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BBC<\/p>\nAngus CochraneSenior political journalist, BBC Scotland<\/p>\n
BBC<\/p>\n
Former Conservative minister Lord Malcolm Offord has been named as Reform UK’s first Scottish leader.<\/p>\n
The ex-Scottish Tory treasurer was unveiled by party leader Nigel Farage at an event in Fife.<\/p>\n
He will lead the party into May’s Scottish Parliament election, with Reform aiming to make a major electoral breakthrough north of the border. <\/p>\n
Farage said: “I think we can surprise ourselves with just how many votes we manage to garner in these elections.”<\/p>\n
He added: “A huge chunk of the Scottish electorate are looking for something different. And they’re tired of the decline this country has seen under SNP government.”<\/p>\n
Lord Offord said momentum in the election contest was with Reform, adding that he saw it as a “two-horse race” with the SNP.<\/p>\n
It was widely speculated that Lord Offord would be lined up to lead the party in Scotland following his defection from the Tories in December. <\/p>\n
Several recent polls have suggested that Reform are on track to challenge Labour for second place behind the SNP in May’s election.<\/p>\n
The party has one MSP, Graham Simpson, who defected from the Conservatives<\/a> in August. <\/p>\n Last month, Reform secured its first success at the ballot box in Scotland by winning a council by-election in West Lothian<\/a>.<\/p>\n This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.<\/p>\n You can receive Breaking News on a smartphone or tablet via the BBC News App<\/a>. You can also follow @BBCBreaking on X<\/a> to get the latest alerts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Angus CochraneSenior political journalist, BBC Scotland BBC Former Conservative minister Lord Malcolm Offord has been named as Reform…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-697522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115898871178475313","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}