Reform's Scottish leader Malcolm Offord must now apologise for Sarwar ad
The trend for politicians to never apologise is a blight on modern society
Finally, Malcolm Offord, Reform UK’s Scottish leader, has said the party is “not intending” to rerun an attack ad about Anas Sarwar, which the Scottish Labour leader and John Swinney justifiably condemned as “racist”.
The ad, which ran during the Hamilton by-election campaign, before Offord joined the party, accused Sarwar of planning to “prioritise the Pakistani community” on the basis that he’d called for more representation of Scots with south Asian heritage in politics.
This was clearly nonsense, and it appears to make Offord uncomfortable. His problem is that his boss, Nigel Farage, doubled down on the advert, arguing wrongly that Sarwar had “introduced sectarianism into Scottish politics”.
Offord keeps trying to avoid talking about this issue, but can’t escape it. He needs to realise he must stand up to Farage, and say sorry for what was, at the very least, a serious error of judgment by his party before he defected from the Tories.
The trend for politicians to never apologise is a blight on modern society that anyone who aspires to lead this country should oppose, not encourage.
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