After Malcolm Offord’s defection from the Conservatives to Reform, he is likely to be its first leader in the Scottish Parliament. Andy Maciver argues that his personal views will strike a chord, if he can escape the baggage of his new party.

I should have known. Last Saturday, when I saw a post on X by The Herald Political Editor indicating that Malcolm Offord had joined Reform and would stand for the party in the Holyrood elections, suddenly much became clear.

I have spent some time with Offord over the last six-or-so months. This summer, he approached me in a professional capacity to carry out communications work for a series of essays he was editing - Wealthy Nation, Healthy Nation. Although he was a Conservative front-bencher, his policy exercise was entirely non-party, which allowed me the scope to accept the job. He oversaw a group of politically unaffiliated doctors writing a paper on the NHS, a teacher writing a paper on education and an economist (who as it happened used to work for Gordon Brown’s Labour government) who wrote an essay on Scotland’s economy.

Offord’s work was a platform with a traditionally Scottish, liberal foundation, in the spirit of Adam Smith, and of the sort I had not seen from a centre-right politician for some time. I saw it 23 years ago when I went to work for David McLetchie, but he was a good man at a politically bad time. I saw it again 14 years ago when I attempted to help Murdo Fraser create a new, electable Scottish party, but his party opted to stick like glue to its Westminster parent and continue its exile from........

© Herald Scotland