NIGEL Farage will make his first campaign trip to Scotland on Friday evening as part of next week’s European elections campaign.
The leader of the new Brexit Party will address a rally at Edinburgh’s Corn Exchange.
Mr Farage’s campaign trip to the Scottish capital in 2013 was notable after he was forced to take refuge in the Canon’s Gait pub on the Royal Mile.
Following an informal press conference, the party leader tried to leave but was confronted by around 50 chanting anti-Ukip protesters and so was forced back into the hostelry. He was later escorted from the premises by police officers into a waiting police van.
Read more: Farrago as Nigel Farage is rescued by police from protesters
Afterwards, the MEP said: “It was a demonstration dressed up as being anti-racism but in fact in itself was deeply racist with a total hatred of the English and a desire for Scotland to be independent from Westminster. I mean, my goodness me, if this is the face of Scottish Nationalism it’s a pretty ugly picture.”
The SNP responded by suggesting Mr Farage had “completely lost the plot”.
In the European poll a year later, the anti-EU party unexpectedly won a Scottish seat, nearly doubling its support.
On Wednesday, the Brexit Party leader was on the stump in Merthyr Tydfil as four Welsh Assembly members, including former Ukip MP Mark Reckless, announced they had joined Mr Farage's party.
The politicians were all originally elected as Ukip AMs, although only one, David Rowlands, was still in the party.A Brexit Party spokesman explained that the move followed a meeting last month between the four and Mr Farage at a rally in Newport.
"We are delighted that the group has come together to prosecute the result of the referendum in which the people of Wales made clear they wished to leave the EU," he said.
Ahead of next week’s poll, Professor Sir John Curtice, the eminent polling expert, said in Scotland the SNP was on track to win around 40 per cent of the vote, which could translate into three - possibly even four - of Scotland's six MEPs.
Read more: Anti-Brexit campaigners troll Nigel Farage by 'squatting' on new party website
his was a figure in a YouGov poll at the end of last month, which placed the Tories on just 10 per cent from a 17.2 per cent share of the vote in the 2014 Euro-poll.
The snapshot placed Scottish Labour on 14 points well down on the 25.9 per cent it secured in 2014. Close behind was the Brexit Party on 13 per cent. Of its supporters almost 40 per cent said they had voted Conservative in the 2017 snap general election.
Across the UK, the latest polling average places Mr Farage’s party ahead of the two major parties on 30 per cent with Labour on 21 points and the Tories on 12.
If this result was realised in the May 23 poll, then it would mark the Tories’ lowest vote share in a national election since they were formed in 1834.
The pro-Remain Lib Dems, Greens and Change UK together have the support of 28 per cent.
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