The Reform UK figurehead 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 peer Malcolm Offord took on the task of field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and anti-Jewish sentiment surrounding the party leader.
A High-Profile Defection
The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor at a packed event of roughly seven hundred attendees at a hotel conference centre in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a Scotland Office minister under the last government and most recently served as treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, announced his intention 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 “delighted” to welcome Offord to the party. He described the switch as “a brave and historic act”.
Avoiding Media Scrutiny
Farage addressed the rally following a difficult period which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC for questioning him about an investigation into claimed discriminatory and remarks as a youth. But, Farage dodged a planned media briefing post-rally.
Questioned why Farage 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 if he thought Farage should apologise for the comments he is said to have made about Jewish students, Offord said: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”
Insisting on Fitness
Offord insisted that Farage was “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and denied he was employing coded political messaging. During his speech, the leader had reiterated on previous comments about the number of Glasgow schoolchildren who are not native English speakers by asking the rally: “Who voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”
Although Scotland's First Minister condemned Farage’s original remarks as “discriminatory”, and the Labour leader called them “toxic and divisive”, the defector argued that Farage was “highlighting a factual issue that people are talking about on the doorstep”.
Growing Confidence
The rally, attended by an energetic and enthused crowd of predominantly older, white male backers who bought tickets for the event, highlights Reform's increasing self-assurance ahead of the Scottish vote.
Although the Scottish National Party remains ahead, the party has made substantial progress recently, achieving a quarter of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. Following Scottish Labour's decline, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place in recent months, 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, the party chair, David Bull said he believed it could gain up to 20 MSPs in May, putting the party in “a very strong position” at Holyrood.
Fighting Talk
Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, 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”, warning that “the next five months will be tough”.
Despite not yet publishing any Scotland-specific policies, speakers from the north-east pledged Reform would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.
The leader personally underlined his delight 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 “couldn't fill a small venue”.
Local Context
Meanwhile, a few miles west in the heart of Falkirk, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters were gathering for a now-regular weekly standoff near a hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.
The organisers of the demonstrations said it was galvanised by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. 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 between those who hold far-right views and people with “legitimate points” about pressure on local services or community safety.