Nigel Farage addressed the biggest the party's public meeting so far in Scotland, however declined to speak with the press corps afterwards. In his place, newly defected peer the former Conservative donor was left to field questions on allegations of racism and anti-Jewish sentiment linked to Farage.
Welcoming a New Recruit
The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor during a sold-out rally of roughly seven hundred supporters at a hotel conference centre near Falkirk. Offord, who served as a junior minister for Scotland in the previous administration 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 next May’s Holyrood elections.
The leader stated he was “delighted” to greet the new member. He called the peer’s defection as “a brave and historic act”.
Avoiding Media Scrutiny
Farage spoke to the crowd after a turbulent week which saw him launch a fierce criticism of the broadcaster for questioning him about an investigation into claimed discriminatory and remarks as a youth. But, the leader avoided a planned media briefing post-rally.
When asked why his new party’s leader did not make himself available to answer mounting allegations about his past behaviour, the new recruit responded: “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 towards Jewish pupils, Offord said: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”
Insisting on Fitness
Offord insisted that Farage was “morally fit” to be prime minister and denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. During his speech, Farage had doubled down on his remarks about the number of Glasgow schoolchildren who are not native English speakers by posing the question to the crowd: “Who authorised the complete transformation of Glasgow's demographics?”
While Scotland's First Minister condemned Farage’s original remarks as “discriminatory”, and the Labour leader called them “toxic and divisive”, Offord maintained that Farage was “highlighting a factual issue that people are talking about on the doorstep”.
A Party on the Rise
The event, filled with an energetic and enthused crowd of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who each paid £6 to attend, showcases Reform's increasing self-assurance before next May’s elections.
Although the Scottish National Party remains ahead, the party 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 lately, polling up to 22%.
Announcing that party membership north of the border had quadrupled in the past year to 12,000 members, the party chair, David Bull stated his belief it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, putting the party in “a powerful situation” 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 told supporters to “man the barricades as we take on the political establishment”, cautioning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.
Despite not yet publishing any Scotland-specific policies, representatives vowed the party would “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.
The leader personally expressed his pleasure 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”.
Local Context
As the event was taking place, not far away in the heart of Falkirk, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters assembled for a now-regular weekly standoff outside a local hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.
A group coordinating protests 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 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 “valid concerns” about pressure on local services or community safety.
