Nigel Farage addressed the largest Reform UK public meeting so far in Scotland, however avoided engaging with local journalists following the event. Instead, recently switched peer the former Conservative donor took on the task of field questions on allegations of racism and anti-Jewish sentiment surrounding the party leader.
A High-Profile Defection
The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor during a packed event of roughly seven hundred attendees in a hotel venue in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a junior minister for Scotland in the previous administration and was until recently treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, announced his intention to give up his peerage in order to stand for Reform UK in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.
Farage said he was “delighted” to greet Offord to the party. He called the peer’s defection as “a brave and historic act”.
Avoiding Media Scrutiny
The Reform leader spoke to the crowd after a turbulent week which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC for questioning him regarding a report into alleged racist and remarks from his teenage years. But, the leader avoided a planned media briefing after Saturday’s event.
When asked why his new party’s leader was not available to address growing claims about his past behaviour, the new recruit responded: “That is a question for him to answer.”
Challenged about whether he believed Farage should apologise for his alleged remarks about Jewish students, Offord said: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”
Insisting on Fitness
The peer maintained that the leader is “morally fit” to be prime minister and denied he was employing coded political messaging. While addressing supporters, Farage had doubled down on previous comments about pupils in Glasgow who speak English as a second language by asking the rally: “Who authorised the complete transformation of Glasgow's demographics?”
While Scotland's First Minister condemned Farage’s original remarks as “racist”, and Keir Starmer called them “harmful and polarising”, the defector argued that Farage was “drawing attention to a real concern” that “voters are discussing”.
Growing Confidence
The event, attended by an energetic and enthused crowd of predominantly older, white male backers who each paid £6 to attend, highlights Reform's increasing self-assurance before next May’s elections.
Although the Scottish National Party remains ahead, Reform UK has made substantial progress recently, securing 26% 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 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 win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, putting the party in “a powerful situation” in the Scottish Parliament.
Fighting Talk
Thomas Kerr, a local representative for the party, elicited loud cheers as he referred to the leader as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He told supporters to “prepare for a fight” as we “challenge the ruling class”, warning 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 “couldn't fill a small venue”.
Protests Nearby
Meanwhile, not far away in the heart of Falkirk, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters assembled for a now-regular weekly standoff near a hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.
A group coordinating protests said it was galvanised by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. Speaking previously, First Minister John Swinney 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 “valid concerns” about strain on public services or community safety.
