Nigel Farage addressed the largest Reform UK rally so far in Scotland, but avoided engaging 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 surrounding Farage.
A High-Profile Defection
The leader presented the former Conservative peer and wealthy businessman at a sold-out rally of about 700 attendees at a hotel conference centre 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 relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to become a candidate for Reform UK in next May’s Holyrood elections.
Farage said he was “delighted” to welcome the new member. He described the switch as “a brave and historic act”.
Avoiding Media Scrutiny
The Reform leader addressed the rally after a turbulent week which saw him launch a fierce criticism of the broadcaster after they quizzed him about an investigation into alleged racist and antisemitic behaviour from his teenage years. However, Farage dodged a planned media briefing post-rally.
When asked why Farage did not make himself available to address growing claims about his past behaviour, Offord said: “That is a question for him to answer.”
Challenged about if he thought an apology was necessary for the comments he is said to have made about Jewish students, Offord said: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”
Insisting on Fitness
The peer maintained that the leader is “ethically suitable” to be the country's leader and denied he was employing coded political messaging. During his speech, the leader had reiterated 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?”
Although the first minister, John Swinney criticised Farage’s original remarks as “racist”, and Keir Starmer called them “harmful and polarising”, the defector argued 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 lively and passionate audience of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who each paid £6 to attend, showcases Reform's increasing self-assurance ahead of the Scottish vote.
Although the SNP continues to lead in the polls, Reform UK has made substantial progress recently, achieving a quarter of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. Following Scottish Labour's decline, the party has often relegated it to third in recent months, with support reaching over a fifth.
Announcing that Reform UK membership in Scotland had quadrupled over the last twelve months to 12,000 members, the party chair, David Bull said he believed it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, putting the party in “a very strong position” at Holyrood.
Fighting Talk
A Reform councillor, 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 “man the barricades as we take on the political establishment”, cautioning 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 “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.
The leader personally underlined his delight at Reform's rise as a significant player in Scottish politics over the past 12 months, confessing to supporters that he was once told he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.
Local Context
Meanwhile, not far away in Falkirk town centre, demonstrators with opposing views 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 criminal case involving an asylum seeker. Speaking previously, Scotland's leader cautioned that “what the far right do is to apportion the blame … to asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the source of a harmful narrative”.
However, he differentiated extremist opinions and people with “valid concerns” about strain on public services or neighbourhood security.
