Euan McColm: New Scottish Reform leader Malcolm Offord shows himself as fragile and unserious

Reform UK’s new Scottish leader presents as a reasonably persuasive facsimile of the dynamic, alpha male. From the cheap seats, you could almost believe him as ruthless dealmaker Gordon Gekko.

But those in the front row would be less easy to convince. Up close, Offord’s ridiculousness becomes absolutely clear.

The former Tory peer – who will quit the House of Lords on January 30 in order to stand in May’s Holyrood election – was unveiled on Thursday by Nigel Farage as his envoy in the frozen north.

There was no tiresome democracy in the process. Rather, Farage chose his man and then gave Reform’s Scottish members an Offord they could not refuse.

Things started to go badly very quickly.

During a post-press conference interview with the ITV News reporter Peter Smith, Offord displayed a flat-footedness that made one wonder what it was that Farage saw in this multi-millionaire former city fund manager.

Asked by Smith about a Reform video, released last June, which attacked Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar with the claim that his priority was the “Pakistani community”, Offord fell to pieces.

After trying – and failing – to change the subject, Farage’s man was pressed by Smith on whether there would be more of that kind of thing under his leadership. Would he disavow that message? Would he repeat it? Did he think that Sarwar prioritised the “Pakistani community”?

A squirming Offord had “no idea” and “no personal” view on the matter.

At this point, a Reform press officer intervened, demanding Smith move on from the subject.

“That’s not what we want to talk about,” said Offord, before another party bag-carrier stepped in, grabbing Smith by the arm as Reform's new Scottish leader cut the interview and walked off.

An interview with Sky News’s Connor Gillies, in which Offord was pressed on past Reform demands for illegal immigrants to be “put in camps and deported” was similarly ended by a press officer who felt compelled to rescue her fragile boss.

I doubt the sort of people who respond to racist dogwhistles will have seen a problem with what happened, but the rest of us should be in no doubt that Reform’s new Scottish leader, unable or unwilling to answer simple questions, is not a serious man.

Talking of unserious men, earlier, as Nigel Farage was taking questions from the gathered media, news broke that Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch had sacked Robert Jenrick from her shadow cabinet and withdrawn from him the party whip after discovering “clear, irrefutable evidence” that he planned to defect to Reform and to cause maximum damage to the Tories as he did so.

Farage admitted that, yes, he had held talks with Jenrick, who’d been serving as shadow justice secretary since losing to Badenoch in 2024’s Conservative leadership election, but denied any plan to unveil him as a new Reform member later that day at a press conference in London.

Later that day, at a press conference in London, Farage unveiled Jenrick as a new Reform member.

Even her fiercest political foes would concede that Badenoch handled Jenrick’s betrayal beautifully, spiking his guns and turning to story into one of sleazy double-dealing. Jenrick will have hoped to cement his position as a serious player in Reform but, instead, he looked weak and shifty as he addressed the gathered media.

Days before Offord and Jenrick pledged fealty to Farage, former Conservative cabinet minister Nadim Zahawi announced his own defection to Reform.

Zahawi – who, you may remember, was dismissed as Tory Party Chairman in 2023 by then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak after it emerged he had failed to disclose he’d been under investigation by the taxman while serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer – said he had made the leap because the UK had reached a “dark and dangerous” moment. The country was in need, he added, of “a glorious revolution”.

All very rousing, I’m sure, but that defiant message was soon undermined by a Tory chairman Kevin Hollinrake, who claimed Zahawi had defected after making a number of unsuccessful approaches to Badenoch, arguing his case to be nominated to enter the House of Lords.

Nigel Farage’s political career is built on the farcical notion that he’s a man of the people, in touch with the realities of their lives, and committed to destroying a self-interested political establishment.

It’s far from clear how that outsider reputation squares with the Reform leader’s enthusiasm form welcoming to his party’s ranks members of the last Tory Government.

Before Nigel Farage welcomed Robert Jenrick to Reform on Thursday, he had been relentless and brutal in his criticism of his new colleague.

Jenrick was, said Farage, “a fraud” and he had always thought as much. For his part, Jenrick had previously asked whether Farage had cooked up policies “after one too many pints at his local?”

That’s the rough and tumble of politics, I suppose. People say some brutal things in the heat of election campaigns.

But it is reasonable to wonder whether Nigel Farage’s new recruits from the “what are you driving these days?” community have joined Reform for any reason other than personal preservation. With the Tories struggling to find their feet again after a humiliating general election defeat in 2024 and Reform on the rise, Malcolm Offord, Robert Jenrick, and Nadim Zahawi look small and cynical.

Current polls suggest Reform is in a race with Scottish Labour to take second place in May’s Holyrood election.

I wonder whether that support will hold up while Nigel Farage continues to offer sanctuary to self-interested Conservatives previously rejected by the electorate.