The Northern Irish grandfather was fresh from a meeting in Port Seton the previous evening where Scottish leader, Malcolm Offord, came along. Mr Neill is a big Malcolm fan.
Offord was given a peerage, Baron Offord of Garvel, and became a government minister in the Scotland Office under the last Tory government. He resigned his peerage earlier this year, having defected from the Conservatives to Reform UK in December. He is one of the Reform candidates standing in Inverclyde. An Edinburgh law graduate he then worked in private equity and was also founder and chair of Badenoch and Co which is a private equity company.
Gary Neill said about Malcolm: “There is no better man for this job. He’s a native Scot, he’s a local boy done good. He has a wealth of experience, both in business and in politics, and he’s resigned his peerage, which I think is a great sign of commitment.
“In addition to that, he is on the ground, and he is active. He is helping my colleagues and I. He is helping local associations. He is getting himself known on the ground with organisations and just day to day people in the street.”
Adamant that this strong leadership will help his own campaign, Gary admitted that not having a Scottish leader or a manifesto previously was an obvious drawback. And he is sure that having Offord at the top, with his local knowledge will also help put any Reform policies into a Scottish setting. That is not to say that the two leaders – the UK leader, Nigel Farage, and the Scottish leader, Malcolm Offord, – have diverging opinions just that policies will now be based on reality as they apply to Scotland.
Gary thinks he now knows about a third of the candidates standing for election. There were 73 names announced at the Reform UK Conference at Ingliston Country Club in Bishopton, but only 72 now remain.
Stuart Niven, the candidate for Dundee City West, was suspended by the party one day later, after it came to light that he had been struck off as a company director just one month previously. Another in Aberdeen stepped down voluntarily for personal reasons.
Neill is clear that nothing shady will come out about him as he is (in his own words) “a very boring guy”. He says he has never really got into posting on social media, so there will be nothing to reveal about his past. He explained that he and all others were vetted by a third party organisation, and that in his case the process began in January of this year. But he said that although the checks were “very thorough” the system is not infallible.
Neill seems unsure about whether he is top of the regional list in Edinburgh, saying that the position is “very fluid” (but he thinks he is).
However, he is clear about Reform and what it means to him. He said that he has worked hard all his days but he has never known a time when people are “working harder and they don’t seem to be showing anything for it”. And it is the economy that worries him most.
He comes from Ireland and worked for a time in the Irish Republic during the days of the Celtic Tiger. He admits that there are still issues to resolve in Ireland, but he praises their economic success: “They still have their issues in the Republic of Ireland, as we have in Scotland, like things like political issues, divided political sentiments.
“We have a social housing problem. We have a high end cost problem. We have an immigration problem. We have lots of social issues in Scotland. The same applies in the Republic of Ireland, but for one big difference. The Republic of Ireland’s economy returns budget surpluses every year, and Scotland is in deficit every year.”
His views on the comparative prosperity of Scotland’s near neighbour (which has almost the same population) align with Malcolm Offord’s views expressed when introducing the party’s manifesto at the conference. Reform is proposing getting rid of three of the Scottish tax bands, and cutting all bands by 1p which they say will lead to an increase in tax revenue.
Gary said: “In a nutshell, it’s because in the Republic of Ireland, they tax people less. They tax corporations less. The bottom line is they are putting money in the bank. They have surpluses. the point I’m coming to, why can’t Scotland have that, particularly when we have absolute, incalculable abundance of natural resources, ie oil and gas. Why can’t we have that?”
He expressed the view that his second reason for standing is that there is a “very low calibre of politicians” in Scotland. He claims he wants to improve the lot of everybody who lives in Scotland. He said: “I think we have people that, quite frankly, would prefer a certain section of the population in Scotland to be in dependency mode, rather than encourage them to be entrepreneurs, encourage them to work harder, encourage them to do well in life.”
He added: “We have to turn this around. We have to make this, honestly, somewhere that young people can afford to live in and do well in. So there’s lots of drivers for me.”
And his final point is that the electorate have to be persuaded to turn out to vote. He recounts that when one of his colleagues stood in the Whitburn by election last year the turnout was only 22%. He thinks that at least part of the reason for that is that “we’ve got incompetent, useless politicians that people have absolutely lost heart in”. He said that he is hoping to get more people to vote “because a lot of them don’t”.
Mr Neill stood in the Edinburgh council by-election in June 2025 to replace the late councillor Val Walker when 33.1% of the electorate turrned out. He attracted 489 votes, and the seat was won by Liberal Democrat, Kevin Mackay with 1,269 votes.
On climate policies, Neill is unequivocal. He said: “Climate emergency – well let’s talk about this expression. There are expressions like Climate Emergency, the Climate Crisis, okay but for whom? That is my question. Well where is it? Tell me how this emergency is affecting you – apart from paying more for petrol at the pump when there’s an international conflict, apart from paying more for your food because there’s an international conflict – where is this climate crisis. I cannot help feel at times that if you just keep saying these words over and over again without actually explaining them, you put people in a sense of delirium.”
Gary believes that in the UK our carbon emissions amount to around 1% of all global emissions, and he feels that it is India and China who should be lobbied about their carbon footprint. He said I think in the scheme of things 1% that’s not a bad thing. You cannot – and I am speaking generally – you cannot eradicate the carbon content on our planet. You can reduce it of course, but the sober truth is that we will need oil and gas to power this country so that we have the resources which are more competitively priced to enable us to drive technology. We have so much oil and gas under people’s feet in Scotland.”
Supporting fracking is a reasonably controversial stance, but Gary proposes this as a way forward. He said: “We did it before why can’t we do it now?”
Suggesting it might be because fracking is considered a dirty fossil fuel, he replies that there is now better technology to manage these things and make the fuel more efficient. He said: “We have so much resource here in this country. It is absolute madness not to access it. Even the Norwegians think we are daft to decommission our own oil fields.”
In the Reform manifesto they propose to scrap all net zero related targets, subsidies and quangos, and “rehabilitate North Sea gas as our primary energy system”. Reform promise to “deliver an energy system that is secure, affordable and reliable” by fast tracking planning permissions for “hydro, geothermal, opencast mining and electrical network infrastructure”.
If Mr Neill is elected to Holyrood he hopes he would bring with him the ability to make a deal. He says he has been a humble sales guy all his life. He said: “The thing about sales in the commercial world is about two things – getting the deal and getting the money for the deal. In simple terms, I would bring what I have done to the Holyrood Parliament so that we can negotiate better deals with industry.”
And his campaign trail food? He replies: “My food of choice on the campaign trail is Aberdeen Angus steak.”
