Thomas Kerr: Ready for Reform

The east end of Glasgow is undergoing a period of regeneration. Unlike the west end and the south side, it’s been a slower process, but it’s happening nonetheless. Walking through Carntyne towards Shettleston there are signs of it everywhere: the Tollcross International Swimming Centre, constructed for the Commonwealth Games, and Tollcross Children’s Farm are the first glimpses I see.  

Rounding the corner onto Tollcross Road and into La Casa Del Caffe, I’m greeted by Thomas Kerr, the 28-year-old Glasgow councillor who has recently defected to Reform UK. He’s keen to tell me about the cafe, which is admittedly very nice. It was once a bookie’s and it’s another sign that the east end is changing, Kerr tells me. The modern decor and vines hanging from the ceiling are juxtaposed with the toilets, however, which haven’t changed since its transformation. 
Kerr, who has lived in the area for most of his life and served as a councillor since 2017, is incredibly passionate about this part of Glasgow. He spent a lot of his early years living in the Cranhill flats, a set of high-rises built for post-war Britain. By the 1970s, Cranhill was earning a reputation for gang violence, drug abuse and antisocial behaviour, and had acquired an unwanted social stigma associated with poverty. 

The first few years of his life were spent living with his mother and father, Debra and Billy, but both were battling drug addiction, which Kerr says “caused a lot of issues”. As a result, he went to live with his grandmother and grandfather, Margaret and Thomas, for most of his primary school years. He fondly recalls how he and Thomas were known as ‘Big Tam and Wee Tam’.  He moved back with his mum for a while after she got herself clean, but when she relapsed he moved in with his auntie, Elaine, and then again with his grandparents.  

“My grandparents knew how unstable things were. I had to be taken away from that,” Kerr says.

“I didn’t become fully aware of the drugs that were being taken until probably high school. In primary seven I suspected that things were pretty bad when I moved to my auntie’s. But you need to remember, when I was growing up in Cranhill a lot of the kids were growing up like me. It didn’t feel unusual that mum was maybe a bit tired during the day because she had been taking something or [that] the morning routine when you were off school was to go to the chemist to get methadone. A lot of the kids went through that, so to me it was normal. That was life. 

“My mum, by the way, is the most remarkable woman ever. Despite the addiction issues, I was always cleaned, fed and clothed.” 

It wasn’t until Kerr moved to Maryhill with his aunt, who was a social worker, that he saw what “an actual family routine was like”. “You had dinner around the table, home-cooked meals, you’re going on camping trips.” 

Around this time, during the latter years of primary school, he says he was beginning to exhibit some concerning behaviour. He says he was “in a very dangerous position of becoming a statistic”. He started performing poorly in school, running out of the building, or skipping it altogether.  

He says he was “saved” by Elaine, Thomas and Margaret, and “if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be the man I am”. 

“My gran and grandad are formidable. They were up every morning to go to work, it was religious. I was in school every day at eight because my gran had to be at the factory – she was a machinist – and my grandad was working in the subway. It was instilled in me then that you needed to work hard, and it shouldn’t matter what your mum’s doing.” 

Kerr was first introduced to politics through Elaine, who would take him to anti-Iraq war demonstrations in Glasgow. She was the only member of his family who was politically minded, and he recalls her friendship with SNP MSP Christina McKelvie, who he would go on camping trips with when he was living with Elaine.  

In 2008, Kerr met his first political hero, then Labour MP Margaret Curran, outside Tesco in Shettleston. Having just seen her on the TV, he recalls being “gobsmacked”. “At that point, I decided I was Labour, not because of the party, but because I thought she was exactly what you needed as an MP.” 

He started campaigning for his MSPs Paul Martin and Frank McAveety, but attending party meetings he began to think, “I don’t agree with any of this”.  

“At that point, I started to think politically, rather than just my admiration for people like Margaret Curran. I saw the men in navy blue suits, as I call them – people in from university who knew nothing about this community, students bussed in and talking down to people about Labour being for the working man. And I thought, this isn’t for me.”

After seeing former Scottish Conservative leader Annabelle Goldie on Newsnight he recalls “liking the cut of her jib” and he contacted Andrew Morrison, who was the Tory candidate for Pollok at the time.  

“Through that I met Ruth Davidson, and my whole politics was transformed. This was before she was an MSP.” 

Kerr began attending executive party meetings in the south side of Glasgow. He felt out of place seeing “ladies with their pearls and men in their tweed” and him, an east-end boy, 17 or 18 at the time with a carry-out – a three-litre bottle of Frosty Jacks – for that Friday evening in a carrier bag. 

