Russell Findlay 'disappointed' as 'attack dog' councillor defects to Reform UK

Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay has spoken out against the “damage” of a swing towards Reform UK after another Tory councillor defected to the party.

Renfrewshire Council's Alec Leishman is the latest to leave the Scottish Conservatives for Nigel Farage's party.

Leishman, who was first elected in 2022 and serves the Erskine and Inchinnan ward, becomes the sixth Scottish Reform UK councillor. This follows the defection of Thomas Kerr, of Glasgow City Council, last month.

Findlay said it was “disappointing” to learn of the defection this morning. He said: “What has been shown in recent by-elections, and indeed the previous general election, is any vote in Scotland for Reform is only going to benefit the SNP. So it’s vital that we persuade people to realise the damage they are potentially doing in that regard.”

Kerr, the former Tory leader on Glasgow City Council, has welcomed Leishman to Reform, saying: “I’ve known Councillor Alec Leishman for several years, he is well respected and will be a great addition to the Reform UK Scotland team.

“Across Scotland, the public are scunnered and fed up with the mainstream parties, Alec is our newest elected politician, but I am confident he won’t be the last as Reform UK gears up for what will be a critical Holyrood campaign.”

Renfrewshire Council lies within the West of Scotland region Findlay represents. 

Leishman has sat on both the education and housing committees on the local authority. On his move to Reform, he said: “Scotland badly needs change. The SNP have failed our country with their narrow-minded obsession with independence but, both Labour and the Conservatives have enabled them in their policy support in Holyrood. From net zero madness to woke gender ideology and policing free speech, the Holyrood bubble is proving how completely detached it is from Scotland’s communities.

“Reform UK is the new kids on the block but has an energised membership with real vision and leadership needed to break the endless cycle of decline that our country faces.”

Outspoken Leishman had garnered a reputation within Renfrewshire Council for being a “Tory attack dog”, in the words of independent councillor Andy Doig, who referred to Leishman as “Russell Findlay's representative on Earth”.

As recently as September, Leishman criticised fellow councillors who had left their former parties, defending Reform UK when independent members Eddie Devine and Will Mylet – ex-Labour and SNP respectively – brought forward a motion seeking to ban limited companies from registering as political parties.

Reform UK was founded as an “entrepreneurial political start-up” in November 2018 and is majority-owned by Nigel Farage, who has the ability to remove deputy leader Richard Tice as a director and dissolve the organisation if preferred.

Devine and Mylet said such practice is "inimical to the tradition of parliamentary democracy” and the motion, which was adopted by councillors, called on the local authority to write to the Electoral Commission seeking a ban.

Responding, Leishman said constituents who voted Labour in Devine's ward at the last election had been left without a “Labour voice” as a result of his defection. He stated: “I do wonder which is the greater affront to democracy; that the voters of ward six do not have a Labour voice despite having voted for one in sufficient numbers, or that Reform UK is a private limited company? 

“I doubt that councillors Devine and Mylet are the right persons to teach on democratic poverty as far as Reform UK goes, to be honest. I don't care that Reform UK is a limited company. The Electoral Commission has already passed it, so I can't help thinking that it's not really any of my business.”

He went on: “The only hardship I could identify when I was doing my rather tiresome research on this issue is actually inflicted upon the members of the Reform UK themselves, in that they don't get to elect their own leader. But again, that's really their lookout.

“If this is an attempt to defang Reform UK, I doubt its prospect of success. If anything, this party has proven itself to be rather practiced at rebranding itself, if not exactly reinventing itself.”

Welcoming Leishman to the party, a Reform UK spokesperson said: “His hard work and commitment to his local community are well known and we are excited to have his energy and enthusiasm within Reform.”