SUNDAY MAIL EXCLUSIVE: Richard Tice said his party want voters to give them a chance in Scotland after England success.
Reform UK chief Richard Tice has ruled out Scotland having another referendum and said his party will be the second largest in Holyrood.
On the campaign trail in Hamilton yesterday the MP said the Scottish Parliament elections next year would be a “two horse race” and insisted Reform would be “great” for Scotland.
Speaking to the Sunday Mail he said there was “no need” for another vote on the constitutionand if his party were in a position to grant one the answer would be ‘no’.
He said: “The answer is no, we don’t need one. We’re better off together.
“If you knocked on 100 doors the two issues that would come up would be immigration and winter fuel allowance.
“It’s not the be-all and end-all for people’s daily lives any more. The longer the SNP mess up running Scotland the more people think they should stop messing around with the independencedebate and actually just do your job properly.”
Tice was visiting Hamiltonahead of the by-election on June 5 and said that not only is his party hopeful of winning the seat but is confident they would become Holyrood’s second biggest party.
If so, they would push for a removal of the ban on alcoholat football matches and on trains, according to Tice, who insisted governments should “trust the people”.
He said: “Of course we’re going for the win.
“It’s a two horse race between the SNP and Reformand we’re going to give it a massive push.”
Asked if he believed Reformwould become Holyrood’s second largest party, Tice said: “Yeah, definitely.
“And for Scotland that would be great. Competition is a good thing. It can be respectful. It doesn’t need to be as nasty and as aggressive and broken as it is.”
Asked about the need for migrant labour in Scotland, Tice said Reformsupported “smart immigration” in roles where “you’ve got the need for high skills, extra qualifications or where you’ve genuinely got a deficit” but claimed the public were being misled.
He said: “There’s a great lie being told that we’re short of people. We’re not. We’ve got record numbers on out-of-work benefits, record numbers economically inactive.”
He also claimed unemployment in Scotland was “double the UK average”, despite official statistics confirming Scotland has a lower unemployment rate (4.2 per cent between December 2024 and February 2025) than the UK overall (4.4 per cent).
Tice said by the time of Holyroodelections voters in Scotland would be able to see how Reformhas performed in their newly-acquired English councils, boasting that they had already identified “almost a million pounds of efficiency saving [from] a few unnecessary positions” in one council and blocked a £20m “daft project” in another.
He said: “If we deliver we can say to voters in Scotland: ‘Give us a chance.’”
