SCOTTISH First Minister John Swinney admitted yesterday he is fearful of what lies ahead as he warned that a Nigel Farage premiership is a very real possibility.

The SNP leader made the comment after Reform UK gained more than 600 council seats and control of 10 authorities in Thursday’s English local government elections, in results that the right-wing party’s newly elected MP for Runcorn & Helsby Sarah Pochin claimed demonstrated “faith in Nigel Farage as the next prime minister.”

Mr Swinney said: “I think it is very real possibility that that could happen. It makes me very fearful of what lies ahead.”

Branding the results a “demonstration of the absolutely spectacular failure of the Labour and Conservative parties in their handling of Farage,” he took aim at both parties, arguing they had “spent years cosying up to the Farage agenda — and they have now come a cropper.”

“I have made clear the only way to deal with Farage is to confront him — which is what we will do in Scotland — and to take a different approach,” he said.

Turning to the Scottish Tories, who polls predict will lose a swathe of seats to Reform at next year’s Holyrood elections, Mr Swinney said: “I listened to some of the things the Conservative Party is now saying in Scotland and I am deeply disturbed by what they are saying.”

Arguing it made him “more resolute to assert and promote the decent values of Scotland,” he added: “They are trying to cosy up to Farage, they are trying to avoid haemorrhaging to Farage in the way the Conservatives have just haemorrhaged to Farage south of the border.”

A Scottish Conservative spokesperson said: “John Swinney is talking up Reform because he knows it’s a gift to his party.”