The Reform UK figurehead addressed the biggest Reform UK rally so far in Scotland, however avoided engaging with local journalists afterwards. Instead, recently switched peer the former Conservative donor took on the task of field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism linked to the party leader.
A High-Profile Defection
Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and wealthy businessman during a packed event of roughly seven hundred supporters at a hotel conference centre near Falkirk. Offord, who served as a junior minister for Scotland in the previous administration and was until recently treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, announced his intention to give up his peerage in order to become a candidate for the party in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.
Farage said he was “delighted” to welcome the new member. 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 tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him about an investigation into alleged racist and remarks from his teenage years. But, Farage dodged a planned media briefing after Saturday’s event.
When asked why his new party’s leader was not available to address growing claims about his past behaviour, Offord said: “That is a question for him to answer.”
Pressed on if he thought an apology was necessary for his alleged remarks about Jewish students, Offord said: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”
Insisting on Fitness
Offord insisted that the leader is “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and denied he was employing coded political messaging. During his speech, Farage had doubled down 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?”
Although Scotland's First Minister condemned Farage’s original remarks as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer called them “harmful and polarising”, the defector argued that his new leader was “drawing attention to a real concern” that “voters are discussing”.
A Party on the Rise
The rally, filled with an lively and passionate audience of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who each paid £6 to attend, highlights Reform's increasing self-assurance ahead of the Scottish vote.
While the Scottish National Party remains ahead, Reform UK has made substantial progress recently, securing 26% 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, with support reaching over a fifth.
Announcing that party membership north of the border had quadrupled in the past year to a running total of 12,000, the party chair, David Bull said he believed it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, putting the party in “a very strong position” at Holyrood.
Campaign Rhetoric
A Reform councillor, a local representative for the party, prompted a roar of approval as he referred to the leader 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, speakers from the north-east vowed the party would “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.
Farage himself underlined his delight at the party’s emergence as a force in the political scene in Scotland in the last year, confessing to supporters that he was once told he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.
Protests Nearby
Meanwhile, a few miles west in the heart of Falkirk, demonstrators with opposing views were gathering for a now-regular weekly standoff outside a local hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.
A group coordinating protests said it was galvanised by a serious local crime. In an interview, First Minister John Swinney warned that the tactic of the far-right is to apportion the blame … to new arrivals and I think that is the root of the poison”.
However, he differentiated extremist opinions and people with “legitimate points” about strain on public services or neighbourhood security.
