REFORM UK have suspended one of their senior Scottish activists after The National revealed that he had made antisemitic comments and joined the far-right demonstrations in Glasgow earlier this week.
Grant Calder, who has links to Reform UK’s Scottish deputy leader Thomas Kerr, was photographed on Buchanan Street steps on Tuesday evening holding a “White Lives Matter” banner.
On the steps in central Glasgow at the same time were members of the fascist group Patriotic Alternative. Disorder then broke out as racist masked gangs associated with the demonstration attacked people “because of the colour of their skin”, according to Police Scotland.
Calder said he had “zero regrets and zero sympathy” for the victims of the riots, adding: “I won’t be condemning any participants or apologise. I stand fully by everyone who turned out and would do again.”
Elsewhere on his social media – where he has many pictures with leading Reform UK figures including Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, and Kerr – Calder has launched diatribes against Jewish people.
On September 7, 2025, he wrote on Facebook: “Jews are forcing us to swallow hordes of migrants, flooding land with the dregs of the world to dilute our Protestant stock and shatter the Union.”
Calder, who describes himself as an “unapologetic ethno-Christian nationalist and Unionist”, was also photographed alongside Kerr at the election count in Glasgow on May 8.
A second picture, uploaded on the same day and apparently taken at a post-election event, showed Calder with Kerr and Kim Schmulian, another Glasgow Reform MSP. Calder wrote: “The dream team well done Thomas and Kim.”
In another image from May 8, Calder is holding a clip board, suggesting he may have been a Reform official helping to observe the election count.
The National’s revelations about the Reform activist were raised with John Swinney at First Minister’s Questions on Thursday.
Scottish Green co-leader Gillian Mackay said: “The National has revealed today that an active member of Reform UK who attended the election count in Glasgow alongside their deputy leader in Scotland, not only took part in the racist scenes on Buchanan Street, but boasted that he would do so again.
“Last year this man, who's clearly a friend of Reform UK's leadership, wrote, and I quote, ‘Jews are forcing us to swallow hordes of migrants, flooding land with the dregs of the world to dilute our Protestant stock and shatter the Union’.
“It makes me feel sick just quoting that.
“But as we've seen this afternoon, this is a party that's consistently branded New Scots as ‘strangers’, attacked Glaswegian schoolchildren who speak more than one language, and scapegoated and demonised our migrant communities.
“What does the First Minister have to say to those on the Reform benches who have fanned the flames of hate and actively welcomed racist and antisemitic members?”
Responding, Swinney said he had seen The National’s story on Calder and was “horrified” by his remarks.
“I would say to Reform, they should establish the strongest possible distance from that rhetoric and from the behaviour of these individuals, or they will forever be known as the people that incited racial tension within our society in Scotland,” the SNP leader added.
Reform UK initially failed to respond to a request for comment on their MSPs’ links to Calder.
Sent the exchange between Swinney and Mackay on Thursday, a spokesperson for Reform UK Scotland said: “Grant Calder has been suspended pending investigation.”
Calder’s Facebook has been made private, but his Twitter/X account is still using the Reform branding, and his profile image shows him stood alongside Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice.
Previously, The National revealed that Amanda Lindsay, who is now a Reform MSP, had spread antisemitic conspiracy theories under a false name. Malcolm Offord, the party's leader in Scotland, shrugged off concerns.
