🔗 Share this article

The Reform UK figurehead spoke to the biggest the party's public meeting so far in Scotland, but avoided engaging with the press corps following the event. In his place, newly defected peer Malcolm Offord took on the task of field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism surrounding the party leader.

Welcoming a New Recruit

Farage introduced the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor during a sold-out rally of roughly seven hundred supporters at a hotel conference centre near Falkirk. Offord, who served as a junior minister for Scotland in the previous administration and was until recently treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, stated his plan to relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to stand for the party 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

The Reform leader addressed the rally following a difficult period which included him delivering a tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him regarding a report into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour as a youth. However, Farage dodged a planned media briefing after Saturday’s event.

Questioned why his new party’s leader did not make himself available to address growing claims concerning his history, Offord said: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”

Pressed on if he thought an apology was necessary for the comments he is said to have made about Jewish students, he stated: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”

Defending the Leader

The peer maintained that the leader is “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and denied he was employing 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 Scotland's First Minister condemned the initial comments as “racist”, and Keir Starmer called them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that Farage was “drawing attention to a real concern” that people are talking about on the doorstep”.

Growing Confidence

The event, attended by 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.

Although the Scottish National Party remains ahead, the party has gained significant ground recently, securing 26% of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. After the collapse in support for Scottish Labour, the party has often relegated it to third lately, with support reaching over a fifth.

Declaring that Reform UK membership in Scotland had quadrupled in the past year to a running total of 12,000, a senior party official stated his belief it could gain up to 20 MSPs in May, putting the party in “a powerful situation” at Holyrood.

Fighting Talk

A Reform councillor, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, prompted a roar of approval as he described Farage as “the future PM of the UK”. He told supporters to “man the barricades as we “challenge the ruling class”, cautioning that “the next five months will be tough”.

Despite not yet publishing any Scotland-specific policies, 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 over the past 12 months, confessing to supporters that he was once told he “couldn't fill a small venue”.

Protests Nearby

As the event was taking place, a few miles west 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.

The organisers of the demonstrations stated they were motivated by a serious local crime. In an interview, Scotland's leader cautioned that the tactic of the far-right 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 “valid concerns” about pressure on local services or community safety.