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The Reform UK figurehead spoke to the largest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, but avoided engaging with the press corps afterwards. In his place, newly defected peer the former Conservative donor was left to responding to queries on allegations of racism and anti-Jewish sentiment surrounding Farage.

Welcoming a New Recruit

Farage introduced the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor at a sold-out rally of roughly seven hundred supporters 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 treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, 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 described the switch as “a brave and historic act”.

Dodging the Press

The Reform leader addressed the rally after a turbulent week which included him delivering a tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him about an investigation into claimed discriminatory and remarks as a youth. But, Farage dodged a planned media briefing after Saturday’s event.

Questioned why Farage 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 if he thought Farage should apologise for the comments he is said to have made towards Jewish pupils, he stated: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”

Defending the Leader

The peer maintained that the leader is “morally fit” to be prime minister and rejected claims of dog-whistle politics. During his speech, Farage had doubled down on his remarks about pupils in Glasgow who speak English as a second language by posing the question to the crowd: “Who voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”

While Scotland's First Minister condemned Farage’s original remarks as “racist”, and Keir Starmer called them “toxic and divisive”, Offord maintained that his new leader was “highlighting a factual issue that people are talking about on the doorstep”.

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 ahead of the Scottish vote.

While the SNP continues to lead in the polls, the party has made substantial progress recently, securing 26% of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. After the collapse in support for Scottish Labour, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place in recent months, with support reaching over a fifth.

Announcing that party membership north of the border had increased fourfold over the last twelve months to a running total of 12,000, a senior party official stated his belief it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, which would place Reform in “a very strong position” in the Scottish Parliament.

Fighting Talk

Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, prompted a roar of approval as he referred to the leader as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He instructed the crowd to “man the barricades as we “challenge the ruling class”, cautioning that “the next five months will be tough”.

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

The leader personally underlined his delight 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 “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.

Protests Nearby

Meanwhile, a few miles west in the heart of Falkirk, demonstrators with opposing views were gathering for what have become regular weekly confrontations outside a local hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.

The organisers of the demonstrations stated they were motivated by a serious local crime. Speaking previously, First Minister John Swinney warned that the tactic of the far-right is to assign responsibility … to new arrivals and I think that is the root of the poison”.

However, he differentiated extremist opinions and people with “valid concerns” about pressure on local services or neighbourhood security.