If you were depressed to hear of the £72m in gifts to Reform UK from two cryptobillionaires – one with two names, the second with both a conviction and a pardon from fellow felon President Donald J Trump – then you probably won’t want to read about the mindset of the people in Nigel Farage’s party who will be spending it.
Nigel troubles? Him not registering the £5m gift in 2024? Him not registering benefits from a convicted fraudster? The Channel 4 sting, catching out him and his two aides? It’s not just that his supporters don’t care. It’s worse than that. They like it.
That was the mood at the recent Reform UK conference in Birmingham. You might have expected the party vibe to have been soured by the sting, aired on Channel 4 News, which led to two of Farage’s close aides stepping down and some embarrassment for the great man himself.
Not a bit of it.
King Richard the Lionheart, fresh from the sack of Messina – or a Reform UK member dressed up as same – shrugged off the Channel 4 investigation, gave a grunt and headed to the loo. Fair dos: unzipping all that chainmail must not be easy.
A bald man in a turquoise soccer strip with “Farage 10” printed on the back rubbished concerns about Farage’s failure to register the five million quid from cryptobillionaire Christopher Harborne/Chakrit Sakunkrit. As, pretty much, did everyone else I spoke to. I didn’t get to speak to the lady with union jacks coming out of her ears but you get the drift.
‘King Richard’, when asked about Channel 4’s hidden camera sting, grunted and headed for the loo. Photo: Oli Scarff / Getty Images
Time and again, Reform UK members flipped the question, snorted derision at the media, pointed to the failings of other politicians – “they’re all the same but Nigel is the best of a bad lot” – and were unconcerned that Farage and co had done anything wrong in accepting the £5m in secret, taking benefits from convicted fraudster Posh George Cottrell or starring in the Channel 4 investigation. They seemed brainwashed to me, but then I owe fealty to Lord Xenu.
Just before the conference started, Reform UK banned three reporters they don’t like: the legendary Michael Crick, the investigative reporter Peter Geoghegan and Anna Isaac, the City editor of the Guardian, who broke the story about Farage receiving the £5m donation.
The Nerve decided to hang out in the ’Spoons, beyond the security zone, waiting for Nigel’s thirst to come through for us.
And come he did. They cheered him to the echo. Reform UK feels like a cult.
I did my best to dampen the religiosity by asking Farage what he thought of the Channel 4 investigation. Surrounded by five or six muscle men, he clocked me, scowled and said: “I have just given a statement on that.”
To be fair, I did meet one critic. That was Chris Atkins, an old BBC Panorama colleague of mine, pretending to be from Patriot News. He had not asked for a press pass but had attended as a member with not a wholly accurate name. Then he got thrown out while asking a question about free speech.
Farage knows that he will never gain power if he goes full-fat fascist. What he does, time and again, is to hint at something and allow others to fill in the blanks
The quasi-religious passion for Farage was far more intense inside the security zone, where I could not go. That was where some climate protesters heckled him, one woman being clubbed by a crutch and having her hair pulled. Farage and co abhor the politics of bloodshed, true; but roughing up their critics, well, that’s something different. Or is it?
To be clear, Farage knows that he will never gain power if he goes full-fat fascist. What he does, time and again, is to hint at something and allow others to fill in the blanks. Although he is on record slagging off Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, Farage and Robinson co-exist in the same far-right ecology. But violence puts off the voters and Farage knows that.
As I have set out in my book, The Real Nigel Farage, he has had a serious problem with getting candidates of quality and vetting the bad apples for decades. Three of his members of the European parliament went to prison: Tom Wise and Ashley Mote for fiddling their expenses, Nathan Gill for taking bribes from a Russian spy.
Will the monster £72m donations change this sorry track record? I doubt that, very much, primarily because Reform UK and Farage’s vehicles in the past tend to attract people who see politics through the prism of hatred for the other. Farage himself bullied Jews and black people at school; he denies this, but there are 34 witnesses to the contrary, of whom I have met 12. Then he turned his wrath on the EU and, during the Brexit vote, eastern Europeans. Now his targets are immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees, most often brown and Muslim. His adepts follow suit.
Farage is smart enough to edit what he says, to stay on the right side of the law, to suggest, to imply but not to spell it out. His followers lack that editing skill but solve that problem by not talking to the media.
The consequence is dismal for democracy. Having a meaningful conversation with Reform UK members is fast becoming impossible. And that is very depressing.
At this point, it is hard to work out whether Farage’s political vehicle will get to spend its £72m of treasure. It is possible that the Labour government will block the payments, banning them from the start-point of its inquiry into political funding last spring. Farage will say such a ban is proof that the establishment is out to get him and his supporters. Either Farage gets the money or his supporters’ belief in democracy is yet further eroded.
That feels like a win-win for Team Farage, for cryptocracy and King Richard.
True, Farage’s polling numbers are going down. But the British and the world economy are in serious trouble thanks to Trump’s war against Iran and Putin’s war against Ukraine. The price of oil, gas and food are going up. Trump seemed finished in 2020. Four years later, he was in the White House. Farage could well sit out the current scandals, bide his time and then come back just before the general election. It would be foolish to write him off.
And as foolish to think that his supporters have any intention of giving up on him.
John Sweeney’s The Real Nigel Farage is published by Headline Books, £22 (to order at a special 10% discount go to the Nerve Bookshop and enter the code LOVEBOOKSHOPS)