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There are a lot of people out there who have it in for Nigel Farage. Most are on the left but a growing number are on the right. The thing is, as far as I am aware there is no great ideological difference between Farage and his right-wing critics. So, what’s going on?
If we are looking for clues we could do a lot worse than look at some of his bust-ups. Rupert Lowe is a recent example. But you have also got Ben Habib, Douglas Carswell and – if you go back far enough – Alan Sked, the founder of the United Kingdom Independence Party.
My theory is that Farage is incredibly jealous of his position. If he detects a threat to it – real or imagined – his instinct is to react with fury, to remove the threat as completely and as loudly as possible and damn the consequences.
That is not to say that Farage is a one-man band. Clearly he has had a very effective working relationship with Richard Tice over the years. I suspect that Tice knows that he could not do what Farage does. And I suspect that Farage knows that he knows.
I have some sympathy with Farage. The prospects for UKIP did not look great in the early 1990s. Or for a long time to come. But Farage stuck at it. It was a lonely existence. He suffered all that – well, a lot of what – the establishment could throw at him and in the Brexit referendum – with a bit of help – humiliated them. And now, he is on the cusp of becoming Prime Minister. And some people think that they can take it away from him when it is he, Farage, that’s done all the bloody work!
There are consequences of Farage’s jealousy. The upside is that Reform does not have to worry about factional in-fighting. There is only one faction, only one opinion that matters: Farage’s. The downside is that it is Stalinist in nature. No one is allowed to disagree. Anyone who attracts the attention of the media or Hope Not Hate – the supposedly anti-racist pressure group – is out. In my local branch the chairman was recently removed for “something” – we were never quite sure what. And then he was brought back. And then fired again. And then brought back.
What it means is that talent is being driven away. This could be really quite serious. Dominic Cummings – former advisor to Boris Johnson – and someone I think is well worth listening to has expressed his scepticism of the effectiveness of “one man and an iPhone” when dealing with an institution as vast and hostile as the British government.
It may be the case that Farage has been listening to us and the plan is to close down vast parts of the British state: education, NHS, Ofcom, FCA. That would make the government more manageable. But I think that unlikely, in which case Farage will be able to do very little given that – due to the size of the task – he will have to delegate to people who have been promoted on account of loyalty rather than ability.
It may be the case that we have to look to Farage’s successors on the right. The good news is that there will be plenty of them.
Ray Sanders has produced solid evidence that suggests the Met Office is inventing temperature data that it is using for political Net Zero purposes. Claiming his thorough, well documented investigations are “vexatious” will no longer wash. It must reply with realistic explanations and evidence of its own to retain public trust in its work.
– Chris Morrison
I used to say “Other than weather reports, don’t believe anything the media says without looking at multiple sources”… well even the weather reports are deeply suspect now.
For Farage and Reform, Musk’s attack is sunlight, the best disinfectant. It clarifies the divide: Reform as a broad church for disillusioned patriots, not a niche for extremists.
– Gawain Towler (£)
These are not smart taxes in a service economy that desperately needs to increase productivity. We need a tax policy that encourages people to work longer hours, in the highest-paying, private sector jobs they can find. We need a tax policy that encourages money to move from unproductive assets to more productive investments, which hopefully make a profit and pay dividends. We need a tax policy that enables small and medium-sized businesses to continue to operate, employ people and pay taxes. We need a tax policy that encourages the global wealthy to live in the UK and spend their money here.
Worst still, besides risking the bulk of UK taxes by discouraging businesses and driving the rich out of the country, these tax increases still aren’t enough to pay for the Government’s additional spending. Which brings us back to the opening paragraph of this essay: A doom loop occurs when government policy reduces economic activity by over-taxing it, over-regulating it, or allowing unconnected third parties to stifle it with litigation. Lower economic activity lowers tax revenue, which in turn causes a debt spiral if the government can’t or won’t cut spending, which leads to increased debt and higher debt costs. In the 2024/25 financial year, the UK public sector net debt was £2.8 trillion, equivalent to 95.1% of GDP. Public sector net borrowing was £151.9 billion in 2024/25, £20.7 billion higher than the previous year and equal to 5.3% of GDP, up from 4.8% in the financial year 2023/24.
– Catherine McBride
What began as scattered acts of defiance has blossomed into a nationwide movement: St George’s Crosses and Union Jacks hoisted on lampposts, motorway bridges, and public spaces from Birmingham’s Shard End to Tower Hamlets in east London, Southampton to Brighton, and even Cannock. Roundabouts painted red and white, zebra crossings marked with the cross, symbols of England asserting themselves in the urban landscape. Last night I cycled through London’s Labour stronghold of Lambeth, and road markings have been transformed with the St George’s Cross, a quiet but bold reclamation in one of London’s most diverse boroughs. Dubbed “Operation Raise the Colours” by organisers (though it is hard to describe the phenomenon as organised), it has seen thousands of flags raised, with fundraising efforts like Birmingham’s £16,000 drive sustaining the effort. I support this gentle uprising, for it breathes life into symbols long marginalised.
