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The Reform UK figurehead spoke to the biggest Reform UK public meeting held in Scotland to date, but declined to speak with local journalists afterwards. Instead, newly defected peer the former Conservative donor was left to field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and anti-Jewish sentiment linked to Farage.

A High-Profile Defection

The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and wealthy businessman during a packed event of about 700 attendees at a hotel conference centre near Falkirk. The businessman, who worked as a junior minister for Scotland in the previous administration 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 the party in next May’s Holyrood elections.

Farage said he was “delighted” 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 fierce criticism of the broadcaster for questioning him regarding a report into alleged racist and antisemitic behaviour from his teenage years. But, Farage dodged a planned media briefing after Saturday’s event.

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

Challenged about if he thought Farage should apologise for his alleged remarks towards Jewish pupils, he stated: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”

Insisting on Fitness

Offord insisted that the leader is “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. During his speech, Farage had doubled down on previous comments about the number of Glasgow schoolchildren who are not native English speakers by posing the question to the crowd: “Who voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”

Although the first minister, John Swinney condemned the initial comments as “discriminatory”, and the Labour leader labeled them “toxic and divisive”, Offord maintained that Farage was “drawing attention to a real concern” that people are talking about on the doorstep”.

A Party on the Rise

The event, attended by an energetic and enthused crowd 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 SNP continues to lead in the polls, the party has made substantial progress in the past year, securing 26% of the vote in a recent parliamentary by-election. Following Scottish Labour's decline, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place lately, polling up to 22%.

Declaring that Reform UK membership in Scotland had quadrupled in the past year 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, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, elicited loud cheers as he described Farage as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He instructed the crowd to “prepare for a fight” as we “challenge the ruling class”, warning that “the next five months will be tough”.

Although the party has yet to produce a distinct policy platform for Scotland, representatives 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 Scottish politics over the past 12 months, confessing to supporters that he was once told he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.

Protests Nearby

Meanwhile, not far away in the heart of Falkirk, demonstrators with opposing views assembled for what have become regular weekly confrontations outside a local hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.

The organisers of the demonstrations said it was galvanised by a serious local crime. In an interview, Scotland's leader warned that the tactic of the far-right is to assign responsibility … 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 pressure on local services or neighbourhood security.