Nigel Farage addressed the largest Reform UK public meeting held in Scotland to date, but declined to speak with local journalists afterwards. In his place, newly defected member of the House of Lords Malcolm Offord was left to responding to queries on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism surrounding the party leader.
Welcoming a New Recruit
Farage introduced the ex-Tory lord and wealthy businessman during a sold-out rally of about 700 attendees in a hotel venue in central Scotland. The businessman, who worked as a junior minister for Scotland under the last government and was until recently treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, stated his plan to relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to become a candidate for the party in next May’s Holyrood elections.
Farage said he was “delighted” to greet the new member. He described the switch as “a courageous and significant move”.
Avoiding Media Scrutiny
The Reform leader spoke to the crowd after a turbulent week which included him delivering a fierce criticism of the broadcaster after they quizzed him regarding a report into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour as a youth. But, Farage dodged a planned media briefing after Saturday’s event.
Questioned why his new party’s leader did not make himself available to answer mounting allegations about his past behaviour, Offord said: “That is a question for him to answer.”
Pressed on 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 the country's leader and denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. During his speech, Farage had doubled down on his remarks 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 the first minister, John Swinney criticised Farage’s original remarks 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”.
A Party on the Rise
The rally, filled with an lively and passionate audience of predominantly older, white male backers who bought tickets for the event, highlights the party’s growing confidence ahead of the Scottish vote.
Although the Scottish National Party remains ahead, the party has gained significant ground in the past year, achieving a quarter of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. Following Scottish Labour's decline, the party has often relegated it to third in recent months, polling up to 22%.
Announcing that Reform UK membership in Scotland had increased fourfold over the last twelve months to a running total of 12,000, a senior party official said he believed it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, which would place Reform in “a powerful situation” in the Scottish Parliament.
Fighting Talk
Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, elicited loud cheers as he referred to the leader as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He instructed the crowd to “man the barricades as we take on the political establishment”, warning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.
Although the party has yet to produce any Scotland-specific policies, speakers from the north-east pledged Reform would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.
Farage himself expressed his pleasure at the party’s emergence as a force in the political scene in Scotland in the last year, admitting to the audience that he was once told he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.
Protests Nearby
As the event was taking place, not far away in the heart of Falkirk, demonstrators with opposing views assembled for a now-regular weekly standoff near a hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.
A group coordinating protests stated they were motivated by a serious local crime. Speaking previously, Scotland's leader cautioned that “what the far right do is to assign responsibility … to asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the root of the poison”.
However, he differentiated extremist opinions and people with “legitimate points” about strain on public services or neighbourhood security.
