Nigel Farage spoke to the biggest Reform UK public meeting held in Scotland to date, but avoided engaging with the press corps following the event. Instead, recently switched peer Malcolm Offord was left to field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism surrounding the party leader.
A High-Profile Defection
Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and wealthy businessman at a packed event of about 700 supporters in a hotel venue near Falkirk. The businessman, who worked as a Scotland Office minister under the last government and most recently served as treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, announced his intention to give up his peerage in order to stand for the party in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.
Farage said he was “delighted” to welcome the new member. He called the peer’s defection as “a courageous and significant move”.
Dodging the Press
Farage addressed the rally after a turbulent week which included him delivering a tirade against the BBC for questioning him regarding a report into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour from his teenage years. However, Farage dodged a planned media briefing after Saturday’s event.
When asked why his new party’s leader was not available to address growing claims about his past behaviour, the new recruit responded: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”
Challenged about if he thought an apology was necessary for his alleged remarks towards Jewish pupils, Offord said: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”
Insisting on Fitness
Offord insisted that Farage was “morally fit” to be the country's leader and denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. While addressing supporters, Farage had doubled down on previous comments 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?”
Although Scotland's First Minister condemned the initial comments as “racist”, and Keir Starmer labeled them “harmful and polarising”, the defector argued that his new leader was “highlighting a factual issue that “voters are discussing”.
Growing Confidence
The event, filled with an lively and passionate audience of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who bought tickets for the event, highlights the party’s growing confidence before next May’s elections.
While the Scottish National Party remains ahead, Reform UK has made substantial progress 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 quadrupled in the past year to a running total of 12,000, a senior party official stated his belief it could gain up to 20 MSPs in May, putting the party in “a very strong position” at Holyrood.
Campaign Rhetoric
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 told supporters to “man the barricades as we take on the political establishment”, warning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.
Although the party has yet to produce any Scotland-specific policies, speakers from the north-east pledged Reform would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.
Farage himself underlined his delight at Reform's rise as a significant player 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
Meanwhile, not far away in the heart of Falkirk, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters assembled for a now-regular weekly standoff outside a local hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.
The organisers of the demonstrations 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 apportion the blame … to new arrivals and I think that is the root of the poison”.
He also made a clear distinction extremist opinions and people with “legitimate points” about pressure on local services or neighbourhood security.
