Nigel Farage spoke to the biggest Reform UK rally so far in Scotland, however declined to speak with the press corps following the event. Instead, newly defected member of the House of Lords the former Conservative donor was left to field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism linked to the party leader.
Welcoming a New Recruit
The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and wealthy businessman during a sold-out rally of about 700 attendees at a hotel conference centre in central Scotland. The businessman, who worked as a junior minister for Scotland in the previous administration and was until recently the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, stated his plan to give up his peerage in order to stand for Reform UK in next May’s Holyrood elections.
The leader stated he was “extremely pleased” to greet Offord to the party. He called the peer’s defection as “a brave and historic act”.
Dodging the Press
The Reform leader addressed the rally following a difficult period which saw him launch a fierce criticism of the broadcaster after they quizzed him about an investigation into alleged racist and remarks from his teenage years. However, the leader avoided a planned media briefing after Saturday’s event.
When asked why his new party’s leader was not available to address growing claims concerning his history, Offord said: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”
Pressed on if he thought an apology was necessary for the comments he is said to have made about Jewish students, Offord said: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”
Defending the Leader
Offord insisted that the leader is “morally fit” to be the country's leader and denied he was employing coded political messaging. During his speech, Farage had doubled down on his remarks about the number of Glasgow schoolchildren who speak English as a second language by posing the question to the crowd: “Who authorised the complete transformation of Glasgow's demographics?”
Although the first minister, John Swinney criticised the initial comments as “racist”, and the Labour leader labeled them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that his new leader was “drawing attention to a real concern” that “voters are discussing”.
Growing Confidence
The rally, filled with an lively and passionate audience of predominantly older, white male backers who each paid £6 to attend, highlights the party’s growing confidence before next May’s elections.
Although the Scottish National Party remains ahead, the party has gained significant ground in the past year, achieving a quarter of the vote in a recent parliamentary by-election. After the collapse in support for Scottish Labour, the party has often relegated it to third lately, polling up to 22%.
Announcing that party membership north of the border had quadrupled in the past year to 12,000 members, the party chair, David Bull said he believed it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, putting the party in “a very strong position” in the Scottish Parliament.
Campaign Rhetoric
Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, prompted a roar of approval as he described Farage as “the future PM of the UK”. He instructed the crowd to “man the barricades as we take on the political establishment”, warning that “the next five months will be tough”.
Although the party has yet to produce any Scotland-specific policies, representatives vowed the party would “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.
Farage himself underlined his delight at Reform's rise as a significant player in the political scene in Scotland over the past 12 months, admitting to the audience that he was once told he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.
Local Context
Meanwhile, not far away in Falkirk town centre, demonstrators with opposing views were gathering for a now-regular weekly standoff outside a local hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.
The organisers of the demonstrations said it was galvanised by a serious local crime. In an interview, First Minister John Swinney cautioned that “what the far right do is to assign responsibility … to new arrivals and I think that is the source of a harmful narrative”.
However, he differentiated between those who hold far-right views and people with “valid concerns” about pressure on local services or neighbourhood security.
