Nigel Farage reveals first Reform MSP and Scottish election plans

Key Points

Tory MSP becomes the first to defect to Nigel Farage’s party
Graham Simpson announced he had joined Reform UK at a press conference in Scotland
The event was held the day after Farage announced plans to deport up to 600,000 asylum seekers if Reform win power
Farage said there will be a Scottish leader of Reform UK ahead of the Holyrood election next year
The Reform UK leader said Glasgow as the ‘asylum capital of the UK’
Farage said plans to deport thousands of illegal immigrants would not include women and children
He said he was the ‘antidote to the far right’ and said neo-Nazis would not be allowed to infiltrate his party

Nigel Farage has said he wants Reform UK to be “strong enough” in Scotland to “get rid of the SNP”, as he announced the first MSP to defect to his party.

Graham Simpson, who represents Central Scotland, has defected from the Tories to join Farage’s party.

During the event at a hotel in Broxburn, outside Edinburgh, Farage called Glasgow the “asylum capital of the UK” and said that he predicted illegal immigration would become more of an issue ahead of the Scottish elections next year.

‘Glasgow is asylum capital of UK’

“I have a sense that maybe it will become a bigger debate in Scottish politics, given that Glasgow now is the asylum capital of the United Kingdom, with nearly 4,000 people who came to Britain illegally housed in Glasgow,” he said.

“That’s 50% more than the next highest place in the United Kingdom, Birmingham, 50% more.

“I would have thought if you were a family on the social housing waiting list in Glasgow, you might be beginning to think that this is something that perhaps ought to be discussed.”

Home Office data for June 2025, published last week, shows that Glasgow has 3,844 asylum seekers, the highest number of any local authority in the UK.

Farage rowed back on plans to deport hundreds of thousands of people in the first five years of a Reform government, saying this would now not include women and children.

He insisted that he had been “very, very clear” that the party was focused on “illegal males” and “not even discussing women and children at this stage”.

‘I am the antidote to the far right’

Farage said Reform had 200 candidates going through interviews and vetting ahead of next year’s Holyrood elections.

Asked if he was to blame for a rise in far-right rhetoric, Farage said he was responsible for stopping the rise of the BNP – a now deregistered British fascist political party.

“There is no man alive in this country that did more to destroy the BNP with their rise in 2006 to 2008 than me,” he said.

“I am the antidote to the far right.”

Asked about reports that the neo-Nazi and white nationalist hate group Patriotic Alternative was seeking to infiltrate his party, Farage said that nobody with such links would be allowed to be a candidate for Reform.

“I’ve always said no to people that I think genuinely come at this from a nasty, hard-right position,” he told the press conference.

“If they have links like that [Patriotic Alternative], we check and we vet, and if they have links like that, and we find out they’ve lied to us, they are out of the door by lunchtime.”

‘Scotland would have been made great again’

Farage revealed that he would not lead Reform into next year’s Scottish elections. He said he would visit and support the party’s campaign north of the border but that a Scottish leader would be chosen.

Reform’s new MSP, Graham Simpson denied a “backroom deal” had been done that will see him become the leader in Scotland.

His speech ended with an open call to his former Tory colleagues to follow him to Reform.

Farage was also asked about whether he would scrap the Barnett formula – the mechanism used to determine changes to the block funding of the Scottish Government – by linking increases to changes in equivalent department spending in England.

“I just said anything that’s been in existence of 60 years needs to be looked at,” he told reporters.

“Wouldn’t it be great if the Scottish economy was at a level where Barnett formula funding would be lower than it is today.

“Because if that was the case, Scotland would have become much wealthier.”

Invoking the words of his friend, the US President Donald Trump, he added: “Some would even say that Scotland would have been made great again.”