The Reform UK figurehead spoke to the biggest Reform UK public meeting held in Scotland to date, however declined to speak with the press corps afterwards. Instead, recently switched member of the House of Lords Malcolm Offord was left to field questions on allegations of racism and antisemitism linked to Farage.
A High-Profile Defection
Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor at a packed event of about 700 supporters in a hotel venue in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a junior minister for Scotland under the last government and was until recently the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, announced his intention to relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to stand for Reform UK in next May’s Holyrood elections.
Farage said he was “delighted” to greet Offord to the party. He described the switch as “a brave and historic act”.
Dodging the Press
The Reform leader spoke to the crowd following a difficult period which included him delivering a tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him regarding a report into claimed discriminatory 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 did not make himself available to answer mounting allegations concerning his history, Offord said: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”
Challenged about whether he believed Farage should apologise for his alleged remarks about Jewish students, Offord said: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”
Insisting on Fitness
Offord insisted that the leader is “morally fit” to be the country's leader and rejected claims of coded political messaging. While addressing supporters, Farage had doubled down on previous comments about pupils in Glasgow who speak English as a second language by posing the question to the crowd: “Who authorised the complete transformation of Glasgow's demographics?”
Although Scotland's First Minister criticised Farage’s original remarks as “racist”, and the Labour leader called them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that his new leader was “highlighting a factual issue that “voters are discussing”.
Growing Confidence
The event, filled with an energetic and enthused crowd of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who each paid £6 to attend, highlights the party’s growing confidence before next May’s elections.
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 a recent parliamentary by-election. Following Scottish Labour's decline, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place lately, polling up to 22%.
Announcing that Reform UK membership in Scotland had quadrupled in the past year to a running total of 12,000, the party chair, David Bull said he believed it could gain up to 20 MSPs in May, putting the party in “a powerful situation” at Holyrood.
Fighting Talk
Thomas Kerr, a local representative for the party, elicited loud cheers as he referred to the leader as “the future PM of the UK”. He instructed the crowd to “man the barricades as we take on the political establishment”, warning that “the next five months will be tough”.
Despite not yet publishing a distinct policy platform for Scotland, representatives vowed the party 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 Scottish politics in the last year, confessing to supporters that he was once told he “couldn't fill a small venue”.
Protests Nearby
As the event was taking place, a few miles west in the heart of Falkirk, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters assembled for what have become regular weekly confrontations near a 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 asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the root of the poison”.
He also made a clear distinction extremist opinions and people with “legitimate points” about pressure on local services or neighbourhood security.
