The Reform UK figurehead addressed the biggest the party's public meeting so far in Scotland, however declined to speak with the press corps following the event. In his place, newly defected member of the House of Lords Malcolm Offord was left to field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism surrounding the party leader.
A High-Profile Defection
The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor at a sold-out rally of roughly seven hundred supporters at a hotel conference centre near Falkirk. The businessman, who worked 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 stand for Reform UK in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.
Farage said he was “extremely pleased” to greet Offord to the party. He called the peer’s defection as “a brave and historic act”.
Dodging the Press
The Reform leader spoke to the crowd after a turbulent week which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC for questioning him about an investigation into alleged racist and remarks from his teenage years. However, Farage dodged the expected press huddle after Saturday’s event.
Questioned why his new party’s leader was not available to answer mounting allegations about his past behaviour, the new recruit responded: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”
Challenged about if he thought Farage should apologise for the comments he is said to have made towards Jewish pupils, he stated: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”
Insisting on Fitness
Offord insisted that Farage was “ethically suitable” 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 speak English as a second language by posing the question to the crowd: “Who authorised the complete transformation of Glasgow's demographics?”
Although the first minister, John Swinney condemned Farage’s original remarks as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer called them “toxic and divisive”, Offord maintained that Farage was “drawing attention to a real concern” that people are talking about on the doorstep”.
A Party on the Rise
The rally, attended by an energetic and enthused crowd of predominantly older, white male backers who bought tickets for the event, highlights the party’s growing confidence before next May’s elections.
While the SNP continues to lead in the polls, Reform UK 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 in recent months, with support reaching over a fifth.
Declaring that party membership north of the border had increased fourfold over the last twelve months to a running total of 12,000, the party chair, David Bull stated his belief it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, putting the party in “a very strong position” in the Scottish Parliament.
Campaign Rhetoric
Thomas Kerr, a local representative for the party, elicited loud cheers as he described Farage as “the future PM of the UK”. He told supporters to “man the barricades 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”.
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 he was once told he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.
Protests Nearby
Meanwhile, a few miles west in Falkirk town centre, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters were gathering for a now-regular weekly standoff outside a local hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.
The organisers of the demonstrations said it was galvanised by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. In an interview, Scotland's leader warned that “what the far right do is to assign responsibility … to new arrivals and I think that is the root of the poison”.
However, he differentiated extremist opinions and people with “legitimate points” about pressure on local services or community safety.
