Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and Reform Scottish leader Malcolm Offord (right) at the Reform Scotland manifesto launch and candidate announcement for the upcoming Scottish Parliament elections, at Ingliston Country Club & Hotel in Bishopton, March 2026
REFORM UK Scotland’s Holyrood campaign has descended into “farce” after it suspended a candidate just 24 hours after he was announced.
Stuart Niven was one of a host of the party’s candidates paraded at its rally at a hotel in Bishopton on Thursday, but by this morning he had been ditched after The Herald reported he had been banned from acting as a company director for seven years for diverting thousands of pounds from a government Covid loan into his personal account.
Confirming the Dundee City West candidate’s suspension, a Reform spokesperson said: “We take allegations like this very seriously, and a full investigation is under way.”
But Reform appeared less concerned that their Galloway and West Dumfries candidate, Senga Beresford, joined a Tommy Robinson rally in 2024 and called for Muslims to be deported; or that their Fife North East candidate Linda Holt’s declaration on social media that former first minister Humza Yousaf was “not British” and a “grandstanding Islamist moron.”
First Minister John Swinney branded the comments “racist,” but speaking on BBC Radio Scotland on Friday, Reform’s Scottish leader Malcolm Offord rejected this, arguing: “We have brought in a whole range of candidates, 80 per cent of whom are not politicians.
“If you want a bunch of people who have never said anything offensive in their lives, I don’t think you’ll find a normal person like that.”
Urging critics to “grow up” and “not take offence at every moment in time,” he added: “As long as they have not done anything criminal, they’re allowed to express their opinion.
“We’re not stopping people from standing for Reform UK just because they might have said something fruity in the past.”
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said: “Reform Scotland’s campaign has immediately been exposed as the farce that it is.
“Malcolm Offord’s car-crash launch gave us a manifesto written on the back of a cigarette packet and a set of candidates totally unfit for public office.
“From the dodgy dealings of a Covid scammer to the divisive tweets of obsessive racists, these scandals show Reform are just taking whoever they can get.
“Reform is treating Scots with contempt by asking them to vote for this hopeless gaggle of Tory rejects and oddballs, and I have no doubt Scotland will send them packing.”
