The Reform UK figurehead addressed the biggest the party's rally so far in Scotland, however avoided engaging with local journalists afterwards. In his place, newly defected peer the former Conservative donor took on the task of responding to queries on allegations of racism and antisemitism linked to the party leader.
A High-Profile Defection
Farage introduced the ex-Tory lord and wealthy businessman during a sold-out rally of roughly seven hundred attendees at a hotel conference centre in central Scotland. The businessman, who worked as a Scotland Office minister in the previous administration and most recently served as the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, announced his intention to give up his peerage in order to become a candidate for Reform UK in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.
Farage said he was “delighted” to greet Offord to the party. He described the switch as “a courageous and significant move”.
Avoiding Media Scrutiny
The Reform leader spoke to the crowd after a turbulent week which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him regarding a report into claimed discriminatory and remarks from his teenage years. But, the leader avoided a planned media briefing post-rally.
Questioned why his new party’s leader was not available to answer mounting allegations about his past behaviour, Offord said: “That is a question for him to answer.”
Challenged about if he thought an apology was necessary for the comments he is said to have made towards Jewish pupils, Offord said: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”
Insisting on Fitness
The peer maintained that Farage was “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and rejected claims of dog-whistle politics. While addressing supporters, 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 voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”
While Scotland's First Minister criticised the initial comments as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer called them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that Farage was “highlighting a factual issue that “voters are discussing”.
Growing Confidence
The rally, filled with an lively and passionate audience of predominantly older, white male backers who bought tickets for the event, highlights the party’s growing confidence before next May’s elections.
While the Scottish National Party remains ahead, the party has made substantial progress in the past year, 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.
Announcing that party membership north of the border had increased fourfold over the last twelve months 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
A Reform councillor, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, elicited loud cheers as he described Farage as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He instructed the crowd 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, speakers from the north-east pledged Reform would “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.
Farage himself underlined his delight at the party’s emergence as a force in the political scene in Scotland 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”.
Local Context
As the event was taking place, not far away in Falkirk town centre, demonstrators with opposing views were gathering for what have become regular weekly confrontations near a hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.
A group coordinating protests said it was galvanised by a serious local crime. In an interview, Scotland's leader warned that “what the far right do is to apportion the blame … to new arrivals 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 strain on public services or neighbourhood security.
