The Reform UK figurehead spoke to the largest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, however avoided engaging with the press corps afterwards. In his place, newly defected peer the former Conservative donor was left to field questions on allegations of racism and anti-Jewish sentiment surrounding Farage.
Welcoming a New Recruit
Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor at a sold-out rally of roughly seven hundred attendees at a hotel conference centre near Falkirk. 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 relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to become a candidate for the party in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.
The leader stated he was “extremely pleased” to welcome the new member. He described the switch as “a courageous and significant move”.
Dodging the Press
The Reform leader addressed the rally after a turbulent week which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC for questioning him about an investigation into alleged racist and antisemitic behaviour as a youth. But, the leader avoided the expected press huddle post-rally.
Questioned why his new party’s leader did not make himself available to address growing claims about his past behaviour, Offord said: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”
Challenged about if he thought Farage should apologise for his alleged remarks 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 “morally fit” to be the country's leader and denied he was employing coded political messaging. During his speech, the leader had reiterated 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 “toxic and divisive”, the defector argued that Farage 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 energetic and enthused crowd of predominantly older, white male backers who each paid £6 to attend, showcases Reform's increasing self-assurance before next May’s elections.
Although the SNP continues to lead in the polls, the party has gained significant ground in the past year, achieving a quarter of the vote in a recent parliamentary by-election. After the collapse in support for Scottish Labour, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place in recent months, polling up to 22%.
Announcing that party membership north of the border had quadrupled in the past year to 12,000 members, a senior party official stated his belief it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, which would place Reform in “a powerful situation” at Holyrood.
Fighting Talk
Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, prompted a roar of approval as he referred to the leader as “the future PM of the UK”. He told supporters to “man the barricades as we “challenge the ruling class”, cautioning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.
Although the party has yet to produce any Scotland-specific policies, representatives pledged Reform would “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.
Farage himself expressed his pleasure at the party’s emergence as a force in the political scene in Scotland over the past 12 months, confessing to supporters that in previous years he had been warned he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.
Local Context
Meanwhile, a few miles west 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 serious local crime. 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 root of the poison”.
He also made a clear distinction between those who hold far-right views and people with “legitimate points” about pressure on local services or neighbourhood security.
