Nigel Farage to name Reform UK’s new leader in Scotland

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Nigel Farage to name Reform UK's new leader in Scotland

Nigel Farage has announced the first leader of Reform UK in Scotland.

Lord Malcolm Offord, a former Tory minister who defected to Reform last month, has been chosen to lead the party into the Holyrood election in May.

Farage said: “I have every confidence in the appointment of Malcolm, he has already shown his country that he is devoted to it.

“Now, he will lead it to a greater future.”

The Scottish businessman and financier is a former long-term member of the Conservative party.

Offord held the role of under secretary of state for Scotland under Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.

He also became under-secretary of state for exports until the Conservatives lost the 2024 election to Labour.

Until his defection, he served as treasurer for the Scottish Conservatives.

Lord Malcolm said: “It’s a great honour to be named today as the new leader of Reform UK Scotland.

“I shall be campaigning hard between now and May 7, to communicate a positive vision of how we can all work together to make Scotland the most successful part of the UK in the next 10 years.

“We represent ordinary, decent, hardworking Scots who are fed-up with mid-table mediocrity in Holyrood. Which is why we will be fielding Reform candidates in all 73 constituencies with one sole objective: to get Scotland back to the top of the table.

“Make no mistake, this is now a two-horse race between Reform and the SNP.

“This is an exciting time for Scotland. The election in May allows Scots to finally get rid of this rotten SNP government who have had plenty of time to deliver prosperity for Scotland and have failed.

“Scotland needs Reform and Reform has arrived in Scotland.”

Asked earlier this month whether it was his ambition to be Scotland’s first minister, Lord Malcolm said: “Yes, I mean, you’ve got to be in it to win it.”

Some polls ahead of May’s Holyrood election have put Reform UK in second place behind the SNP, pushing Labour to third.

The party recorded their best ever parliamentary election result in Scotland at the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election last summer, with a 26% share of the vote.

Reform UK also celebrated its first-ever election win in Scotland just before Christmas, picking up a council seat in Whitburn and Blackburn in West Lothian.

Scotland’s only Reform MSP, Graham Simpson, who defected from the Tories in August 2025, and Thomas Kerr, Reform councillor for Shettleston in Glasgow, are also believed to be in the running for the party’s top job in Scotland.

Ahead of the announcement, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar accused Reform of being the “Tories in disguise”.

“They are the same team with a different badge,” Sarwar said. “They have the same destructive ideas that have done so much damage to Scotland, and I am confident that the people of Scotland will reject them.

“Lord Offord is the same man who is a long-term donor to the Conservative Party, a former treasurer of the Scottish Conservatives, the man who advised Iain Duncan Smith, the man who served in both the governments of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss – and now he wants to pretend somehow he is the great defender of working class communities across the country.

“He is a charlatan, he’s a joke, and that’s why Scots will see right through him.”