Reform Clubbed

The elites are gunning for Farage

Hello everyone. This is a short extra post about the UK general election.

It’s obviously time sensitive so I thought I’d put it out straight away. I do try not to clog up your inbox so I’ll return to my usual bi-weekly posts in a couple of weeks.

Thanks LSO

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Anyone who reads this Substack (and thank you for that) knows that I have long been slightly sceptical of the Reform Party.

I’ve worried that it is little more than a vehicle for Nigel Farage’s ego. A Tory Grumble Party, and an electoral dead end, a noisy mausoleum for disillusioned conservatives like me.

Sure, I may well end up voting for Reform on July 4th, if only to add my merry boot to the kicking Britain is about to give the quisling Tories.

But I certainly don’t see Reform as the long term answer to this country’s problems.

It’s too old for a start. We need a much more youth focused, positive and upbeat political movement if we want to attract a new generation of non woke, disillusioned voters. Young people who want to discuss how the best way to build a successful, fulfilling life for themselves, without every conversation devolving into a rant about immigration.

And its economic policies might appeal to me, but I’m not sure they fully reflect the political realignment, right on cultural issues, left on economics, which it would probably need to embrace if it were to become a truly popular, and populist force. I’m no expert, but that seems to be the winning formula across Europe right now.

I say all this because it is important I think, to state that I am in no way, a Nigel Farage fan boy.

But over the last week or two, as Reform has risen in the polls, snapping terrier like at the heels of the stumbling, knocked kneed, zombie like Tories, it has become obvious that the big guns of the elite class have been sighted on Reform, and more specifically, the effervescent Nigel.

First it was the ever impartial BBC, shutting Farage out of a special leader’s edition of Question Time on the grounds that their line up should reflect the results of the last two elections. (Sorry I can’t find the reference to this.)

This is obviously a flawed premise. If only past winners or participants can take part, then there is no prospect of any new party ever making the grade. You must languish, unloved through two election cycles before the beneficent BBC ever considers you worthy of inclusion.

In the end  BBC bowed to pressure. And now Farage will take his place in a ‘special’ Question Time Special after all.

Although he was deemed unworthy to go head to head with Tory leader Rishi Sunak, Labour’s future PM Keir Starmer, or Ted from the Lib Dems, which is surely the clash we all wanted to see.

Instead he will be relegated to the kiddies table, to debate on a separate occasion with the Green Party (ealayhim alsalam) and presumably Count Binface

Next it was Google’s turn. The increasingly broken and seemingly biased search engine attempted to block Reform’s ad account, effectively banning the party’s adverts from the platform. This is obviously a massive deal, unless you still use Ask Jeeves. (Hello Mum!)

And it represents, I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say, real and measurable ‘election interference’.

Thankfully, after a bit of a public outcry, the account was reinstated.

And then there’s the biggie, Nigel Farage’s Panorama interview with the BBC’s giddy attack dog Nick Robinson.

Nick Robinson, (the same journalist who practically frothed at the mouth when Isabel Oakeshott broke Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s NDA to reveal to the world the ineptitude behind the lockdown fiasco-so much for ‘public interest’) was almost beside himself when Farage suggested that the expansion of NATO and the creep of the EU eastwards had ‘provoked Russia’, and potentially handed Vladimir Putin an excuse to invade Ukraine.

Farage’s comments were immediately seized on by the MSM and portrayed as unfathomably shocking, breathtakingly naive, wilfully misguided and potentially dangerous.

Luckless Tory sap Rishi Sunak even accused him of being an ‘appeaser’.

But Farage did not say that Putin was justified in his invasion, or that NATO or the EU were responsible for the war. What he said, was that their recklessness had played into Putin’s hands and allowed him to act the victim, launching his invasion as if it was a response to some kind of threat.

In truth Nigel Farage’s words actually seemed less about the Russian leader and more about Nigel Farage. A self aggrandising attempt to depict himself as a lone sage, the only sane voice, and clear sighted individual smart enough to spot the looming Kremlin threat.

Which is ironic because I seem to recall Donald Trump warning of the exact same danger in 2018. And specifically the risk to Germany of being held to ransom, if it relied too heavily on Russia for its energy needs.

Instead of heeding this prescient warning the Germans literally laughed in his face.

The clip is here.

But clearly Farage was neither justifying the invasion of Ukraine, nor suggesting that NATO and the EU were the cause of the war. He simply wasn’t.

For this Farage has been denounced as at best a brainless ‘Putin apologist’ and at worse some kind of Kremlin stooge, a Russian cheerleader who revels in the thought of plucky Ukraine being ground under the Spetsnaz jack boot.

Outlets as diverse as The Guardian and the Daily Telegraph, have seized up this narrative. Accusing Farage of ‘parroting the talking points of Vladimir Putin’ and essentially branding him a traitor to the west.

