Nigel Farage addressed the biggest Reform UK public meeting held in Scotland to date, but avoided engaging with the press corps following the event. In his place, recently switched peer Malcolm Offord took on the task of field questions on allegations of racism and antisemitism linked to Farage.
Welcoming a New Recruit
Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor at a packed event of roughly seven hundred attendees at a hotel conference centre in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a junior minister for Scotland in the previous administration and was until recently treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, stated his plan to give up his peerage in order to stand for the party in next May’s Holyrood elections.
Farage said he was “extremely pleased” to welcome Offord to the party. He described the switch as “a brave and historic act”.
Dodging the Press
The Reform leader spoke to the crowd following a difficult period which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC for questioning him regarding a report into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour as a youth. However, the leader avoided a planned media briefing post-rally.
When asked why Farage 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 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.”
Defending the Leader
The peer maintained that the leader is “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and denied he was employing coded political messaging. While addressing supporters, Farage had doubled down on previous comments about pupils in Glasgow who are not native English speakers by asking the rally: “Who authorised the complete transformation of Glasgow's demographics?”
While the first minister, John Swinney criticised Farage’s original remarks as “racist”, and the Labour leader called them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that Farage was “drawing attention to a real concern” that people are talking about on the doorstep”.
A Party on the Rise
The rally, attended by an energetic and enthused crowd of predominantly older, white male backers who bought tickets for the event, showcases Reform's increasing self-assurance before next May’s elections.
Although the SNP continues to lead in the polls, the party has made substantial progress recently, achieving a quarter 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 in recent months, with support reaching over a fifth.
Announcing that Reform UK membership in Scotland had increased fourfold over the last twelve months 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” in the Scottish Parliament.
Fighting Talk
A Reform councillor, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, elicited loud cheers as he described Farage as “the future PM of the UK”. He told supporters to “man the barricades as we take on the political establishment”, cautioning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.
Despite not yet publishing a distinct policy platform for Scotland, representatives vowed the party would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.
Farage himself underlined his delight at Reform's rise as a significant player in Scottish politics over the past 12 months, admitting to the audience that he was once told he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.
Local Context
Meanwhile, a few miles west in Falkirk town centre, demonstrators with opposing views assembled for a now-regular weekly standoff near a hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.
The organisers of the demonstrations said it was galvanised by a serious local crime. In an interview, Scotland's leader warned that the tactic of the far-right is to assign responsibility … to asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the root of the poison”.
He also made a clear distinction extremist opinions and people with “valid concerns” about pressure on local services or neighbourhood security.
