🔗 Share this article

Nigel Farage spoke to the biggest the party's rally held in Scotland to date, but declined to speak with local journalists afterwards. Instead, newly defected member of the House of Lords Malcolm Offord was left to field questions on allegations of racism and antisemitism linked to the party leader.

Welcoming a New Recruit

The leader presented the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor during a sold-out rally of about 700 attendees at a hotel conference centre near Falkirk. The businessman, who worked as a Scotland Office minister in the previous administration and most recently served as treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, stated his plan to give up his peerage in order to stand for the party in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.

Farage said he was “delighted” to greet Offord to the party. He described the switch as “a courageous and significant move”.

Dodging the Press

The Reform leader spoke to the crowd following a difficult period which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC for questioning him about an investigation into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour as a youth. However, the leader avoided a planned media briefing after Saturday’s event.

When asked why Farage was not available to address growing claims about his past behaviour, the new recruit responded: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”

Pressed on whether he believed an apology was necessary for his alleged remarks about Jewish students, he stated: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”

Defending the Leader

Offord insisted that the leader is “ethically suitable” to be the country's leader and denied he was employing coded political messaging. While addressing supporters, Farage had doubled down on previous comments about pupils in Glasgow who are not native English speakers by asking the rally: “Who voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”

Although the first minister, John Swinney criticised Farage’s original remarks as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer called them “harmful and polarising”, 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 each paid £6 to attend, showcases the party’s growing confidence ahead of the Scottish vote.

Although the SNP continues to lead in the polls, Reform UK has gained significant ground recently, securing 26% of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. After the collapse in support for Scottish Labour, the party has often relegated it to third in recent months, polling up to 22%.

Declaring that Reform UK membership in Scotland had quadrupled in the past year to 12,000 members, a senior party official said he believed it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, putting the party in “a powerful situation” in the Scottish Parliament.

Fighting Talk

Thomas Kerr, a local representative for the party, prompted a roar of approval 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 coming campaign will be difficult”.

Despite not yet publishing any Scotland-specific policies, speakers from the north-east pledged Reform would “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.

Farage himself expressed his pleasure at Reform's rise as a significant player in the political scene in Scotland in the last year, confessing to supporters that in previous years he had been warned he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.

Protests Nearby

As the event was taking place, not far away in the heart of Falkirk, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters assembled for what have become regular weekly confrontations near a hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.

The organisers of the demonstrations said it was galvanised by a serious local crime. Speaking previously, First Minister John Swinney cautioned that “what the far right do is to assign responsibility … to asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the root of the poison”.

However, he differentiated between those who hold far-right views and people with “valid concerns” about strain on public services or neighbourhood security.