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The Reform UK figurehead spoke to the largest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, but avoided engaging with local journalists following the event. In his place, newly defected peer the former Conservative donor was left to field questions on allegations of racism and anti-Jewish sentiment linked to the party leader.

A High-Profile Defection

Farage introduced the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor at a packed event of roughly seven hundred attendees in a hotel venue in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a Scotland Office minister under the last government and was until recently 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 next May’s Holyrood elections.

The leader stated he was “delighted” to welcome Offord to the party. He called the peer’s defection as “a courageous and significant move”.

Avoiding Media Scrutiny

The Reform leader addressed the rally after a turbulent week which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him regarding a report into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour as a youth. However, Farage dodged the expected press huddle after Saturday’s event.

When asked why his new party’s leader did not make himself available to address growing claims about his past behaviour, Offord said: “That is a question for him to answer.”

Challenged about if he thought Farage should apologise for the comments he is said to have made about Jewish students, Offord said: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”

Defending the Leader

Offord insisted that Farage was “ethically suitable” to be prime minister and rejected claims of coded political messaging. While addressing supporters, the leader had reiterated 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 criticised the initial comments as “discriminatory”, and the Labour leader labeled them “toxic and divisive”, the defector argued that Farage was “drawing attention to a real concern” 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 each paid £6 to attend, showcases the party’s growing confidence ahead of the Scottish vote.

Although the Scottish National Party remains ahead, the party has made substantial progress in the past year, achieving a quarter of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. Following Scottish Labour's decline, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place in recent months, with support reaching over a fifth.

Announcing that party membership north of the border had increased fourfold in the past year to 12,000 members, the party chair, David Bull stated his belief it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, putting the party in “a very strong position” at Holyrood.

Campaign Rhetoric

Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, elicited loud cheers as he described Farage as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He told supporters to “prepare for a fight” as we “challenge the ruling class”, cautioning that “the next five months will be tough”.

Although the party has yet to produce any Scotland-specific policies, representatives pledged Reform would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.

Farage himself underlined his delight at Reform's rise as a significant player 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”.

Protests Nearby

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 criminal case involving an asylum seeker. In an interview, First Minister John Swinney warned that “what the far right do is to apportion the blame … to new arrivals and I think that is the root of the poison”.

He also made a clear distinction between those who hold far-right views and people with “legitimate points” about strain on public services or neighbourhood security.