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The Reform UK figurehead addressed the biggest Reform UK public meeting held in Scotland to date, but avoided engaging with local journalists following the event. Instead, recently switched member of the House of Lords the former Conservative donor was left to responding to queries on claims of discriminatory behaviour and anti-Jewish sentiment linked to Farage.

A High-Profile Defection

Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor during a sold-out rally of about 700 supporters at a hotel conference centre near Falkirk. Offord, who served as a junior minister for Scotland in the previous administration and most recently served as treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, 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 “delighted” to greet the new member. He described the switch as “a courageous and significant move”.

Avoiding Media Scrutiny

The Reform leader addressed the rally after a turbulent week which saw him launch a fierce criticism of the broadcaster for questioning him regarding a report into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour from his teenage years. But, Farage dodged the expected press huddle post-rally.

When asked why his new party’s leader did not make himself available to answer mounting allegations about his past behaviour, the new recruit responded: “That is a question for him to answer.”

Challenged about if he thought an apology was necessary for the comments he is said to have made towards Jewish pupils, Offord said: “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, the leader had reiterated on his remarks 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 Scotland's First Minister criticised the initial comments as “racist”, and Keir Starmer called them “toxic and divisive”, Offord maintained that Farage was “drawing attention to a real concern” that “voters are discussing”.

A Party on the Rise

The rally, filled with an energetic and enthused crowd of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who each paid £6 to attend, highlights Reform's increasing self-assurance ahead of the Scottish vote.

While 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, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place in recent months, polling up to 22%.

Declaring that Reform UK membership in Scotland had quadrupled in the past year to a running total of 12,000, the party chair, David Bull stated his belief it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, putting the party in “a powerful situation” in the Scottish Parliament.

Fighting Talk

A Reform councillor, a local representative for the party, prompted a roar of approval 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”, cautioning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.

Despite not yet publishing a distinct policy platform for Scotland, representatives pledged Reform would “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”.

Farage himself expressed his pleasure at Reform's rise as a significant player in the political scene in Scotland in the last year, admitting to the audience that he was once told he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.

Protests Nearby

As the event was taking place, not far away in Falkirk town centre, demonstrators with opposing views were gathering for a now-regular weekly standoff near a hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.

A group coordinating protests said it was galvanised by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. In an interview, First Minister John Swinney cautioned that “what the far right do 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 “valid concerns” about pressure on local services or neighbourhood security.