“They must have been thinking ‘what have we let ourselves in for with this boy?’” he says fondly. 

But despite not identifying as the typical Tory, that didn’t deter him. Soon after leaving school, his activity with the party intensified. He remembers taking part in a debate in the run-up to the 2016 Scottish Parliament election. And then he found out his dad had died. Despite not having spoken to each other for a number of years, Kerr said the moment was a “gut punch”. 

“We had a very fraught relationship, it wasn’t the best, but when he was sober he was the funniest and best guy in the world. When I got the call to tell me that he’d passed away it was a gut punch that I never got to see him. 

“It taught me a lot and made me more resilient, but it was the worst experience I’ve ever had in my life. 

“It’s why I’ll always admire Ruth Davidson. She was running the campaign at the time and she called me and spoke with me for an hour, and that was one of the kindest things that’s ever happened to me. In the middle of a huge election, taking the time to do that was really touching.” 

A year later Kerr ran to become a councillor in the Shettleston ward of Glasgow. He says the party encouraged him to try for another ward, one they thought he’d have a better chance of winning. But he was clear that he felt the message the party was trying to get across in 2017 would resonate with the community he grew up in. And it did. He was elected and later became the party’s leader on Glasgow City Council in 2019.  

Having grown up in the Conservatives, Kerr has recently made headlines for defecting to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party. And he has become critical of the party he once loved.  

He tells Holyrood it has changed from a party that tells people where it stands. “We had policy positions then, but that has all disappeared.” 

And he says that since 2017 there has been “an influx of people” who he doesn’t believe are Conservative. “They would fit into whatever way the wind was blowing.”  

At the time of Kerr’s defection in January, a Tory source told the media there were “74,506 reasons” why he had left – a reference to the salary earned by an MSP. 

“He’s been promised top of the Glasgow list by Reform, which he wouldn’t have got near in our party,” the source said.  

“All my closest friends are in the Conservatives; it was my second family,” Kerr says. “Me and [Tory MSP] Meghan Gallacher grew up together. It was a difficult transition to make. Some of them are real friends and have stood by me; there are others who I would have considered really close friends that I’ve not heard from. To be branded a traitor who just has ambitions for himself is really hurtful. 

“And the briefing was hurtful. If I were to sit here and say to a journalist that I didn’t want to be an MSP, I’d be lying. I joined the party young; I have ambitions to go to Holyrood for this area. It’s no secret I have ambitions, but the idea that I did this because I was promised something is not true.” 

At the time of writing, Reform UK has had a string of positive polls and the most recent YouGov polling suggests the party could win the biggest vote share at the next general election. I ask Kerr if people are joining the party now for the same career-driven reasons he says people joined the Conservatives in 2017.  

“I’ve been branded everything under the sun, from a fascist to a racist. Reform is more of a mechanism for people to let out their anger about where the world is at the moment. I don’t think it’s a career move for people to join.  

“The day I defected I went to the branch meeting in Pollokshields, and there were 60 people there; the Tory branch meetings were six people and a dog. There were young men and women, all different ethnicities, and when you speak to them they are not all Tory and Labour defectors, a lot of them are people who have never been involved politically.” 

In the lead-up to the general election last year, Kerr posted a now infamous tweet, calling some of Reform UK’s candidates anti-monarchy, pro-independence, and “Putin apologists”. He stands by that and says the party has undergone a transformation since then, changing its vetting processes, which he says are now “top-notch”.  

“Will it stop the odd member with extreme views joining up? No. That was the case in the Tories as well.” 

Over a year away from the Holyrood elections, polling suggests Reform could pick up seats in the low-to-mid-teens. I ask if he thinks we will see Farage in Scotland ahead of the election.  

“I don’t think Nigel will mind me saying, he loves the limelight. Will we see him on a debating stage with John Swinney, Russell Findlay, and Anas Sarwar? I think that’s very possible. I think it’s taken the party a bit aback how well it’s doing in Scotland.” 

While the party doesn’t have a raft of policies yet, Kerr says we can expect to see more at the end of the summer into the beginning of autumn. Whether Kerr will be one of those MSPs who takes that policy platform forward to Holyrood is yet to be decided.  

“Of course I have ambitions, I stood twice for Holyrood for the Conservatives. But I have a two-year-old with my fiancée Shannon. If I can benefit my constituents and myself I will do Holyrood, but I have a young family and I need to put my son’s needs first. Being away from Josh for three days a week is a big task to take on. It’s a five-year parliament, and I need to ask myself, do I want to miss all those school shows and football classes? 

“When it comes to the time I’ll speak to Shannon and decide if it’s right.”