🔗 Share this article

The Reform UK figurehead addressed the largest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, but declined to speak with local journalists afterwards. Instead, recently switched member of the House of Lords Malcolm Offord was left to field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism surrounding the party leader.

Welcoming a New Recruit

Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and wealthy businessman during a packed event of roughly seven hundred supporters in a hotel venue in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a junior minister for Scotland in the previous administration and was until recently the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, stated his plan to give up his peerage in order to become a candidate for the party 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”.

Avoiding Media Scrutiny

The Reform leader spoke to the crowd after a turbulent week which saw him launch a fierce criticism of the broadcaster after they quizzed him regarding a report into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour as a youth. But, the leader avoided a planned media briefing post-rally.

Questioned why his new party’s leader was not available to answer mounting allegations about his past behaviour, Offord said: “That is a question for him to answer.”

Challenged about if he thought Farage should apologise for his alleged remarks about Jewish students, he stated: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”

Insisting on Fitness

Offord insisted that Farage was “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and rejected claims of coded political messaging. During his speech, Farage had doubled down on previous comments about pupils in Glasgow who speak English as a second language by asking the rally: “Who voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”

Although Scotland's First Minister criticised the initial comments as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer labeled them “toxic and divisive”, Offord maintained that his new leader was “drawing attention to a real concern” that “voters are discussing”.

Growing Confidence

The rally, filled with an lively and passionate audience of predominantly older, white male backers who each paid £6 to attend, highlights the party’s growing confidence before next May’s elections.

While the Scottish National Party remains ahead, the party has made substantial progress recently, securing 26% of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. 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 party membership north of the border had increased fourfold in the past year to 12,000 members, the party chair, David Bull said he believed it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, which would place Reform in “a powerful situation” at Holyrood.

Campaign Rhetoric

Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, 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 “challenge the ruling class”, 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 “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.

Farage himself expressed his pleasure at the party’s emergence as a force in Scottish politics in the last year, confessing to supporters 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, not far away in the heart of Falkirk, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters were gathering for what have become regular weekly confrontations near a hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.

A group coordinating protests stated they were motivated by a serious local crime. Speaking previously, First Minister John Swinney warned that “what the far right do is to apportion the blame … to asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the root of the poison”.

However, he differentiated extremist opinions and people with “valid concerns” about strain on public services or neighbourhood security.