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The Reform UK figurehead spoke to the largest the party's rally so far in Scotland, however declined to speak with the press corps following the event. In his place, recently switched peer the former Conservative donor was left to field questions on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism surrounding the party leader.

Welcoming a New Recruit

The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and wealthy businessman during a sold-out rally of about 700 attendees at a hotel conference centre in central Scotland. The businessman, who worked as a Scotland Office minister under the last government and was until recently the Scottish Tory party's chief financial officer, announced his intention to relinquish his seat in the Lords 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 brave and historic act”.

Avoiding Media Scrutiny

Farage spoke to the crowd following a difficult period which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him regarding a report into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour from his teenage years. But, the leader avoided a planned media briefing 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.”

Pressed on whether he believed Farage should apologise for his alleged remarks towards Jewish pupils, Offord said: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”

Defending the Leader

The peer maintained that Farage was “morally fit” to be the country's leader and denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. While addressing supporters, Farage had doubled down 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 the first minister, John Swinney condemned Farage’s original remarks as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer called them “toxic and divisive”, Offord maintained that Farage was “highlighting a factual issue that people are talking about on the doorstep”.

A Party on the Rise

The rally, attended by an energetic and enthused crowd of predominantly older, white male backers who each paid £6 to attend, showcases the party’s growing confidence before next May’s elections.

While the SNP continues to lead in the polls, the party has made substantial progress 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, with support reaching over a fifth.

Declaring that party membership north of the border had quadrupled in the past year to 12,000 members, the party chair, David Bull said he believed it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, which would place Reform in “a very strong position” in the Scottish Parliament.

Fighting Talk

A Reform councillor, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, elicited loud cheers as he described Farage as “the future PM of the UK”. He told supporters to “prepare for a fight” as we “challenge the ruling class”, cautioning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.

Despite not yet publishing a distinct policy platform for Scotland, speakers from the north-east vowed the party would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.

Farage himself underlined his delight at the party’s emergence as a force in Scottish politics in the last year, admitting to the audience that he was once told he “couldn't fill a small venue”.

Protests Nearby

Meanwhile, a few miles west in Falkirk town centre, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters assembled for what have become regular weekly confrontations outside a local 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, Scotland's leader warned that “what the far right do is to assign responsibility … to new arrivals and I think that is the source of a harmful narrative”.

However, he differentiated extremist opinions and people with “valid concerns” about strain on public services or community safety.