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Nigel Farage spoke to the largest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, but declined to speak with the press corps afterwards. Instead, recently switched member of the House of Lords the former Conservative donor took on the task of responding to queries on allegations of racism and anti-Jewish sentiment linked to the party leader.

A High-Profile Defection

The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor at a sold-out rally of about 700 supporters at a hotel conference centre 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 become a candidate 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 courageous and significant move”.

Dodging the Press

Farage spoke to the crowd after a turbulent week which included him delivering a fierce criticism of the broadcaster after they quizzed him about an investigation into alleged racist and remarks as a youth. But, the leader avoided a planned media briefing post-rally.

Questioned why his new party’s leader did not make himself available to answer mounting allegations concerning his history, the new recruit responded: “That is a question for him to answer.”

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 rejected claims of coded political messaging. During his speech, the leader had reiterated on his remarks about the number of Glasgow schoolchildren who are not native English speakers by asking the rally: “Who voted for the wholesale change of the population of Glasgow?”

While the first minister, John Swinney condemned the initial comments as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer called them “toxic and divisive”, the defector argued that Farage was “highlighting a factual issue that people are talking about on the doorstep”.

Growing Confidence

The rally, 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.

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. Following Scottish Labour's decline, the party has often relegated it to third lately, polling up to 22%.

Announcing that Reform UK membership in Scotland had increased fourfold in the past year 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.

Fighting Talk

Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, prompted a roar of approval as he described Farage as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He instructed the crowd to “prepare for a fight” as we “challenge the ruling class”, warning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.

Although the party has yet to produce any Scotland-specific policies, speakers from the north-east pledged Reform 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 the political scene in Scotland in the last year, admitting to the audience that in previous years he had been warned he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.

Local Context

Meanwhile, not far away in the heart of Falkirk, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters assembled 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 serious local crime. Speaking previously, Scotland's leader warned that the tactic of the far-right is to assign responsibility … to new arrivals and I think that is the source of a harmful narrative”.

However, he differentiated between those who hold far-right views and people with “legitimate points” about strain on public services or neighbourhood security.