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Nigel Farage addressed the biggest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, but declined to speak with the press corps afterwards. In his place, newly defected member of the House of Lords the former Conservative donor took on the task of field questions on allegations of racism and anti-Jewish sentiment surrounding the party leader.

A High-Profile Defection

Farage introduced the ex-Tory lord and wealthy businessman at a sold-out rally of about 700 attendees in a hotel venue in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a junior minister for Scotland in the previous administration and most recently served as the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, announced his intention to relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to stand for Reform UK in next May’s Holyrood elections.

Farage said he was “extremely pleased” to welcome Offord to the party. He called the peer’s defection as “a courageous and significant move”.

Dodging the Press

The Reform leader addressed the rally following a difficult period which included him delivering a tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him regarding a report into alleged racist and antisemitic behaviour as a youth. But, Farage dodged a planned media briefing post-rally.

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.”

Pressed on whether he believed Farage should apologise for the comments he is said to have made towards Jewish pupils, he stated: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”

Defending the Leader

Offord insisted that Farage was “ethically suitable” to be the country's leader and rejected claims of 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?”

While the first minister, John Swinney condemned Farage’s original remarks as “racist”, and the Labour leader labeled them “toxic and divisive”, Offord maintained that his new leader was “drawing attention to a real concern” that “voters are discussing”.

Growing Confidence

The event, filled with an lively and passionate audience of predominantly older, white male backers who bought tickets for the event, highlights the party’s growing confidence ahead of the Scottish vote.

While the Scottish National Party remains ahead, the party has gained significant ground recently, achieving a quarter of the vote in a recent parliamentary by-election. Following Scottish Labour's decline, the party has often relegated it to third in recent months, polling up to 22%.

Announcing that party membership north of the border had increased fourfold in the past year to 12,000 members, a senior party official said he believed it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, putting the party in “a very strong position” at Holyrood.

Campaign Rhetoric

A Reform councillor, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, prompted a roar of approval as he referred to the leader as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He told supporters to “man the barricades as we “challenge the ruling class”, cautioning that “the next five months will be tough”.

Although the party has yet to produce a distinct policy platform for Scotland, speakers from the north-east vowed the party 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 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, not far away in Falkirk town centre, demonstrators with opposing views 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 criminal case involving an asylum seeker. In an interview, Scotland's leader cautioned that the tactic of the far-right is to apportion the blame … 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 strain on public services or community safety.