Nigel Farage spoke to the largest Reform UK rally so far in Scotland, but declined to speak with local journalists following the event. In his place, newly defected member of the House of Lords Malcolm Offord took on the task of responding to queries on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism linked to Farage.
A High-Profile Defection
The leader presented the former Conservative peer and wealthy businessman at a sold-out rally of about 700 attendees in a hotel venue in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a junior minister for Scotland under the last government and most recently served as treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, announced his intention 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 “extremely pleased” to welcome the new member. He called the peer’s defection as “a brave and historic act”.
Dodging the Press
Farage addressed the rally after a turbulent week which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him about an investigation into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour as a youth. However, the leader avoided the expected press huddle after Saturday’s event.
When asked why his new party’s leader did not make himself available to address growing claims concerning his history, Offord said: “That is a question for him to answer.”
Challenged about whether he believed Farage should apologise for his alleged remarks about Jewish students, Offord said: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”
Insisting on Fitness
Offord insisted that the leader is “morally fit” to be prime minister and denied he was employing coded political messaging. During his speech, the leader had reiterated on previous comments about pupils in Glasgow who are not native English speakers by posing the question to the crowd: “Who voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”
While the first minister, John Swinney condemned Farage’s original remarks as “discriminatory”, and the Labour leader labeled them “toxic and divisive”, Offord maintained that Farage was “drawing attention to a real concern” that people are talking about on the doorstep”.
A Party on the Rise
The event, attended by an energetic and enthused crowd of predominantly older, white male backers who bought tickets for the event, highlights the party’s growing confidence before next May’s elections.
Although the Scottish National Party remains ahead, Reform UK has made substantial progress recently, 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, polling up to 22%.
Declaring that Reform UK membership in Scotland had increased fourfold over the last twelve months 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 told supporters to “man the barricades as we take on the political establishment”, warning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.
Although the party has yet to produce any Scotland-specific policies, speakers from the north-east pledged Reform would “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.
The leader personally underlined his delight at the party’s emergence as a force in the political scene in Scotland over the past 12 months, admitting to the audience 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 Falkirk town centre, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters were gathering for what have become regular weekly confrontations near a hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.
A group coordinating protests stated they were motivated by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. In an interview, Scotland's leader warned that the tactic of the far-right is to assign responsibility … to asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the root of the poison”.
He also made a clear distinction between those who hold far-right views and people with “valid concerns” about pressure on local services or community safety.
