With Scottish Parliamentary elections around the corner, I’ve been putting my mind to how to vote and what the electoral landscape for Ettrick, Roxburgh & Berwickshire and South Scotland currently looks like.
I’ve also attempted to work out how my votes work. It seems we do two Xs: one for Constituency and one for Regional list. After counting the constituency vote then the list vote, some wildly complicated Returning Officer calculations take place to give us the list seat results.
Click here for Electoral Reform Society and here for Electoral Commission explainers.
Constituency – Ettrick, Roxburgh & Berwickshire
My friend, James Anderson, is standing as an independent for Ettrick, Roxburgh & Berwickshire constituency. He did so much to help me when I stood as an independent MP candidate at GE2024, I’m voting for him, no question. He’s long been a brilliantly effective East Berwickshire ward Scottish Borders Councillor and is well worth supporting on the national stage.
If you’re looking for a good political party candidate who’s neither rightwing nor nationalist then, for Ettrick, Roxburgh & Berwickshire, your best bet is the lovely Liberal Democrat, Ray Georgeson, who’s not only a tremendous human being but a hard-working constituency champion, steeped in all that our area wants and needs.
Neither Scottish Labour nor Scottish Greens paper candidates have viable footholds in the constituency.
Regional – South Scotland
But for the South Scotland regional peach ballot paper, what to do?
Looking at the local polls, at this rate, Reform is likely to wipe out the Conservative vote and take four South Scotland seats, with Labour on two and Greens with one.
This is a disaster. Conservatives giving all their power to ultra far-right, completely anti-Scottish Reform shysters, who are not only thick as three short planks but also fascist, is *exceptionally stupid.*
When did Scottish, let alone English, Borderers start thinking voting for fascism was a brilliant, forward-thinking, progressive idea? It beggars belief.
Hitler’s hateful, racist, belligerent lies that infected a beleaguered Germany in 1930s have absolutely no place in a beleaguered UK today. Yet those *same lies* are what England-centric bully boy Reform is offering, headed by equally slimy, corrupt, creepy leeches as Hitler’s vile cabal.
Why do rightwing and leftwing Scots appear to be lapping up the specious crap of Farage, a duplicitous, mendacious English charlatan who appears to advocate asset-stripping Scottish public services, driving up prices, increasing poverty, eliminating critical free health and social care, transport and education provision, whilst treating most Scottish communities as destitute wastes of space? I just don’t get it.
The Scottish message from Reform’s Nazi core is anti-union, anti-constitutional-monarchy, anti-Scottish, anti-EU, anti-NATO-security, anti-climate, anti-women, wholly racist and violently regressive. Reform’s policies in Scotland only benefit its seedy, ultra-monied thick-as-pig-shit leadership, along with genocidal Russia and Israel (with Israel owning large quantities of North Sea petrochemical extraction rights), and will impoverish the Scottish people to a previously inconceivable degree.
As for Scottish Labour, which is very different to UK Labour, I have a great deal of time for Anas Sarwar and the work Scottish Labour politicians have done in opposition at Holyrood to provide sensible checks and balances on SNP government power. But Anas has been completely shafted by Sir Keir Starmer, with Starmer, UK Labour’s leadership and Whitehall SpAds doing everything possible to participate in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians and now Israel/USA’s catastrophic war on Iran, as well as implementing disastrous UK-wide non-manifesto policies that have seen Scottish households suffer badly as a result.
However much Anas rightly distances Scottish Labour and himself from diabolical Netanyahu’s economic and military puppets seemingly squatting in Number 10 and the White House, UK Labour HQ has the whip hand over Scottish Labour, and everyone can see it. But Scottish Labour’s vote must hold up even in South Scotland to offset the horrors of Reform. If you are an erstwhile Labour voter thinking Reform is a reasonable protest vote, it absolutely is not.
SNP in the Borders is not so much visible as an undercurrent of Borderers who see SNP as the pro-independence pro-EU option that’s done a good job for Scotland in power, but whose recent corruption woes and factionalism have eaten into voter goodwill and patience.
Scottish Greens locally have a lot to offer but inadvertently demanding a hard Border at the end of our South Scotland roads nullifies climate emergency recognition for unionists.
Which means the Scottish Liberal Democrats locally are our best option. I’ve always voted for them in Borders elections (when not voting for myself!). Euan Robson, Jim Hume and others were great constituency champions as MSPs. David Steel, Archy Kirkwood and Michael Moore were massively more effective MPs for constituents than either dank SNP or Conservative incumbents. I really miss their brilliance, courage, perseverance and humanity on the UK-wide stage. I know LibDem candidates on this year’s South Scotland list come from a savvy, dedicated, well-trained cadre of Borderers, so I recommend voting Scottish LibDem for the Regional ballot.
Your vote on Thursday, 07 May 2026
Whomever you vote for 7am-10pm on 07 May (click here to find your polling station and list of candidates) make sure you’re using your vote wisely and, whatever you do, *avoid* voting Reform at all costs.
Vote Independent, Scottish Liberal Democrats, Scottish Labour, Scottish Greens, SNP, even Scottish Conservatives. Just *never* Reform.