One of the first things I saw when I went onto X this morning was a photo of Nigel Farage at an event in Clacton, the constituency in Essex that he hopes to win.
Farage is no court jester
There were flashbulbs and drama, pyrotechnics on the stage, and a hall filled with people, all waiting to see him appear.
It was a spectacle, and to some people it’s clearly refreshing, amid an election season which has been dreary and staid. Among shades of grey, Farage pops like a firework.
He’s attracting an awful lot of media attention too, both on headline panel shows and in discussions between journalists during the endless “talk radio” which fills up our relentless 24 hours a day news cycle. And why not? They’re always looking for a bit of colour, an interesting story, a scandal. Farage delivers this by the bucketload, cleverly and intentionally. He’s wedged himself into the public consciousness, and he intends to stay there.
In their discussions, journalists, particularly of the high-brow publications, often laugh at the scenes he creates, or the supporters he attracts, treating the whole thing as a circus. In town today, but then it’ll move on somewhere else, out of view. Even the attacks he receives, which are never acceptable and should never occur, are treated like theatre and reported like that too. Stocks in the street for the clown man of politics, the jester, the fool.
But he’s not a fool, and he’s not light-hearted either. Farage is a beacon of the sort of sinister politics that we shouldn’t be entertaining, even to fill gaps in a barren news cycle.
No one can claim ignorance about Farage’s political potential, because the man was a driving force behind Brexit which has arguably caused the greatest rupture in our political system in decades. He has great potential to cause damage again, and we should be extremely concerned.
Legitimate concerns – but Reform is not the answer
In 2024, at a time when millions of people have been profoundly failed by Conservative governments (ironically, enacting a political agenda which has in part been directed by Farage himself), many people are vulnerable to the politics Farage represents.
Perhaps they are legitimately worried and anxious, because they cannot access the healthcare they need in the NHS, after the Conservatives have systematically undermined it for 14 years.
Perhaps they believed that their town, once industrious but long left behind by politicians, would be lifted up again through plans to “level up” the country.
Perhaps they can’t get work, and they’re not sure why, and they’re susceptible to the incorrect, hateful messaging of publications which point fingers at immigrants. Point fingers everywhere, in fact.
It’s the “Westminster blob” who’s to fault. Or the hard-working immigrants who moved to the UK to offer their skills and jobs, and who we should be more supportive of, not less. Fingers pointed outwards, to deflect blame and ignite outrage in as many as possible.
A lot of people are looking for someone to blame, and Farage will give you plenty.
A slippery slope
He’ll then throw in some cheeky anecdotes and rollicking nostalgia and imagery of pints and pubs and flags to cover up the gaps in his rhetoric. He wants to lower your defences, create a sense of connection and a clubby atmosphere for all of the people who are isolated, frustrated, looking for something to grasp hold of.
It’s a slippery slope, and we’re slipping down it fast. The only thing that’s going to stop us, break our fall, stop us from descending as a country to the far-right support that other countries are experiencing at the moment, is to focus on facts. Because when it comes to actual policies, Farage is weak.
He announced his political candidacy late (perhaps to avoid the sort of scrutiny that other political parties are experiencing), and we need to play catch-up now. We have about two weeks before the election to shine a light on the Reform Party’s policies and show them for what they are; empty promises.
Farage claims that the Reform Party will reduce NHS waiting lists to zero within two years.
This is absolute nonsense; completely unachievable.
Facts, not Farage
Since NHS waiting lists have first been recorded they have never been at zero, not even at the end of the most recent Labour years, when enormous investment had been pumped into the service to bring them down. Even if Reform pumped enormous sums of money into the service now, this goal would still be unachievable.
The NHS is currently missing 121,000 full-time members of staff. NHS waiting lists are higher now than they were when Rishi Sunak pledged to reduce them. Some of the NHS buildings are literally crumbling, with an unmet repair bill of almost £12bn in England alone, because the Conservative government has allowed things to deteriorate so significantly.
No, the Reform Party will not reduce the NHS waiting lists to zero in two years. It simply could not happen.
If we want to stop Farage now, quieten his claxons, and minimise the support he receives from voters, journalists, think tanks, and others, we need to trawl through his manifesto and demonstrate that this is an unworkable contract, a contract without depth, or value, or strength.
As a country, because of terrible policies and terrible politicians, we face a polycrisis. If we want to tackle that properly and turn things around, we need experts and facts, not Farage and unworkable policies.
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