Tories are one policy party in ‘co-dependent relationship’ with SNP, says Offord

Reform UK’s Scottish leader has told how he quit the Tories because they were a “one policy” party in a “sort of co-dependent relationship with the SNP”.

Malcom Offord, a former Scotland Office minister who defected from the Conservatives to join Nigel Farage’s party in December 2025, said his former party “have only got one policy and that is to say no to another referendum”.

Speaking about the Scottish Tories he added: “They’re in a sort of co-dependent relationship with the SNP. The SNP call for a referendum and the Conservatives say no to another referendum.”

Speaking at an online event staged by the Institute for Government think tank, the Reform UK Scottish leader said that while this was happening “public services are not working and the economy is not growing”.

As a result, he said, he had concluded he needed to leave the Conservatives and “go elsewhere”, insisting: “I am very ambitious for Scotland.”

He added that, as Scottish Conservative treasurer, he had been talking to donors “trying to whip up funds” but claimed that those he approached told him: “We can’t give you any money until the Conservatives in Scotland have got an ambitious policy for governing Scotland.”

On that he insisted: “The reality is they don’t.”

He continued: “We need a growth agenda for Scotland and that chimed with my conversations with Reform UK.”

While he previously had a successful career in private equity investing, the party leader told the online event – held in the run up to the May 7 Scottish Parliament election – SNP plans to re-run the 2014 independence referendum had inspired him to go into politics.

Saying that the 2014 vote had produced a “decisive result”, he said he “objected” to SNP attempts to force a second ballot “on the basis that the people of Scotland had spoken, spoken in a strong manner”.

Lord Offord, who became Reform UK’s Scottish leader in January 2026, said: “That was the catalyst for me, that was the moment I stopped shouting at the telly to actually go and get involved.”

He explained his decision to defect to Reform UK was also because he became “quite appalled at what Conservatives had actually done over 14 years” on energy policy.

He told how, while he was a Conservative peer, he was “questioning”  the commitment for the UK to achieve net zero by 2050 – which was introduced by the Tories.

Lord Offord insisted this was policy was “just virtue signalling” and “wasn’t actually based on reality”.

However, he added: “I got a lot of pushback, a lot of senior grandees in the Conservative Party, who basically had put that policy through, were not happy.”

He added that this, coupled with concerns over issues such as rising levels of immigration, led him to believe “the Conservative Party had lost its way from  a UK point of view”.