The Reform UK figurehead addressed the biggest Reform UK public meeting held in Scotland to date, however avoided engaging with the press corps afterwards. Instead, recently switched peer the former Conservative donor was left to field questions on allegations of racism and antisemitism linked to Farage.
Welcoming a New Recruit
Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and wealthy businessman during a packed event of roughly seven hundred attendees in a hotel venue in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a Scotland Office minister in the previous administration and was until recently the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, announced his intention to relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to stand 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 courageous and significant move”.
Dodging the Press
The Reform leader spoke to the crowd after a turbulent week which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him about an investigation into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour from his teenage years. But, Farage dodged the expected press huddle post-rally.
Questioned why his new party’s leader was not available to address growing claims about his past behaviour, Offord said: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”
Pressed on whether he believed an apology was necessary for his alleged remarks about Jewish students, he stated: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”
Defending the Leader
The peer maintained that the leader is “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and rejected claims of dog-whistle politics. While addressing supporters, the leader had reiterated 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 the first minister, John Swinney criticised Farage’s original remarks as “racist”, and Keir Starmer called them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that Farage was “drawing attention to a real concern” that “voters are discussing”.
Growing Confidence
The event, filled with an energetic and enthused crowd 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 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 lately, polling up to 22%.
Announcing that party membership north of the border 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, which would place Reform in “a very strong position” at Holyrood.
Fighting Talk
Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, prompted a roar of approval as he described Farage as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He told supporters to “prepare for a fight” as we take on the political establishment”, warning that “the next five months will be tough”.
Despite not yet publishing a distinct policy platform for Scotland, speakers from the north-east vowed the party 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 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”.
Protests Nearby
Meanwhile, not far away in Falkirk town centre, demonstrators with opposing views assembled for what have become regular weekly confrontations outside a local hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.
A group coordinating protests stated they were motivated by a serious local crime. Speaking previously, Scotland's leader warned that “what the far right do is to apportion the blame … to asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the source of a harmful narrative”.
However, he differentiated extremist opinions and people with “legitimate points” about pressure on local services or community safety.
