The Reform UK figurehead addressed the largest Reform UK public meeting so far in Scotland, but avoided engaging with local journalists following the event. Instead, newly defected member of the House of Lords the former Conservative donor was left to responding to queries on allegations of racism and antisemitism linked to the party leader.
A High-Profile Defection
The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor during a sold-out rally of roughly seven hundred supporters in a hotel venue 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 relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to become a candidate for the party in next May’s Holyrood elections.
Farage said he was “extremely pleased” to greet Offord to the party. He described the switch as “a courageous and significant move”.
Dodging the Press
The Reform leader spoke to the crowd following a difficult period which included him delivering a tirade against the BBC for questioning him regarding a report into alleged racist and remarks from his teenage years. But, Farage dodged the expected press huddle post-rally.
Questioned 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.”
Challenged about 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
Offord insisted that Farage was “morally fit” to be the country's leader and rejected claims of dog-whistle politics. While addressing supporters, 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 voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”
Although the first minister, John Swinney condemned Farage’s original remarks as “racist”, and Keir Starmer labeled them “harmful and polarising”, the defector argued that Farage was “drawing attention to a real concern” that “voters are discussing”.
Growing Confidence
The event, filled with an lively and passionate audience of predominantly older, white male backers who each paid £6 to attend, highlights Reform's increasing self-assurance before next May’s elections.
Although the Scottish National Party remains ahead, Reform UK has made substantial progress in the past year, 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, with support reaching over a fifth.
Announcing that Reform UK membership in Scotland had increased fourfold in the past year to 12,000 members, a senior party official said he believed it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, putting the party in “a very strong position” in the Scottish Parliament.
Fighting Talk
A Reform councillor, 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 “prepare for a fight” as we “challenge the ruling class”, cautioning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.
Although the party has yet to produce any Scotland-specific policies, speakers from the north-east vowed the party would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.
Farage himself underlined his delight at Reform's rise as a significant player in the political scene in Scotland in the last year, 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, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters were gathering for a now-regular weekly standoff near a 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, First Minister John Swinney cautioned that “what the far right do is to assign responsibility … to asylum seekers or migrants 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 strain on public services or neighbourhood security.
