Nigel Farage addressed the biggest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, but declined to speak with the press corps afterwards. In his place, recently switched member of the House of Lords Malcolm Offord took on the task of responding to queries on claims of discriminatory behaviour and anti-Jewish sentiment surrounding Farage.
A High-Profile Defection
The leader presented the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor during a packed event of about 700 attendees in a hotel venue in central Scotland. The businessman, who worked as a Scotland Office minister under the last government and most recently served as 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.
The leader stated he was “extremely pleased” to greet Offord to the party. He described the switch as “a brave and historic act”.
Dodging the Press
The Reform leader addressed the rally following a difficult period which saw him launch a fierce criticism of the broadcaster for questioning him about an investigation into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour from his teenage years. However, Farage dodged the expected press huddle after Saturday’s event.
Questioned 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.”
Pressed on whether he believed Farage should apologise for his alleged remarks 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 “ethically suitable” to be the country's leader and denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. During his speech, Farage had doubled down on his remarks about the number of Glasgow schoolchildren 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 criticised the initial comments as “discriminatory”, and the Labour leader called them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that his new leader was “drawing attention to a real concern” that people are talking about on the doorstep”.
Growing Confidence
The rally, 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 before next May’s elections.
While the SNP continues to lead in the polls, Reform UK 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, polling up to 22%.
Announcing that party membership north of the border 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, which would place Reform in “a very strong position” at Holyrood.
Fighting Talk
A Reform councillor, a local representative for the party, 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”, cautioning that “the next five months will be tough”.
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, confessing to supporters that in previous years he had been warned he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.
Protests Nearby
Meanwhile, a few miles west in Falkirk town centre, demonstrators with opposing views were gathering 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, First Minister John Swinney warned that the tactic of the far-right is to apportion the blame … 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 community safety.
