Nigel Farage addressed the largest the party's public meeting so far in Scotland, however avoided engaging with local journalists following the event. In his place, newly defected member of the House of Lords the former Conservative donor took on the task of field questions on allegations of racism and antisemitism linked to Farage.
A High-Profile Defection
Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor during a packed event of about 700 supporters at a hotel conference centre near Falkirk. Offord, who served as a Scotland Office minister in the previous administration and was until recently treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, stated his plan to give up his peerage in order to stand for the party in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.
Farage said he was “extremely pleased” to welcome Offord to the party. He called the peer’s defection as “a courageous and significant move”.
Dodging the Press
Farage spoke to the crowd following a difficult period which included him delivering a tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him about an investigation into alleged racist and remarks from his teenage years. However, Farage dodged the expected press huddle after Saturday’s event.
When asked why Farage was not available to address growing claims about his past behaviour, Offord said: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”
Challenged about whether he believed Farage should apologise for the comments he is said to have made about Jewish students, he stated: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”
Insisting on Fitness
Offord insisted that the leader is “morally fit” to be prime minister and rejected claims of coded political messaging. While addressing supporters, Farage had doubled down on his remarks about the number of Glasgow schoolchildren who are not native English speakers by asking the rally: “Who authorised the complete transformation of Glasgow's demographics?”
While Scotland's First Minister condemned the initial comments as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer called them “toxic and divisive”, the defector argued that Farage was “drawing attention to a real concern” that people are talking about on the doorstep”.
Growing Confidence
The rally, filled with an lively and passionate audience of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who each paid £6 to attend, highlights Reform's increasing self-assurance ahead of the Scottish vote.
While the SNP continues to lead in the polls, Reform UK has gained significant ground recently, achieving a quarter of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. After the collapse in support for Scottish Labour, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place lately, with support reaching over a fifth.
Declaring that Reform UK membership in Scotland 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, which would place Reform in “a powerful situation” at Holyrood.
Fighting Talk
Thomas Kerr, a local representative for the party, 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 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 underlined his delight at Reform's rise as a significant player in the political scene in Scotland over the past 12 months, admitting to the audience that in previous years he had been warned he “couldn't fill a small venue”.
Protests Nearby
Meanwhile, a few miles west in the heart of Falkirk, demonstrators with opposing views assembled for what have become regular weekly confrontations near a hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.
The organisers of the demonstrations stated they were motivated by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. In an interview, First Minister John Swinney cautioned that “what the far right do is to assign responsibility … to asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the source of a harmful narrative”.
However, he differentiated between those who hold far-right views and people with “legitimate points” about pressure on local services or neighbourhood security.
