The Reform UK figurehead addressed the largest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, but avoided engaging with the press corps following the event. In his place, newly defected member of the House of Lords the former Conservative donor was left to field questions on allegations of racism and antisemitism surrounding Farage.
A High-Profile Defection
The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor at a packed event of roughly seven hundred supporters in a hotel venue in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a junior minister for Scotland under the last government 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 the party in next May’s Holyrood elections.
Farage said he was “extremely pleased” to greet the new member. 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 fierce criticism of the broadcaster for questioning him about an investigation into alleged racist and antisemitic behaviour from his teenage years. But, the leader avoided a planned media briefing after Saturday’s event.
Questioned why his new party’s leader was not available to address growing claims concerning his history, the new recruit responded: “That is a question for him to answer.”
Pressed on whether he believed an apology was necessary 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
The peer maintained that Farage was “ethically suitable” to be the country's leader and denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. During his speech, Farage had doubled down on previous comments about pupils in Glasgow who are not native English speakers by posing the question to the crowd: “Who voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”
Although Scotland's First Minister criticised Farage’s original remarks as “racist”, and Keir Starmer labeled them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained 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 SNP continues to lead in the polls, the party has gained significant ground in the past year, 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.
Announcing that Reform UK membership in Scotland had increased fourfold in the past year to a running total of 12,000, the party chair, David Bull stated his belief it could gain up to 20 MSPs in May, which would place Reform in “a powerful situation” in the Scottish Parliament.
Campaign Rhetoric
Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, prompted a roar of approval as he described Farage as “the future PM of the UK”. He instructed the crowd to “prepare for a fight” as we “challenge the ruling class”, cautioning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.
Despite not yet publishing 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 Reform's rise as a significant player in the political scene in Scotland over the past 12 months, confessing to supporters that in previous years he had been warned he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.
Protests Nearby
As the event was taking place, a few miles west in the heart of Falkirk, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters were gathering for what have become regular weekly confrontations outside a local hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.
The organisers of the demonstrations said it was galvanised by a serious local crime. In an interview, Scotland's leader cautioned that “what the far right do is to apportion the blame … to asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the root of the poison”.
However, he differentiated extremist opinions and people with “valid concerns” about pressure on local services or community safety.
