results<\/a> from Thursday’s local and regional polls showed Farage’s far-right Reform party had stormed into the Scottish and Welsh parliaments for the first time.<\/p>\n![\"Honorary](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/4KP4I1D_000_34UQ69L_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\nReform party leader Nigel Farage.
\nPhoto: AFP \/ Henry Nicholls\n<\/p>\n
“What is coming our way is the likelihood of Farage being the next prime minister of the United Kingdom,” he said, although UK general elections were not due before 2029.<\/p>\n
“We need to have the protection of being an independent country from being affected and influenced by the election of a Farage government.”<\/p>\n
Swinney’s Scottish National Party (SNP) again became the largest party in Holyrood, as the 129-seat Parliament is known, winning 58 seats in Thursday’s polls – but that falls short of a majority.<\/p>\n
Reform tied neck-and-neck with Labour, with both parties scoring 17 seats.<\/p>\n
Speaking to supporters in Edinburgh, Swinney said Farage had talked about abolishing the Scottish parliament.<\/p>\n
“It is vital we unite in Scotland to ensure our parliament is fully Farage-proofed,” he said.<\/p>\n
“That means having the power, before 2029, to decide our own constitutional future, without Farage being able to block us.”<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scotland First Minister and Scottish National Party (SNP) leader John Swinney. Photo: Andy Buchanan \/ AFP Scotland First…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-420231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Scotland's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/4JOUWVY_AFP__20260508__B2AB9LA__v1__HighRes__BritainScotlandPoliticsVote_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n