Nigel Farage spoke to the biggest the party's public meeting so far in Scotland, but avoided engaging with the press corps afterwards. In his place, newly defected peer the former Conservative donor was left to responding to queries on claims of discriminatory behaviour and anti-Jewish sentiment linked to Farage.
Welcoming a New Recruit
The leader presented the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor at a sold-out rally of about 700 attendees in a hotel venue near Falkirk. Offord, who served as a Scotland Office minister under the last government and was until recently treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, announced his intention to relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to stand for the party in next May’s Holyrood elections.
Farage said he was “extremely pleased” to welcome the new member. He described the switch as “a brave and historic act”.
Dodging the Press
Farage addressed the rally after a turbulent week which included him delivering a tirade against the BBC for questioning him about an investigation into alleged racist and remarks from his teenage years. However, the leader avoided a planned media briefing after Saturday’s event.
Questioned why his new party’s leader did not make himself available to answer mounting allegations about his past behaviour, the new recruit responded: “That is a question for him to answer.”
Pressed on if he thought an apology was necessary 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.”
Insisting on Fitness
Offord insisted that the leader is “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. During his speech, the leader had reiterated on his remarks about the number of Glasgow schoolchildren who are not native English speakers by asking the rally: “Who authorised the complete transformation of Glasgow's demographics?”
Although the first minister, John Swinney condemned the initial comments as “racist”, and Keir Starmer called them “toxic and divisive”, Offord maintained that Farage was “highlighting a factual issue that people are talking about on the doorstep”.
A Party on the Rise
The event, filled with an energetic and enthused crowd 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.
Although the Scottish National Party remains ahead, Reform UK has made substantial progress recently, achieving a quarter of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. Following Scottish Labour's decline, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place in recent months, with support reaching over a fifth.
Declaring that party membership north of the border had quadrupled in the past year to a running total of 12,000, a senior party official said he believed it could gain up to 20 MSPs in May, which would place Reform in “a very strong position” at Holyrood.
Campaign Rhetoric
A Reform councillor, a local representative for the party, elicited loud cheers as he referred to the leader as “the future PM of the UK”. He instructed the crowd to “prepare for a fight” as we take on the political establishment”, cautioning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.
Although the party has yet to produce a distinct policy platform for Scotland, representatives pledged Reform would “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.
Farage himself expressed his pleasure at the party’s emergence as a force in Scottish politics over the past 12 months, admitting to the audience that in previous years he had been warned he “couldn't fill a small venue”.
Protests Nearby
As the event was taking place, a few miles west in the heart of Falkirk, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters were gathering for a now-regular weekly standoff outside a local hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.
The organisers of the demonstrations stated they were motivated by a serious local crime. Speaking previously, First Minister John Swinney cautioned 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”.
However, he differentiated extremist opinions and people with “legitimate points” about pressure on local services or community safety.
