Nigel Farage spoke to the biggest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, however declined to speak with the press corps following the event. In his place, recently switched peer the former Conservative donor took on the task of field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and anti-Jewish sentiment linked to the party leader.
Welcoming a New Recruit
The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor during a packed event of about 700 attendees at a hotel conference centre in central Scotland. The businessman, who worked as a Scotland Office minister in the previous administration and most recently served as 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 greet Offord to the party. He called the peer’s defection as “a courageous and significant move”.
Avoiding Media Scrutiny
The Reform leader addressed the rally after a turbulent week which included him delivering a tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him about an investigation into alleged racist and remarks from his teenage years. But, Farage dodged the expected press huddle post-rally.
Questioned why his new party’s leader did not make himself available to answer mounting allegations about his past behaviour, the new recruit responded: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”
Pressed on if he thought an apology was necessary for the comments he is said to have made towards Jewish pupils, he stated: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”
Insisting on Fitness
The peer maintained that Farage was “morally fit” to be the country's leader and denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. 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 authorised the complete transformation of Glasgow's demographics?”
Although Scotland's First Minister condemned the initial comments as “racist”, and Keir Starmer called them “toxic and divisive”, Offord maintained that his new leader was “drawing attention to a real concern” that people are talking about on the doorstep”.
A Party on the Rise
The event, filled with an lively and passionate audience of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who each paid £6 to attend, highlights the party’s growing confidence ahead of the Scottish vote.
Although the SNP continues to lead in the polls, the party has gained significant ground recently, securing 26% of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. Following Scottish Labour's decline, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place lately, with support reaching over a fifth.
Declaring that Reform UK membership in Scotland had quadrupled over the last twelve months to a running total of 12,000, a senior party official said he believed it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, putting the party in “a powerful situation” at Holyrood.
Campaign Rhetoric
Thomas Kerr, a local representative for the party, elicited loud cheers as he described Farage as “the future PM of the UK”. He told supporters to “man the barricades as we “challenge the ruling class”, cautioning that “the next five months will be tough”.
Despite not yet publishing any Scotland-specific policies, representatives pledged Reform would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.
Farage himself underlined his delight at the party’s emergence as a force in Scottish politics in the last year, 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, demonstrators with opposing views were gathering for what have become regular weekly confrontations outside a local hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.
The organisers of the demonstrations stated they were motivated by a serious local crime. Speaking previously, 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 source of a harmful narrative”.
He also made a clear distinction between those who hold far-right views and people with “valid concerns” about pressure on local services or community safety.
