🔗 Share this article Reform UK Leader Addresses Movement's Largest Scottish Rally Following Controversy and Defection Nigel Farage addressed the biggest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, but avoided engaging with local journalists afterwards. Instead, recently switched member of the House of Lords Malcolm Offord was left to field questions on allegations of racism and antisemitism surrounding Farage. Welcoming a New Recruit The leader presented the ex-Tory lord and millionaire donor at a packed event of roughly seven hundred attendees in a hotel venue in central Scotland. Offord, who served as a Scotland Office minister in the previous administration and was until recently treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, announced his intention to give up his peerage in order to stand for the party in the upcoming Scottish parliament vote. Farage said he was “extremely pleased” to welcome Offord to the party. He described the switch as “a brave and historic act”. Avoiding Media Scrutiny The Reform leader spoke to the crowd after a turbulent week which saw him launch a tirade against the BBC after they quizzed him regarding a report into alleged racist and antisemitic behaviour as a youth. But, the leader avoided the expected press huddle post-rally. When asked why his new party’s leader was not available to answer mounting allegations concerning his history, Offord said: “That is a question for him to answer.” Challenged about whether he believed an apology was necessary for the comments he is said to have made towards Jewish pupils, he stated: “I think that’s something he’ll need to consider with his own advisers.” Insisting on Fitness Offord insisted that the leader is “morally fit” to be prime minister and rejected claims of 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?” Although Scotland's First Minister criticised the initial comments as “discriminatory”, and Keir Starmer called them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that his new leader was “highlighting a factual issue that people are talking about on the doorstep”. A Party on the Rise The event, filled with an lively and passionate audience of predominantly older, white male backers who bought tickets for the event, highlights the party’s growing confidence before next May’s elections. Although the Scottish National Party remains ahead, Reform UK has made substantial progress recently, achieving a quarter of the vote in a recent parliamentary by-election. Following Scottish Labour's decline, Reform has regularly pushed it into third place lately, with support reaching over a fifth. Declaring that party membership north of the border had increased fourfold 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 powerful situation” at Holyrood. Campaign Rhetoric Thomas Kerr, a local representative for the party, elicited loud cheers 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”. 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 the party’s emergence as a force in the political scene in Scotland in the last year, confessing to supporters that he was once told he “couldn't fill a small venue”. Local Context Meanwhile, a few miles west in the heart of Falkirk, anti-immigration and anti-racist protesters were gathering for a now-regular weekly standoff 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, First Minister John Swinney cautioned that “what the far right do is to apportion the blame … to asylum seekers or migrants and I think that is the root of the poison”. He also made a clear distinction extremist opinions and people with “legitimate points” about pressure on local services or community safety.