The Reform UK figurehead addressed the biggest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, but declined to speak with the press corps afterwards. In his place, recently switched peer the former Conservative donor was left to responding to queries on allegations of racism and antisemitism surrounding Farage.
Welcoming a New Recruit
The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor at a packed event of roughly seven hundred supporters in a hotel venue in central Scotland. The businessman, who worked as a Scotland Office minister in the previous administration and most recently served as the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, announced his intention to give up his peerage in order to become a candidate for the party in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.
Farage said he was “delighted” to welcome Offord to the party. He called the peer’s defection as “a courageous and significant move”.
Dodging the Press
Farage spoke to the crowd following a difficult period which included him delivering a tirade against the BBC for questioning him regarding a report into claimed discriminatory and remarks from his teenage years. However, the leader avoided the expected press huddle post-rally.
Questioned why his new party’s leader was not available to answer mounting allegations concerning his history, the new recruit responded: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”
Challenged about whether he believed an apology was necessary for his alleged remarks towards Jewish pupils, he stated: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”
Insisting on Fitness
The peer maintained that the leader is “morally fit” to be the country's leader and rejected claims of dog-whistle politics. During his speech, the leader had reiterated on his remarks about pupils in Glasgow who speak English as a second language by asking the rally: “Who voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”
While the first minister, John Swinney condemned Farage’s original remarks as “racist”, and Keir Starmer called them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that Farage was “highlighting a factual issue that people are talking about on the doorstep”.
A Party on the Rise
The event, attended by an lively and passionate audience of predominantly older, white male backers who bought tickets for the event, highlights Reform's increasing self-assurance 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 in recent months, polling up to 22%.
Announcing that party membership north of the border had increased fourfold in the past year to a running total of 12,000, a senior party official said he believed it could gain up to 20 MSPs in May, putting the party in “a very strong position” at Holyrood.
Campaign Rhetoric
A Reform councillor, a local representative for the party, elicited loud cheers as he described Farage as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He instructed the crowd to “man the barricades as we take on the political establishment”, cautioning that “the next five months will be tough”.
Despite not yet publishing any Scotland-specific policies, representatives vowed the party would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.
Farage himself expressed his pleasure at the party’s emergence as a force in Scottish politics in the last year, confessing to supporters that in previous years he had been warned he “couldn't fill a small venue”.
Protests Nearby
As the event was taking place, a few miles west in the heart of Falkirk, demonstrators with opposing views assembled for what have become regular weekly confrontations 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. In an interview, Scotland's leader cautioned that “what the far right do is to apportion the blame … 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 strain on public services or neighbourhood security.
