I wonder what Nigel Farage sees when he looks in the mirror. Certainly someone who has spent all his life trying to enter Parliament and when he finally arrives it is not what he expected. The Commons embodies strange contradictions. It can sniff out a fraud at a hundred paces. It tends to be suspicious of intellect and those who ignore the traditions of decency towards each other. They also don’t treat new members who are famous with star struck reverence. In the Commons respect has to earned and if you are not prepared to work at it they regard you as arrogant. The whips used to have a list of all their members on a wall. It was to keep an eye how colleagues were thought to be voting on important votes. It was always covered when non whips entered the Office. The whips used to grade members. Unhelpful, unreliable, mad and finally the gold standard of awfulness, “a shit”.
The Commons can be very forgiving of those who have slipped up, broken the rules, had affairs, or were too fond of the Columbian marching powder, to name but a few sins. That is if you show contrition. It is for all these reasons that Farage doesn’t fit in. His unique selling point is that he doesn’t want to. He loves to cultivate the aura of a swashbuckling Captain Jack figure. A pirate turned privateer.
At the moment he looks more buckle than swash. The reason he has started a national tour is because Parliament looks at him as more Arthur Daley than a national leader. He hates criticism, is chippy about scrutiny and his comfort zone is bathing in adulation. Worse, the sky is black with cryptocurrency chickens coming home to roost. And his own sharks can smell blood and are circling, waiting for the chance to kill.
I suspect that he is seeing a number of unwelcome images in his mirror. Nothing prepares a person to be Prime Minister. Andy Burnham, a decent man who is totally out of his depth, may just be realising that governing by slogan doesn’t work. The only control he has over his party is the threat of a general election. And you can only cry wolf a few times and get away with it.
I wonder if Farage has begun to realise that he really isn’t up to it. Perhaps not yet. But he will. Has he begun to realise that by encouraging the sinister men in balaclavas, his ‘Patriots’, to strut around the streets threatening the RNLA is not a good look? Perhaps not yet. But he will.
And why is he allowing that nasty little shit weasel Yusuf to undermine the rule of law, to attack judges and align himself with those convicted criminals who are encouraging others to break the law. It’s because as Margaret Thatcher would have said, he is Frit. So he should be. Yusuf has more me, me, mees than Pavarotti and his tanks are on Farage’s lawn.
For those of us who knew Margaret Thatcher, Enoch Powell and Alan Clark well, I can assure you that they would have despised Reform and all it stands for. They would have looked on in horror at the attacks on the judiciary, the attacks of freedom of speech such as banning journalists. And aligning with balaclavad thugs would have been the last straw. She would have given Farage the full handbag. Enoch would have reminded him of the 1930s and Alan would have just drawled in the Smoking Room, “oh for fuck’s sake, are you stupid enough to take this man seriously?” And then ordered another couple of bottles of claret.
If you really want to see the sheer panic of what is going on behind the scenes have a look at the face of the once rather sensible Richard Tice. The stress and worry have twisted and gnarled those once handsome features into the perpetual snarl of a robber’s dog.
There is a time when the tectonic plates of politics change. People sniff something rather unusual in the air. First it’s MPs, then it’s the press and finally it trickles down to the voters.
Opinion polls are about snap shots of a trend. The trend is that Reform and particularly Farage are losing traction. We live in an age when tactical voting has become popular again. One thing is very clear, the next election will be between the Conservatives and Labour. Reform is the least liked party, with many former Tories being revolted by the lies, the racism and the association with the thugs. They are returning to the fold. But the right must unite behind Kemi Conservatives. A vote for Reform will lead to another Labour government. Lock up your Labradors. Worry about your pensions and be terrified for your children’s future. It’s not because Burnham hates this country. He doesn’t. He just doesn’t understand it and doesn’t have the courage to stand up to the left. Angela Rayner’s unchecked drive-by shooting of the Home Secretary shows how weak he has become. And it will get worse.
Farage may have created an uncontrollable, malign party of hate based on grievance, but Starmer has spawned a monster whose insatiable appetite will devour your pensions, your standard of living and your security. Britain is not ungovernable. It’s just not governed.