Reform’s Scottish leader, Lord Malcolm Offord, got humiliated after admitting to having six houses, six boats and five cars during an STV election debate yesterday. 

In an attempt to paint the Green Party as anti-success and anti-business, Offord said that he went to London 40 years ago, with £2,000 in debt and “full of ambition”.

He said that he “worked hard” and was successful, and that “Today, I own six houses, five cars and six boats”. Offord also said he has paid £45 million in tax through his business. 

He was then laughed at as he said: “I don’t say that to boast”.

Offord then asked the Scottish Green Party co-leader, Ross Greer, if the Greens would want more or less people like him in Scotland.

Greer fired back: “Fewer people like you. I’m glad you’ve finally admitted how many homes that you have, Lord Offord.”

Greer continued: “I think it’s worth at this point in the debate pointing out that there are three times as many holiday homes and empty properties in this country as there are homeless children. 

“You don’t need six homes, you don’t even need two homes, everybody just needs a home to live in.”

Greer said that to tackle the housing crisis, “super rich elite individuals” like Offord “should be giving up some of those homes” so that people without a home can have somewhere to live.

Offord looked down at the podium as Greer gave his answer, and then changed the subject when he was given the opportunity to respond to the Green MSP. 

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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The Scottish Labour Leader roasted Reform UK on Question Time last night, saying he wants Nigel Farage’s party to get “absolutely pumped” at next month’s Holyrood election.

Anas Sarwar also dismissed claims that he had ever agreed to do a deal with Reform UK to oust the Scottish National Party (SNP).

Speaking on BBC Question Time yesterday, Sarwar said it was “nonsense” to suggest that he would work with Reform after the party spent thousands of pounds on adverts questioning his loyalty to Scotland last May. 

He said to the SNP Housing Secretary Màiri McAllan, “To think that a political party that has targeted me and my family in a very personal way, are somehow the same people that I am in secret cahoots with, I think actually you should look in a moral mirror.”

This comes after Reform alleged that Sarwar had said on three occasions that he would be willing to make a pact with the hard-right party in order to get the SNP out.

Sarwar then tore into Reform UK: “There are lots of families right now that are fearful of the prospect of Reform politics and Reform being anywhere near politics.”

To applause from the audience, he said that “for all those families” he wanted Scotland to “utterly reject” Lord Malcolm Offord and Reform at the upcoming Holyrood elections on 7 May.

On the last Question Time show Offord and Sarwar appeared on last December, the Reform leader in Scotland alleged that the Scottish Labour leader had spoken to him about working with Reform to “get the SNP out”.

The host of Question Time, Fiona Bruce, pressed Sarwar on this. 

Sarwar responded: “The idea that a Question Time green room, with six political parties, all the Question Time staff, is the place to have secret talks with Lord Malcolm Offord, who spent tens of thousands of pounds, his party, targeting me, saying I’m not even loyal to my own country Scotland, is utter nonsense.

To laughs from the Question Time audience, he said: “Let’s make it really clear, I want Reform to get absolutely pumped in this election”.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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1. Nigel Farage defends Nazi salute and homophobic joke

Reform leader Nigel Farage has defended a Reform candidate standing in the Welsh Parliament elections in May after he was pictured performing a Nazi salute. Asked by a journalist if he would kick Corey Edwards, the candidate in question, out of Reform, he said: “No, he’s a human being”, and suggested he was being “silly and funny” by impersonating Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers. 

Farage also swept to the defence of Scottish Reform leader Malcolm Offord over a homophobic joke about George Michael’s ashes being cooked in a curry. He excused the joke, saying that Offord made it in 2018 at a “rugby club boozy dinner”.

2. Reform MPs stage walkout from PMQs

Farage asked the prime minister a question about small boats at PMQs on Wednesday, claiming that he could be ‘trusted’ to “stop them from coming” but that Keir Starmer had failed to do so.

The PM’s response was: “Mr Speaker, this is from the man and the party that voted against giving law enforcement counter-terrorism style powers to tackle it. 

“So he wants the grievance, he doesn’t want it sorted.”

