🔗 Share this article

Nigel Farage spoke to the largest the party's rally held in Scotland to date, but avoided engaging with the press corps following the event. In his place, recently switched member of the House of Lords the former Conservative donor took on the task of responding to queries on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism linked to the party leader.

Welcoming a New Recruit

The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor at a packed event of about 700 attendees at a hotel conference centre near Falkirk. The businessman, who worked as a junior minister for Scotland under the last government and was until recently the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, stated his plan to give up his peerage in order to become a candidate for the party in next May’s Holyrood elections.

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 tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him about an investigation into alleged racist and antisemitic behaviour from his teenage years. But, Farage dodged a planned media briefing post-rally.

Questioned why Farage did not make himself available to answer mounting allegations concerning his history, Offord said: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”

Challenged about if he thought 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.”

Insisting on Fitness

The peer maintained that Farage was “morally fit” to be the country's leader and rejected claims of dog-whistle politics. During his speech, the leader had reiterated on his remarks about pupils in Glasgow who speak English as a second language 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 the Labour leader called them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that Farage was “drawing attention to a real concern” that “voters are discussing”.

A Party on the Rise

The event, filled with an lively and passionate audience of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who each paid £6 to attend, showcases Reform's increasing self-assurance ahead of the Scottish vote.

While the SNP continues to lead in the polls, the party has made substantial progress recently, achieving a quarter of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. Following Scottish Labour's decline, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place lately, polling up to 22%.

Announcing that Reform UK membership in Scotland had quadrupled in the past year to a running total of 12,000, the party chair, David Bull said he believed it could gain up to 20 MSPs in May, which would place Reform in “a powerful situation” in the Scottish Parliament.

Fighting Talk

Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, 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 take on the political establishment”, cautioning that “the next five months will be tough”.

Despite not yet publishing a distinct policy platform for Scotland, representatives pledged Reform would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.

Farage himself expressed his pleasure at Reform's rise as a significant player in the political scene in Scotland in the last year, confessing to supporters that in previous years he had been warned he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.

Local Context

As the event was taking place, not far away in Falkirk town centre, demonstrators with opposing views were gathering for what have become regular weekly confrontations outside a local hotel used to accommodate asylum seekers.

A group coordinating protests stated they were motivated by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. Speaking previously, Scotland's leader cautioned that “what the far right do is to assign responsibility … to new arrivals and I think that is the root of the poison”.

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