The Reform UK figurehead addressed the largest Reform UK public meeting held in Scotland to date, however avoided engaging with local journalists following the event. In his place, recently switched member of the House of Lords the former Conservative donor took on the task of field questions on allegations of racism and antisemitism linked to the party leader.
Welcoming a New Recruit
Farage introduced the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor during a packed event of roughly seven hundred 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 give up his peerage 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”.
Avoiding Media Scrutiny
Farage addressed the rally following a difficult period which included him delivering a fierce criticism of the broadcaster after they quizzed him regarding a report into claimed discriminatory and remarks from his teenage years. However, Farage dodged a planned media briefing post-rally.
Questioned why his new party’s leader did not make himself available to answer mounting allegations concerning his history, Offord said: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”
Pressed on whether he believed 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.”
Defending the Leader
Offord insisted that the leader is “morally fit” to be prime minister 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?”
While the first minister, John Swinney condemned the initial comments as “discriminatory”, and the Labour leader labeled them “harmful and polarising”, the defector argued that his new leader was “highlighting a factual issue that people are talking about on the doorstep”.
A Party on the Rise
The rally, filled with an lively and passionate audience of predominantly older, white male backers who bought tickets for the event, showcases Reform's increasing self-assurance ahead of the Scottish vote.
Although the SNP continues to lead in the polls, Reform UK has made substantial progress in the past year, achieving a quarter of the vote in a recent parliamentary by-election. After the collapse in support for Scottish Labour, the party has often relegated it to third lately, polling up to 22%.
Declaring that Reform UK membership in Scotland had increased fourfold in the past year to a running total of 12,000, the party chair, David Bull stated his belief it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, which would place Reform in “a powerful situation” at Holyrood.
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 take on the political establishment”, cautioning 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 the party’s emergence as a force in the political scene in Scotland 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”.
Protests Nearby
As the event was taking place, a few miles west in Falkirk town centre, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters assembled for a now-regular weekly standoff outside a local hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.
The organisers of the demonstrations said it was galvanised by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. Speaking previously, Scotland's leader warned that the tactic of the far-right is to assign responsibility … to new arrivals and I think that is the source of a harmful narrative”.
He also made a clear distinction between those who hold far-right views and people with “legitimate points” about strain on public services or neighbourhood security.