Starmer then tore into Farage, pointing out that Reform had pledged to lower people’s taxes, but had instead increased council tax across all of 13 councils. The eight Reform MPs then stormed out of PMQs, with Farage later claiming that his reason for doing so was because Starmer had ‘ignored’ his question.

3. Temporary ban on crypto donations imposed in blow to Reform

Farage proudly declared that Reform would become the first political party to accept cryptocurrency donations at a bitcoin conference in Las Vegas last May. Reform is believed to have received its first crypto donation in October, but it has yet to declare any crypto donations to the Electoral Commission. 

According to a report in the Observer, Reform UK has been converting cryptocurrency donations into cash before they reach the party’s accounts, thereby obscuring the original source of the funding. 

In a major blow to Farage, crypto donations to political parties have now been temporarily banned with immediate effect following the publication of the Rycroft Review of foreign interference in politics.

4. Reform U-turns on nationalisation pledge

Reform has made a number of U-turns. It pledged to remove the two-child benefit limit, but then backtracked and said it would fully reinstate it. It abandoned its promise to cut council tax. It dropped a pledge to cut taxes by £90 billion. Farage has now said that a Reform government would not nationalise water and energy companies, in the party’s latest policy U-turn.

Just last summer, Farage said he was determined to bring half of the water industry back into public ownership, as it would cost “a lot less” money. Now, Reform has dropped the policy citing the UK’s economic difficulties.

5. Farage says council tax ‘has to go up’

Reform UK plastered their leaflets with promises to ‘cut your taxes’ in the run-up to the local elections last year, yet Farage has now conceded that council tax “has to rise” as councils are in “massive debt”. Not only that, but Farage continues to distance himself from Reform’s council leaflets, and claims that the party did not pledge to cut council tax, despite their leaflets saying otherwise.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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Reform leader Nigel Farage has defended a Reform candidate in the Welsh Parliament elections who performed a Nazi salute.

Corey Edwards, who is standing as a Senedd candidate in Bridgend and Vale of Glamorgan constituency in May, is pictured grinning with his right arm in the air, and a finger under his nose. 

Farage dismissed Edwards’ behaviour, saying he was impersonating Basil Fawlty, from the BBC show Faulty Towers.

Speaking to ITV News, Farage said “It was a Faulty Towers impression.”

He added: “Maybe we should ban the BBC, I don’t know.”

Asked if Edwards would be kicked out of Reform or sacked as a candidate for doing a Nazi salute, Farage said: “No, he’s a human being.”

Clearly rattled by the question, Farage told the ITV journalist: “I don’t know who you want us to be, a bunch of nobodies, who’ve never said or done anything silly or funny.”

Farage then said “I get the point – it looks terrible”, before diverting the conversation to what he called a “far more serious” case of a Plaid Cymru candidate stepping down for an offensive tweet.

The Reform leader has also defended the Scottish Reform leader Malcolm Offord after a homophobic joke he made in 2018 was unearthed earlier in the week.

Offord made a joke about the Wham singer George Michael who died in 2016.

Offord said: “Fadi Fawaz, George Michael’s partner at the time of his death, takes the late singer’s ashes to a curry house after his death. 

“Fawaz asks the chef to make a curry with the ashes. When asked why, Fawaz replies: “I want to feel him oozing out of my arse one last time.”

Ian Lewer from Surrey, who heard Offord tell the joke, said that it was “pretty awful” and that “even for a rugby club it was a crude, bad taste and insulting spectacle”.

Farage downplayed the joke, saying Offord told it at a “Rugby club boozy dinner in 2018, it was a private joke.”

He added: “If we are going to kick people out of public life because with their mates over a drink they said something deemed to be inappropriate, there will be no one left apart from people like Keir Starmer.”

Reacting to Edwards’ Nazi salute, the Lib Dems have called on Farage to suspend him. 

Liberal Democrat Wales Spokesperson, David Chadwick MP said: “This is absolutely abhorrent. A Nazi salute is one of the most vile symbols imaginable. Anyone associated with this has no place in our politics. Nigel Farage must suspend this candidate immediately.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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Malcolm Offord, the Scottish Reform leader has admitted that some of Nigel Farage’s language on immigration made him “uncomfortable”.

