🔗 Share this article

The Reform UK figurehead spoke to the largest the party's rally so far in Scotland, however avoided engaging with the press corps following the event. Instead, recently switched member of the House of Lords the former Conservative donor was left to responding to queries on allegations of racism and antisemitism linked to the party leader.

A High-Profile Defection

The leader presented the former Conservative peer and wealthy businessman during a sold-out rally of roughly seven hundred attendees at a hotel conference centre in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a junior minister for Scotland in the previous administration 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 the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.

The leader stated he was “delighted” to greet the new member. He described the switch as “a brave and historic act”.

Dodging the Press

The Reform leader addressed the rally after a turbulent week which saw him launch a fierce criticism of the broadcaster for questioning him regarding a report into alleged racist and antisemitic behaviour from his teenage years. But, the leader avoided the expected press huddle post-rally.

When asked why his new party’s leader was not available to address growing claims concerning his history, Offord said: “That is a question for him to answer.”

Challenged about whether he believed an apology was necessary 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 “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. During his speech, Farage had doubled down on previous comments about the number of Glasgow schoolchildren who are not native English speakers by asking the rally: “Who voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”

While Scotland's First Minister criticised Farage’s original remarks as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer called them “toxic and divisive”, Offord maintained that his new leader was “highlighting a factual issue that “voters are discussing”.

A Party on the Rise

The rally, attended by 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 SNP continues to lead in the polls, 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, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place lately, polling up to 22%.

Announcing that Reform UK membership in Scotland had increased fourfold in the past year 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 very strong position” at Holyrood.

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 next five months will be tough”.

Despite not yet publishing any Scotland-specific policies, speakers from the north-east vowed the party would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.

Farage himself expressed his pleasure at Reform's rise as a significant player in the political scene in Scotland in the last year, admitting to the audience that in previous years he had been warned he “couldn't fill a small venue”.

Local Context

Meanwhile, a few miles west in Falkirk town centre, demonstrators with opposing views were gathering for a now-regular weekly standoff near a hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.

A group coordinating protests said it was galvanised by a serious local crime. In an interview, First Minister John Swinney warned that the tactic of the far-right is to assign responsibility … to asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the source of a harmful narrative”.

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