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

Nigel Farage will name Reform UK’s new leader in Scotland on Thursday.

It is widely expected that Sir Malcolm Offord – who defected from the Conservatives late last year – will be handed the job.

Asked earlier this month whether it was his ambition to be Scotland’s first minister, he 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.”