Nigel Farage spoke to the largest Reform UK public meeting so far in Scotland, but avoided engaging with local journalists afterwards. Instead, newly defected member of the House of Lords Malcolm Offord was left to responding to queries on claims of discriminatory behaviour and anti-Jewish sentiment linked to the party leader.
Welcoming a New Recruit
The leader presented the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor at a sold-out rally of roughly seven hundred attendees at a hotel conference centre in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a Scotland Office minister under the last government and most recently served as the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, stated his plan to relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to become a candidate for the party in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.
The leader stated he was “extremely pleased” to greet Offord to the party. He called the peer’s defection as “a courageous and significant move”.
Dodging the Press
Farage spoke to the crowd after a turbulent week which included him delivering a tirade against the BBC for questioning him regarding a report into alleged racist and remarks from his teenage years. However, the leader avoided the expected press huddle post-rally.
Questioned why Farage did not make himself available to address growing claims about his past behaviour, 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: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”
Insisting on Fitness
Offord insisted that Farage was “morally fit” to be prime minister and rejected claims of coded political messaging. During his speech, Farage had doubled down on previous comments about pupils in Glasgow who are not native English speakers by posing the question to the crowd: “Who voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”
While Scotland's First Minister condemned Farage’s original remarks as “racist”, and the Labour leader called them “toxic and divisive”, the defector argued that his new leader was “highlighting a factual issue that “voters are discussing”.
Growing Confidence
The event, filled with an energetic and enthused crowd of predominantly older, white male backers who each paid £6 to attend, highlights Reform's increasing self-assurance before next May’s elections.
While the Scottish National Party remains ahead, Reform UK has made substantial progress recently, achieving a quarter of the vote in a recent parliamentary by-election. Following Scottish Labour's decline, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place lately, with support reaching over a fifth.
Declaring that party membership north of the border had quadrupled over the last twelve months to a running total of 12,000, the party chair, David Bull stated his belief it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, putting the party in “a powerful situation” at Holyrood.
Campaign Rhetoric
Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, prompted a roar of approval as he referred to the leader as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He instructed the crowd to “man the barricades as we “challenge the ruling class”, warning that “the next five months will be tough”.
Despite not yet publishing any Scotland-specific policies, speakers from the north-east pledged Reform would “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.
The leader personally expressed his pleasure at the party’s emergence as a force in Scottish politics in the last year, admitting to the audience that he was once told he “couldn't fill a small venue”.
Local Context
Meanwhile, not far away in the heart of Falkirk, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters assembled for what have become regular weekly confrontations near a hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.
A group coordinating protests stated they were motivated by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. Speaking previously, First Minister John Swinney warned that the tactic of the far-right is to assign responsibility … to asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the root of the poison”.
He also made a clear distinction between those who hold far-right views and people with “legitimate points” about pressure on local services or neighbourhood security.
