The Reform UK figurehead spoke to the largest the party's public meeting held in Scotland to date, but declined to speak with local journalists following the event. Instead, newly defected member of the House of Lords Malcolm Offord was left to responding to queries on claims of discriminatory behaviour and anti-Jewish sentiment surrounding Farage.
A High-Profile Defection
Farage introduced the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor during a packed event 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 was until recently 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 “extremely pleased” to greet the new member. He called the peer’s defection as “a brave and historic act”.
Avoiding Media Scrutiny
Farage addressed the rally following a difficult period which included him delivering a tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him regarding a report into alleged racist and remarks as a youth. However, Farage dodged the expected press huddle post-rally.
When asked why his new party’s leader did not make himself available to address growing claims concerning his history, the new recruit responded: “That is a question for him to answer.”
Challenged about whether he believed an apology was necessary for his alleged remarks towards Jewish pupils, Offord said: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”
Defending the Leader
Offord insisted that the leader is “morally fit” to be prime minister and rejected claims of dog-whistle politics. During his speech, Farage had doubled down on his remarks about pupils in Glasgow who speak English as a second language by asking the rally: “Who authorised the complete transformation of Glasgow's demographics?”
Although the first minister, John Swinney criticised the initial comments as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer called them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that his new leader was “highlighting a factual issue that “voters are discussing”.
A Party on the Rise
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 SNP continues to lead in the polls, the party has made substantial progress in the past year, achieving a quarter of the vote in a recent parliamentary by-election. 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 Reform UK membership in Scotland had quadrupled in the past year to a running total of 12,000, the party chair, David Bull stated his belief it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, which would place Reform in “a powerful situation” 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 “Britain’s next prime minister”. He told supporters to “prepare for a fight” as we “challenge the ruling class”, warning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.
Although the party has yet to produce any Scotland-specific policies, representatives vowed the party would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.
Farage himself expressed his pleasure at Reform's rise as a significant player in Scottish politics in the last year, admitting to the audience that in previous years he had been warned he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.
Protests Nearby
As the event was taking place, a few miles west in the heart of Falkirk, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters were gathering for a now-regular weekly standoff near a hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.
The organisers of the demonstrations stated they were motivated 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 root of the poison”.
He also made a clear distinction extremist opinions and people with “valid concerns” about strain on public services or neighbourhood security.
