🔗 Share this article

The Reform UK figurehead spoke to the biggest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, but avoided engaging with the press corps following the event. In his place, recently switched peer Malcolm Offord was left to field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and anti-Jewish sentiment linked to the party leader.

Welcoming a New Recruit

Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor at a sold-out rally of roughly seven hundred attendees in a hotel venue near Falkirk. Offord, who served as a junior minister for Scotland under the last government and most recently served as treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, stated his plan to give up his peerage in order to stand for Reform UK in next May’s Holyrood elections.

Farage said he was “delighted” to greet the new member. He called the peer’s defection as “a brave and historic act”.

Dodging the Press

The Reform leader spoke to the crowd after a turbulent week which included him delivering a fierce criticism of the broadcaster for questioning him about an investigation into alleged racist and remarks from his teenage years. But, Farage dodged the expected press huddle post-rally.

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

Challenged about 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.”

Insisting on Fitness

Offord insisted that Farage was “morally fit” to be prime minister and denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. While addressing supporters, the leader had reiterated on his remarks about the number of Glasgow schoolchildren who are not native English speakers by asking the rally: “Who voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”

While the first minister, John Swinney condemned the initial comments as “racist”, and Keir Starmer labeled 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 rally, attended by an lively and passionate audience of predominantly older, white male backers who bought tickets for the event, highlights Reform's increasing self-assurance ahead of the Scottish vote.

While the SNP continues to lead in the polls, Reform UK has made substantial progress recently, achieving a quarter of the vote in a recent parliamentary by-election. Following Scottish Labour's decline, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place in recent months, polling up to 22%.

Announcing that Reform UK membership in Scotland had increased fourfold over the last twelve months to 12,000 members, a senior party official said he believed it could gain up to 20 MSPs in May, which would place Reform in “a powerful situation” at Holyrood.

Fighting Talk

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 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 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, not far away in the heart of Falkirk, 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 stated they were motivated by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. Speaking previously, Scotland's leader warned that the tactic of the far-right is to apportion the blame … to asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the source of a harmful narrative”.

However, he differentiated extremist opinions and people with “legitimate points” about strain on public services or community safety.