Nigel Farage spoke to the largest the party's rally held in Scotland to date, however declined to speak with local journalists following the event. Instead, newly defected peer Malcolm Offord was left to responding to queries on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism surrounding Farage.
A High-Profile Defection
Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor at a sold-out rally of about 700 attendees 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 give up his peerage in order to become a candidate for the party in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.
The leader stated he was “extremely pleased” to welcome Offord to the party. He described the switch as “a brave and historic act”.
Dodging the Press
Farage addressed the rally after a turbulent week which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him about an investigation into alleged racist and antisemitic behaviour from his teenage years. However, Farage dodged the expected press huddle post-rally.
Questioned why Farage did not make himself available to address growing claims about his past behaviour, Offord said: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”
Pressed on whether he believed Farage should apologise for his alleged remarks towards Jewish pupils, he stated: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”
Defending the Leader
Offord insisted that the leader is “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and denied he was employing coded political messaging. During his speech, the leader had reiterated on previous comments about the number of Glasgow schoolchildren who speak English as a second language 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 “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer called them “harmful and polarising”, the defector argued that his new leader was “highlighting a factual issue that people are talking about on the doorstep”.
A Party on the Rise
The rally, attended by an lively and passionate audience of predominantly older, white male backers who each paid £6 to attend, showcases the party’s growing confidence ahead of the Scottish vote.
While the SNP continues to lead in the polls, the party has made substantial progress in the past year, securing 26% 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 in recent months, polling up to 22%.
Announcing that party membership north of the border had quadrupled in the past year to a running total of 12,000, a senior party official said he believed it could gain up to 20 MSPs in May, which would place Reform 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 “prepare for a fight” as we “challenge the ruling class”, cautioning that “the next five months will be tough”.
Despite not yet publishing any Scotland-specific policies, representatives pledged Reform would “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.
Farage himself expressed his pleasure at Reform's rise as a significant player in the political scene in Scotland in the last year, admitting to the audience that in previous years he had been warned he “couldn't fill a small venue”.
Local Context
As the event was taking place, a few miles west in Falkirk town centre, demonstrators with opposing views assembled for a now-regular weekly standoff outside a local hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.
The organisers of the demonstrations stated they were motivated by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. Speaking previously, Scotland's leader warned 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 between those who hold far-right views and people with “legitimate points” about pressure on local services or community safety.
