First Minister chucked more than milkshake in scathing attack on Nigel Farage

This was the toughest political attack on Nigel Farage from a political opponent.

The First Minister chucked more than a milkshake at the Reform leader.

He said Scottish “values were under threat from the politics of Nigel Farage”; he said he was “repulsed by Farage and the far right”; he called him an apologist for Putin; and said his argument against migrants is “fundamentally racist”.

John Swinney announced he is organising a summit in April calling on all party leaders in the Scottish Parliament, churches and trade unions to come together to “protect the country from the bigotry that Farage represents”.

Reform denies it is a far-right party and describes Putin as a “despicable aggressor against Ukraine”.

Reform says this is “desperate stuff” from the First Minister to “deflect from the SNP’s awful record in government”.

Glasgow councillor Thomas Kerr, a recent Reform convert from the Scottish Conservatives, has said he has suffered abuse since his defection, being branded a fascist and a racist.

At the weekend, the Prime Minister launched a scathing attack on Reform in his Scottish Labour Conference speech, saying Farage had voted against workers’ rights in the Commons and would charge people to use the NHS.

The First Minister has stepped up the attack on Wednesday.

The invites to the summit haven’t gone out yet, but the STUC (Scottish Trades Union Congress) is already backing them. General secretary Roz Foyer said “the threat of the far-right is a real and present danger both in our politics and our communities”.

It’s hard to see any of the other parties at Holyrood turning down the invitation.

However, Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay has been railing against the “cosy left-wing consensus at Holyrood”.

In response to the First Minister, a Conservative spokesperson said: “We’ll see what is proposed but we won’t take part in yet another SNP talking shop that achieves nothing.”

Reform is taking votes from all the Holyrood parties. It got 10% in a council by-election in Kilmarnock last week, 15% in Kirkintilloch a couple of weeks ago and almost 23% in Bannockburn a month ago.

Polls suggest Farage’s party could get quite a few MSPs elected next year and that’s really put the wind up all the parties here at Holyrood.