MICHELLE Ballantyne has been unveiled as the leader of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party in Scotland.
The MSP for South Scotland said at its launch yesterday – just over four months ahead of the Holyrood election due in May – that the party would work to “champion personal choice, community response and local networks”.
She added: “Our policies will reflect these values and respect the basic rights of freedom of thought, speech and worship.”
Ballantyne quit the Scottish Conservatives in November, after differences with the party’s support for lockdown. Ahead of the online event yesterday morning, SNP depute leader Keith Brown said: “The Reform Party and its toxic brand of politics is not welcome here in Scotland. Voters rejected the right-wing isolationism of Ukip and the Brexit Party and I am confident that they reject this lot too.”
Scottish Greens co-leader Lorna Slater, also hit out, saying: “The Brexit Party may have changed its name to Reform but this is the same far-right party with new branding and this time they are promoting dangerous coronavirus conspiracies.”
Responding to the criticisms, Reform Party chair Richard Tice said: “History shows we only make progress by challenging the status quo, the consensus. If we don’t have challenge and open debate then we live in a one-party dictatorship and no progress is ever made.”
Ballantyne quit the Tories over policy and principles and attacked her former party for agreeing with the Scottish Government’s lockdown. She said the final straw “was watching fellow Tories line up behind Nicola Sturgeon put half of Scotland into level 4 lockdown” with “scant regard for jobs, social isolation and risking deaths not directly linked to Covid-19”.
A Brexit supporter, she stood against Jackson Carlaw in the 2020 Scottish Tory leadership election, losing out to the Eastwood MSP, who was replaced months later with MP Douglas Ross.
The 57-year-old caused outrage as Tory welfare spokesperson when she suggested people on benefits should not have as many children as they want as she defended the UK Government’s so-called “rape clause”.
The policy caps the number of children receiving benefits at two per family, except in circumstances where the mother has been raped.
Ballantyne, who has six children, later accepted she had received child benefit for her children.
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