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Nigel Farage spoke to the biggest Reform UK rally so far in Scotland, but avoided engaging with local journalists following the event. In his place, newly defected member of the House of Lords Malcolm Offord took on the task of field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and anti-Jewish sentiment linked to Farage.

A High-Profile Defection

The leader presented the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor at a sold-out rally of roughly seven hundred attendees in a hotel venue near Falkirk. Offord, who served as a Scotland Office minister in the previous administration and was until recently the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, announced his intention to give up his peerage in order to stand for the party in next May’s Holyrood elections.

Farage said he was “delighted” to greet the new member. He described the switch as “a brave and historic act”.

Dodging the Press

Farage addressed the rally following a difficult period which included him delivering a tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him about an investigation into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour from his teenage years. However, the leader avoided a planned media briefing after Saturday’s event.

Questioned why Farage was not available to address growing claims about his past behaviour, the new recruit responded: “That is a question for him to answer.”

Challenged about whether he believed Farage should apologise for his alleged remarks about Jewish students, he stated: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”

Insisting on Fitness

The peer maintained that Farage was “ethically suitable” to be the country's leader and denied he was employing coded political messaging. During his speech, the leader had reiterated on previous comments about pupils in Glasgow who are not native English speakers by asking the rally: “Who voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”

Although the first minister, John Swinney condemned Farage’s original remarks as “racist”, and the Labour leader called them “toxic and divisive”, Offord maintained that Farage was “highlighting a factual issue that people are talking about on the doorstep”.

Growing Confidence

The rally, attended by an lively and passionate audience of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who bought tickets for the event, showcases the party’s growing confidence before next May’s elections.

Although the Scottish National Party remains ahead, Reform UK has gained significant ground in the past year, securing 26% 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 in recent months, with support reaching over a fifth.

Announcing that Reform UK membership in Scotland had increased fourfold over the last twelve months to 12,000 members, the party chair, David Bull stated his belief it could gain up to 20 MSPs in May, putting the party in “a very strong position” at Holyrood.

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 take on the political establishment”, cautioning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.

Although the party has yet to produce any Scotland-specific policies, speakers from the north-east vowed the party would “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.

Farage himself expressed his pleasure at the party’s emergence as a force in Scottish politics in the last year, admitting to the audience that he was once told he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.

Protests Nearby

Meanwhile, not far away in Falkirk town centre, demonstrators with opposing views were gathering for a now-regular weekly standoff outside a local hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.

The organisers of the demonstrations said it was galvanised by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. 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 between those who hold far-right views and people with “legitimate points” about pressure on local services or neighbourhood security.