THE Tories’ treasurer in Scotland, Baron Offord of Garvel, defected to the “Tories in turquoise tartan” at a Reform UK rally in Falkirk on Saturday.

After failing to be elected to Holyrood in 2021, the Greenock-born financier — who has donated almost £150,000 to the Tory Party — was handed a seat in the House of Lords and the position of parliamentary under-secretary of state for Scotland by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

He went on to hold a range of business briefs in the Truss and Sunak ministries but has now made clear his intention to resign from the Lords to allow another tilt at Holyrood in next year’s election, this time as a Reform UK candidate.

Speaking at the far-right party’s rally — held in a town at the centre of recent anti-immigrant protests — Reform leader Nigel Farage repeated assertions that parts of Glasgow were “unrecognisable,” with one in three schoolchildren not having English as a first language: claims dismissed this week by First Minister John Swinney as “simply racist.”

Mr Farage, who has been dogged by allegations of racist bullying in his time at posh private school Dulwich College, said he was delighted at the defection, arguing that Lord Offord “will take Reform UK Scotland to a new level.”

Condemning his old party for having “given up on Scotland,” Lord Offord branded the Tories “regional not national, parochial not political, timid not ambitious: a party without a vision of how to govern Scotland with a right-of-centre agenda.”

In response a spokesman for the Scottish Tories said: “Any vote for Reform next year will only tighten the SNP’s grip on power at Holyrood.”

But SNP MSP Kevin Stewart said: “An unelected Tory peer defecting to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK just highlights how the party is nothing more than the Tories in turquoise tartan.

“Nigel Farage’s Reform UK are completely out of touch with the pressures facing people every day in Scotland: rising energy bills, food prices and making ends meet. Multimillionaire Farage has nothing to offer Scotland.”

Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie said: “This defection proves what we already know: Reform aren’t even Tories in disguise any more, they are just Tories — the same Tories that broke the immigration system, collapsed the economy and left working Scots to pay the price.

“This isn’t change. It’s the same failed politicians and failed ideas trying to divide our country.”