Reform’s mini-MAGAS Are Collapsing

A lesson for TrumpAmerica and the world

here may be some lessons from the UK for anyone opposing the Far Right around the world.

Last September Nigel Farage’s Reform UK were polling 31% and Farage was boasting about being the next Prime Minister. His other MPs, mainly failed Conservatives, were already haggling over ministerial posts.

Yesterday”s YouGov poll had them on 22% after a steady decline over several months. Even more damning, a poll by Lord Ashcroft had Reform on a dismal 18%. Instead of the usual polling question of how would you vote if an election was called tomorrow, Ashcroft asked: how are you likely to vote at the next General Election.

Reform is not going to form the next UK Government. At this rate of decline they’ll be lucky to hang on to the meagre number of MPs they already have.

It’s been quite a turnaround, but it didn’t happen in a vacuum. Both Trump and Farage are creations of a media that must carry a significant portion of the blame for the rise of the Far Right and the subsequent damage done across the world.

In the US and the UK, the media saw Trump and Farage as “characters” who could brighten up the grey world of serious politics with their matey, I just say what the common man says, anti-Politics approach. They were uncritically given platforms and received no challenge to their weird and downright dangerous views.

After all, they’ll never win so what’s to lose?

Turned out a lot of people on both sides of the Atlantic are sick of politicians and believe the system isn’t working for them. Candidates promising to smash everything up were just what they were looking for.

In the UK, this began to change in the spring. The Times newspaper began to probe Farage’s opaque personal finances, including a £5 million “gift” from an offshore crypto billionaire.

That opened the gates to scrutiny of all the Reform players from multiple media outlets. Once the rocks were being turned over all sorts of things came scurrying out.

Why did it take so long — a good ten years since Farage helped destroy the UK’s future with his part in the Brexit vote? Bluntly, the media is filled with cowards. The supporters of the Far Right are a despicable bunch who respond to any criticism of their fuehrers with a flood of venom, abuse and death threats. It’s been a frightening time to be a journalist.

The same system is in play in the US. It’s just safer to keep your heads down and couch any negative comments in verbiage and code.

That’s a betrayal of what journalism should stand for and it’s helped perpetuate the rise of the Far Right.

But there’s safety in numbers. The media moves as a pack, and once The Times poked its head above the parapet…and kept it there…others followed.

And why did The Times suddenly decide to start ripping apart the tissue of respectability that Reform had wrapped itself in? They haven’t said, but I have my suspicions. The Times is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Murdoch, and now his heir, has always set out to influence politics around the world.

His calculation seems to be that Reform are simply too incompetent to maintain a good environment for his business interests. He’d rather have Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party in charge.

Whatever the reason, it’s notable how quickly Reform fell apart once the light was shone into the murkier areas of their existence. The media across the UK is now piling on. Reform’s days of uncritical coverage is gone.

And without that they’ve got nothing — no policies beyond hate for immigrants, no representative who is remotely liked by the public. The IPSOS Political Monitor shows both Farage and Reform are disliked by huge margins compared to other leaders and parties.

Tomorrow Farage’s political career is on the line. He resigned his seat in Parliament to call a by-election in the hope that it would deflect from the scrutiny of his financial affairs. His belief was that he’d win massive support from the voters of Clacton, one of the most Far Right constituencies in the UK. That would mute his critics.

It backfired spectacularly. The other parties refused to buy into Farage’s stunt and decided not to stand candidates. That left Farage facing only the satirical candidate Count Binface, a comedian who wears a trash can on his head.

It’s turned Farage and his big scheme into a joke.

There’s virtually no chance that Count Binface can win the election — the voting public in the deprived Clacton area already think the world sees them as the punchline in a bad comedy sketch. It’s unlikely they’re going to vote to perpetuate that.

But even when Farage wins he’s lost. The turnout will be low and though Farage might get a large majority in percentage terms, his numbers will be far lower than the General Election and the whole of the UK will be laughing as he conducts his swivel-eyed, spittle-flying victory speech with Count Binface standing behind him.

Farage is already diminished, a wounded beast. His supporters like winners. They don’t like to ally themselves with losers, especially ones that are being laughed at. They’ve had enough of that in their lives.

The lesson then: the Far Right are vulnerable. It just requires the media to do their job.