Reform UK's Scottish leader Malcolm Offord has revealed he was diagnosed with prostate cancer on the same day as the Holyrood election in May. He said it “wasn’t the best day” to receive the news, but after having surgery last week he is now “raring to go”.
Diagnosis and surgery
Lord Offord was speaking at Matt Forde’s Political Party event at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival on Thursday. The host noticed a hospital band on his wrist. Offord told him: “I just had a procedure last Wednesday to remove my prostate. So I am now clear. It was last Wednesday.”
He said he was “feeling pretty good” after surgery, and added that “final confirmation” of his prostate cancer had come on May 7, which was “the weirdest thing”. He added: “The thing about the prostate is it is out and gone, I can move on.”
“But the point is it is pretty routine, I am 61 years old, about to become 62, it happens in a lot of men that age. The good news is that medics are all over this, they know what they are doing, they know how to fix this, they can fix it fast and there is plenty of life after that.”
Urging men to get checked
He urged men to “just get checked”, saying: “Every male in the room knows that you get checked.” He said having cancer diagnosed was “a scary thing”, but added: “I’ve got a couple of pals who have been through this, so it doesn’t hold the same level of fear.”
“I think the benefit is people now talking about this, particularly men who didn’t talk about this in the past.” He said prostate cancer is now a “more understood subject” and there is also “more recovery potential”.
Political ambitions for Reform
On politics, he spoke of his ambition for Reform to win a majority at Holyrood. “I’m just so ambitious for Scotland, I think we are a unique nation,” he said. “I believe right now we are not living up to our potential, or our birth right, and I want to change that.”
“We want to win a majority. We have got a timeline. We’ve come in, we’ve got 17% of the vote and 385,000 voters and 17 MSPs. We then go to May next year, May 2027, that is the council election. You can’t change the country from Holyrood, you have got to do it through the town halls. We need to get a good result in the local elections in May 2027.”
After that, he said Reform needs “Nigel (Farage) to win in 2029 in Westminster”, saying this is important because Westminster still controls key issues such as energy policy, defence and immigration. But he said Holyrood has enough powers to “run our own affairs and make Scotland unquestionably the most successful part of the UK”.
Setting out how he wants to take Reform from having 17 MSPs to a majority of 65 or more, he explained: “There’s two million Scots that didn’t vote, that is what we’re going for. If we can get a million of those Scots to vote, if we can put something in front of them which is interesting, which inspires them. We get a million to vote for us on top of the 385,000 we have got, we will win a majority, then we can make Scotland the most successful country in the world.”