Referring to a video in which Farage said that nearly one in three pupils speak English as a second language and claimed there had been a “cultural smashing of Glasgow”, Offord said he had felt “uncomfortable and squeamish”.

Offord told the BBC’s Scotcast podcast: “I was uncomfortable… I was a bit squeamish about that.”

“But I do agree with the sentiment that we’ve got an issue [and] that immigration is an issue in some of our communities, especially our working class communities.”

Farage was heavily criticised for comments he made about Glasgow schoolchildren in December last year. 

Keir Starmer said Farage was a “toxic divisive disgrace”, while Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said: “How dare [Farage] use Glasgow’s kids to spread his poison”. 

First minister John Swinney said: “I think Nigel Farage’s comments are quite simply racist. There’s no other way to describe them.”

Offord also said he had lost friends as a result of defecting from the Tories to Reform in December last year.

The former Tory peer said: “I’ve got a couple of people who have said to me: we just can’t support what the party stands for.”

“I feel that that is a sacrifice that I have to make if I believe in the cause of what I’m trying to do,” he added.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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This week, new Electoral Commission figures revealed that Reform received £5.5 million between October and the end of December last year – more than any other political party. Despite Reform continuing to attract billionaire backers, it has been found to be the most disliked political party in the UK, and is plateauing in the polls. 

1. Reform found to be most unpopular UK political party

A poll carried out by think tank More in Common asked voters which parties they would be most likely to tactically vote against in order to block their candidates. It found that 38% of Brits would vote against Reform, up nine points since last November, and the highest for any party. As we saw in the Gorton and Denton by-election, the strength of anti-Reform sentiment drove turnout up and stopped Farage’s party from winning. In recent polls, Reform’s lead has been dropping. A YouGov survey this week showed its lead down by one point, while a poll by Lord Ashcroft’s polling firm indicated that it has fallen by three points.

2. ‘Serious questions’ over cryptocurrency donations

Reform received a further £3 million from Thailand-based billionaire crypto investor Christopher Harborne in the last quarter of 2025. This is on top of the record £9 million Reform received from Harborne back in August last year. Not only is Reform raking it in from billionaire investors, questions are being raised about Reform’s failure to register any cryptocurrency donations. This is despite Nigel Farage claiming on 22 October last year that his party had received “a couple” of donations in that form.

Labour chair Anna Turley MP has said she will ask the Electoral Commission to investigate the matter.

3. Reform blocks journalist from manifesto launch

In Wales, Reform UK blocked investigative journalist Will Hayward from reporting on its manifesto launch ahead of the Senedd elections yesterday. Hayward said the party refused to grant him press accreditation to attend the event. Responding on social media, he wrote: “Banning journalists is very Donald Trump.”

Reform has previously barred reporters from outlets including Byline Times, DeSmog and The Observer from its events, raising concerns about why the party appears to be dodging scrutiny. 

4. Reform’s Scottish Leader makes ‘racist’ remarks about stabbing

Over in Scotland, Reform’s Scottish leader Malcolm Offord has come under fire for making ‘racist’ remarks about a knife incident in Edinburgh. Offord admitted that he didn’t know any details about the suspect in the incident which left two people injured, but said “we can tell by the photographs” that immigration had been a factor, as the person pictured was not white. Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman called Offord’s remarks “racist”, “crass and dangerous”. 

5. Almost 1 in 10 Reform councillors have quit

Research by Hope Not Hate has found that since swathes of Reform councillors were elected in the local elections last May, almost one in 10 of them have quit. The anti-fascist group said: “8% of Reform’s new councillors – almost one in ten — have now quit. By our count, 67 of the party’s councillors elected last year have either defected to other parties, resigned, or been sacked.”

Just this week, two Reform councillors in West Northamptonshire, Kathryn Shaw and Joanne Blythe, quit the party less than a year after being elected to the council. Shaw said she had quit as she felt she could advocate for stronger child safeguarding systems outside of Reform. Meanwhile, Blythe said she could no longer continue under Reform’s current leadership and that there had been “misogynistic undertones” to how she had been treated.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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