Nigel Farage addressed the largest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, but avoided engaging with the press corps afterwards. Instead, recently switched peer Malcolm Offord took on the task of field questions on allegations of racism and antisemitism surrounding the party leader.
A High-Profile Defection
Farage introduced the ex-Tory lord and wealthy businessman at a packed event of roughly seven hundred supporters at a hotel conference centre near Falkirk. The businessman, who worked as a Scotland Office minister in the previous administration and most recently served as treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, announced his intention to relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to stand for Reform UK in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.
Farage said he was “extremely pleased” to welcome Offord to the party. He described the switch as “a brave and historic act”.
Dodging the Press
The Reform leader spoke to the crowd after a turbulent week which saw him launch 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 after Saturday’s event.
Questioned why Farage did not make himself available to answer mounting allegations concerning his history, the new recruit responded: “That is a question for him to answer.”
Challenged about whether he believed an apology was necessary for the comments he is said to have made towards Jewish pupils, Offord said: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”
Insisting on Fitness
The peer maintained that the leader is “morally fit” to be prime minister and denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. During his speech, Farage had doubled down on his remarks about pupils in Glasgow who speak English as a second language by asking the rally: “Who authorised the complete transformation of Glasgow's demographics?”
While Scotland's First Minister condemned Farage’s original remarks as “racist”, and Keir Starmer called them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that his new leader was “highlighting a factual issue that people are talking about on the doorstep”.
Growing Confidence
The event, filled with an lively and passionate audience of predominantly older, white male backers who bought tickets for the event, highlights Reform's increasing self-assurance ahead of the Scottish vote.
While the SNP continues to lead in the polls, Reform UK has gained significant ground recently, achieving a quarter of the vote in a recent parliamentary by-election. After the collapse in support for Scottish Labour, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place lately, with support reaching over a fifth.
Declaring that Reform UK membership in Scotland 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 powerful situation” in the Scottish Parliament.
Fighting Talk
Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, elicited loud cheers as he referred to the leader as “the future PM of the UK”. He instructed the crowd to “man the barricades 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, speakers from the north-east 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 in the last year, confessing to supporters that in previous years he had been warned he “couldn't fill a small venue”.
Protests Nearby
As the event was taking place, a few miles west in Falkirk town centre, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters were gathering for what have become regular weekly confrontations 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 warned that “what the far right do is to assign responsibility … to asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the root of the poison”.
However, he differentiated extremist opinions and people with “legitimate points” about pressure on local services or community safety.
