The Reform UK figurehead addressed the largest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, however avoided engaging with the press corps afterwards. Instead, newly defected peer Malcolm Offord took on the task of responding to queries on claims of discriminatory behaviour and anti-Jewish sentiment linked to the party leader.
Welcoming a New Recruit
Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and wealthy businessman during a sold-out rally of about 700 attendees at a hotel conference centre in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a Scotland Office minister under the last government 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 Reform UK in next May’s Holyrood elections.
Farage said he was “delighted” to welcome Offord to the party. He called the peer’s defection as “a courageous and significant move”.
Dodging the Press
The Reform leader spoke to the crowd following a difficult period which saw him launch a fierce criticism of the broadcaster for questioning him regarding a report into claimed discriminatory and remarks as a youth. But, Farage dodged the expected press huddle post-rally.
When asked why his new party’s leader was not available to address growing claims concerning his history, the new recruit responded: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”
Challenged about if he thought an apology was necessary for the comments he is said to have made about Jewish students, he stated: “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 pupils in Glasgow who are not native English speakers by asking the rally: “Who voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”
While Scotland's First Minister condemned the initial comments as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer called them “harmful and polarising”, the defector argued that his new leader was “highlighting a factual issue that “voters are discussing”.
Growing Confidence
The event, attended by 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.
While the Scottish National Party remains ahead, the party has made substantial progress 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 in recent months, polling up to 22%.
Declaring that Reform UK membership in Scotland had quadrupled in the past year to 12,000 members, the party chair, David Bull stated his belief it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, putting the party in “a powerful situation” in the Scottish Parliament.
Campaign Rhetoric
A Reform councillor, a local representative for the party, prompted a roar of approval as he described Farage as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He instructed the crowd to “man the barricades as we take on the political establishment”, warning that “the next five months will be tough”.
Although the party has yet to produce any Scotland-specific policies, representatives vowed the party would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.
Farage himself underlined his delight at the party’s emergence as a force in Scottish politics 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”.
Local Context
Meanwhile, not far away in Falkirk town centre, demonstrators with opposing views assembled 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 criminal case involving an asylum seeker. Speaking previously, First Minister John Swinney 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 extremist opinions and people with “valid concerns” about pressure on local services or neighbourhood security.
