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The Reform UK figurehead addressed the biggest the party's rally so far in Scotland, but avoided engaging with local journalists following the event. Instead, newly defected peer the former Conservative donor took on the task of responding to queries on claims of discriminatory behaviour and anti-Jewish sentiment linked to Farage.

Welcoming a New Recruit

The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and wealthy businessman during a packed event of roughly seven hundred attendees 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 stand for the party in next May’s Holyrood elections.

The leader stated he was “delighted” to welcome the new member. He called the peer’s defection as “a brave and historic act”.

Dodging the Press

Farage spoke to the crowd following a difficult period which included him delivering a tirade against the BBC for questioning him about an investigation into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour as a youth. But, Farage dodged a planned media briefing after Saturday’s event.

Questioned why his new party’s leader was not available to address growing claims about his past behaviour, the new recruit responded: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”

Challenged about whether he believed Farage should apologise for his alleged remarks towards Jewish pupils, Offord said: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.”

Insisting on Fitness

The peer maintained that the leader is “morally fit” 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?”

While Scotland's First Minister condemned the initial comments as “racist”, and Keir Starmer labeled them “toxic and divisive”, the defector argued that his new leader was “highlighting a factual issue that “voters are discussing”.

A Party on the Rise

The rally, filled with an lively and passionate audience of predominantly older, white male backers who each paid £6 to attend, showcases the party’s growing confidence before next May’s elections.

Although the Scottish National Party remains ahead, Reform UK has made substantial progress in the past year, achieving a quarter of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. After the collapse in support for Scottish Labour, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place lately, polling up to 22%.

Declaring that party membership north of the border had increased fourfold over the last twelve months to a running total of 12,000, a senior party official said he believed it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, putting the party in “a very strong position” in the Scottish Parliament.

Campaign Rhetoric

Thomas Kerr, 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 told supporters to “man the barricades as we take on the political establishment”, warning that “the next five months will be tough”.

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”.

The leader personally expressed his pleasure at Reform's rise as a significant player in Scottish politics over the past 12 months, admitting to the audience that he was once told he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.

Local Context

As the event was taking place, a few miles west 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. In an interview, First Minister John Swinney cautioned that “what the far right do is to assign responsibility … to asylum seekers or migrants 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 community safety.