Getty ImagesOne is a wish, two is a kiss, three is a disappointment, but for Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay, it must all seem like a disappointment.
He must have been disappointed but not surprised when Jamie Greene defected to the Scottish Liberal Democrats.
He must have been disappointed and a bit surprised on Friday when Jeremy Balfour quit to become an independent; the saving grace for the Tories was that at least he didn’t defect to Reform.
Then on Wednesday, up popped Graham Simpson shaking hands with Nigel Farage at a press conference in West Lothian.
I phoned a few Conservatives yesterday to see if they had heard any rumours of defections to Reform ahead of Farage’s visit.
None of the people I spoke to had heard anything. Simpson told me today that he didn’t answer my calls because he didn’t want to lie to me.
Today, no one in the Scottish Conservatives seems terribly surprised. The party’s official line doesn’t even mention him, instead focusing on “holding the SNP and Labour to account”.
An unofficial Tory source, commenting to a colleague, was more direct.
“Graham Simpson is a pathetic nasty little man who won’t be missed,” they said.
“He’ll be more trouble than he is worth to Reform”.
I think he is worth a fair bit to Reform.
If this was Monopoly and councillor defections are houses, then an MSP defecting is a hotel.
The problem with that analogy is that if you mention hotels to Nigel Farage he starts to talk about “migrant hotels”.
Today, he linked asylum seekers staying in hotels in Glasgow to increasing numbers of sexual assaults and rapes in the city.
Scottish Government crime figures, published yesterday, show an increase in cases of sexual violence in Glasgow but there is no evidence linking them to any particular group.
Rape Crisis said today: “Thousands of women and girls are raped or sexually assaulted in Scotland every year. Most of them have been attacked by people they know”.
This is classic Nigel Farage – he is not accusing asylum seekers staying in these hotels of rape or sexual assault, but he is making the connection and leaving it there for people to join the dots of his nudge-nudge-wink-wink comments.
Whether you like him or loathe him, Nigel Farage is setting the political agenda and with it the news agenda right across the UK.
He admitted today that immigration hasn’t been as big an issue in Scotland as England, but he rightly asserts that it is getting bigger.
I was surprised by the number of voters in the Hamilton by-election who raised it with me. In June, an Ipsos Scotland opinion poll suggested that it was a major issue for 28% of those polled. That is higher than for Independence.
Immigration is reserved to Westminster, but it is becoming a bigger issue for voters in Scotland, as the rise of Reform becomes a bigger issue for politicians in Scotland too.
That means it will likely be an issue in next year’s Holyrood election.
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