Exclusive:Shetland to Shettleston: Mixed reception for Nigel Farage on the Scottish campaign trail

Their conversation is muffled by supportive horn honking from vehicles heading along Shettleston Road in Glasgow’s east end.

A mother points Mr Farage out to two wee boys who respond as one might expect from a sighting of Henrik Larsson or Ally McCoist, preference depending.

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The Reform UK leader is on the Holyrood campaign trail in an area carefully selected to give a warm welcome.

Shettleston, a community with one of the UK’s lowest life expectancies, is fast becoming a Reform stronghold. Mr Farage heads to a safe pub - the Marquis.

As he walks in, he is greeted with cheers and demands for selfies with the punters.

At the bar he brings out a wodge of notes and a credit card. A round for the whole pub?

“For certain people,” he replies. I ask Graham Simpson, Reform UK’s only MSP, whether his boss is good at getting a round in. He doesn’t know. Mr Farage has never bought him a drink. “I’ve offered to buy him one though,” he says. No doubt.

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Mr Farage has just flown by private jet from Shetland to Shettleston. How was Lerwick?

“It was fine apart from the English,” he says. The MP had been berated on the main street.

He goes on to claim a gaggle of students had flown to the archipelago to support the “very gobby Green councillor” and seized the chance, while they had it, to heckle him. The Shetland islanders, by contrast, were “very quietly spoken, quite thoughtful” and “gentle”.

A holy man of unspecified denomination had insisted on blessing Mr Farage and wishing eternal life on him. What would he do with eternal life? He raises his pint of John Smith’s and says “Keep drinking”.

Earlier, another local had emerged from a shop and asked for a selfie, his hands shaking so from nerves that he cannot open his phone. He’s a striking looking gentleman with a touch of Elvis about his hairstyle. It, and his eyebrows, have been so recently dyed black that he still has touches of dye staining the inside fold of his ear.

Why will he vote Reform? Periscope-style, his head sweeps his surroundings before, sotto voce, he asks in reply, “Is it ok to say?”

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He’s not racist, he goes on, but there are too many immigrants, there is a two-tiered system for health and housing, and local people are ill-served because of it. When pushed, he adds his fears are long held but never expressed. “Nigel” has opened a safe space where it is socially acceptable to criticise migration.

The man gives his name. It is Italian.

Mr Farage admits his party’s progress in Scotland has “lagged behind a little bit”. Those who’ve paid attention to the Reform machine know the UK party leader’s position has been that a top three finish at Holyrood is success.

Malcolm Offord, the leader in Scotland, has, however, said he aims to be First Minister. Is one an optimist and one a pragmatist?

Mr Farage nods over at Mr Offord, chatting to supporters.

“You send soldiers into fight,” he says, “They have to believe they're going to win outright.”

In the pub, two senior Reform insiders make mention of their irritation at what they see as Scottish Labour’s Janus face. Publicly, party leader Anas Sarwar is scathing of Reform. Privately, they claim, he is friendly and conspiratorial.

Later in the evening, Offord will claim at a hustings that Anas Sarwar ‘bounced’ up to him to offer a collaborative deal. Whatever the truth, Reform clearly now aims to be Holyrood’s second largest party and will play dirty to do it.

Mr Farage acknowledges Mr Offord will not be First Minister this time but states next time “it’s possible”.

“If we can establish ourselves fully, there's no reason why we can’t prove ourselves over the course of four years,” he says, in for a surprise that the Holyrood term is five years. The Reform leader makes much of having a cohort of candidates from “real life” as opposed to what he calls the SNP’s glut of “apparatchiks”.

Fine, but the risks of a group of untested, inexperienced newbies are manifest. Yes, he agrees, but the issue will be mitigated by hiring “very high grade staff”.

One of Offord’s key buzzphrases throughout the campaign has focused on criticising Holyrood’s “cosy consensus”.

It is, however, a parliament designed to be collegiate and - with its additional member system of voting - that design benefits Reform UK. If polling plays out, the party is not in line to win any constituencies but rather return list MSPs.

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“We will disrupt, not the workings of the place, we will behave with dignity, absolutely, and I would insist upon that at all times,” he says.

“But we will disrupt the political debate in Scotland or the lack of it.”

With a mind on independence or gender recognition reform, some might say there has been an overabundance of political debate in Scotland, whether it is focused on the correct topics or not.

Mr Farage, of course, uses immigration as illustrative of his point. He says he is told time and again that immigration is not a concern yet “if you look at social attitudes surveys, attitudes in Scotland are almost exactly the same as they are in England”. This is not, however, correct. Social attitudes surveys find immigration is a rising concern in Scotland but far behind England.

Anyway, immigration is a reserved matter. Won’t voters expecting a Nigel Farage crack down find themselves disillusioned?

The party has borrowed the UK Conservative’s playbook of scapegoating immigrants on every issue. When he first enters the pub and addresses the waiting crowd, one woman says she worked for a homelessness project.

He tells her: “Glasgow is housing absolutely thousands of people who shouldn't even be in the country.

“That's the joke of it, isn't it? Young men who cross by a boat go to the top of the list effectively.”

He goes on: “It may be Dover in the south, where the influx comes, but you're the dumping ground.

“Labour won't stop the boats. Tories haven't stopped the boats. No one's got the balls to do it.”

How would Reform at Holyrood show balls? Easy, apparently.

“You can say to national government, ‘We will not accept any more young men in boats being dumped in hotels or HMOs in Glasgow.

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“Simple, just stand up and say, ‘No, we ain't doing it’.”

For the moment Reform is all style without having to prove the substance to govern; their popularity may collapse when ideal meets reality. For their core base, the celebrity pull of Farage is enough but the party needs more than a lone charismatic man. Outside the Marquis, a fan tells me he loves Reform and Nigel Farage.

He complains of immigrants using up resources. His children can’t buy homes because of “Mohammed getting off a boat”. Retired now, he was a tradie. His boys can’t afford the houses he laid the bricks to build. He then explains that the government is trying to replace the white population of Scotland - Reform is the only one to stop to it.

He’ll be voting for local Reform candidate Thomas Kerr then? He looks puzzled. “Who’s that?” he says.