The Reform UK figurehead addressed the largest Reform UK rally so far in Scotland, but declined to speak with the press corps afterwards. Instead, newly defected peer the former Conservative donor was left to field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism surrounding Farage.
A High-Profile Defection
Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and wealthy businessman during a packed event of about 700 supporters at a hotel conference centre near Falkirk. The businessman, who worked as a junior minister for Scotland in the previous administration and was until recently the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, stated his plan to give up his peerage in order to become a candidate 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 saw him launch a fierce criticism of the broadcaster after they quizzed him regarding a report into alleged racist and antisemitic behaviour as a youth. But, Farage dodged a planned media briefing after Saturday’s event.
When asked why his new party’s leader did not make himself available to answer mounting allegations about his past behaviour, Offord said: “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 about Jewish students, he stated: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”
Defending the Leader
Offord insisted that Farage was “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and rejected claims of coded political messaging. During his speech, Farage had doubled down on his remarks about the number of Glasgow schoolchildren who speak English as a second language by posing the question to the crowd: “Who authorised the complete transformation of Glasgow's demographics?”
While the first minister, John Swinney criticised the initial comments as “racist”, and Keir Starmer called them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that his new leader was “drawing attention to a real concern” that “voters are discussing”.
A Party on the Rise
The rally, attended by an lively and passionate audience of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who bought tickets for the event, highlights the party’s growing confidence before next May’s elections.
Although the SNP continues to lead in the polls, Reform UK has made substantial progress 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, polling up to 22%.
Announcing that Reform UK membership in Scotland had quadrupled 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, putting the party in “a powerful situation” in the Scottish Parliament.
Fighting Talk
A Reform councillor, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, prompted a roar of approval as he described Farage as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He instructed the crowd to “man the barricades as we take on the political establishment”, cautioning that “the next five months will be tough”.
Despite not yet publishing a distinct policy platform for Scotland, speakers from the north-east pledged Reform 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 in the last year, confessing to supporters that in previous years he had been warned he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.
Protests Nearby
Meanwhile, not far away in the heart of Falkirk, demonstrators with opposing views assembled for a now-regular weekly standoff outside a local hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.
A group coordinating protests 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 assign responsibility … to new arrivals and I think that is the source of a harmful narrative”.
He also made a clear distinction extremist opinions and people with “valid concerns” about pressure on local services or neighbourhood security.
