Millionaire Tory donor Malcolm Offord defects to Reform UK in boost to Nigel Farage
A Conservative who donated to the Conservative Party defected to Reformation England.
Lord Malcolm Offord has said he has switched from the Conservatives to Reform UK and plans to stand in the Scottish Parliament elections next year.
The former Tory minister was introduced by Reform leader Nigel Farage during a party rally in Falkirk on Saturday. In announcing his departure, he said he believed the Scottish Conservatives had “given up” on Scotland.
Mr Farage welcomed Lord Offord as “someone who I think will have a transformative impact on our party in Scotland”.
The former Scottish Conservative party treasurer served as export minister in the Conservative government before Labor won the 2024 general election. He confirmed that he would resign from the House of Lords and return to his peerage to stand as “good old Malcolm Offord”.
Members of the House of Lords have been banned from becoming members of the Scottish Parliament under legislation passed earlier this year. It is not possible to renounce the peerage for life, but peers can resign as members of the House of Lords.
Lord Offord branded the Scottish Conservative Party “unelectable” and said: “I’m worried about Scottish politics, I’m very worried about what’s going on in Scotland.
“That’s why I’m leaving the Scottish Conservative Party, because I believe the Scottish Conservative Party has given up on Scotland, and ladies and gentlemen, I can’t do that.”
Discussing his experiences with the Scottish Conservative Party, the former minister said: “What I find, quite frankly, is a party that is not national but regional, not political but narrow-minded, not ambitious but timid; a party with no vision of how Scotland should be governed with a centre-right agenda.”
He said he would run a “positive campaign” with “hope, ambition, reform”.
Lord Offord became the latest of those to leave the Conservative Party last week, including Jonathan Gullis and Lia Nici.
He has donated more than £150,000 to the Conservatives and was made a life peer by former prime minister Boris Johnson in September 2021, giving him his first ministerial post.
Lord Offord had previously unsuccessfully stood as the Conservative candidate to become MSP for the Lothian region before he was promoted by Mr Johnson in May 2021, leading to SNP claims of “widespread cronyism”.
But Mr Johnson insisted he was “a man with huge offers” and predicted he would do a “fantastic job”.
Lord Offord previously ran the pro-union No Borders campaign during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and is also the founder and chairman of Badenoch and Co., a “boutique investment” firm based in Edinburgh.