– Gawain Towler
Thousands upon thousands of ULEZ cameras have been destroyed by the Bladerunners (way more than 5,000 last year alone)
There’s a pattern: the foolishness unfolding under the Starmer government often gestated under the previous Conservative ones. The Online Safety Act is probably the most egregious example (although some Tories attacked it at the time, to no avail). Another might be that the UK embarked on the idea of offloading the Chagos Islands – a strategic blunder that may yet be countered by the Trump administration – under James Cleverly (then foreign minister). (Cleverly has, with some level of brass neck, since denounced the Chagos fiasco.)
Another example is creating a football regulator. The UK pioneered football (aka soccer) more than a century ago, and it has become a global phenomenon. The English Premier League is a big and profitable brand (judging by all the people I see watching games on TV when I am on business trips in Singapore, New York or Dubai). Yes, there have been controversies about players’ taxes, and crowd behaviour. But that’s what HM Revenue & Customs and the police are there for. But apparently the “beautiful game” requires supervision from a regulator. The usual warnings about “regulatory capture” apply, and one assumes that Conservatives might have been aware of such a risk. But no. The former administration proposed it. And unsurprisingly, the incoming Labour government liked the idea, because it likes regulation almost as an end in itself.
In the fag-end of the last government, Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt signalled that if re-elected, he would scrap the UK’s resident non-domicile tax system and replace it with a residency-based system. Hunt probably thought he was being clever in trying to “shoot the fox” of Labour, which has railed about non-doms for years. But he could have changed the narrative and challenged the economic illiteracy of those who want to hammer wealthy foreigners. Instead he conceded to Labour the terms of debate, which a good general never does.
Another case: shotgun licensing. The UK now requires that an application for a shotgun requires two referees, not one as before. This move was initiated under the past Tory government, reacting to a case of a shooting in Plymouth, southwest UK. While designed to stop problems, it also makes it that much harder for a farmer, for example, to obtain one to shoot game and vermin with such a weapon.
And so on and so on. Hence why you hear people refer to Labour and the Conservatives as a sort of “uni-party”. Even when that is a bit unfair, because differences genuinely exist, there is an edge to the criticism because it does speak to a genuine problem. The Tories contain a lot of people who are at base paternalists in how they think of the role of government, and also share some of the same post-colonial cringes of those on the Labour side. There is also, arguably, a failure of nerve and self-confidence that goes very deep.
This is interesting.
“American businesses do not surrender their First Amendment rights because a foreign bureaucrat sends them an e-mail.”
Hopefully more sites and services outside the UK will refuse to comply with the appalling Online Safety Act.
A trade group representing companies that build age verification systems is now lobbying to extend these checks to anyone using a VPN in the UK. The Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA) wants online platforms that fall under the UK’s censorship law, the Online Safety Act, to not only detect VPN usage but also analyze user behavior to guess whether someone might be a minor in disguise.
If flagged, users would face a prompt: prove your age, or allow a one-time geolocation to confirm you’re outside the UK.
According to the AVPA, this process is necessary because VPNs can mask users’ actual locations, allowing them to appear as though they are in countries where age verification laws do not apply. The association points to data showing a dramatic increase in VPN use around the time the UK’s new internet rules were enforced, suggesting people are using these tools to bypass restrictions.
This approach treats privacy tools as a form of defiance. Here, VPNs, once considered sensible and essential for online security, are being rebranded as suspicious.
– Richard Eldred
“Middle Class Britain is bulking with aging radicals who are desperate to relive the heady days of their youths protesting the Vietnam War or patriarchy or capitalism. They possess an abundance of the resources necessary for the life of demonstrating — spare time, spare cash and, having left the job market, a willingness to acquire a criminal record.”
– Adrian Wooldridge
There’s the point made a few years ago by P J O’Rourke that there is a reason why centre-right folk tend to avoid demonstrations – they’ve got jobs to do and they are intelligent enough to be able to sign a petition, write to their MP, and considerate enough – mostly – to avoid irritating ordinary folk going about their business. There are a few exceptions if the cause is seen as big enough. In my lifetime, I recall that exception to the rule: the Countryside Alliance one in the Blair years, where the ostensible cause was to protect the hunting of foxes with hounds (you can still shoot them with a rifle, by the way). And the rural angle returned when farmers recently drove their tractors into Whitehall to protest against inheritance tax on their businesses. But the vast majority of demos are for banning things like fossil fuels, and supporting enemies of Israel. (I haven’t come across many demos about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine lately.)
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