell Finlay because he is, I mean, we know him because he used to be a journalist as well.
16:12But he is charming.
16:13He is personable.
16:15He's good fun.
16:16And we keep talking about one of the main qualities that you want from a political leader like Nigel Farage.
16:21Is it someone that you go for a pint with?
16:23And Russell Finlay definitely passes the pint test.
16:26But I don't think he's getting his personality out to the electorate.
16:30So I think they need to use him more in that sort of way.
16:34He needs to stick with the messaging that he's using currently.
16:38But there has to be a credible centre-right space in Scottish politics for people to lean to so that they're not going to reform.
16:47And I think there will be a disconnect between the by-elections that we've had so far at a local level and the Hollywood election.
16:55Because it's one thing to give your protest vote at a local election.
16:59But when it comes to something like a general election, a Hollywood election, a protest vote is essentially an act of self-harm.
17:05And I think that that will – I think the polling is maybe inflating the forum's chances a little bit.
17:12But for Russell Finlay, I think he has to turn it around.
17:16I think he can turn it around.
17:18But he needs to find some way of persuading, first of all, his cohort of NSPs that he's the right man for the job and that he can do it.
17:26And then after that, it's about approaching the electorate.
17:30And he has a really short space of time to do that in as well because the clock is really against him.
17:35David, what do you think?
17:37I mean, just to pick up on what Kat was saying there, I think Russell Finlay, when you have kind of personal dealings with him as a journalist, you know, in press huddles, press conferences, he can be quite funny.
17:46He's got quite a dry sense of humour.
17:48He is quite sort of personable in that way.
17:50I don't think that comes across when he does kind of TV things.
17:54I don't think it comes across really in the Hollywood chamber all the time.
17:57Do you think there's anything he can do?
17:59Do you think he can turn it around?
18:00Or do you think he's kind of, yeah?
18:04I think he's kind of boxed himself into a corner.
18:07I think he's kind of boxed himself into a corner in the fact that he is trying to kind of appeal to reform voters.
18:14And you can't really out-reform reform.
18:17You just can't do it.
18:18You're never going to please people enough, especially when the alternative is sitting right there next to you on the ballot box.
18:24So it is, I don't know what he can do other than carry on and just hope it goes away or hope that reform implodes.
18:34There's no guarantee it will.
18:35We've seen Nigel Farage's parties kind of explode a little bit in the past before we get to voting day.
18:41But as Kat said, we're running out of time.
18:43I don't know what he does.
18:44He can maybe give the impression that he's changing things and he's taking it seriously.
18:48But so far, he has kind of tried to show that he's unfazed by people leaving.
18:54And that's really backfired on him.
18:56So I don't know how he does that, how he balances it with trying to stop people leaving to reform and keeping the rest of his party in line, really, and happy.
19:06And it doesn't look great.
19:08He's coming at a time where he's going to have to take full responsibility for this election as well.
19:11He's been in a fair bit now.
19:13By the time we get to polling day, it will all be on him.
19:16And I think a lot will, I think I can see him staying in that role, even if it doesn't get any better, because people around him will want to pin this on him if it is a disaster, so they can move forward and it not be about them.
19:29But people's jobs and people's remaining in MSP is on the line here.
19:33So it could get quite tetchy as we move forward towards that May election.
19:38Sorry, I was trying not to laugh there at the beginning, because I thought I heard a cat meowing or something.
19:42But I wanted to end with a question that I suppose is actually quite difficult to answer, but do we think reform will do as well as predicted in the polls?
19:53Obviously, the polls show them completely eating into the Tory vote in Scotland on course to get upwards of a dozen MSPs, potentially more than that.
20:02Do you think that's accurate, or do you think that by the time we get to see their manifesto, what they're actually pledging in Scotland,
20:09who their Scottish leader is, Nigel Farage yesterday was saying it would be, well, indicating there will be a separate Scottish leader going into those TV debates and heading up the election campaign?
20:20Is there a risk things might start to fall apart for them?
20:23I think that once we have a manifesto from the forum and we see what their actual set-up in Scotland is, it will be much easier to make those kind of predictions.
20:37I mean, I sort of touched on it a minute ago, but I don't think that the polling is going to reflect the actual outcome.
20:45And that's probably really unwise at this stage in the game to pin my colours to the mast in such a bold way.
20:51I'm probably going to end up being completely wrong there.
