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Nigel Farage addressed the biggest Reform UK rally so far in Scotland, but avoided engaging with local journalists afterwards. Instead, recently switched peer the former Conservative donor took on the task of responding to queries on allegations of racism and anti-Jewish sentiment linked to Farage.

Welcoming a New Recruit

Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor at a sold-out rally of roughly seven hundred attendees at a hotel conference centre in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a Scotland Office minister 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 Reform UK in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.

Farage said he was “extremely pleased” to welcome the new member. He called the peer’s defection as “a brave and historic act”.

Dodging the Press

The Reform leader spoke to the crowd following a difficult period which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC after they quizzed 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 his new party’s leader was not available to address growing claims concerning his history, the new recruit responded: “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 about Jewish students, Offord said: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”

Defending the Leader

The peer maintained that the leader is “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and rejected claims of dog-whistle politics. During his speech, the leader had reiterated on his remarks about the number of Glasgow schoolchildren 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 the initial comments as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer labeled them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that his new leader was “highlighting a factual issue that people are talking about on the doorstep”.

A Party on the Rise

The rally, filled with an energetic and enthused crowd of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who each paid £6 to attend, showcases the party’s growing confidence ahead of the Scottish vote.

Although 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, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place lately, with support reaching over a fifth.

Declaring that party membership north of the border had quadrupled over the last twelve months to 12,000 members, the party chair, David Bull said he believed 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 described Farage as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He told supporters to “prepare for a fight” as we take on the political establishment”, cautioning that “the next five months will be tough”.

Although the party has yet to produce any Scotland-specific policies, speakers from the north-east pledged Reform would “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.

Farage himself underlined his delight at the party’s emergence as a force in the political scene in Scotland over the past 12 months, confessing to supporters that in previous years he had been warned he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.

Local Context

As the event was taking place, a few miles west in Falkirk town centre, demonstrators with opposing views were gathering for a now-regular weekly standoff outside a local hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.

A group coordinating protests said it was galvanised by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. Speaking previously, Scotland's leader warned that “what the far right do is to assign responsibility … 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 pressure on local services or neighbourhood security.