Scotland’s First Minister and Scottish National Party (SNP) leader John Swinney has called yet another “anti-far right summit” in the wake of the racist violence which has ripped through Scotland this summer.
The summit follows an almost identical meet-up of the great and good of Scottish politics in 2025, which was unceremoniously (but not incorrectly) dubbed by the media as the SNP’s “unpopular front”.
Based on this summer’s events, clearly these summits achieve very little. And this is reflected in the very few promises and comments from Swinney this time around.
In reality, last year’s summit was nothing more than an election ploy to try and rally the SNP’s tired and disillusioned voters in an ‘us vs Reform’ campaign. This year, Swinney is simply recycling old ideas to appear to be even remotely in control of Scotland’s streets.
First Minister John Swinney has said that ‘hatred, extremism and racism have no place in Scotland’ ahead of a summit in response to far-right agitators https://t.co/lk7px8070I
— The National (@ScotNational) August 18, 2026
In the past, the SNP’s unrivalled dominance over the anti-Westminster and anti-austerity mood in Scotland managed to keep racist demagogues like Farage in the background of Scottish politics.
During this period, they were able to claim that Scotland was a rosy safe haven for all. But recent events have thoroughly blown this ‘Scot-la-la-land’ to pieces.
Now they have to admit racism exists in Scotland, the SNP have nothing to offer other than stern words, Police Scotland initiatives, and constant summits.
The rise of Reform
The SNP’s failures to deliver for voters has paved the way for Reform’s rise in Scotland, and the party’s presence in Holyrood has stoked flames of racist violence. Whilst Reform whips up racism and emboldens the far right in every part of Britain, this is felt particularly starkly in Scotland.
Until very recently, Reform (and all previous Farage outfits) were banished to the sidelines by the existence of the SNP as an outlet for anti-establishment anger.
As such, they were a very fringe outfit with intimate links with the far right and the Loyalist movement, which bases itself on whipping up Protestant sectarianism. The party’s former national organiser has ties to the UVF Loyalist paramilitary group, and the just-recently suspended activist Grant Calder has Loyalist ties.
Deputy leader Thomas Kerr has been the most prominent inflammatory figure in the party. Just this week he was posing for photos and being shown around Belfast by a group headed up by a former Loyalist paramilitary leader.
The hardened Loyalists which exist within and close to Reform are at odds with the more mainstream figures who want to appear electable, and the instability this causes is not contained within the party. Rather, it has played out on Scotland’s streets.
The bankruptcy of the ‘lefts’
This is a serious situation. Whilst they are still fringe elements, the far right and Loyalists are emboldened by those like Kerr and pose a genuine threat to black and Asian workers and youth in Scotland. They must be fought back against.
This fight – despite the SNP’s insistence on leaving the matter with the police – has been taking place: we have seen inspiring counter-demonstrations in Glasgow and Leith, where the thugs were outnumbered and pushed back. However, they have not been defeated entirely.
So where next for the struggle against the far right in Scotland? Unfortunately, those workers and youth who want to fight will look to the ‘left’ of the SNP and think they are seeing double!
To meet Swinney’s ‘unpopular front’ last year, Stand Up to Racism offered their own popular front in the form of their own summit, and their ‘Stop Reform 2026’ campaign. Their summit was not just similar in character to the SNP’s, but it contained SNP speakers like former First Minister Humza Yousef!
This copy-cat approach has not stopped, and we now have the quite absurd situation where Swinney will say we must unite because “we are all Scottish!” and SUTR echoes him by saying we must all unite because “we are all anti-racist!”.
But who are ‘we’? The very same politicians in the Labour Party and the SNP who have paved the way for Farage? Police Scotland, who are the direct perpetrators of this violence?
It is precisely the SNP’s cross-class ‘unity’ which led the independence movement into a dead end and paved the way for the rise of Reform in Scotland – so shouldn’t the left be fighting them, not linking arms and singing ‘kumbaya’?
The RCP in Scotland certainly believes so. To fight racism we need a mass working-class movement to drive the far right and the Loyalists off the streets.
This would mean mobilising the trade unions, the Palestine movement, and communities – not only on demonstrations, but in practical self-defence of their communities, in the spirit of Kenmure Street. This is Scotland’s true anti-racist tradition.
