Nigel Farage spoke to the largest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, but declined to speak with local journalists afterwards. Instead, recently switched peer Malcolm Offord was left to field questions on allegations of racism and anti-Jewish sentiment surrounding Farage.
A High-Profile Defection
The leader presented the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor during a packed event of roughly seven hundred attendees at a hotel conference centre in central Scotland. The businessman, who worked as a junior minister for Scotland under the last government and was until recently treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, stated his plan to give up his peerage in order to become a candidate for the party in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.
The leader stated he was “delighted” to welcome Offord to the party. He described the switch as “a brave and historic act”.
Dodging the Press
The Reform leader addressed the rally after a turbulent week which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC for questioning him about an investigation into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour as a youth. But, the leader avoided a planned media briefing post-rally.
When asked why his new party’s leader was not available to address growing claims about his past behaviour, Offord said: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”
Challenged about whether he believed an apology was necessary for the comments he is said to have made towards Jewish pupils, 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 dog-whistle politics. During his speech, Farage had doubled down on previous comments about the number of Glasgow schoolchildren who are not native English speakers by asking the rally: “Who authorised the complete transformation of Glasgow's demographics?”
While Scotland's First Minister criticised the initial comments as “racist”, and Keir Starmer called them “toxic and divisive”, Offord maintained that Farage was “highlighting a factual issue that “voters are discussing”.
Growing Confidence
The rally, filled with an lively and passionate audience of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who each paid £6 to attend, showcases the party’s growing confidence before next May’s elections.
While the SNP continues to lead in the polls, the party has gained significant ground 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 in recent months, polling up to 22%.
Announcing that party membership north of the border had increased fourfold in the past year 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 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 “Britain’s next prime minister”. He instructed the crowd to “prepare for a fight” as we “challenge the ruling class”, warning that “the next five months will be tough”.
Although the party has yet to produce any Scotland-specific policies, representatives pledged Reform would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.
The leader personally expressed his pleasure at the party’s emergence as a force in the political scene in Scotland in the last year, admitting to the audience that in previous years he had been warned he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.
Protests Nearby
Meanwhile, not far away in the heart of Falkirk, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters were gathering for a now-regular weekly standoff near a hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.
The organisers of the demonstrations stated they were motivated by a serious local crime. Speaking previously, Scotland's leader cautioned that the tactic of the far-right is to apportion the blame … to asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the source of a harmful narrative”.
However, he differentiated extremist opinions and people with “legitimate points” about strain on public services or neighbourhood security.
