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Nigel Farage addressed the biggest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, however avoided engaging with local journalists afterwards. In his place, newly defected member of the House of Lords the former Conservative donor took on the task of field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and anti-Jewish sentiment linked to Farage.

Welcoming a New Recruit

The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor at a sold-out rally of about 700 attendees at a hotel conference centre in central Scotland. The businessman, who worked 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 give up his peerage in order to stand for the party in next May’s Holyrood elections.

Farage said he was “delighted” to greet the new member. He called the peer’s defection as “a courageous and significant move”.

Dodging the Press

The Reform leader 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 remarks as a youth. However, the leader avoided a planned media briefing post-rally.

When asked why his new party’s leader did not make himself available to address growing claims about his past behaviour, Offord said: “You’ll need to ask him that question.”

Pressed on if he thought an apology was necessary for the comments he is said to have made about Jewish students, he stated: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”

Defending the Leader

The peer maintained that the leader is “ethically suitable” to be the country's leader and denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. During his speech, the leader had reiterated on previous comments 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 criticised the initial comments as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer labeled them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that Farage was “highlighting a factual issue that “voters are discussing”.

Growing Confidence

The rally, filled with an energetic and enthused crowd of predominantly older, white male backers who bought tickets for the event, showcases the party’s growing confidence ahead of the Scottish vote.

Although the SNP continues to lead in the polls, Reform UK has made substantial progress in the past year, securing 26% 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 in recent months, polling up to 22%.

Declaring that Reform UK membership in Scotland had quadrupled in the past year to 12,000 members, a senior party official said he believed it could gain up to 20 MSPs in May, putting the party in “a powerful situation” in the Scottish Parliament.

Fighting Talk

A Reform councillor, a local representative for the party, elicited loud cheers as he described Farage as “the future PM of the UK”. He told supporters to “man the barricades as we take on the political establishment”, cautioning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.

Despite not yet publishing a distinct policy platform for Scotland, representatives 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 Scottish politics in the last year, confessing to supporters that in previous years he had been warned he “wouldn’t get 20 people in a room”.

Protests Nearby

Meanwhile, not far away in the heart of Falkirk, demonstrators with opposing views assembled for what have become regular weekly confrontations outside a local hotel where asylum seekers are now housed.

A group coordinating protests stated they were motivated by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. Speaking previously, Scotland's leader warned that the tactic of the far-right is to assign responsibility … to asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the source of a harmful narrative”.

He also made a clear distinction between those who hold far-right views and people with “valid concerns” about strain on public services or neighbourhood security.