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The Reform UK figurehead spoke to the largest Reform UK rally so far in Scotland, but avoided engaging with local journalists afterwards. In his place, newly defected member of the House of Lords Malcolm Offord took on the task of field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism linked to Farage.

A High-Profile Defection

Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor at a packed event of roughly seven hundred attendees in a hotel venue in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a junior minister for Scotland under the last government and was until recently the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, stated his plan to relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to stand for the party in next May’s Holyrood elections.

The leader stated he was “delighted” to greet Offord to the party. He called the peer’s defection 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 antisemitic behaviour from his teenage years. However, the leader avoided 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: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”

Pressed on if he thought an apology was necessary for his alleged remarks about Jewish students, he stated: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”

Insisting on Fitness

Offord insisted that the leader is “morally fit” to be the country's leader and denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. While addressing supporters, Farage had doubled down on his remarks 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 Scotland's First Minister criticised Farage’s original remarks as “discriminatory”, and the Labour leader labeled them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that his new leader was “drawing attention to a real concern” that people are talking about on the doorstep”.

A Party on the Rise

The event, filled with an energetic and enthused crowd of predominantly older, white male backers who bought tickets for the event, highlights the party’s growing confidence ahead of the Scottish vote.

While the Scottish National Party remains ahead, Reform UK has made substantial progress 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 lately, with support reaching over a fifth.

Declaring that party membership north of the border had quadrupled in the past year to 12,000 members, 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, elicited loud cheers as he referred to the leader as “the future PM of the UK”. 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, representatives vowed the party would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.

The leader personally expressed his pleasure at the party’s emergence as a force in the political scene in Scotland in the last year, admitting to the audience that he was once told he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.

Local Context

Meanwhile, a few miles west in the heart of Falkirk, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters assembled 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. Speaking previously, First Minister John Swinney warned that “what the far right do is to assign responsibility … to new arrivals and I think that is the source of a harmful narrative”.

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