Nigel Farage spoke to the biggest Reform UK public meeting so far in Scotland, but declined to speak with local journalists following the event. Instead, newly defected peer Malcolm Offord was left to responding to queries on allegations of racism and anti-Jewish sentiment linked to Farage.
A High-Profile Defection
The leader presented the former Conservative peer and wealthy businessman at a packed event of roughly seven hundred supporters in a hotel venue near Falkirk. Offord, who served as a Scotland Office minister in the previous administration and was until recently treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, announced his intention to relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to stand for Reform UK in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote.
Farage said he was “extremely pleased” to greet the new member. He described the switch as “a brave and historic act”.
Dodging the Press
The Reform leader spoke to the crowd following a difficult period which included him delivering a tirade against the BBC for questioning him about an investigation into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour as a youth. However, Farage dodged the expected press huddle after Saturday’s event.
Questioned why Farage did not make himself available to address growing claims concerning his history, the new recruit responded: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”
Pressed on if he thought an apology was necessary for the comments he is said to have made about Jewish students, he stated: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”
Defending the Leader
Offord insisted that the leader is “morally fit” to be prime minister and denied he was employing coded political messaging. During his speech, Farage had doubled down on his remarks about pupils in Glasgow 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 criticised the initial comments as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer labeled them “harmful and polarising”, the defector argued that his new leader was “highlighting a factual issue that people are talking about on the doorstep”.
Growing Confidence
The event, filled with an lively and passionate audience of predominantly older, white male backers who each paid £6 to attend, showcases Reform's increasing self-assurance ahead of the Scottish vote.
Although the Scottish National Party remains ahead, Reform UK has made substantial progress in the past year, 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, the party chair, David Bull said he believed it could gain up to 20 MSPs in May, putting the party in “a powerful situation” at Holyrood.
Fighting Talk
A Reform councillor, a local representative for the party, prompted a roar of approval as he referred to the leader as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He instructed the crowd to “man the barricades as we take on the political establishment”, warning that “the next five months will be tough”.
Despite not yet publishing any Scotland-specific policies, speakers from the north-east pledged Reform would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.
Farage himself expressed his pleasure at the party’s emergence as a force in the political scene in Scotland in the last year, confessing to supporters that he was once told he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.
Local Context
Meanwhile, a few miles west in Falkirk town centre, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters were gathering for what have become regular weekly confrontations near a hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.
The organisers of the demonstrations stated they were motivated by a serious local crime. Speaking previously, Scotland's leader cautioned that the tactic of the far-right is to assign responsibility … to new arrivals 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.
