Mairi McAllan, the SNP government’s Housing Minister, Nicola Sturgeon protege, and leader in waiting (according to the gossip), has been lambasted for claiming that Scotland has ‘too few migrants’. McAllan said on the BBC’s The Sunday Show this week that migration was ‘good and necessary for the economy’. In doing so, she sidestepped the self-evident truth that the 4,000 or so asylum seekers who live in Glasgow – the highest figure for any local authority in the UK – are not making a particularly great contribution to the economy. She also brushed over other problematic issues, such as integration, but that’s par for the course with the Scot Nats.
Deaths have outnumbered births in Scotland for over a decade
Yet, though it pains me to say it, McAllan has a point on this one. Whether Scots like it or not, immigration is probably necessary due to the country’s dismally low birth rate. There were just 45,000 live births in Scotland in 2024, which is the lowest figure since 1855 (!). The fertility rate is now 1.25, just under the EU average of 1.34, below the UK rate of around 1.5, and significantly lower than the 2.1 replacement level. The trend in Scotland has been downward since 1965. Deaths have outnumbered births since 2015.
There are probably two reasons why this is not a bigger story. The first is Japan, the poster child for the horror movie that is population decline. In a famous 2022 tweet, Elon Musk predicted the extinction of the Japanese people if current demographic trends continued (they have), lamenting what a loss to the world that would be. The focus on Japan has distracted people from acknowledging that this is a general problem in the developed world and a particularly serious one in Scotland.
The second reason is immigration, which has allowed the UK’s population to swell and masked the fact that the natives are simply not reproducing. Scotland’s population has actually grown in the last 25 years and reached a record high of 5.5 million in 2024. Projections are for this to continue until the mid-2030s before declining. But this gives a wholly artificial impression of societal well-being. The reason for much of this increase is immigration.
Scotland’s low birth rate cannot be entirely blamed on the SNP, of course, and the party has made the odd gesture towards encouraging people to procreate. In fact, one of the few bright spots of the Nationalist’s long reign has been the ‘baby boxes’ presented to mothers, which contain all manner of useful items. It was hardly a dealbreaker for those contemplating starting a family, but it was at least a positive endorsement of motherhood. It sent a message, of sorts.
Apart from that tiny gesture, in all other respects, the SNP has done little to promote marriage or encourage couples to have bigger families. The SNP’s priorities have never been the married family; their energies have always been focused elsewhere: on single-parent families, female empowerment, and minority rights. Arguably, they have sought to undermine the family with their notorious ‘named person’ scheme (a non-family government contact for each child, which was never implemented) and controversial curriculum for excellence with its ‘progressive’ (some would say explicit) subject matter, which unfortunately was implemented.
The SNP also boasts of their ‘feminist foreign policy’ which is helping to spread the message of female empowerment to the backward people of heathen lands. Their buffer zone policy treats critics of abortion as literal thought criminals.
The problem for Scotland is that none of the other main parties are facing up to the underlying demographic nightmare the country is facing, either. Reform might argue for a net-zero immigration policy for the UK, but that would be problematic so long as the birth rate remains so low, and especially in Scotland, where the rate of over-65s is higher than the rest of the UK. Only the small Scottish Family Party have dealt with this issue at all.
Government can’t force people to have large families, and pro-natalist policies have a poor success rate (Japan has tried just about everything). But ignoring the problem entirely doesn’t help anyone.
Comments