🔗 Share this article Nigel Farage Addresses Party's Largest Scottish Rally Following Controversy and High-Profile Switch The Reform UK figurehead spoke to the biggest Reform UK rally held in Scotland to date, but avoided engaging with local journalists following the event. Instead, newly defected member of the House of Lords Malcolm Offord took on the task of responding to queries on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism linked to Farage. Welcoming a New Recruit Farage introduced the former Conservative peer and millionaire donor during a sold-out rally of about 700 supporters in a hotel venue near Falkirk. 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, stated his plan to give up his peerage in order to become a candidate for the party in next May’s Holyrood elections. The leader stated he was “extremely pleased” to welcome Offord to the party. He described the switch as “a brave and historic act”. Dodging the Press The Reform leader addressed the rally after a turbulent week which saw him launch a fierce criticism of the broadcaster for questioning him about an investigation into claimed discriminatory and antisemitic behaviour from his teenage years. However, Farage dodged a planned media briefing post-rally. When asked why his new party’s leader was not available to address growing claims concerning his history, the new recruit responded: “That is a question for him to answer.” Pressed on whether he believed Farage should apologise 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.” Insisting on Fitness The peer maintained that Farage was “morally fit” to be the country's leader and denied he was employing dog-whistle politics. During his speech, Farage had doubled down 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 the first minister, John Swinney criticised Farage’s original remarks 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 largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who bought tickets for the event, showcases the party’s growing confidence ahead of the Scottish vote. While the SNP continues to lead in the polls, Reform UK has gained significant ground 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%. Announcing that party membership north of the border had quadrupled over the last twelve months to a running total of 12,000, a senior party official stated his belief it could win around twenty parliamentary seats in May, which would place Reform in “a very strong position” in the Scottish Parliament. Fighting Talk Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, elicited loud cheers as he described Farage as “the future PM of the UK”. He instructed the crowd to “man the barricades 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 “take on the green blob and the net-zero grifters”. Farage himself underlined his delight at the party’s emergence as a force in the political scene in Scotland 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 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. The organisers of the demonstrations stated they were motivated by a criminal case involving an asylum seeker. In an interview, Scotland's leader 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”. However, he differentiated extremist opinions and people with “legitimate points” about strain on public services or community safety.