Even Boris Johnson and the MoD weighed in, condemning Farage’s words. With Johnson accusing him of spouting ‘Kremlin Propaganda.’

But hang on a minute.

Is Farage’s opinion, that western NATO expansion contributed to the Ukrainian war really so heinous? Is it only the view of Russian apologists and brainwashed fools that NATO’s shift eastwards had some part to play in the disaster? Do only racist dupes with no understanding of global politics, and war mongering Hitler adjacent psychopaths believe that Putin was somehow provoked into action?

No. Not really.

The instant, outraged, pearl clutching response to Farage’s comments immediately struck a false note with me. Was this the first time I’d heard these outrageous suggestions? Well no. His words seemed, if anything, quite familiar.

So I did some digging, Not much digging mind. The internet, despite our bosses’ best efforts, still just about works. And I discovered that in February 2022, just four days after the invasion began the Guardian published  an article entitled

‘Many predicted Nato expansion would lead to war. Those warnings were ignored’

In which the writer  Ted Galen Carpenter suggests

‘It was entirely predictable that Nato expansion would ultimately lead to a tragic, perhaps violent, breach of relations with Moscow.’

I can’t remember Ted Galen Carpenter

‘a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, [who] is the author of 12 books on international affairs’

being pilloried in every newspaper, and denounced on every TV show for his outrageous, ill considered, traitorous views.

And two years on The Guardian seems to have forgotten their previous position entirely. Suggesting instead. That Farage is, you guessed it,  an ‘apologist for Putin.’

Or how about that Munich Beer Hall of far-right opinion that is the London School of Economics? In a LSE  blog article from April 2022  Zofia Stemplowska argues that

‘Many voices in the UK and US press – in the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Guardian, and others – suggest that NATO is partly to blame for the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.’

(Those links are from the original blog)

Zofia argues against this position. But as the quote above shows, it was clearly a mainstream view at the time.

Then there’s NPR. Not know as a redoubt of Alex Jones style conspiracy theorists. Whose ‘explainer’ published on the very first day of the invasion details

‘How NATO's expansion helped drive Putin to invade Ukraine’

As I said. This stuff is not hard to find.

There’s clearly something going on here. Previously mainstream and acceptable liberal opinions are being rebranded as far-right, outrageous, traitorous, hateful and dangerous.

And this is being done for no other reason than to smear and delegitimise a loudmouth politician who is rising in popularity, and who delights in trolling a catastrophically failing incumbent party, and the broader cosy political order.

Sound familiar?

The elites obviously believe that if they can associate Nigel Farage with cardboard cut out ‘baddie’ Putin, then they can potentially erode his political support.

This is not how democracy is meant to work.

It is breathtakingly naked, cynical and corrupt. The same ‘fact checking’ obsessed media outlets which never stop warning us about media manipulation, ‘fake news’  and online ‘disinformation’ are pumping out this rubbish and expecting the public to swallow it hook line and sinker.

And perhaps they will. But I’m not so sure.

Just as the constant lawfare and partisan attacks against Trump have served only to shore up and even expand his support. I wouldn’t be surprised if Farage, canny media operator that he is, manages to turn the tables and gain some kind of advantage from this debacle, just as he did from the recent de banking scandal.

Our elites attempt to portray characters like Farage and Trump as fools, idiots and demagogues. Paper thin dolts who have little understanding of the modern world or the complexities of global politics. Ok fair enough. That’s politics.

But if they are really such poor candidates, venal scumbags with weak ideas, flawed characters, with wonky ideologies, then it should be an absolute doddle to beat them fair and square, at the ballot box.

That is of course, unless you also believe that the electorate is so bestial, small minded, gullible and hateful that it will easily fall for such demagoguery.

I’d suggest that if that is your view of the voters, that they are little more than a ‘basket of deplorables’ or ‘Fruitcakes, loonies and closet rascists’ then perhaps you shouldn’t be in politics in the first place.

Time and again our entrenched political elite swerve from the fair fight, preferring instead to demean themselves and their parties by resorting to underhand tactics,  wilfully misrepresenting what their opponents say, (anyone up for a bloodbath?) painting their rivals as anti-democratic insurrectionists, or even in the case of Trump, attempting to employ a partisan court system to actually imprison their enemies on the shakiest of pretexts.

As I said at the beginning of this piece I have long been slightly sceptical of the Reform project.

But after seeing how our elites have attempted to suppress the party, sideline its message, and implicitly insult the millions of people who will potentially support it at the forthcoming election. I am now more sure than ever how I will be casting my vote come July 4th.

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Thanks so much for reading this extra post from Low Status Opinions.

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That’s it. Thanks again and all the best.

LSO