Marie’s Column in The Herald | Monday 4th May 2026

Marie’s latest opinion article, carried in the Herald as part of its pre-election commentary, focusses on the twin issues of immigration and housing, and how successive decades of flawed policy have created the current housing crisis.

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In late 1891, an outlandish collection of wagons rolled up deep in Glasgow’s East End.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show had come to town, and between November that year and the following February, an estimated half a million Scots had packed in to the East End Exhibition Buildings for the American’s residency, featuring the likes of sharpshooter Annie Oakley and Lakota Sioux performers.

The episode is a curious and colourful one in the history of Glasgow – and I was reminded of it for two reasons as we approach election day in Scotland on Thursday.

Firstly, how we could do with just a little of the excitement, buzz and razzmatazz which that wagon train brought, in an election campaign which has never managed to rise above lacklustre.

But secondly, it seems fitting to recount the episode given the more recent arrival of a different set of wagons in the East End.

The travelling circus this time was in the form of Reform UK, whose Scottish election campaign targeted the Tollcross area of Glasgow with banners about immigration.

Talking to voters in Scotland about small boats arriving on the south coast of England maybe isn’t as much a hard sell as it was a few years ago.

Opinion polls show that immigration has shot up the list of policy issues listed by Scottish voters as among their main concerns since the last Holyrood election in 2021.  That concern is understandable, especially when so many of our communities rely on already stretched public services and housing provision.

But the Reform banners miss the mark. They send out a negative, divisive message when they should – as all parties should – be trying to send out a positive vision of hope for our communities.

Immigration has brought huge benefits to Glasgow and other parts of Scotland over many generations, whether that has involved folk arriving on these shores from Ireland, Italy, Pakistan or any number of other places, including the Jewish refugees who fled persecution in Central and Eastern Europe and settled here. All these communities have added value to our national story.

But the fact that immigration is now more of an issue on the doorsteps across Scotland is bound up with another fundamental policy question which doesn’t get nearly enough attention – housing.

In the week when one party leader revealed he has six houses, nothing could further demonstrate the need for a renewed focus on ensuring all our communities have a decent place to call home.

And while Reform UK’s Malcolm Offord’s remarks were not the most tactful, some of the reaction from the opposite end of the spectrum also needs to be called out. The Scottish Greens’ co-leader Ross Greer has used the issue to stir up a tedious and predictable narrative which amounts to little more than the politics of envy and attacks on aspiration, and on those who know what it’s like to come from humble origins to build successful businesses, pay taxes and support charitable causes.

Mr Greer’s brand of kid-on communism won’t work in Scotland, any more than the real thing worked in the Soviet Union.

Instead, when it comes to the pressing issue of housing, we should be looking to raise our sights and address a serious national problem.

We have a housing crisis in Scotland, just as there is across the whole of the UK, and not enough is being done to address the situation.

The causes of the crisis are deep and complex, and relate to policy decisions made by all parties in power at Westminster and at Holyrood going back over many decades.

But fixing it is surely the key to resolving a whole host of other social and economic questions, including moving to a better place in the debate on immigration.

Having built affordable homes in the East End of Glasgow, I know firsthand what communities there and others like them are seeking – and it is not election campaign lip service or clickbait political slogans from left or right.

When it comes to housing, none of the parties deserve the votes of those in communities who have too often been let down and not presented with workable solutions.

The roots of the housing crisis go back generations. The UK Labour Government in the years immediately after the Second World launched a massive house building programme.

Fast-forward several decades and many of those council homes were taken out of public ownership through the Tories’ Right to Buy policy.

However, that stored up a host of problems for the future as successive UK governments not only progressively cut funding for new council houses, they also slashed money for maintaining existing homes too.

The Right to Buy also helped fuel a housing bubble, which led to the massive house price inflation we have seen over the decades since in all parts of the UK.

When housing was devolved in 1999, one of the new Scottish Parliament’s first actions was to establish a homelessness taskforce, which took forward some important work in improving life for those on the street.

But homelessness is still a problem in Scotland today, with the present Scottish Government setting up a Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group in 2017 and then declaring a housing emergency two years ago.

In short, we are still dealing with the legacy of different housing policies over many decades, which have not been joined up enough.

In my view, Right to Buy was correct, but the social policy and funding for housing have never been robust enough to deal with society’s needs.

Let’s hope this Scottish election is one which, whatever the result, sees a step forward in housing policy that sees enough quality homes being built to give hope to all our communities and those who live in them, wherever they come from.

View the column via The Herald website: Forget slogans and sideshows – Scotland’s election must focus on homes | The Herald