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Nigel Farage spoke to the biggest Reform UK rally so far in Scotland, but avoided engaging with the press corps following the event. In his place, newly defected member of the House of Lords the former Conservative donor took on the task of field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and anti-Jewish sentiment surrounding the party leader.

A High-Profile Defection

Farage introduced the ex-Tory lord and wealthy businessman during a sold-out rally of about 700 attendees at a hotel conference centre in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a junior minister for Scotland under the last government and most recently served as treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, announced his intention to relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to stand for Reform UK in next May’s Holyrood elections.

Farage said he was “extremely pleased” to welcome Offord to the party. He called the peer’s defection as “a courageous and significant move”.

Dodging the Press

Farage addressed the rally following a difficult period which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC for questioning him regarding a report into alleged racist and remarks from his teenage years. However, Farage dodged the expected press huddle post-rally.

Questioned why his new party’s leader did not make himself 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 Farage should apologise for his alleged remarks about Jewish students, Offord said: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”

Insisting on Fitness

Offord insisted that the leader is “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and rejected claims of 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 authorised the complete transformation of Glasgow's demographics?”

While the first minister, John Swinney criticised Farage’s original remarks as “racist”, and the Labour leader called them “toxic and divisive”, the defector argued that his new leader was “highlighting a factual issue that people are talking about on the doorstep”.

Growing Confidence

The event, attended by an lively and passionate audience of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who bought tickets for the event, highlights Reform's increasing self-assurance before next May’s elections.

While the Scottish National Party remains ahead, Reform UK has gained significant ground recently, achieving a quarter of the vote in a recent parliamentary by-election. Following Scottish Labour's decline, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place in recent months, polling up to 22%.

Announcing that party membership north of the border had quadrupled over the last twelve months to 12,000 members, a senior party official said he believed it could gain up to 20 MSPs in May, which would place Reform in “a powerful situation” in the Scottish Parliament.

Campaign Rhetoric

A Reform councillor, a local representative for the party, prompted a roar of approval as he described Farage as “the future PM of the UK”. He told supporters to “man the barricades as we “challenge the ruling class”, warning that “the next five months will be tough”.

Despite not yet publishing any Scotland-specific policies, speakers from the north-east vowed the party 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 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 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.

A group coordinating protests stated they were motivated by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. In an interview, Scotland's leader cautioned that the tactic of the far-right 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 “legitimate points” about strain on public services or neighbourhood security.