Nigel Farage spoke to the biggest Reform UK public meeting held in Scotland to date, but avoided engaging with the press corps following the event. Instead, newly defected peer Malcolm Offord took on the task of field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism surrounding Farage.
A High-Profile Defection
Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor at a packed event of about 700 attendees at a hotel conference centre near Falkirk. The businessman, who worked as a junior minister for Scotland under the last government and was until recently the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, stated his plan 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 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 fierce criticism of the broadcaster after they quizzed him regarding a report into alleged racist 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 did not make himself available to address growing claims concerning his history, Offord said: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”
Pressed on if he thought Farage should apologise for his alleged remarks about Jewish students, Offord said: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”
Defending the Leader
The peer maintained that the leader is “morally fit” to be the country's leader and rejected claims of dog-whistle politics. While addressing supporters, Farage had doubled down 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 Scotland's First Minister criticised Farage’s original remarks as “racist”, and Keir Starmer called them “harmful and polarising”, the defector argued that Farage 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 the party’s growing confidence ahead of the Scottish vote.
While the Scottish National Party remains ahead, the party has made substantial progress in the past year, securing 26% of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. Following Scottish Labour's decline, the party has often relegated it to third lately, with support reaching over a fifth.
Declaring that party membership north of the border had increased fourfold over the last twelve months 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 very strong position” in the Scottish Parliament.
Campaign Rhetoric
Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, elicited loud cheers as he referred to the leader as “the future PM of the UK”. He instructed the crowd to “man the barricades as we “challenge the ruling class”, warning that “the next five months will be tough”.
Despite not yet publishing any Scotland-specific policies, representatives vowed the party would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.
The leader personally underlined his delight at the party’s emergence as a force in Scottish politics in the last year, confessing to supporters that he was once told he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.
Protests Nearby
Meanwhile, a few miles west in Falkirk town centre, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters assembled for what have become regular weekly confrontations near a hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.
A group coordinating protests said it was galvanised by a serious local crime. In an interview, First Minister John Swinney cautioned that the tactic of the far-right is to assign responsibility … to asylum seekers or migrants 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.
