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Nigel Farage spoke to the largest Reform UK public meeting held in Scotland to date, but 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 responding to queries on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism linked to Farage.

A High-Profile Defection

The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and wealthy businessman during a packed event of roughly seven hundred supporters at a hotel conference centre near Falkirk. Offord, who served as a Scotland Office minister in the previous administration and was until recently the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, announced his intention to give up his peerage in order to stand for the party in next May’s Holyrood elections.

The leader stated he was “extremely pleased” to greet Offord to the party. He described the switch as “a brave and historic act”.

Dodging the Press

Farage addressed the rally following a difficult period which saw him launch a fierce criticism of the broadcaster after they quizzed him regarding a report into claimed discriminatory and remarks from his teenage years. However, Farage dodged a planned media briefing post-rally.

Questioned why Farage did not make himself available to answer mounting allegations about his past behaviour, Offord said: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”

Pressed on whether he believed Farage should apologise for the comments he is said to have made 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 “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and rejected claims of dog-whistle politics. During his speech, the leader had reiterated on previous comments about the number of Glasgow schoolchildren who are not native English speakers by asking the rally: “Who authorised the complete transformation of Glasgow's demographics?”

While Scotland's First Minister criticised Farage’s original remarks as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer labeled 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 largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who each paid £6 to attend, highlights Reform's increasing self-assurance 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 a recent parliamentary by-election. Following Scottish Labour's decline, the party has often relegated it to third 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 stated his belief it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, which would place Reform in “a very strong position” at Holyrood.

Campaign Rhetoric

A Reform councillor, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, 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”, cautioning that “the next five months will be tough”.

Although the party has yet to produce a distinct policy platform for Scotland, speakers from the north-east vowed the party would “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.

Farage himself underlined his delight at the party’s emergence as a force in Scottish politics over the past 12 months, confessing to supporters that he was once told he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.

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 a now-regular weekly standoff near a hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.

A group coordinating protests stated they were motivated by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. In an interview, First Minister John Swinney cautioned that the tactic of the far-right is to assign responsibility … to new arrivals and I think that is the root of the poison”.

He also made a clear distinction extremist opinions and people with “legitimate points” about strain on public services or community safety.