Hope and fears: Farage and Offord set out Reform's pitch for Holyrood

“They can’t stop us,” says Nigel Farage, crystal chandeliers and fairy lights glittering overhead.

The décor of the wedding venue chosen by Reform UK for its Scottish pre-election rally is at odds with the rhetoric delivered on stage.

Yes, there is a promise of “hope”. But more often there is the language of battle, of ‘fights’ and ‘barricades’, of ‘ripping up’ consensus at Holyrood; of “anarchy” and “lawlessness” on the streets; of “fear” and danger; of “locals” and “strangers”. Of John Swinney, Keir Starmer and their “rotten governments”, Glasgow councillor and MSP hopeful Thomas Kerr says that instead of serving the public, they “spit in their faces and rob them blind”.

Cheers in the room, around 400-people strong, vary from the polite to the passionate. They’re most voluble when a speaker says something about immigration and its ills.

Some have travelled from England and Wales to be here, showing the extent of the pull. Tickets were advertised on the Eventbrite platform. Dr David Bull, Reform’s chairman, tells attendees they will soon have another chance to spend their money – the party is launching its own tartan next week, which will be available to buy in kilts, trews, and the like.

Sarah Pochin, MP for Runcorn and Helsby, says she wishes it had been available earlier. “I wanted to come on in a Reform tartan burqa,” she announces to whooping and laughter from the crowd.

Yes, this is nominally a party conference. But it is not. Conferences are open to delegates and speakers who are allowed to join the debate.

Here motions and votes are replaced by crowd work, as if we’re at a comedy gig instead. Malcolm Offord and Farage use call and response, asking a question with an implied answer. The audience delivers every time. “This is like a pantomime, isn’t it?” Farage grins.

Minutes earlier, the Reform UK leader had been pacing behind a turquoise screen to the side of the stage at his party’s Scottish pre-election rally, popping his head out as his Caledonian deputy Offord spoke at length.

Next to Farage, a large man rolled his eyes. Next to him, Bull shifted, tapping his thumbs on clasped fingers.

Yes, Offord is the man they want to be, in the ex-peer’s own words, Scotland’s “next first minister”, or, in Farage’s, the leader of the opposition. But it is Cameo star Farage who brings the showbiz to this event, not Offord, whose speech sees him grip the black lectern, making it shoogle and shake, as if the whole thing is based on shonky foundations.

We’re supposed to be hearing about the party’s plans for the Scottish Parliament. A manifesto, scant on detail, has been produced.

It pledges to reduce the number of MSPs, abolish the Scottish Sentencing Council to give ministers “direct democratic oversight of sentencing”, and scrap quangos. Which ones? Start with a presumption that it would be “all of them”, says Offord, until they can work out which are value for public money.

Offord, who tells us about his own grandfather's time as an economic migrant in Hong Kong, also takes time to talk about Glasgow night patrol group North2South, who walk around at night to keep women safe, it is claimed, but who police have distanced themselves from, saying they “do not work with them or their members, nor advise them how to carry out their activities”.

Farage denounced mass Muslim prayer after a Community Iftar event attended by Sadiq Khan in London, saying his party would “stand firm for the Judeo-Christian principles upon which our nation was built”, and denounced “sectarianism” in politics.

On social media, Offord’s friends in North2South shared an image of volunteers with a flag bearing the Red Hand of Ulster and bearing the initials EBFD.

A group by those initials, the East Belfast Nightwatch First Division, operates in Northern Ireland.

There is much to take in here at Ingliston Country Club in the Renfrewshire hills, where attendees boo journalists loudly when their questions come up, heckling them to “sit down” or “get a job”. “The questions were so stupid,” one woman complains on the way out.

Those questions cover policy on education, independence, policing and more.

Before they begin, one candidate, Helen McDade, snaps at Holyrood journalists. She’s angled her chair and keeps an eye on us. “At least that put a smile on your face,” she snaps at one of us. We have not, it seems, been enthusiastic enough.

There is plenty of enthusiasm in the room, however. One man, clad in Union Jack trews and Reform branded shoes he sourced from India, takes to the stage and is photographed with Farage.

This room is predominately white and tips towards middle age and older, but it is not homogenous.  One man wears red trews and tweed – the uniform of Tory Edinburgh. A hat-wearing woman looks like she’s stepped out of a Laura Ashley catalogue. Tattooed men in Barbour-style jackets look on, as do women in blue dresses, and a host of casually dressed ticket-holders who are content that they have found their people.

“Are you happy?” Farage asks at one point. “I’ll be happy when you’re prime minister,” calls back an attendee.

If they are happy, it is a happiness borne of dissatisfaction with services, governments, and the economy. There’s support for scrapping net zero measures and agreement that Glasgow, Scotland's biggest and most diverse city, is dangerous. Hochin denounces the education system, but it’s unclear whether she’s talking about England or Scotland. Bull says the Greens are a “total threat” to national security, but it’s uncertain whether he means the Scottish Greens, the Green Party of England and Wales, or both.

Farage won’t have a shot at Downing Street for a while. And polls suggest the party will fall short of Bute House, but could form the second largest party.

It has selected 73 candidates including former Edinburgh Tory councillor Cameron Rose and Aimee Alexander, who once worked for Conservative MSP Meghan Gallacher.

Graham Simpson MSP, currently the only Reform man in Holyrood, jokes that he could “do with a few friends”, and polls suggest he may end up with a score of them.

Between them, they will have stood on a platform promising to jettison net zero targets, maximise oil and gas production and slash welfare spending, as well as forming a department of government efficiency to “cut waste and duplication” and revoking land reforms.

All that, plus fast-tracking open-cast coal mining applications and cutting the number of MSPs by 16 by aligning Holyrood constituencies with their Westminster counterparts.

“Scotland is broken”, speakers repeated throughout the day. Reform has 49 days to convince the country that it is the fix the nation needs.