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Nigel Farage spoke to the biggest Reform UK rally so far in Scotland, but declined to speak with local journalists afterwards. In his place, recently switched peer Malcolm Offord took on the task of field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and anti-Jewish sentiment linked to the party leader.

Welcoming a New Recruit

Farage introduced the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor during a sold-out rally of roughly seven hundred supporters at a hotel conference centre in central Scotland. The businessman, who worked as a Scotland Office minister under the last government and most recently served as the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, stated his plan to give up his peerage in order to become a candidate for Reform UK in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.

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

Farage addressed the rally after a turbulent week which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC for questioning him about an investigation into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour from his teenage years. However, Farage dodged the expected press huddle after Saturday’s event.

Questioned why his new party’s leader was not available to answer mounting allegations concerning his history, Offord said: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”

Pressed on if he thought Farage should apologise for the comments he is said to have made towards Jewish pupils, he stated: “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 denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. While addressing supporters, Farage had doubled down on his remarks 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 the first minister, John Swinney condemned the initial comments as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer 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 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, the party has gained significant ground recently, achieving a quarter 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 in recent months, polling up to 22%.

Announcing that party membership north of the border had increased fourfold in the past year to a running total of 12,000, a senior party official said he believed it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, which would place Reform in “a powerful situation” at Holyrood.

Campaign Rhetoric

Thomas Kerr, a local representative for the party, 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”.

Despite not yet publishing any Scotland-specific policies, speakers from the north-east pledged Reform would “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.

Farage himself 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 in previous years he had been warned he “couldn't fill a small venue”.

Local Context

As the event was taking place, a few miles west in the heart of Falkirk, demonstrators with opposing views were gathering for a now-regular weekly standoff near a hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.

A group coordinating protests stated they were motivated by a serious local crime. In an interview, First Minister John Swinney warned 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”.

He also made a clear distinction extremist opinions and people with “legitimate points” about pressure on local services or community safety.