20:53But if you look at what they're proposing in England, right, they've got this plan to tackle migration by trampling all over human rights,
21:04by ripping up the Good Friday Agreement, by setting up internment camps.
21:08The vision of Britain that Farage is painting under his prime ministership is one of abject dysfunction, morally bankrupt, financially bankrupt.
21:20He's not selling a positive vision.
21:22And I just don't think that that's going to translate in Scotland.
21:24So I think actually when they come up with their policies, they're going to have to be a lot more moderate than you might expect.
21:30And if they are, then that spills great trouble for the Conservatives, because, again, the Conservatives in that case are just going to be reform-lite.
21:39But I think they are not going to do as well as they think they're going to do, and I think they're going to have a lot of problems with candidates.
21:48They are a ragtag bunch internally.
21:50They don't have a smooth election machine.
21:53There's a lot of chaos behind the scenes, and I think that's going to start to unravel in the run-up to the election.
21:58What do you think, David?
22:00Do you agree with that?
22:04Yeah, potentially, although I do think they are trying to thrive on this apathy and people who are fed up with the Scottish Parliament and kind of lean into that a bit.
22:15So I do think some of it will be that that negative message will cut through with some people.
22:19But in terms of the details of the manifesto, yeah, they probably will kind of have to be a bit more sensible.
22:25I mean, we'll have to wait and see.
22:25I'm looking forward to reading it, to be honest, because all we've heard so far is that they don't want net zero.
22:31I asked Richard Tice when he was up in Glasgow at another chaotic event.
22:35I can't remember when it was.
22:37I said, well, what are your policies?
22:38And he just said to make people richer.
22:40I mean, that's not going to cut through in a manifesto, is it?
22:43Everyone says that.
22:45Yesterday.
22:46I mean, honestly, like, see if you sit down and you go through all the stuff that Brasley's coming out with yesterday.
22:51I was reading, Al, I was sitting beside you yesterday and you were being very professional and very focused on your job in hand.
22:57My face was just doing all sorts of weird and marvellous contortions.
23:00There was one point where he was asked about falling birth rates because, you know, as David mentioned earlier on, we have declining birth rates in Scotland.
23:09We have skill shortages.
23:10We have depopulation in the Highlands and Islands.
23:12Scotland needs migrants.
23:16And Faraj was asked about that by James Cook from the BBC.
23:20And he just started going on about how we don't need to worry about falling birth rates because AI is going to take all of our jobs.
23:25And I mean, you know, you start.
23:28I feel like I'm sort of crediting him with too much to start drilling down into why that's an absolutely nonsensical position to take.
23:34You know, I'm giving him a dignity that he doesn't deserve if I start unpacking that.
23:37But it was an absolutely wild thing to come away with.
23:41But he's just so sort of quick with these oddities and these bizarre responses.
23:45You just get it's very Trumpian.
23:47You know, it's just like a word salad and you kind of pick out what you need to hear.
23:50It's mad.
23:51Totally bonkers.
23:52Sorry.
23:52I promise not to go on about my...
23:54No, I mean...
23:57...disappointment about Faraj and I'm doing it.
23:58That struck me as well.
23:59I mean, the thing about AI, I mean, when we're talking about the kind of sectors of the economy that are really held up by immigration,
24:07you're talking about things like the NHS, the social care sector, those jobs that are...
24:11Even if we accept that there's a kind of AI apocalypse on the horizon,
24:15they're the jobs that are going to be hardest to replace with AI.
24:18It's going to be the office workers, people like us sometimes, frankly,
24:23whose jobs are more at risk.
24:25So, yeah.
24:26See, I'm afraid of that I am a migrant, so I can just go home.
24:28But yous are all good.
24:31On that note, that's all we've got time for this week.
24:35Thank you very much for listening.
24:37We'll be back at the same time next week when Holyrood is also back from a summer recess.
24:41So we'll have all the latest from the Scottish Parliament.
24:44We're not expecting a programme for government.
24:46Well, there won't be a programme for government because we had that earlier on in the year.
24:49But I'm sure there'll be lots to talk about with Holyrood returning.
24:51There's been loads of issues over the summer that politicians will want to dig into.
24:55We'll have all the latest on that.
24:57In the meantime, please stay tuned to the Scotsman's website
24:59for all the latest news, comment, analysis and video.
25:03Thank you very much for listening.
25:04This Dini, a politics podcast from the Scotsman.
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