Golf and Scotch Pies: Lord Offord and the Scottish Media
There’s only two weeks left of the Holyrood Election. Polls vary widely, but this is a post about the coverage, not the parties.
This is from the Financial Times:
As has been pointed out by a number of people, deporting two million people would require a separate force beyond the police. We’ve already seen what that looks like in the USA.
In August last year, Nigel Farage, the Prime Minister in-waiting, outlined his plans for government.
He promised uniformed officers raiding Britain’s towns and cities, disappearing people off the street for rendition to countries they’ve never been to, with no recourse to legal protections, claiming that it’s what “normal countries do.”
Taking a leaf out of Trump’s book Farage proposes deporting 600,000 asylum seekers in a five-year period. He outlined plans for a network of ‘detention centres’. Farage confirmed that women and children would also be detained and deported under Reform’s plans. Answering a question from Sky News’ political correspondent Serena Barker Singh, Farage said: “Women and children, everybody on arrival will be detained.”
This is a horrific, unprecedented prospect.
So what has the Scottish media’s response been to this force in Scottish politics?
Well, Marie Macklin called Lord Offord a ‘glimmer of hope’ [Malcolm Offord, the Tory turned Reform candidate – a glimmer of light ] in the Herald.
Andy MacIver, the Tory from Holyrood Sources podcast said: “For those of us who want good people in Holyrood, with enthusiasm, drive and ideas, Offord will be a welcome and vital addition.”
Alistair Grant, the Political Editor of The Scotsman went and played golf with him.
Martin Geissler asked the Reform leader tough questions like “Why do you like Yachts?”
Chris Deerin appeared in the New Statesman where he gushed:
“The last time I saw Lord Offord of Garvel in the flesh was a few months ago. We both attended a lunch for well-to-do business types, and as I left I was suitably impressed by the array of elite motors in the car park.”
The consistency running through this coverage is threefold: a) completely avoid the actual policies of Farage and its consequences for human rights and minorities b) treat Offord as an individual completely separate from his party and their policies c) venerate him because he’s rich (being rich is a good thing in itself).
How do you explain such terrible journalism?
With Macklin and MacIver there’s a sort of idea that celebration of the businessman is key. He’s been in banking, he’s made a lot of money, so he must be really competent. It’s based on a background story that this is a meritocracy we live in. What flows from that is the idea that the rich must be clever and the poor must be stupid. You kind of deserve what you get.
With Martin Geissler he explains his ridiculous Scotcast interviews as ‘getting to know the person’ rather than concentrating on his politics. This literally makes no sense. Imagine you’re being deported or ‘disappeared’ off the streets. ‘But did you know he likes yachts?’
Across them all there’s an inability, or an unwillingness to confront this for what it is, or to name it as a party with a clearly fascist programme. It may be that for Deerin mixing with ‘well-to-do business types’ has left him intoxicated by it all, or for Grant maybe it was all just a great photo-opportunity. It may have been a motivation that Offord would ‘shake things up’ and it’s all a bit boring. It may have been a motivation that Offord would give the SNP a bloody nose and the rest were pretty useless. Or maybe there’s an unspoken assumption that these journalists share Offord and Farage’s worldview? Either way it gives the impression of a media class not serious in any way, not fit for purpose and immersed in a view of the world which looks at politics as just a game.
None of which excuses the complete lack of serious questioning, the complete absence of ‘politics’ from so-called political journalists, the softball interviews or the chummy editorials.
It’s also journalism from a place of white privilege. If you can see a politician with a plan to deport two million people, and your question is “What’s the most Scottish thing about you?” you’re not really up to the job. None of these journalists thought for a moment to ask Lord Offord about the appalling consequences for so many people of his party’s policies.
Far-right politics has been sane-washed and normalised and one of the reasons is our media institutions aren’t fit for purpose. We’ll need to fund the alternative as we resist the creeping influence of people like Malcolm Offord.
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Unfortunately we’ve been here before. Thousands of Chinese, African, and West Indians recruited to bolster the UK WW11 economy ‘disappeared’ off the streets of Liverpool when the war was over. They became ‘obsolete’ along with working class whites no longer required by industries in decline. I’m sickened by the mainstream press socialising the ideas and conveyors of this current round of inhumane policies, as if they know who will be paying their salaries after the election, and as long as that is secure, nothing else matters. Shameful.
It is depressing how the media in Scotland have presented and normalised Malcolm Offord and Reform as just another person or political party who may defeat the SNP. This is due either to the media’s visceral dislike of the thought of an independent Scotland or their desire to try and inject more unpredictably and excitement into the Holyrood election now that incumbency at Westminster’s appears to scuppered Labour’s hopes of an electoral comeback. . Either way the lack of scrutiny of Reform’s policies and the negative effect that they would have economically and socially on Scotland and the vast majority of people living in Scotland tells you more about the state of media in Scotland in 2026 than anything else.
I have no doubt that if SNP & Greens do not manage a combined majority that the Tories and Labour Party would be happy to enter into a coalition/agreement with Reform to oust SNP. I am not sure if Lib Dem’s would join any agreement with Reform as they are the antithesis of social liberalism. Having said that with the rise of the Greens the Lib Dem’s appear to have become more of a depository for polite, middle class anti independence voters to defeat SNP in central Scotland than anything else.
Couldn’t agree more!
I look forward to Martin Geissler opening interviews with SNP spokespersons with an affable “Foos yer doos?” 😉
not sure relocation/deportation of populations id just a right wing phenomenon, thinking of Stalin, or the expulsion of Germans from eastern Europe or french from Algeria, or Greeks and Turks, Muslims and Hindus extra, not saying it’s nice. Just saying
Okay, so the country whose economy has been showing anemic growth for over a decade now, and which has lost as much as 8% of GDP because of Brexit according to analysts, is now soft-soaping a guy, with no track record to speak of, whose solution to the current crisis, caused in large part by Brexit, is to throw out even more people who weren’t born in the UK (but have made it their home) and become even more hostile to outsiders…
No one who looks at the evidence can doubt that immigration is not just a good thing, it’s absolutely crucial for the future of the country…
If someone in the British government, or the BBC, or any of the powerful institutions who are meant to offer a voice of authority, actually made it their business to demolish the lies Reform are peddling, over a sustained period of time, as if they were fighting war propaganda say, then a lot of otherwise sensible people would awake from their fantasy view of Britain in the modern world…
The UK media environment is killing what is left of UK democracy. That and the rank cowardice of the Labour Party, and the BBC, who refuse to give people straight answers to the immigration question…