Nigel Farage addressed the biggest the party's rally held in Scotland to date, however declined to speak with local journalists following the event. Instead, recently switched peer Malcolm Offord was left to responding to queries on allegations of racism and antisemitism linked to Farage.
Welcoming a New Recruit
Farage introduced the ex-Tory lord and wealthy businessman at a packed event of about 700 attendees in a hotel venue in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a Scotland Office minister under the last government and was until recently the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, stated his plan to give up his peerage in order to stand for Reform UK in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.
The leader stated he was “delighted” to welcome Offord to the party. He described the switch as “a brave and historic act”.
Dodging the Press
Farage addressed the rally after a turbulent week which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC for questioning him regarding a report into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour from his teenage years. However, the leader avoided 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, the new recruit responded: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”
Challenged about 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.”
Defending the Leader
Offord insisted that the leader is “morally fit” to be the country's leader 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 posing the question to the crowd: “Who voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”
While the first minister, John Swinney condemned Farage’s original remarks as “discriminatory”, and the Labour leader labeled them “toxic and divisive”, the defector argued that Farage was “highlighting a factual issue that people are talking about on the doorstep”.
A Party on the Rise
The event, attended by an energetic and enthused crowd of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who each paid £6 to attend, showcases the party’s growing confidence ahead of the Scottish vote.
Although the SNP continues to lead in the polls, Reform UK has made substantial progress in the past year, securing 26% of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. Following Scottish Labour's decline, the party has often relegated it to third lately, polling up to 22%.
Declaring that Reform UK membership in Scotland had increased fourfold in the past year to 12,000 members, the party chair, David Bull said he believed it could gain up to 20 MSPs in May, which would place Reform in “a powerful situation” at Holyrood.
Campaign Rhetoric
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 instructed the crowd to “man the barricades as we take on the political establishment”, warning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.
Despite not yet publishing any Scotland-specific policies, representatives vowed the party would “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.
Farage himself expressed his pleasure at Reform's rise as a significant player in the political scene in Scotland over the past 12 months, admitting to the audience that he was once told he “couldn't fill a small venue”.
Local Context
Meanwhile, a few miles west in Falkirk town centre, demonstrators with opposing views assembled for what have become regular weekly confrontations near a hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.
A group coordinating protests said it was galvanised by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. In an interview, Scotland's leader cautioned that “what the far right do is to assign responsibility … to asylum seekers or migrants 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 neighbourhood security.
