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Nigel Farage spoke to the largest Reform UK rally so far in Scotland, however avoided engaging with local journalists afterwards. Instead, recently switched member of the House of Lords the former Conservative donor took on the task of field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism linked to the party leader.

Welcoming a New Recruit

The leader presented the former Conservative peer and wealthy businessman at a packed event of about 700 supporters at a hotel conference centre near Falkirk. The businessman, who worked as a junior minister for Scotland in the previous administration and most recently served as treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, announced his intention to relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to become a candidate for the party in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.

Farage said he was “delighted” 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 following a difficult period which included him delivering a fierce criticism of the broadcaster for questioning him about an investigation into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour as a youth. However, Farage dodged the expected press huddle post-rally.

Questioned why his new party’s leader did not make himself available to address growing claims about his past behaviour, Offord said: “That is a question for him to answer.”

Challenged about whether he believed an apology was necessary for the comments he is said to have made towards Jewish pupils, Offord said: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”

Insisting on Fitness

The peer maintained that the leader is “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. While addressing supporters, the leader had reiterated 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?”

While the first minister, John Swinney condemned the initial comments 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 event, filled with an lively and passionate audience of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who each paid £6 to attend, showcases Reform's increasing self-assurance ahead of the Scottish vote.

While the SNP continues to lead in the polls, the party has gained significant ground recently, 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 in recent months, polling up to 22%.

Announcing that party membership north of the border had quadrupled in the past year to 12,000 members, the party chair, David Bull said he believed it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, which would place Reform 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 instructed the crowd to “prepare for a fight” as we “challenge the ruling class”, cautioning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.

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

Farage himself expressed his pleasure at the party’s emergence as a force 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

As the event was taking place, not far away 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.

A group coordinating protests said it was galvanised by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. Speaking previously, Scotland's leader cautioned that the tactic of the far-right is to assign responsibility … to new arrivals and I think that is the source of a harmful narrative”.

However, he differentiated between those who hold far-right views and people with “valid concerns” about pressure on local services or community safety.