John Swinney's 'anti far-right' summit didn't invite Reform - but they were the elephant in the room

“If everyone is against us we must be in the right place”. That was Reform UK leader Nigel Farage’s response to the Scottish Government’s summit for safeguarding democracy.

Reform was not invited, although they protested outside with leaflets stating “Democracy denier – John Swinney/Anas Sarwar won’t listen to you”. First Minister John Swinney said he had invited all the party leaders at Holyrood and that he regretted that Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay was the only one to turn it down.

This was billed by many as a summit to tackle the rise of Reform, and in fact when John Swinney announced it in Bute House in February he was quite clear that “our values are under threat from Farage, and he said he was “repulsed by Farage and the far right”.

But at the post summit press conference on Wednesday, the First Minister seemed remarkably reluctant to talk about Reform or Nigel Farage specifically. In fact in the whole 50 minutes, he was asked about them numerous times by journalists but never actually referred to them directly.

John Swinney was asked by the Press Association if all this might not be “an inadvertent advert for Reform”. In response he said he recognised the danger to the democratic system, and responding to a similar question from the Daily Record he said he didn’t want to look back in a few years’ time without having done something about it. He was clearly addressing Reform without naming them. Don’t mention Reform!

It took about 15 minutes of questioning until someone finally directly addressed the elephant in the room (or not actually in the room because they weren’t invited). STUC general secretary Roz Foyer said Reform was a “different kind of political party, not just another party”. She said “Reform was no friend of the working classes” and warned the political leaders who were at the summit that they had to “pull their socks up or risk losing working class Scottish people”.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said he agreed with her comments about “Nigel Farage and his party”, and in fact he was the only party leader to even talk directly about them. Maybe that’s because of the threat Reform poses to Labour’s vote at next year’s Holyrood election or maybe he was the only one willing to tackle them head on.

Five of the six Holyrood parties were among around 50 groups from civil Scotland including churches, business organisations, charities, universities and anti-racist campaigners. They all agreed and signed up to a communique – “strengthening and protecting democracy in Scotland”. It doesn’t specifically mention Reform or Nigel Farage either, but that is what this has all been about and it brings to mind something Alex Salmond used to say – “the mair they talk about me, the better I’m kent”.