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Nigel Farage spoke to the largest the party's rally held in Scotland to date, but avoided engaging with local journalists afterwards. Instead, newly defected peer Malcolm Offord took on the task of responding to queries on claims of discriminatory behaviour and antisemitism surrounding Farage.

Welcoming a New Recruit

Farage introduced 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 most recently served as treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, stated his plan to relinquish his seat in the Lords in order to stand for the party in next May’s Holyrood elections.

Farage said he was “delighted” to greet Offord to the party. He described the switch as “a courageous and significant move”.

Dodging the Press

The Reform leader spoke to the crowd after a turbulent week which included him delivering a fierce criticism of the broadcaster after they quizzed him about an investigation into claimed discriminatory and remarks from his teenage years. But, the leader avoided the expected press huddle after Saturday’s event.

Questioned why his new party’s leader was not available to answer mounting allegations about his past behaviour, the new recruit responded: “That is a question for him to answer.”

Challenged about if he thought an apology was necessary for his alleged remarks about Jewish students, he stated: “That is a matter for him to deliberate on with his team.”

Defending the Leader

Offord insisted 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 previous comments about the number of Glasgow schoolchildren who are not native English speakers by asking the rally: “Who authorised the complete transformation of Glasgow's demographics?”

While Scotland's First Minister criticised the initial comments as “discriminatory”, and the Labour leader labeled them “harmful and polarising”, Offord maintained that his new leader was “drawing attention to a real concern” that “voters are discussing”.

A Party on the Rise

The rally, attended by an lively and passionate audience of largely male, white and middle-aged supporters who each paid £6 to attend, highlights the party’s growing confidence ahead of the Scottish vote.

While the Scottish National Party remains ahead, Reform UK has made substantial progress in the past year, achieving a quarter of the vote in its first Holyrood byelection test. After the collapse in support for Scottish Labour, the party has often relegated it to third in recent months, polling up to 22%.

Declaring that party membership north of the border had increased fourfold 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” at Holyrood.

Fighting Talk

Thomas Kerr, one of Reform’s 19 Scottish councillors, prompted a roar of approval as he described Farage as “Britain’s next prime minister”. He told supporters to “man the barricades as we take on the political establishment”, warning that “the coming campaign will be difficult”.

Although the party has yet to produce any Scotland-specific policies, speakers from the north-east vowed the party would “confront climate activists and those profiting from green policies”.

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, 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. In an interview, First Minister John Swinney warned that the tactic of the far-right is to assign responsibility … to new arrivals and I think that is the root of the poison”.

He also made a clear distinction between those who hold far-right views and people with “valid concerns” about pressure on local services or community safety.