At this point there is only one way to salvage Reform’s Scottish Parliament election campaign. Granted it’s unorthodox and, well, illegal, but hear me out: arrange to have Malcolm Offord kidnapped. Not long-term or anything, just until 7 May and the Holyrood elections in which Reform Scotland is set to make sizeable gains. Or at least it was until mid-January, when the party was hit by a leadership crisis, that crisis being Offord’s appointment to the leadership.
Offord has broken the cardinal rule of elections: don’t hand your opponents free ammunition
Without a leader, Reform was climbing up the polls. With Offord as leader, it’s going back down again. I might be in some very small way to blame for this. Around a year and a half ago, I wrote on Coffee House about a handful of Glasgow City Council by-elections in which a leaderless Reform went from nowhere to third place. At that time, the party was considered an English phenomenon by the Scottish political and media classes. I argued that Reform could do very well in the next Holyrood elections provided, and here’s where my mea culpa comes in, that it got itself a Scottish figurehead. Well, it did – and now everything’s going pear-shaped.
Lord Offord, who only defected from the Tories a few months ago, is getting a right shoeing from political rivals and journalists over a joke he told eight years ago at a rugby club Burns’ supper shortly after the death of George Michael. The gag – sensitive souls look away now – involved the pop star’s partner having his ashes cooked into a curry so he could feel his boyfriend oozing out of his arse one last time. Offord regretted it instantly and says he is not homophobic. He also made a donation to a gay rugby team, which strikes me as a bit of an overcorrection but each to their own.
Now there are calls for him to resign over the joke, which opponents have branded crass and homophobic. Of course it was crass and homophobic. It was a rugby club dinner, not the Mash Report. What did they expect, Rosie Jones and a land acknowledgement? But for all that there’s more than a little pearl-clutching going on here, this episode is just the latest in which Offord has broken the cardinal rule of elections: don’t hand your opponents free ammunition.
Unfortunately for Reform, Offord does so almost every time he steps out in public. His unveiling was a disaster, not least his difficulties under interrogation by ITV’s Peter Smith, a reporter noted for his dogged questioning of Labour, Tory and SNP politicians. A Reform press officer faced criticism for getting into Smith’s personal space and stopping any further questions.
Then there was the interview with the Times where Offord volunteered his views on Catholic – or what he termed ‘sectarian’ – schools. He wasn’t voicing Reform policy. The party doesn’t want to abolish Catholic schools. He just offered his musings on perhaps the most divisive issue in Scottish society, in front of a journalist no less, and took a position guaranteed to alienate a sizeable group of socially conservative voters.
Another of his musings, this one from 2025 when he was still a Tory peer, countenanced the holding of another independence referendum within a decade. If there is one issue on which disaffected Scottish Tory voters are unanimous, it is opposition to another referendum. These are people who don’t think there should be another referendum ever, and whatever one’s view of that as a constitutional position these are the very voters Reform must win if it is to make advances in Scotland.
Malcolm Offord was a success in business and that is admirable. In recent years, he has invested his time and money in a strain of politics Scotland could use a lot more of: pro-enterprise, pro-growth, and pro-productivity. But he is a hopeless party leader, lacking the strategic mind and gut instincts that you need in electoral politics. It’s no surprise that Reform is keen on the politically unpolished given how far Nigel Farage has managed to get on his blokey personality. However, unless you are going to lean into your boorishness like Donald Trump, you need to strike a balance between political incorrectness and political gravitas. Farage knows how to do it. So did Boris Johnson. Malcolm Offord hasn’t a clue.
Hence my kidnapping proposal. Now, don’t get all Lord Hermer on me about laws and human rights and whatnot. I’m not talking about chaining him to a radiator in a CIA black site with a bowl of water and a couple of Mars bars. It could be done with a certain amount of decorum. Book a five-star suite somewhere, tell him there’s a prospective donor or defector waiting inside, then accidentally weld the door shut behind him. Anything to keep him off TV for the next six weeks.
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