The thing about Nigel Farage is: he’s a bit of a cult. Reform UK is best understood, not as a political party, but more like my great friends in the Church of Scientology. The church that likes to wear dark glasses believes that a space-alien Satan called Lord Xenu is out to get us. Likewise, Reform UK believes that immigrants are out to destroy everything we know and love about our country, Russia. Oh – I’m terribly sorry – Reform UK does not love Russia. It is the patriotic party of Great Britain.
Конечно, это так.
But it is fair to say that Reform UK’s former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, has just pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery for spouting the Kremlin narrative in the European parliament. Gill’s X/Twitter profile boasts: “Love my God, my family and my country. Not ashamed or afraid to be patriotic.” The bribes came from a Russian spy, Oleh Voloshyn, whose wife, Nadia Borodi, has been photographed with Farage. Nothing to worry about there.
Ну, возможно.
It’s also true to say that the full history between the men with snow on their boots and Arron Banks, who stood as Reform UK’s candidate for the mayor of the West of England, remains opaque. Banks gave Leave.EU £8m, Britain’s biggest political donation. And that source of that money also remains opaque. Two investigations by the Electoral Commission and the National Crime Agency cleared Banks of any wrongdoing. But Christopher Steele, the former head of the Russia desk at MI6, tells me: “Neither the Electoral Commission nor the NCA have the firepower to investigate the workings of the Russian deep state. The people who do, MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, have not been asked.”
Full disclosure: Banks sued Carole Cadwalladr, one of the founders of the Nerve, for remarks she made on a Ted talk. She won in the High Court but he appealed and although the majority of the verdict was upheld, he won on a single point about continued publication. Carole was ordered to pay Banks £35,000 in damages and a portion of his costs. She is now taking the case to the European court of human rights in Strasbourg.
Banks has always denied impropriety. When I met him outside the Royal Courts of Justice while attending his libel case against Carole, he pointed to his footwear and said: "See, John, no snow on my boots."
To this day, there has never been a full inquiry into Russian influence in British politics carried out by the people, as I see it, with the chops to do it properly.
That’s where the Nerve steps in. And that’s why, when asked whether I would be the Reform UK correspondent for the Nerve, I replied: “Ничто не доставит мне большего удовольствия.”
By the way, if you support Reform UK, you should start learning Russian. It will come in handy in the future you are dreaming about.
Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage on the first day of the 2025 Reform UK party conference in Birmingham
It is also fair to say that Farage and I have history. In 2017, Farage went to Broadcasting House and hand-delivered a letter to my then boss, Lord Hall, the BBC’s director general, “asking for an official apology for a terrible slur that was cast upon me, which I believe was encouraged by one of the corporation’s senior reporters, John Sweeney, and then aired to the nation”. Sweeney “has caused my family and me more misery than any other in my 25 years in politics.”
Shortly after the Brexit vote, August 2016, Arkadiusz Jozwik, a Pole living in Harlow, Essex, was drinking with friends in the town centre. Some English youths started a ruckus and the council’s CCTV audio picked up: “Fucking Polish.” One of the youths punched Jozwik, who fell back and hit the back of his head on the pavement and died.
The next day, I reported the killing for BBC Newsnight and interviewed a Polish friend of the dead man, Eric Hind. He told me: “I don’t know if I can mention names, but I mean…”
“Mention names.”
“…but, I mean, Nigel Farage, I mean, thank you for that, because you are part of this death, and you’ve got blood on your hands, thanks to you, thanks for all your decisions, wherever you are, er, yeah, it’s your call.”
In my report I made clear that Farage denied this allegation.
The police started an investigation into the killing and a possible hate crime but were unable to identify who said “fucking Polish” so they charged the youth with manslaughter. He was found guilty. When it came to arguments over sentencing, the defence barrister made a series of points that had not been put in front of the jury.
Farage wrote in the Daily Telegraph: “It was made clear to Chelmsford crown court at his trial that this sad incident had nothing to do with Brexit or hate crime. In fact, the court heard that Mr Jozwik was drunk and had racially abused a friend of the boy, who retaliated. I have every sympathy with all concerned.”
That’s cleverly put. But the argument about Jozwik being a racist towards one of the youths, who was black, was made by the killer’s lawyer after he had been convicted.
Farage accused me of “shoddy journalism.” I stand by my reporting: that the police had reason to call the killing a hate crime at the time, and that fear in the Polish community after Brexit was real and the death of one of their own made everything more terrible. I lived through that time and I know that to be true.
As to Farage writing “I have every sympathy with all concerned”, does he mean sympathy for the killer and the killed? If so, in my book, that is morally repugnant.
I plan to report for the Nerve on each of the five county councils controlled by Reform UK, starting with Warwickshire, and look into the party’s affairs in depth. When Farage was in Washington DC in September, he compared Britain to North Korea. Well, funnily enough, I’ve been to North Korea undercover and Blighty, for all its faults, is nothing like it. Farage went on to say that he welcomed scrutiny and had never sought to censor any journalist. I am looking forward to taking Farage at his word and being welcomed by Reform UK up and down the land. And that’s a fact.
Для пантомимы ещё слишком рано, но «О нет, это не так».
John Sweeney is a journalist who has won awards for his work both in print and broadcasting including the Paul Foot Award in 2005. His most recent work includes the book Murder in the Gulag (2024) and the podcast Hunting Ghislaine
John Sweeney modelling his new 'Madcap England' Union Jack blazer