Sawt Falasteen - UK's Farage rallies in Scottish town hit by immigration protests

His rare visit north of the English border came five months before elections to Scotland's devolved parliament and follows Reform's surprising rise in popularity there, prompting predictions of winning its first seats in the chamber.

The Brexit champion -- whose party has led UK-wide polls throughout this year -- held a lunchtime event in Falkirk, a town northwest of the capital Edinburgh that has seen rival pro- and anti-immigration protests outside a hotel housing asylum seekers.

They have mirrored similar fractious scenes in English towns and cities this year.

"Who voted for areas of our cities to literally become unrecognisable from their Scottish backgrounds," Farage told a crowd of hundreds in a city hotel. "The answer? Simple. Nobody."

Farage, 61, has been struggling to quell growing scrutiny of allegations he made racist and antisemitic comments while a youngster at an elite English school, with fresh accusations emerging in recent days.

The veteran Eurosceptic did not return to the subject that has dogged him in recent weeks, instead sticking to more comfortable topics of UK "decline".

"Our once great nation, the United Kingdom, is in very great trouble," he added.

"We are in economic decline. We are in social decline. We are even I think, frankly, in moral decline."

- 'Laying the ground' -

Reform, which has no leader and minimal political infrastructure in Scotland, won just seven percent of Scottish votes at the last UK general election.

But 17 months on, the party is regularly polling in the high teens.

It has leapfrogged Labour into second place behind the Scottish National Party (SNP) in several surveys focused on next May's elections to the parliament in Edinburgh.

According to political analysts, Farage has been luring voters from the Conservatives and to, a lesser extent, Labour, which won the July 2024 general election and took power in London.

They expect Reform to use the May 7 Scottish election to build further momentum.

"They'll be happy to have what could be more than a dozen Reform MSPs (Member of the Scottish Parliament) in Holyrood arguing the party's case," pollster John Curtice, of Glasgow's University of Strathclyde, told AFP.

He added they would be "laying the ground for maybe going further in 2029" when the next UK-wide election is due and crucial Scottish constituencies will be up for grabs.

Reform -- founded in 2021 from the ashes of Farage's Brexit Party -- this week grabbed a massive financial boost after Thailand-based cryptocurrency investor and aviation entrepreneur Christopher Harborne gave it £9 million ($12 million).

Meanwhile it unveiled Saturday its latest defection from the Conservatives, with House of Lords member Malcolm Offord announcing he will resign that role and run for the Scottish parliament for Reform.

- 'Niche market' -

However, Farage has long struggled for popularity among Scots.

In 2013, when leading his UK Independence Party (UKIP), police had to escort him from an Edinburgh pub after angry confrontations with opponents he later dubbed anti-English.

Scots overwhelmingly backed staying in the EU in the divisive 2016 Brexit referendum, making Farage an unpopular figure to many.

Dubbed an English nationalist by his critics, he has also long repelled supporters of Scottish independence from the UK.

His personal popularity remains low with 69 percent of Scots viewing him unfavourably, according to a November YouGov poll.

But Reform's messaging appears to resonate with growing numbers in Scotland.

University of Edinburgh electoral politics lecturer Fraser McMillan said, like in England, it has established itself as a "protest vote against the mainstream parties" and "the most credible vehicle for socially conservative immigration attitudes".

"There's a relatively strong contingent of that in Scotland," he told AFP.

The SNP has governed in Edinburgh for nearly two decades and is expected to top the May 7 contest, but with a diminished vote share.

Curtice said the SNP, whose voters are typically pro-EU and back Scottish independence, was losing "virtually nothing" to Reform,

Instead, its rise is fragmenting the anti-independence vote, while Farage remains unpopular with Scotland's many Brexit opponents.

He is tapping into "a niche market" of voters, Curtice told AFP.

"The ability of the party to do well in Scotland has to be lower than elsewhere."

B.AbuZeid--SF-PST