Nigel Farage spoke to the largest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, however avoided engaging with the press corps afterwards. In his place, newly defected member of the House of Lords Malcolm Offord was left to field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism surrounding Farage.
Welcoming a New Recruit
The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor at a sold-out rally of about 700 attendees at a hotel conference centre in central Scotland. The businessman, who worked as a Scotland Office minister in the previous administration and most recently served as the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, announced his intention to relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to stand for Reform UK in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.
The leader stated he was “delighted” to greet Offord to the party. He called the peer’s defection as “a brave and historic act”.
Dodging the Press
Farage addressed the rally after a turbulent week which included him delivering a fierce criticism of the broadcaster for questioning him regarding a report into alleged racist and remarks from his teenage years. But, Farage dodged a planned media briefing post-rally.
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 Farage should apologise 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.”
Insisting on Fitness
The peer maintained that Farage was “ethically suitable” 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 speak English as a second language by asking the rally: “Who voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”
While the first minister, John Swinney condemned Farage’s original remarks as “racist”, and Keir Starmer called them “toxic and divisive”, Offord maintained that Farage was “highlighting a factual issue that “voters are discussing”.
A Party on the Rise
The rally, attended by an energetic and enthused crowd of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who bought tickets for the event, highlights the party’s growing confidence ahead of the Scottish vote.
While the SNP continues to lead in the polls, the party has made substantial progress in the past year, securing 26% of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. 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 in the past year to 12,000 members, a senior party official stated his belief it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, putting the party in “a very strong position” in the Scottish Parliament.
Fighting Talk
Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, elicited loud cheers as he described Farage as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He instructed the crowd to “man the barricades as we “challenge the ruling class”, warning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.
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”.
The leader personally expressed his pleasure at Reform's rise as a significant player in Scottish politics over the past 12 months, confessing to supporters that in previous years he had been warned he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.
Local Context
As the event was taking place, a few miles west in the heart of Falkirk, demonstrators with opposing views were gathering for what have become regular weekly confrontations outside a local hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.
The organisers of the demonstrations said it was galvanised by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. In an interview, Scotland's leader cautioned that the tactic of the far-right is to apportion the blame … 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 “legitimate points” about pressure on local services or community safety.
