Deacon Blue slam Reform UK's Malcolm Offord for quoting 'Dignity'
The band said Reform’s ideology ‘goes against everything we believe in’
Deacon Blue, one of Scotland’s best loved rock bands, has slammed Reform UK’s Scottish leader for quoting the lyrics to their smash-hit song Dignity to “bolster” his campaign.
Malcolm Offord described it as one of his favourite songs during his first major speech on Monday and compared its message to his own journey from humble beginnings in Greenock, where he admired yachts he “couldn’t afford to sail”.
The multimillionaire financier now owns at least two yachts, including one named Braveheart.
“Once a song is released into the world it can be sung, listened to and loved or hated by anyone; that is just the nature of releasing a song,” Deacon Blue said in a statement to The Guardian.
“However, it appals us to see the lyrics of any of our songs being used to bolster a campaign and ideology which is completely at odds with what the song, and we as a band, believe.”
The band added: “It has been deeply depressing to see the poisonous rhetoric of Reform take hold in Scotland”.
Mr Offord defected to Reform from the Conservatives in December and was unveiled as the party’s new Scottish leader by Nigel Farage earlier this month.
He was made a life peer in 2021, and served as a Scotland Office minister and business minister in the previous Tory administration at Westminster.
Asked what a yacht-owner knows about the cost-of-living crisis, he previously quoted Dignity to journalists. “They’ll ask me how I got it,” he said. “I’ll say, I saved my money. They’ll say, isn’t she pretty, a ship called Dignity.”
On Monday, he said the song’s lyrics “encapsulate the essence of Scotland”, adding: “I want everyone in Scotland to work, to save up their money, and to follow their dreams. To have dignity at home, in faith and in work.”
But Deacon Blue said Reform’s ideology “goes against everything we believe in”.
The band added: “Perhaps Malcolm Offord has overlooked another song from our first album. Loaded is sung at our gigs by the audience, too: ‘It’s just you laugh, ‘cause you’re loaded. And things are different from there’.”
It continued: “It goes without saying we hope Malcolm Offord and his party are roundly defeated by people all over the UK.”
Mr Offord and Reform have been approached for comment.
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